Sian Alice Group: The Dusk Line CD review (Blurt)

Following up last year’s stunning 59.59 album with a brief, four-song EP, British combo Sian Alice Group continue to chart a path for contemporary dreampop. More sedate than the occasionally noisy ethereality of 59.59, this EP should nonetheless be seen as an addendum to its predecessor.

Vocalist Sian Ahern has a more pronounced presence on these piano-dominated tracks, and her bandmates’ proficiency on multiple instruments is played down somewhat here. “When… (Variation)” takes the central melodic figure of the dizzying improvisation of 59.59’s “When….” and turns it into a stark, circular piano theme, accented by Ahern’s multi-tracked voice.

While somewhat more one-dimensional than the kaleidoscopic nervousness of 59.59, The Dusk Line is a satisfying accompaniment and serves as a tantalizing stop-gap until the group completes their next full-length.

Standout Tracks: “When… (Variation),” “The Dusk Line”

First appeared Aug. 22, 2008 at Blurt.

Hanggai & Sa Dingding: New Chinese Pop feature review (Orlando Weekly)

As the Chinese government stage-manages every aspect of the Beijing Olympic Games, the array of tricks they’re employing to ensure that their country is portrayed well in the international media is stunning. Admonishing a country of carton- an-hour cigarette smokers to stub ’em out? Check. Getting things like “chicken without sexual life” off Beijing menus? Done. Cranking up a mysterious weather-making machine to ensure bright, sunny days? Believe it or not, yes.

But beyond their desire to make their roads look empty and prevent the Olympic athletes from noticing the, ahem, security cameras in their dorms, the biggest heartburn-inducing fear among Central Committee members is that some free-thinking Western performer is going to swan onto a stage somewhere and launch a pro-democracy rant, thus forcing the government to let loose their entire nuclear arsenal on the offending artist’s home country.

These concerns have led the government to augment their already byzantine restrictions on foreign performers during the Games. Even under-the-radar performances are under heavy scrutiny; entertainment mag Time Out Beijing’s June edition was banned from newsstands, and their August issue will be folded into September because there isn’t enough non-Committee nightlife planned during the Olympics to fill the pages. Bars are forbidden from hosting live music and a local music festival was cancelled, meaning the thousands of foreigners visiting the city will have a difficult time finding musical entertainment beyond the sanctioned cultural performances on the official Olympic calendar.

A majority of these concerts focus on China’s glorious cultural history, with a mixture of Peking Opera, symphony orchestras, dance performances and folk music. It’s all perfectly highbrow and ensures that nobody confuses the host country with a dictatorial, propaganda-driven sweatshop. Beyond the obvious issues of artistic freedom, this clampdown is a tragedy; by only letting China’s visitors see their preapproved music events, the government is also reinforcing their country’s image as a utilitarian, creativity-free zone, hamstrung by tradition, propriety and productivity.

Why not find some time in the schedule between the Wang Jiaxun Percussion Music Band and, say, one of the three scheduled Disney concerts for a group like Hanggai? This Beijing crew is composed of six musicians who were originally from Mongolia. The members started out in punk and rock bands, but, inspired by the full-throated singing style and sparse instrumentation of the music of their homeland, found a way to smoothly integrate both styles without diluting either.

If there were a Chinese version of No Depression (like that would pass muster with censors), Hanggai would be cover stars. Their recombination of folk styles and edgy contemporary music is roughly analogous to what y’all-ternative musicians have been doing to American roots music for decades. Except, you know, in Chinese … and with really deep vocals. Hanggai’s music is – like the best alt-country numbers – fantastic to drink to, and the band has received considerable acclaim for their live performances. So why not put them on a stage, or better yet, a bar? The songs on Introducing are imbued with centuries of cultural history, but they pulse with the frantic pace of modern city life. Hanggai are indisputably Chinese, but also incredibly accessible for novice listeners who have yet to acclimate to the unique tonal complexities of Asian music.

Vocalist Sa Dingding similarly fuses Chinese musical traditions with a contemporary approach in a way that Western listeners should appreciate. Her Mandarin, Tibetan, Sanskrit and glossolaliac singing is inscrutable to non-polyglot ears, but her fluid vocal method completely eschews the squeaks and squeals associated with contemporary Chinese pop singers. The production on Alive creates swooning electronic textures that pivot off traditional Chinese instrumentation, undergirded by propulsive rhythms. Occasionally danceable and pop-oriented, Sa Dingding’s music is prismatic and nuanced – it draws as much from the centuries of culture in her homeland as it does from her collection of counterfeit Cocteau Twins CDs.

Sa Dingding’s efforts to trumpet the ruling party’s lines may help her avoid charges of being a counterrevolutionary, but it doesn’t appear that the singer will be performing at any officially sanctioned events. It’s the country’s loss; her music is a beautiful representation of the rarely seen artistic side of Chinese pop.

First appeared Aug. 18, 2008 in Orlando Weekly.

Buy Sa Dingding: Alive and Introducing Hanggai at Amazon.com.

Various Artists: Love, Peace & Poetry: Chilean Psychedelic Music CD review (Broward-Palm Beach New Times)

Continuing to prove that psychedelic rock was as omnipresent in the ’60s as it is loosely defined today, the tenth volume in the QDK Media series further breaks down the definition of “Latin American Psychedelic Music” the label explored in its second volume. After delivering tunes from Brazil (Volume Six) and Mexico (Volume Seven), this edition takes on the somewhat obscure sounds that emerged from Chile between 1967 and 1973. The Andes produced a sizable amount of psychedelic music, as any recent fan of Peruvian chicha music can testify. There’s a drug joke there, but let’s not explore it, since what’s most interesting about this batch of garage freakouts is that not much is tied to any specific cultural heritage. Although most of the 17 tracks on this disc are sung in Spanish, these Chileans were clearly under the sway of American rock mythology. The Blops deliver gentle, folky trippiness, Los Beat 4 have taken up residence just this side of the Calico Wall, and Aguaturbia are all about beat-swinging sexodelica. It’s all quality stuff, but were you to not know that much of it was recorded in a country about to fall under that iron fist of a regressive dictator, it wouldn’t strike you as being all that special. While the LP&P series has been a great way to get an interesting peek into rock underground movements that took place all over the world in the ’60s and ’70s, its true power has been its ability to provide some cultural context. Unfortunately, this edition could have been recorded almost anywhere in the Spanish-speaking world.

First appeared Aug. 14, 2008 in Broward-Palm Beach New Times.

Buy this CD at Amazon.com.

Dead Can Dance SACD reissues (Blurt)

Original vinyl pressings of Dead Can Dance’s catalog on 4AD have, for years, fetched top dollar on various auction sites, due primarily to the fact that the CD versions of all of the group’s albums have suffered mightily in the sonics department. With the exception of DCD’s last two studio albums, Into the Labyrinth and Spiritchaser, there was always something peculiarly thin and uninviting about the digital replications of these albums, and even those later works failed to capture the warm, organic expansiveness of Dead Can Dance’s sound. Now, a few years after painstakingly remastering the catalog of the Cocteau Twins, 4AD has finally released a series of high-fidelity reproductions of their other flagship group.

Simply put, the difference in audio quality on these new discs is unmistakably amazing. Remastered by the audiophiles at Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs (without, apparently, the input of either DCD members Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry), all nine of the group’s albums are now available in hybrid SACD format, which allows both surround-sound playback in SACD-capable machines, as well as high-resolution sound from regular CD players. The new editions are issued in LP replica sleeves that capture – in reduced scale – the impact of the original striking artwork. (Regular CD versions are due later in August.)

Listening chronologically – from the early, synth-based melodrama of their self-titled debut to the multi-culti world-beat constructs of later masterpieces like Aion and The Serpent’s Egg – a few things become clear. First, the continual insistence by Perry and Gerrard that DCD was not a “goth” group is borne out by actually listening to what was driving the duo musically.

While a certain dark drama is prevalent in many of their songs, the same could be said about Leonard Cohen, who is a likely candidate for Perry’s biggest musical reference. Second, despite the confluence of world and medieval music influences in their sound, Dead Can Dance wrote songs. While Gerrard’s career as a soundtrack-scorer has cemented her reputation as an effective ambient mood-setter, it was Perry’s rather strict devotion to structure and melody that made DCD’s albums so engaging and even catchy. These excellent remasters encourage far more focused listening than their more unpleasant CD predecessors, allowing the listener to become fully engaged in these rich soundscapes. However, even a casual play reveals sonic elements that were previously unheard – even on vinyl – giving these iconic works the presentation they’ve deserved for some time.

Now, if they’d just get around to This Mortal Coil.

First appeared August 2008 in Blurt.

Buy these reissues at Amazon.com.

‘American Teen’ film review (Baltimore Citypaper)

If you can’t remember high school–how harrowing its halls are, how invigorating those first flexes of independence can be, how fucking obnoxious high school students are–the makers of American Teen have crafted a movie expressly designed to clarify those memories. Focusing on the lives of four (eventually five) high school students from the first day of senior year right through to graduation, American Teen is another fly-on-the-wall docudrama by the folks at A&E Indie Films. Like the other productions from A&E–Murderball, My Kid Could Paint That, Jesus Camp–the documentary pokes its nose into an idiosyncratic world with its own peculiar hierarchies, social cues, and jargons; unlike those other movies, Teen is an idiosyncratic world in which nearly everyone in America has inhabited at some point in their lives.

In picking its Everytown, USA, location (Warsaw, Ind., to be precise) and a generally archetypal selection of students–”a heartthrob, a princess, a jock, a rebel and a geek,” the tag line accurately reads–the first part of director Nanette Burstein’s (The Kid Stays in the Picture) thesis is clear: Everyone’s high school experience is similar. But in its gentle exposition and in-depth character studies, Teen heartily proves the second, less obvious part of that thesis: Everyone’s high school experience is unique. Both parts of this idea, however, are only applicable if you’re white and hovering somewhere near middle class, since Warsaw isn’t the most socioeconomically diverse environment. It’s worth noting that, despite the implied prosperity gap between them, both the well-to-do prom queen and the scrappy artist drive their own cars, and neither appears to have a job.

Burstein’s greatest success in Teen is in stressing the uniqueness of each of these kids by revealing them to be creatures who are much more complex than appearances allow. Among those same five archetypal high-schoolers are a partier, a drama queen, someone who’s endured suicide in the family, a free spirit, and an insecure romantic. And none of them is the kid you’d assume him or her to be. By scratching just beneath their hallway-steeled personas, Burstein proves the adage that’s basically keeping A&E on the air: Everyone’s got a story, and it’s probably kinda fucked up.

And it’s truly notable how fucked up all of these kids are, and not in the scare-tactic, drugs-and-sex way that teenagers are typically portrayed on the big and small screen. No, these kids are fucked up in the way that high school students have been fucked up for decades: Empowered by years of being told they’re special and can accomplish anything, they feel ready to take on the world. They’re experiencing romantic love, they’re driven, and they’re extremely aware of the world around them. But at the same time, they’re emotionally retarded and astonishingly naive.

The eternal tug of war between independence and immaturity has always been muddled by parents’ constant, contradictory exhortations to “grow up” and “you can’t because you’re still a kid.” But in recent years, those messages have become even cloudier, as children have been bullied into deciding their lifelong paths at an age when they can barely decide which shirt to wear without having a meltdown, all while being more and more sheltered from a world their parents deem “dangerous.” To that end, Teen brilliantly demonstrates how unnerving it is to be a high school student these days. All of these kids are grappling with enormous–gigantic–decisions about their futures, but often appear equally overcome by conflicts over prom decorations or some such seemingly inconsequential thing.

Those things aren’t, to a teenager, inconsequential. And American Teen emphasizes this. Not in the “oh, these silly kids” way that most adults minimize the swirling chaos that is life in high school. Instead, it casts an empathetic eye toward revealing these students as formative adults. The documentary shows them living in a world full of crippling self-doubt and endless pressure to conform and succeed. It also shows them struggling to survive and prosper in their own unique ways. That very uniqueness winds up making all of these supposed archetypes truly engaging characters. It also makes American Teen essential viewing, both for kids about to embark upon that journey and the parents entrusted to help them along.

First appeared August 6, 2008 in Baltimore Citypaper.

‘Making Of’ DVD review (Detroit Metro Times)

Nouri Bouzid’s 2006 film Making Of took home two awards from the Tribeca Film Festival; one for Best Actor, and the other a special mention for Best Screenplay. Though the winning performance by young Lofti Abdelli as Bahta, the carefree-kid-turned-dazed-terrorist is doubtlessly noteworthy, it’s Bouzid’s nuanced script that goes the furthest to give this Tunisian film its undeniable impact. Opening with a group of lively and typical teenage boys — talking trash, flirting with delinquency via graffiti — it’s hard to imagine that Making Of will devolve into a harrowing look at the mind of a young man who will soon strap sticks of dynamite to his chest. Yet, as beautifully as Bouzid and cinematographer Michel Baudour present the landscape of seaside Tunis, they paint in equally vivid strokes the hardscrabble poverty that affects so many families in the north Africa. As Bahta’s run-ins with the law escalate in intensity, his relationship with his father disintegrates and his options dwindle (the kid just wants to be a break dancer, which isn’t an admired, or particularly lucrative, occupation in Tunisia), it still seems extraordinarily unlikely that he’s destined to become a deluded pawn in an extremist game. But Bouzid delicately and empathetically puts him there in a way that’s as emotionally deflating for the viewer as it is haunting.

First appeared August 6, 2008 in Detroit Metro Times.

Buy this DVD at Amazon.com.

US Christmas: Eat the Low Dogs CD review (Reax)

The third album from these rural North Carolina boys continues US Christmas’ mission to spread their peculiar – and astounding – blend of psychotic metallurgy. Half hippy, half hesher, US Christmas owes a considerable debt to early Hawkwind (just check out those flanging synths) and even Uli Jon Roth-era Scorpions (“Uktena” could have come right off of side two of In Trance). But these guys are definitely not living in the past. Nate Hall pushes some swirling psychedelia out of his guitar, but his gruff, insistent singing voice – which he refers to as “goddamn vocals” – is not interested in speeding your trip. Urgent, emotional and often pretty angry, Hall’s vocal approach brings out the rougher, darker edges inherent in the music’s sturm und drang. It’s an interesting approach that’s evocative of what could have become of Monster Magnet had Dave Wyndorf never gotten an advance check with multiple zeros on it.

First appeared August 2008 in Reax.

Buy this CD at Amazon.com.

Humanfly: II CD review (Revolver)

Rattling off “epic” tracks that clock in at an average 10-minute length, Leeds-based band Humanfly stakes a strong post-metal claim with their second album. Unfortunately, none of these monstrously heavy cuts display any compositional prowess, and instead come off like multiple lumbering songs crudely jammed together.

First appeared in the August 2008 issue of Revolver.