Musique Non Stop | eMusic Electronica |  |
- Laraaji’s Cosmic Ambience and Stunning Beauty
- The Many Sides of Blood Orange’s Dev Hynes
- Teengirl Fantasy, Nun EP
- Daniel Avery, Drone Logic
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Posted: 27 Nov 2013 09:47 AM PST
In May of 1978, Brian Eno found himself subletting a flat in Greenwich Village in what would prove to be a fertile period for the man and his music. Within the next two years, he became a staple on the downtown scene, recording no wave bands for the epochal No New York compilation and collaborating with CBGB fixture Talking Heads on a series of records that moved their sound away from punk and toward a polyrhythmic groove that would power the band on into the ’80s. But late in 1979, Eno happened upon a busker while strolling through Washington Square Park. He was sitting in the lotus position, eyes closed, lost in the waves of sound he coaxed from his zither.
When Edward Larry Gordon opened his eyes, he found amid his donations Eno’s business card. He entered the studio with Eno a few months on and emerged with a new name (Laraaji), a new album (1980′s Day of Radiance, released as part of Eno’s influential Ambient series), and a new sound: his zither run through a patina of electronic effects. It was a relationship that would continue throughout that decade and into the ’90s, with Laraaji releasing a string of albums for Eno’s All Saints imprint. This music revealed a strain of New Age that could be by turns placid yet exquisitely psychedelic, mind-elevating and body-erasing. Gordon’s life, in particular, serves as a definition and counterpoint. He was born in Philadelphia, where he learned to play violin, piano and trombone; he eventually studied composition in Washington, D.C., at Howard University. After college, in the early ’70s, he relocated to New York City, where he took up stand-up comedy and acting, in addition to playing music gigs. No doubt influenced by the Eastern spiritualism infused into the late-’60s free jazz of John Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders that still hung in the air of the Village, Gordon began to study with gurus like Swami Satchidananda and Shri Brahmananda Sarasvati. But it was when he came upon a zither in a pawn shop that he became attuned to his musical and spiritual calling. Celestial Music features some of Laraaji’s earliest home recordings, revealing a sound both percussive and spacious. His zither playing evokes a river’s motion, transitioning from kinetic movement to tranquility in an instant. Perhaps the nearest antecedent to it is in the harp playing of John Coltrane’s widow, Alice Coltrane, as she unshackled herself from the constricts of jazz in the early ’70s and began to meld Eastern mysticism to Western musical instrumentation in her own group recordings. The title of Two Sides of Laraaji, meanwhile, is a misnomer: Traces of Greenwich Village folk, spirit jazz, ambient electronica, lounge exotica, drone, trip-hop (in collaboration with producer Bill Laswell), even some experimental noise (courtesy of a lengthy jam session with Blues Control from 2011) can be gleaned. Of the five titles being reissued, only The Way Out is the Way In — made in collaboration with Audio Active — is skippable, a by-product of the early ’90s that finds producers smothering Laraaji’s playing in bombastic Big Beat drum programming. And in digitally processing one of the man’s lectures about laughing meditation (Laraaji’s website boasts of both “Celestial Music Performances and Seriously Playful Laughter Workshops”) the man sounds like a deranged Mad Hatter cackling and lecturing you on the benefits of “cosmic energy.” For those fearing they may be entering a realm of New Age mists and wispiness, Laraaji’s music has far more coursing beneath its placid surfaces. On the transportive 25 minutes of “Being Here” (from 1992′s Flow Goes the Universe), his zither transforms into something akin to light on still water, the very act of listening not unlike floating weightless. The water metaphor becomes literal on “A Cave in England,” where a field recording of a waterfall melds with Laraaji’s strummed strings, the white noise of it soon becoming meditative. To these ears, Laraaji’s masterpiece remains 1987′s Essence/ Universe, and it’s nothing short of aural bliss. It’s beautiful, minimal, evocative music, whether or not you enjoy astral projection, lucid dreaming, chakra massage, or nurturing your inner child. New Age music is often used (and derided) as being a tool for self-help or even worse, of being a form of music with no pulse, neither sharp nor rough edges. Yet there remains in Laraaji’s music, an ineffable stunning beauty. At its finest moments, it dances just beyond conscious apprehension. Laraaji also appears briefly on I Am the Center: Private Issue New Age Music in America 1950-1990. Along with Iasos, Steven Halpern, Constant Demby and others, he represents the core of New Age music, but the true treasures of the compilation come from other musicians who perhaps released a few private-press cassettes before disappearing back into the ether (or the ashram). I Am the Center explores every corner of the genre, primarily that intersection particular to this music, wherein seer meets musician, where spirits commune via their earthly vessels (both Iasos and Larkin deploy the preposition “through” when describing their musical inspirations), where sound can be visionary, where music could be considered as both a form of psychotherapy and as life force. Artists like Daniel Emmanuel, Peter Davison and Judith Tripp are Laraajis who never had the fortune of meeting their Brian Eno, or garnered much interest outside of a small circle of cassette enthusiasts. New Age was once an underground, this flurry of release activity tells us. At the very least, a new generation of listeners who gravitate towards the ecstatic sounds of modern acts ranging from Sigur Ros to Oneohtrix Point Never, Emeralds to Mountains to Julianna Barwick, might be encouraged to immerse themselves a bit deeper in the genre and imagine New Age less as ideal for a spa soundtrack, and more like a cauldron, magical and dark.  |
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Posted: 27 Nov 2013 08:55 AM PST
Britain born, New York-based singer/songwriter Dev Hynes has always carried himself with an idiosyncratic grace that suggests that he’s more than capable of penning a mainstream hit. But where would the fun in that be? Hopscotching across sounds, from dance-punk as Test Icicles, to confessional folk balladeer, to positioning himself as a next-generation Prince with the R&B-leaning project Blood Orange, Hynes has approached with each of his musical incarnations with an outsider’s ear and a “feet first” mentality.
It’s his left-of-center approach to music that’s transformed Hynes from genre-skipping lone wolf to in-demand collaborator, his list of credits stretched across so many bands and projects it’s a small wonder he has time to release any work of his own. From the shadowy electro of Sky Ferreira’s “Everything is Embarrassing,” to the bruised hearts and broken strings of jangle-pop outfit Bleeding Knees Club, eMusic’s Laura Studarus has assembled 10 of Hynes’s finest career moments in writing, producing, remixing, and leading his talents in support of other people’s work. |
Sky Ferreira, “Everything is Embarrassing”
Role: Writer
Having worked his way through several different monikers and styles (dance punk, heartbroken folkie, and Prince-influenced R&B lothario among them), it makes sense that Hynes would be pals with Sky Ferreira — a singer whose artistic and personal CV already had multiple pages before the release of her first full-length. Thankfully both musicians were on the same page for this standout single from Ferreira’s 2012 Ghost EP. From the spiky bass to the romantic angst, “Everything is Embarrassing” is a song that could easily be graphed onto Hynes’s Blood Orange debut, Coastal Grooves.
Solange, “Losing You”
Role: Producer
Solange may croon like a traditional R&B/pop princess in the making, but in handling production duties for her 2012 EP True, Haynes made sure to keep things weird, transforming the EP into something closer to outsider art than Motown. “Losing You” features a Lynchian undercurrent: Just another slick pop breakup song, nothing to see here people—Wait. What exactly is making those crunchy, squealing backbeats? (Cue fever dream sequence.)
Florence and the Machine, “Bird Song”
Role: Writer
Last year, Florence Welch and Dev Hynes revealed that they’re working on a “strange album” of collaborative material. No word yet on release date, but for the time being we have “Bird Song” a b-side that the pair wrote for Welch’s 2011 debut Lungs. Together, Welch and Hynes set aside their preoccupations with love and heartbreak — the result was a dark song about being driven to violence by an errant songbird, delivered in gospel-style swing.
Bleeding Knees Club, “Nothing to Do”
Role: Producer
An exercise in jangle-pop guitar and raw nerves that clocks in just under two minutes, one would be hard-pressed to believe that “Nothing to Do” has, well, anything to do with Hynes. Recently, Hynes expressed that he’d hate for someone to keep buying his music simply because they liked what he’s done in the past. Love or hate it, his production work with Bleeding Knees Club proves the same point, that Hynes is not interested in merely repeating formulas.
The Chemical Brothers, “All Rights Reversed”
Role: Arrangements, guest musician
“All Rights Reversed” is a big beat electronic dance song. Arranged by Hynes and featuring the murmur-to-a-chant vocals of the Klaxons, this is the musician dipping out of his comfort zone (nary a guitar in sight) without losing his trademark intensity. Call it hiding in plain view.
Nedelle Torrisi, “I Love Thousands Every Summer”
Roles: Co-writer, guitarist, guest musician
Nedelle Torrisi’s delicate soprano graced Hynes’s first Blood Orange album, and on her self-titled debut (she previously fronted twisted art-pop trio Cryptacize), Hynes returns the favor, both writing and playing guitar on the ethereal ode to fleeting seasonal romance, “I Love Thousands Every Summer.” A wisp of a song that lingers like a stolen kiss, this is Hynes as the ultimate background player, supporting — but never overwhelming — his leading lady with a series of barely-there funk licks.
Basement Jaxx, “My Turn”
Role: Guest vocalist
Hynes moves through this string-driven Scars track with a commanding vocal swagger. It takes a strong vocalist to overcome a song full of fart-like electronic beats, and an even stronger actor to stand out in a video featuring dancing cartoon bears and questionable wardrobe choices (oversized hats, multi-toned bowtie). Still, the absurdity can’t hide the fact that even when someone else is driving the ship, Hynes is always a hair’s breadth away from commandeering the vessel with just gravely, charismatic baritone.
Kavinsky, “ProtoVision (Blood Orange remix)”
Role: Remixer
A skilled remixer, Hynes successfully remakes the Drive-soundtrack musician over in his own image. The female vocals have an extra layer of reverb, the beats are bigger, and the mood is more late night lonely than sinister. By the time the Prince-like guitar riff kicks in, hitting the road with Hynes as a co-pilot doesn’t sound like such a crazy idea.
Lana Del Rey, “Blue Jeans (Blood Orange remix)”
Role: Remixer
Like Hynes, Lana Del Rey has a taste for melodrama. On his remix for Born to Die cut “Blue Jeans” Hynes deftly enters the chanteuse’s world of Gatsby-like extravagance. Emptying the track of its overstuffed instrumentation and replacing it with a streamlined electronic beat, the Blood Orange remix of “Blue Jeans” amplifies both the tune’s inherit anguish and Del Rey’s sex kitten vocals.
Theophilus London, “Flying Overseas”
Role: Guest vocalist
In 2011, Hynes and pal/collaborator Solange joined rapper Theophilus London for the Green Label single, “Flying Overseas.” Singing and humming against a steel-drum beat, Hynes sounds ready for a beach vacation. It’s still a long way from Margaritaville, but we’d certainly be up for sharing a piña colada.
Posted: 27 Nov 2013 08:24 AM PST
Some of their most straightforward dance music to date
But rather than lean further into a mini-universe they helped facilitate, Weiss and Takahashi have made some of their most straightforward dance music to date on the four-track Nun EP. Where 7AM and Tracer took traditional techno and house and samples of pop songs and smeared them against a hazy holographic wall, this release uses alien sounds within more conventional dance song structures structures. On the EP’s first two tracks, at long last, we have breakbeats and mini-drops, little explosions of groove that would’ve melted into warm synth whimsy in Teengirl Fantasy’s past lives. Weiss and Takahashi have always made dance music on their own terms — and with Nun, they’re shifting what those terms mean again.
Posted: 27 Nov 2013 07:29 AM PST
As post-dubstep splinters into countless micro genres and the two-step garage revival gathers pace, Daniel Avery releases his tag-averse debut. There’s more than a trace of rave to these 12 tunes, but they’re agreeably off-centre, anchored by UK bass’s weight and balanced by melodic complexities, with savvy shifts in tone and context preventing numbing repetition. Not that Avery denies the pleasure of a good, old-fashioned build/release pattern: the title track is an especially strong call to the dance floor, but the hushed minimalism of “Naïve Response” and the lean, cosmic-house groove that drives “Simulrec” show the wayward logic that is Avery’s sharpest tool.
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