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Sublime Frequencies in Syria and the Western Sahara |
Omar Souleyman: Highway to Hassake: Folk and Pop Sounds of Syria
Group Doueh: Guitar Music from the Western Sahara
(Sublime Frequencies)Reviewed by Dustin Drase The orgiastic nature of Syrian debka (Arabic folkloric dance and party music) permeates every inch of the muffled recordings on Omar Souleyman's Highway to Hassake: Folk and Pop Sounds of Syria. Mark Gergis of Sublime Frequencies expertly compiled this disparate array of recordings into a glass-bottom boat-tour through some of the most wildly original music imaginable (recording quality be damned). Fuzzy synth-lines sputter amidst cardboard-box banged drums, which make you feel as if you're waiting right outside a busy Saharan nightclub. "Jani," Souleyman's first hit in Syria, opens with a fierce war cry that morphs into a warm swash with power-saw feedback while the mawai-style vocals hit in rapid-fire succession. The aptly titled "Dabke" is squelchy and messy, as if the instruments were circuit-bent children's electronics. Souleyman cries and wallows with abandon, calling out for the audience to join him in his manic antics. The keyboard trills are hypnotic and sexual, evoking bacchanal rituals of abandon. Omar Souleyman is a prolific folk-pop artist who is all but unknown outside his native Syria. One of his more than 500 cassette albums can surely be found in the shops and markets throughout Syria, yet Highway to Hassake marks the first release outside his homeland. Souleyman leaves a message to his newfound Western audience in the liner notes: "I hope this music will make some sense for you and that you will enjoy listening. I don't care much about material things. I simply want popularity among people. I hope that people will love this music and I hope that I will be with you in the future. I wish prosperity for all people." Like many of the entries in the Sublime Frequencies catalog, the genesis of the release is as fascinating as the album itself. The label, which is overseen by Alan Bishop of the Sun City Girls, is home to a renegade group of field recordists, found sound archivists and visual alchemists hell-bent on exposing glimpses of unknown cultures. The Girls themselves were famous for making obscure recordings of their music, spraypainting the cassette cases and planting them in random markets and shops in remote villages throughout Asia. In summer 2005, while trawling the local Moroccan radio airwaves, Bishop came across a searing guitar sound that left him awestruck. Armed with what little knowledge he could glean from the DJ, Bishop and compatriot Hisham Mayet set out with a cassette recording to canvass street vendors, in hopes of finding out who or what was behind this sonic insanity. All the cassette vendors could offer was that it was Sahrawi music, from the Western Sahara. Mayet returned to Morocco the following year and traveled south to hit up more street vendors for any additional information. The vendors were no help until Bishop chanced upon a small boy who led him through the old city of Dakhla to a small studio, where he once again played the cassette tape. Fate had smiled upon him that day, as the man in front of him exclaimed, "That's me!" Doueh's music on the LP, Group Doueh: Guitar Music from the Western Sahara, is a primal spasm of hillbilly-like guitar affixed with songs about love, honor and respect for the common man, all sung in the Hassania language. As Doueh himself admits, it’s as much Hendrix as it is traditional Sahrawi music. "Eid El Arsh" could be a heated melting pot of Lou Reed's slop-art guitar mixed with woodblocks and bucket beats. "Tirara" is O Brother, Where Art Thou? Americana, along with some hand-claps and a little bit of swagger. Fans of Henry Flynt's Backporch Hillbilly Blues will feel right at home with Doueh's rock antics. To those of us with ears attuned to American pop, the music of Omar Souleyman and Group Doueh begets a higher-level consciousness of rock ‘n' roll — something many have tried, but few have achieved. This article was originally published on 04/19/07 @ stopsmiling online |
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V/A - 8 Bit Operators: The music of Kraftwerk |
 Artist: V/A Album: 8-Bit Operators: The Music of Kraftwerk Label: Astralwerks Review date: Apr. 3, 2007 The premise of 8-bit Operators: The music of Kraftwerk was originally an April fools' joke by the band 8-bit Weapon, who posted the idea on a message board. Fans of chiptune music have long found camaraderie on Internet Bulletin Boards and on fan-run sites such as Micromusic, and it didn't take long for a collection of tracks from around the globe to start pouring in. To wit, Ralf (Hütter) and Florian (Schneider-Esleben) of Kraftwerk were among the first to use computers as musical performance machines in the early ’70s. By the end of the decade, Kraftwerk had pioneered the use of animatronics and handheld electronics in their live shows to effectively take their entire studio on the road with them. On their 1981 Computer World tour, the band famously performed on stage using little more than their "pocket calculators" as instruments. Jumping to 1983, a young composer by the name of Koji Kondo was hired by a relatively unknown company called Nintendo, to compose music for their Famicon gaming system. Two years later, he would create one of the most recognizable tunes in the entire world, using the limited palette of four instruments that were available to him on the system's sound chip (two monophonic pulse channels, a monophonic triangle wave channel and a noise channel that is used for percussion). That theme song to Super Mario Brothers would become instantly recognizable and ignite a revolution of devotees to what is now referred to as "8-bit" or "chiptune" music. Perhaps the greatest invention to come from the love of chiptune music would be Oliver Wittchow's Nanoloop. First developed in 1998, Nanoloop is a 16-step pattern sequencer for the Nintendo Gameboy (a cartridge) that literally allows the user to play the Gameboy as an instrument. This piece of equipment, alongside other hardware like the Sid Station, made it possible for musicians to step outside the world of video game sound design and onto the dance floors. Realizing that live performances within the Gameboy crowd had a striking resemblance to Kraftwerk playing their pocket calculators, Jeremy Kolosine of Receptors Music began compiling all of the message board submissions into what would eventually become 8-Bit Operators. Kolosine made sure that alongside prolific artists in the genre, he also included the architects behind the technology that made 8-bit music performance possible, such as Nanoloop creator Oliver Wittchow and Johan Kablinski, the creator of Little Sound DJ. Similar to their origins, the majority of these tracks pull off the amazing feat of sounding futuristic yet simultaneously retro. Bacalao's "The Robots [Die Roboter]" is a skittery jackhammer jam, with twisted drumbeats and breathy, processed vocals sung in German. Glomag's version of "Pocket Calculator" is an exceptionally playful recreation with herky-jerk, Devo-esque vocals and steam-static drums that ping-pong all over the mix. Covox cranks out a Mega Man-inspired version of "Computer Love" that is slow and plodding, with a fantastic percussive back beat that would have translated just as well to an intro of "Trans Europe Express.” Where the first half of the record relies on dance-floor remixes, the second half starts to delve into wilder territory. Wittchow,takes on the lesser-celebrated "Kristallo," while David E. Sugar's version of "Radioactivity" quickly devolves into happy-hardcore, spastic-child-dance madness that is almost unrecognizable until the last 10 seconds of the song. 8-Bit Weapon's version of the almost unknown "Spacelab" starts like the soundtrack to an old horror movie, one reminiscent of the electronic soundscapes on Air’s Moon Safari. Overall, the reverence that these artists have for Kraftwerk shines through in their meticulously crafted renditions. Whereas most covers compilations are completely indulgent and self-serving, 8-Bit Operators holds up on its own merits, and manages to serve as a perfect snapshot of a vibrantly talented group of electronic artists paying homage to their musical forefathers. By Dustin Drase This review originally appeared on 4/03/07 @ Dusted Magazine |
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Klaxons - Myths of the near future |
 Klaxons Myths of the near future (DGC) Tweaking on the frenetic energy of their self described 'nu-rave' sound, the UK trio of Klaxons have a lot riding on their debut release. Online fans quickly gravitated to their frothy, upbeat brand of dance-rock. But to call Myths of the Near Future a rave album, or to even discuss it in the context of teddy-bear backpack, lollypop sucking, glow-stick waving, raver throwback is doing it serious injustice. For as much as the group tries to wear their dance music allegiance on their fashionable sleeves, at their heart and at their best, they are unmistakably a frenetic rock band, lush with pianos, throbbing, harmonized vocals, thick bass lines and angular guitars. Album opener "two receivers" hits off with a decidedly distorted rumble, building to a smashing, snare-heavy drumbeat and piano overlays that slowly crescendo into territory mined by those other NME darlings, TV on the Radio. Regrettably, the worst track on the album is perhaps the one that will garner Klaxons the most attention: "Atlantis to Interzone" is a spastic romp, that roars to life with air raid sirens, and insufferable mid-’90s, Moby-era techno samples, yet quickly merges into a guitar breakdown that would make Fugazi proud. Adding keyboards to your guitars or guitars to your keyboards or drums to your bass or piano to your whatever is nothing we haven't seen before. That being said, this is the Klaxons at their worst, yet surprisingly better than myriad UK buzz bands that have tried to make it here in the US. It's exceptionally hard to deny the infectiously evil and pogo-inducing madness behind tracks like "Magick" and "Four Horsemen of 2012," both of which are early Myspace fan favorites, but drummer/producer James Ford's skills shine through more on "As Above, So Below" and "Golden Skans," the latter with its mesmerizing oohs and aahs punctuated by a swaggering backbeat and jagged guitar stabs. Like so many other buzz bands, the Klaxons are trying to align themselves to a "new" movement, but in the process may be underscoring their own potential. Listen to the tracks that are not being released as singles and you'll see that the band truly does have something to offer outside of their super-fun-party-time aesthetic. Taking the album title literally, let's hope that these Myths of the Near Future are true, and that the Klaxons can fashion the fashionable success of this album into a more substantial follow up. This review was originally published 03/26/07 at Dusted Magazine |
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