|
 New
Lines
By
David King
Massive
Attack
Heligoland
Britain’s
trip-hop messiahs have gotten a lot of guff over the years
since releasing their first three, universally praised albums.
On 1991’s Blue Lines, the trio taught the world how
hip-hop and electronica and rock could chill together; for
Protection, as other bands figured out the old formula,
they switched things up and got even more chill. On 1998’s
Mezzanine, Massive Attack got dark, gritty and heavy.
But by 2003’s 100th Window, the group (now a duo) found
themselves accused of trying to recapture what they had done
in the past. So for their latest release, Heligoland,
they just did what they’ve done most consistently during their
career: They called in some friends and put together a fucking
good album.
Heligoland
is sparse, chill, perhaps the musical equivalent of too much
klonopin. Tunde Adebimpe of TV on the Radio guests on opening
track “Pray for Rain,” a lumbering, clanking, jazzy sort of
ponderance on being at the mercy of absolutely everything.
Guy Garvey of Elbow gets a chance to glum up the place on
“Flat of the Blade,” a sporadic pseudo-industrial lament about
how much it sucks to be generally useless exactly when you
are needed—like being unemployed when you need to pay the
mortgage. (Other guests include Portishead guitarist Adrian
Utley, and Blur/Gorillaz frontman Damon Albarn.)
But it’s not all wrist-slitting, head-in-the-pillow trip-hop
(even though it’s damn good depressing stuff). “Paradise Circus”
gets things shaking with handclaps and the sultry purr of
Hope Sandoval: “It’s unfortunate that when we feel a storm/We
can’t roll ourselves over ’cause we’re uncomfortable/Oh where
the devil makes us sin/But we like it when we’re spinning
in his grip.” It’s the song you want playing in the café at
night while you flirt with the girl on her MacBook in the
corner, or blasting as you drive your girlfriend back from
the party, to the hotel room in the rain.
The absolute treats of the album, “Atlas Air” and “Rush Minute,”
pulse with sinister bass lines, and ache like a needle leaving
a vein. They act like the kind of drugs those creative types
use—they make you get up and write, plot, calculate, scheme,
appraise, smile like an evil motherfucker, and dance. Picture
a Michael Mann flick with the shimmering cityscapes—the camera
pans in to a ganja-smoke-filled hotel room, with some sinister
suit-wearing types plotting to croak Savage Henry for his
stash—and you might get the idea of how these songs might
make you feel.
 Caribou
Swim
If there is one word that can sum up the aesthetic of 32-year-old
math scholar Dan Snaith, it would have to be “change.” On
2005’s The Milk of Human Kindness, Snaith (who records
as Caribou) concocted a pleasurable amalgam of trance-inducing
krautrock and head-bobbing hip-hop. 2007’s Andorra melded
dance rhythms with the pop sensibilities of the late ’60s,
awash with melodies reminiscent of the Zombies and the Association;
three years later, its stature has only grown.
On Swim, Caribou’s second release on Merge Records,
Snaith has come into his own, inhabiting his own sonic universe
and largely leaving outside references behind. It’s the closest
to club music he has ever gotten, and may provide the commercial
breakthrough that his music so richly deserves. Still present
are the iconoclastic touches that make Caribou so unique,
like the Pharoah Sanders-esque, multiphonic sax solo that
closes out the luxurious “Kaili,” the gamelan percussion breakdown
in “Bowls,” and the repetitive to the point of off- putting
vocal loop on “Sun.” What truly sets the album apart from
typical dance music is the sonic texture—instead of the hard-edged,
crisply defined sounds of, say, Lady Gaga, Snaith instead
wants his music to sound organic and elusive, constantly changing
and evolving in subtle ways. Notes oscillate in pitch, transferring
from one speaker to another, enacting a constantly shifting
landscape not unlike a seascape.
Snaith also seems much more comfortable as a vocalist, with
less double-tracking and reverb drenching his voice. He does
enlist an outside vocalist (Born Ruffians’ Luke Lalonde) for
closing track “Jamelia,” and the result is a quiet bit of
soul music that ends the album in an intriguing and satisfying
way.
At its best, Swim bypasses reason and enters the world
of ritual. Like most of Caribou’s music, the album stands
up to repeated listens, and is something to go to when one
wants to conjure up a mood of seduction, mystery, and yes,
in its own gnomic, cerebral way, fun.
—Mike
Hotter
Various
Artists
Intermediate
Masterworks for Marimba
Intermediate Masterworks for Marimba is a remarkable undertaking
in every regard. The two discs feature 24 new concert pieces,
two-thirds of which were commissioned by a range of known
composers. The remainder were winning entries in a contest
held by the Zeltsman Marimba Festival, the organization behind
this endeavor. Eight marimbists performed the works, all of
them from the realms of symphonies or universities. The music
ranges from Carla Bley’s playfully wistful “Over There” to
Gunther Schuller’s angular “Three Small Adventures” and J.K.
Randall’s abstract “Through Lapland.” Sonically there is the
full gamut from the rich bass notes in Steven Mackey’s “Beast”
to the skittering upper register of Louis Andriessen’s “Mouse
Running.” There is the African folk-like bearing of “The Zebra”
by Robert Aldridge and the Oriental timbres of Chen Yi’s “Jing
Marimba.” There’s also a surprise appearance in the form of
a new piece by Paul Simon; he’d written it for guitar, and
Nancy Zeltsman adapted it to the marimba.
Richly recorded and thoughtfully sequenced, the two discs
play as one engaging set, with a robust sense of variety,
playfulness and adventure. These marimbas sound great in pretty
much any space you’d care to play them, from the warmth of
a winter living room to the thrill of a speeding car on an
open summer road.
—David
Greenberger
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