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01. MP3: Hypnotic Brass Ensemble – War
02. MP3: Hypnotic Brass Ensemble – Sankofa

As a biologist, I think a lot about the future of mankind.  For example, genetic engineering: will it ever be useful, technically feasible, or morally acceptable to genetically engineer humans with a vast array of traits?

Then, I find out about projects like Hypnotic Brass Ensemble.  Inheritance of musical ability the old fashioned way: juice of the loins, incubate in the womb, pop out kid, pass down craft.  Phil Cohran did this times 8, to be precise.  His name may be more familiar to you in the context of the Sun Ra Arkestra (too crazy NOT to be true), where he played trumpet.

Hypnotic is a pure brass and drums instrumental band (8 horn players, all Cohran’s sons, and a drummer) forged in the fading flames of Chicago’s once fiercely active, and still ferociously inventive jazz scene.  In this context, the band’s sound and catalytic energy should be expected, but it still manages to take your breath away every time.  Look no farther than their collaborations with Blur’s Damon Albarn, Tony Allen or Mos Def for more vetting. Read the rest…

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MP3: Secret Mountains – Kaddish

The first eight minutes of Secret Mountains’ Kaddish EP are nothing short of breathtaking. You’ll find gorgeous crescendos shimmering on both opening tracks, “Kaddish” and “Gate/Gate/Paragate,” two undeniably Baltimorean songs operating on an EP that plays more like a dream than it does music. Like Beach House and Wye Oak before them, Secret Mountains replicate a peculiar brand of euphoria, one that strikes more closely at the vein of beauty and is in touch with pure, unadulterated splendor. What we have on our hands today is a pretty damn promising debut.

At it’s best, Kaddish is a powerful narcotic; Secret Mountains’ straightforward instrumentation raises the heavens with a blunt echo, their listeners need do little to follow suit. Kaddish’s masterwork, “Gate/Gate/Paragate” resides in this state as a force of nature, it works fundamentally around an earthy chic-beat and a progression rooted in old folk. The notes have a way of testing your confidence: each count becomes a new leap of faith, falling into place like a snowflake on a bed of winter dust.

“I Have Been Awake” is Kaddish’s easy anthem, lyrics somehow mightier than the bony post-primal percussion point up the track’s attention, “I have been awake today. What have I done? What have I done?” It’s about reconciling self-knowledge and human nature, personal right, social wrong, the various cycles of life. Heavy stuff. These themes aren’t merely skimmed throughout the remainder of Kaddish either.  In fact, most of the subject matter eagerly sisters with virtuous artistic abstraction. Gladly, and  surprisingly, Secret Mountains have found an amiable middle ground between overzealous conceptual wankery and transparent secularism. The polished production reflects a similar position, intuitively revealing their stargazing eye sockets equally as well as their soles, planted comfortably in the soil.

What’s really impressive is that, for a home-cooked gem, Kaddish is sequenced immaculately. Sure, you’ve got the occasional mistake littered about on the flooring (which only adds to how deeply personal the EP is), but for something so homemade to sound this unified is quite simply uncalled for. Each piece moves seamlessly into the next devoid of the slightest friction; Kaddish never loses momentum between songs or within. Never. And that alone is worth being proud of.

Label: Unsigned

Release date: Aug 2009

Track list:

1. Kaddish
2. Gate/Gate/Paragate
3. Countries
4. Growing Season
5. I Have Been Awake

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MP3: Béla Fleck – Djorolen (with Oumou Sangaré)

This is a special album, the likes of which you won’t get to experience many times in a cloistered, Western musical experience.

A little bit of backstory: Béla Fleck, everyone’s favorite (or least favorite, depending on your tastes and outlook) virtuoso instrumentalist takes a bit of a soul-searching journey. Fleck undertook Throw Down Your Heart, a project to create a movie about his travels and explorations through Africa, searching out the origins of his musical love: the banjo, and making some great music along the way. It is perhaps a little known fact that the banjo’s origins lay in Earth’s oldest inhabited territory, rather than in its more commonly known trappings as a staple of Appalachian and rural American music.

Read the rest…

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MP3: Lands and Peoples – Bad Habits

This is only their second EP, and I daresay Lands & Peoples are one of the most intriguing new projects to sprout out of our city’s fertile musical soil.

There will undoubtedly be comparisons to other, more prominent textural haze-languishers on the scene, Beach House.  And there are definite similarities, as both make liberal use of echo-chamber vocals, warm and foggy aural landscapes, and a consistently slow-to-mid-tempo trot. Beach House reaches internally to wrangle dense and massive, backwards-gazing phantasmagoria, Lands & Peoples add a twist, willfully emerging from the haze for stark moments of lucidity.  In Beach House, I see awe-inspiring, almost otherworldly power whereas Lands & Peoples aims to better capture those more precious, personal moments.

Their sound is, in a sense, quite of the moment.  Tying together the threads of some of the most gorgeously couched pop in circulation today.  The intro track “Six Weeks” swells with a swirling, amorphous sound mass reminiscent of High Places.  Vocal oohs fade in and out eerily, looped electronic fuzz and delicate percussive lines slowly layer atop one another, like drizzling molasses coating everything.  ”Bad Habits” builds further on this, taking some cues from Beach House’s dilapidated melodic progressions and the lingering, full vocals.  The juxtaposition of simple, staccato percussion lines provide a great, propulsive foil.  Where Beach House often feels so big it is almost overwhelming, Lands & Peoples are more prone to receding into a more fragile and nimble beast.  But this is not to say that L&P play the role of the timid wisp, as “Bad Habits” eventually works up the nerve to become quite the lush number.

“Awake” starts with glitched-out, downtuned synth lines before Moore’s voice punches through like some vivid mirage through a desert haze as the synth loop churns ever forward, a persistent tide of somnambulence.  The track also showcases some nice vocal acrobatics and harmonies with Beau Cole. The gorgeously seductive “Isabella” is a mind-blowing shift, and far and away the best track on the album.  Well worth the price of admission, the sparse guitar lines and longing,  rich vocal harmonies loom hauntingly.  The vulnerable tone shift of the guitar and vocals from mournful to gentle, optimistic lullaby is inspired.  Nothing short of bliss.  ”Cars Like Waves” rounds out the EP first with a gentle instrumental half, followed by something like a distorted melody ripped from a children’s carousel or funhouse.

Lands & Peoples traffic in rich, tender aural textures with a distinctly personal element, churning out one of the most promising releases from the local scene this year.  Catch them tonight at the Talking Head as they return from their tour to open for Philly’s Kurt Vile.

If you like “Bad Habits” and what you’ve read, pick up the album on the group’s Bandcamp site.

Conflict of Interest: Caleb Moore has contributed to Aural States before, but I think I am pretty unbiased in my assessments.  I mean, look how badly I treated him during his short-lived stint as Thrust Lab’s lead singer.

Label: Unsigned

Release Date: Jul 25 2009

Track list:
1. Introduction (Six Weeks)
2. Bad Habits
3. Awake
4. Isabella
5. Cars Like Waves

In addition to the Stoop Storytelling Series, you can catch Caleb live at the Golden West this Sunday Jul 26th with DC’s These United States.

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MP3: Caleb Stine – Welcome to Rock and Roll

Country artists generally fall into two easily distinguished categories: the dominant is radio-fried country which is potentially more derivative than Top 40 pop in its most egregious recycling of predictable elements into formula.  Then you have the others, who remember that at one point in its history, country derived from true rural traditions of folk and Old Time music.  Generally speaking, it’s clear from the first note whether you are dealing with mere contrivance or something natural and organic.

With Caleb Stine, you never question his sincerity.  Every word and note feels like a naked, soul-bared moment. Caleb’s music is something like an oasis here in Baltimore, intensely warm and personal moments amidst the stark cold and disaffection of fast-paced urban life.  Instead of focusing outward on bewildering experimentalism, he focuses inward on stellar, precise and intimate songwriting.  From the piercing gaze Caleb shoots from the cover down to his steady cadence and tempo, his unfaltering vocals, everything about Eyes So Strong And Clean (his first solo outing, though many Brakemen make appearances) compels you to take pause, to contemplate and reflect.  And this time, packing a bit more punch thanks to a brand-new electric Epiphone.

Read the rest…

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MP3: Wye Oak – Take It In

Don’t miss the CD release party next Tues July 21st at the Ottobar. You can also hear a full stream of the album here.

Even before this release, Baltimore natives Wye Oak had quickly ascended my personal list of favorite artists.  With this, they cement themselves into the most rarified air of my all-time beloved musicians.  All the pitfalls you hear and fear of the sophomore album are utterly non-existent as Jenn and Andy make a strong and organic thrust forward with The Knot (the first truly new album since signing to North Carolina-based Merge Records about a year and a half ago).  They provide strong evidence that traditional songwriting has plenty of life left in it (take that leftfield and avant-garde!).

The thing that makes The Knot so grand is that it is a natural polishing of all the facets of their debut gem If Children.  Jenn’s soaring vocals and big-riff, crashing guitars, Andy’s finessed drumming and mysterious, warm synth work, all these see some fantastic maturation.  The interplay of all these elements becomes even more awe-inspiring in the context of a wider range of peaks and valleys, expansions and contractions.  These elements give their sound a fresh sense of cavernous space and epic proportion that makes If Children appear almost claustrophobic by comparison.

Read the rest…

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MP3: Pontiak – Wax Worship

Drenched in reverb, as though recorded in some distant wooded canyon, ex-Baltimoreans Pontiak follow up their hard-rocking psychedelic debut with another strong offering of much of the same. Which is problematic, because somehow this band sounds both all too familiar and equally difficult to describe. Stoner metal riffs that could have come off a Kyuss album are buried between, and sometimes subconsciously emerge from, more eerie and vaguely defined, druggy soundscapes. Luckily Ponitak pack enough twists and turns into a three-minute jam to keep you on your toes, never dragging their heels or resting their laurels on a single riff or sound (a habit some stoner rockers too easily settle into).

Read the rest…

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MP3: White Rabbits – Percussion Gun from the forthcoming LP It’s Frightening

White Rabbits have always been a concussion ensemble of vicious rhythms and unconventional minor compositions. With It’s Frightening (release May 19 2009), they take things in a different direction. Overall, It’s Frightening is not as danceable as their freshman effort, but has more intricate compositions and lush textures as well as a consistency that Fort Nightly (2007) lacked.

Read the rest…

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MP3: Dirty Projectors – Stillness is the move from the forthcoming full-length Bitte Orca (2009)

There’s a strange pattern of listenership between Dirty Projectors and myself. Here’s generally how it works: every few months I excitedly stumble upon one of their albums at some miscellaneous record shop. I’ll take it home, cherish the album art that the indie gods have bestowed upon me, set my player on repeat, and amongst the other indistinct tunes, I’ll find one sole outstanding track that absolutely dominates my musical interests like a newly acquired puppy.

For example: the beauty-saturated The Glad Fact’s most sincere track (“Lit From Below”) ran through my speakers for the majority of last January, whereas the grand harmonies of “Not Having Found” played the same role for The Getty Address last June. Over a year and a half after my first experience with Dirty Projectors, “Rise Above” still hasn’t vanished from my play cue, and that’s all I’ll say about that. It’s always been worth the trouble to shuffle through Dave Longstreth’s discography for these rare tracks, which is exactly the state of mind I utilized while first listening to Bitte Orca.

Read the rest…

Giveaway: we have 3 copies (CD) of the new album, paired with posters, to give to 3 lucky winners, courtesy of the fine folks at Thrill Jockey Records.  Just comment, leaving a contact email to join our kind-of monthly email list, and you could be randomly drawn on Friday!

Winners!

Katie

James

Petrnotail

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MP3: Double Dagger – The Lie/The Truth

Double Dagger are undoubtedly one of our fair city’s most brilliant and potent gems.  Combining the best parts of the music and arts scenes from around town, the talented trio bridge the oft-chasmic valleys separating the social circles of indie, hipsterism, art and hardcore punk roots in the town.  Their broad appeal is a testament to their talent and magnetism.  And with this latest album, they assert themselves as a constantly progressing entity that can be so much more than the tongue-in-cheek amalgamated genre they wittingly (and back-handedly) coined “graphic design-core” so many years ago, and have been straddled with ever since by the lazy music writers of the world. Read the rest…