Slick Rick - The Art Of Storytelling

Most people know Slick Rick for his mid-to-late 80s hits like "La Di Da Di" and "Children's Story." The easy assumption to make is that a 1999 comeback album would be a halfhearted attempt to prolong his former glory, but that is far from the case. The only problem is that too many people made that assumption (or didn't even know it existed) and Rick hasn't put out an album since.Slick Rick's flow evolved a LOT between 1989 and 1999. Where he used to rap in a very fly but also very 80s old-school style, mostly in goofy storytelling form, now (1999) he is a punchline rapper with a cadence unlike anyone else I've heard. He packs his lines with internal rhymes and ends every line with a punchline. He became the type of rapper who almost never spits a syllable that doesn't rhyme with something else, but unlike most who try to do that, he does not sound like he's trying at all. He doesn't spit, he breathes. Sometimes he almost whispers, like he's so fly he doesn't even have to speak up to be heard. Often you get the feeling that Rick is really just humming to himself, except that his humming rhymes. The album is uneven, I'm sorry to say. Some of the less-than-inspired beats and guest appearances make it drag, and it could have used a bit of a trim. But the tracks that hit are among the smoothest slices of hip hop ever offered, and I think it's a shame so few have heard this shit. "Street Talkin'" with Big Boi and "Unify" with Snoop Dogg are good funky singles, but it's the solo tracks like "I Own America" and "Trapped In Me" and the few-and-far-between story tracks that really shine. Yes, Slick Rick still tells stories, and they are still hilarious. He still plays multiple characters right in the middle of his verses, letting their reactions rhyme with his quips effortlessly. "Who Rotten Em" is the story of a young slave to an Egyptian pharoah, who entertains the court with his amazing rhymes. "2 Way Street" is hilarious as Rick continuously almost hooks up with groupies before suddenly remembering he's married, and "Adults Only" is the funniest (and grossest) hip hop ode to anal sex I've ever heard with it's chorus "ain't no way to put it subtle when I want the butthole". For real, for just as much (well-deserved) praise is loaded on the 1980s version of Slick Rick, the nineties version deserves perhaps even more accolades, as one of the most clever, smooth, articulate mc's ever to dip the mic in drawn butter.

Jimi Hendrix Experience - Are You Experienced

Before I had my own stereo, I saved up my allowance for a Walkman, and for probably a year or so I had only one tape: "Are You Experienced?" In fact it was a dubbed copy of my dad's tape, and the blank tape I used was so much longer than the album that there were over 15 minutes of silence at the end on each side. I probably used twice as many batteries just fast-forwarding so I could start it all over again. I don't know how many times I listened to it. Now, this is a rock album, more so than any other Hendrix album, but to me it will always be a headphone album. The hazes, confusions, depressions, waterfalls, sunsets, itching desires, jacks, clowns, the wind, it all sounds like inner space to me. The emotions touched on are all over the map and they are all raw: whether Hendrix is serenading his waterfall/rainbow, or lamenting that he can't tell the difference between love and confusion, he is always wearing his heart on his sleeve. Obviously this album will always be heralded mostly for Jimi's guitar work, but his singing is just as impressive, in my opinion. He is the greatest singer ever not to be that good of a singer, taking his limited voice to heights of expression that Bob Dylan could only dream of. And he's a poet too; check the laments of the curious alien sampling Earth for the first time on "Third Stone From the Sun", or the ethereal word-painting of "The Wind Cries Mary". And, yes, the guitar is jaw-droppingly awesome throughout. There's not a ton of shredding on "Are You Experienced," but the delayed blips and bloops of "May This Be Love", the reversed pick scrapes of the title track, the dreamy melodies of "Third Stone from the Sun" and the wah-wah/whammy meltdown at the end of "I Don't Live Today" say more with a few notes (they might not even *be* notes) than any other guitarist could say with hundreds. "Are You Experienced" is the greatest rock album ever recorded.

Outkast - Aquemini

"Aquemini" fills the air like the smoke from a fat charcoal grill, causing everything to shimmer behind it with heat. At this point Outkast (and Organized Noize) had the budget for some seriously overblown productions, but before they went the way of galactic space-funk with "Stankonia," they had a barbecue and got down. The instrumentation on here drips with deep dark soul sauce, from the organs and horns of "Return of the G" to the strummed guitars and harmonicas and foot-stomping of "Rosa Parks" to the ethereal percussion and slow-cooking poetry of "Aquemini", to the horn-section melancholy of "Spottieottiedopalicious," and the psychedelic guitar work on "Chonkyfire". The background singing is always beautiful and soulful, like on the feed-the-baby anthem "Slump," the melancholy "Return of the G," and the sublime "Art of Storytelling" which is probably Outkast's greatest song ever, matching Big Boi's parking lot pimping with Andre's tearjerking reminiscence on Sasha Thumper. Big Boi and Andre are both in fine form, spitting forever-quotable lines. The laid-back, never in a hurry production fits their flows perfectly, with Big Boi's fifty-million-syllables-in-a-bar stop and start style never sounding rushed or off-beat, and Andre able to spread his wings and throw (for example) thousands of monosyllable rhymes into one non-stop verse on the title track: "My mind warps and bends, floats the wind, count to ten, meet the twin, Andre Ben, welcome to the lion's den, original skin many men comprehend, I extend myself so you go out and tell a friend, sin all depends on what you believing in, faith is what you make it, that's the hardest shit since MC Ren, Alien can blend right on in with your kin, look again cause I swear I spot one every now and then, It's happenin' again wish I could tell you when, Andre this is Andre, ya'll just gon' have to make amends". Big Daddy Kane got nothin' on this. Anyone deprived enough to still have no Outkast in their collection, start here.

Mahavishnu Orchestra - Apocalypse

The differences are obvious between this and other (earlier) Mahavishnu albums: Jan Hammer and Billy Cobham are gone, Jean-Luc Ponty has arrived, George Martin (the fifth Beatle) produces, and it features the freakin' London Symphony Orchestra! Two orchestras at once, eh? Well it opens up pretty symphonically and traditionally until you realize the lead violin (Ponty) is playing through a wah-wah pedal. Then the band comes in and before you know it John McLaughlin is doing what he does best: shredding his natural ass off. It gets from point A to point B so smoothly I didn't even notice the transition from delicate finger-picked nylon strings to white-hot electric licks, but it happened somewhere. Then the funk kicks in. The album is good from start to finish, not their best album by any means (and I REALLY miss cobham and Hammer) but it's still interesting throughout. There's even an operatic song with vocals by the new female keyboard player! And having a full orchestra really amps up the epicness of the Mahavishnu sound, with grand gestures and microfunk rhythms alike being nailed by the string section. I think I even heard a choir passage or two, but I might have been tripping again.

Faith No More - Angel Dust

I first heard Faith No More on the hit "Epic," which sounded to me like a harder-rock, slightly evil Red Hot Chili Peppers song. I got "Angel Dust" as soon as the opportunity struck, even though "Epic" is from an earlier album. This is one of my favorite hard-rock albums. It blends heavy-metal guitars with funk bass, creepy lyrics and a lot of choruses that are as weird as they are catchy. Mike Patton's singing, as always, goes everywhere from deep metal growls to syrupy lounge leering, and this is probably the most listenable of all his projects, with the creepiness lurking somewhere in the background instead of bashing you over the head. I know that calling anything "the most listenable Mike Patton project" isn't really saying much, but trust me. "Midlife Crisis" is especially amazing, and its breakdown contains the same (at least I think) sample as the opening of the Beastie Boys' "Car Thief," a fabulous falling rhythmic sweep. "Be Aggressive" is weird as hell, with "I swallow, I swallow" repeated over and over again and a bunch of boy scouts spelling out the chorus like it's a flag-raising chant.

Anticon - Anticon Giga Single

Is this the same group? They must have gone home and did their homework or something. The production is tighter and less murky, the song structures have started to exist, some of the mc's have decided to throw rhymes in every once in awhile, and in general it sounds a lot more coherent and thought-out than the worst-titled album ever, "Music for the Advancement of Hip Hop." I think the biggest difference is that Anticon found their niche here. They're not really hip hop, they're more of poets with music. So get rid of Slug, someone said, and replace him with more poets! So they found a way to take lyric poetry and release it on CD. And the way to do that, lo and behold, is to structure it like songs. Sole and Dose One, two of the most annoying mc's ever on that other album, do a dual/duel rapping workout on "A.D.D.", and it actually sounds sorta good! Sage Francis, who actually is a hip hop artist, appears on this album and his beats and rhymes are lightyears beyond anything I expected to find when I popped it in. I'm still not big on Buck 65, whose "Pen Thief" sounds like whatever the take before the first take is called, and I could also do without the annoying "Postmodern Pat Boones" or the inane skit that follows, but overall this is an improvement to a degree I would never have thought possible.

Roy Ayers Ubiquity - Vibrations

Funny how the 70s turned some jazzcats into suave funkateers. The Roy Ayers Ubiquity was a group formed expressly for this purpose when it comes to vibes-man Roy Ayers, and woe unto those purists who avoided it like the plague, because this shit is excellent. Smooth vibes, intensive grooves, quasi-falsetto singing, catchy start-and-stop choruses, I lidove it. My only regret is the Ubiquity is not more Ubiquitous in my collection.

Laurie Anderson - Big Science

The cover of this album looks like some sort of new-wave synth pop, and though there are some shades of that, this is a lot darker and weirder. Often it's just a kooky drumbeat with maybe a little bit of background atmospherics, while Laurie Anderson performs spoken-word poetry that ranges from mundane to disturbing. I don't listen to it a lot but there are bits that are cool. Overall there is definitely a sense that something is missing, and a little research showed me that something indeed is missing: apparently this "album" is in fact a partial soundtrack to a several-hours-long performance art piece.

Anticon - Music For The Advancement of Hip Hop

"Music for the Advancement of Hip Hop"? Really? With a title that pretentious it had better be the dopest shit ever heard. It starts off promising (if not revolutionarily) with Slug (who I never knew was involved with these guys) throwing back to Rakim's seven mc's and then dropping a pretty tight verse. Unfortunately it's downhill from there. Lofty song titles like "Martyr Theme Song", "Human Races the Tortoise" and "Untitled" can't save the fact that everything done here has been done long before, and with a lot more power and soul, by Ultramagnetic MC's, Organized Konfusion, Divine Styler, Wu-Tang, and plenty of others. Most of the rappers' styles are somewhere between rhythmless and annoying, with a few actually managing to climb both those peaks at once. Dose One obviously thinks he's the most original person to ever "rock the mic", with his wavery delivery and pseudo-English accent whenever he says something "deep", but he's really just the biggest Rammelzee rip-off to ever suck. Sole is inaudible, Buck 65 can't decide if he wants to be Kool Keith or Mykah 9, and the production and subject matter throughout sound like some kid read three paragraphs of Eastern philosophy during a bad trip and decided that rhythm is stupid and they should make a rap group to prove it. There are two good mc's on this album, Eyedea and Slug, neither of whom show up often enough to make a difference, and both of whom later went on to much bigger and better things. Slug is a borderline great mc, one who knows his history, makes throwbacks where appropriate, and, in a breath of fresh air for this album, actually seems to realize he's rapping over a beat. His "Nothing But Sunshine" is by far the best track on the album, and if you haven't heard it you should give it a listen.There is one area in which this album really does make a break from the rest of the hip hop world: a complete lack of hip hop slang and urban imagery. I've got nothing against that, but if taking the roots out of hip hop, ignoring its past and pretending to represent its future, is what passes for "advancement", I'll pass. Supposedly this crew cut their hip hop teeth on battles. Who were they battling, Emily Dickinson's corpse?

Caribou - Andorra

I kept accidentally thinking I was listening to the Mamas and the Papas. The sunstained dream melodies on "Andorra" are so similar to 60's flower power songs that you almost feel transported. Except the instrumentation is clearly from the new millenium, with crystal-clear production and bubbly synths flying around in the background. I can't really get into the indie-rock rhythm section that demands bass and guitar be played by metronomes instead of musicians, but the drums and singing come close to saving it for me. For my money though I'd rather drop the needle on "Nuggets".

Aphex Twin - Analogue Bubblebath

Get a Flux-equipped Delorean, set your time circuits to somewhere around 1991, and hit up the wee hours of a smallish rave. Before you go in, smoke half a J and put on some earmuffs. That's pretty much what this EP sounds like. The song structures and rhythms are not too far from what rave techno sounds like, but the timbres are parsecs away from cliche. Where others use synthesized Korg pianos for their rhythm tracks, Aphex Twin uses softened drippy synths. Instead of breakbeats and 909s he uses custom synth drums that twist like burnt cans. It's not essential Aphex, especially if you're more into his late-90s rhythmic insanity, but it's worth a listen.

Q-Tip - Amplified

When this album came out, it got pretty much nothing but bad press. The word was that the Abstract had gone pop and it just didn't work. I was naive enough to go on this word and not even get the album to give it a chance. I eventually picked it up about 6 years later in a used bin somewhere. This album has aged a lot better than you might expect. It doesn't sound anything like the popular hip hop of the time, nor does it sound like Quest minus Phife. If anything the closest thing to it in sound is The Love Movement, but the production on Amplified is a lot sparer.Q-Tip does very little message rapping on this, very little narrative, etc. and those of us like myself who are used to his verses being perfect examples of easily-memorizable, impeccable simplicity, will find a different Q-Tip here. In part I would think that being freed from the reins of Tribe allowed him to just stretch out and have fun; at the same time, the cover art and his fur coat, bare-chest look suggest that the label was pressuring him to dumb down his sound and vision. The middle of the album is strongest, from the sing-song "Let's Ride" and "Things U Do" to the crunchy "Go Hard," the Moroder-y "Go Hard"and the *almost* anthemic "Do It." What it comes down to is that this is a good Q-Tip album. It's only a disappointment when you compare it to the huge shelf of classics that have his name on them. The album does a sonic and conceptual U-Turn with the last track, "End of Time." After 11 tracks of having a great time and enjoying life, all of a sudden we're on the brink of apocalypse. Not too convincing. Then there's a not-too-hidden bonus track where Tip raps his autobiography, which is by far the most honest and heartfelt track on the album. All in all, I have to say that if this were a debut album by an unknown artist, it would have been lost in the sands of time. This is the only project Q-Tip has ever been involved in that is not essential.

Radiohead - Amnesiac

The calmest Radiohead album. Unlike Kid A's id you can hear guitars and the singing has a human presence. At least one song is shared between the two albums (in two different versions), and Thom Yorke said they were twins separated at birth. The music is dreamy and soft, not as depressing or ominous as Radiohead sometimes is. The songs flow like syrup or molasses, not fully existing but approaching something like existence as they are played. The orange soundscape is a mostly unpopulated space with elements floating in, out of, and through it without regard to anything except the rhythm, which is an ebb and flow more than a beat. Even the tape hiss is an instrument.

Albert Ayler Quartet - The Hilversum Session

Usually when a good band plays, it sounds like the drummer is creating a couch or pocket for the rest of the band to comfortably sit in. With jazz it's often more like the drummer is an icy lake and the other instruments are figure skaters, skipping around in circles on the rhythm. On this record Albert Ayler's saxophone is the one that everyone else sits in, but instead of a couch or an icy lake, it is like Ayler is dangling the rest of the band at the end of a string that he is slowly twirling around himself. Better yet, a yo-yo that never quite makes it back to his hand. At first every rhythmic and melodic motif sounds random and thrown-together, like each member doesn't really care what the rest of the band is doing or even what key or meter they're playing in. Gradually you start to notice that Ayler's sax and Don Cherry's trumpet converge regularly, playing the same random-seeming squawks of notes simultaneously, with the bass (Garry Peacock) and drums (Sonny Murray) falling into place after like the horns just fell down the stairs and pulled the rhythm section after them. That is to say, the rhythm is there, it's just stretched and squeezed a bit, and the different instruments are following it at different speeds. I don't know if that makes any sense, and my guess is that to most people it still wouldn't make sense even if they were listening to the music at the same time. The lack of piano on a lot of so-called free jazz is probably the biggest barrier to most people's listening enjoyment, whether they realize it or not. The piano is so often the essential glue that holds a jazz group together and makes it cohere. On this album and a lot of others from this time period and in this circle, there is no piano and it makes the music seem stark, disconnected, disjointed. Until you start to figure out the underlying structures that only sort of call attention to themselves. Then, at least for me, I have trouble seeing just where a piano would fit in. This is an album will make at least 90 out of 100 people walk out of the room, or at least unable to concentrate on anything. Of the other ten people, nine will be able to stand it, and maybe even find it interesting, but only one will find it beautiful. That person will cherish the sound and be engulfed by it. I may or may not be that person.

Ice Cube - Amerikkka's Most Wanted

Public Enemy was supposed to be the group that woke everybody up. And yes, they were controversial, but the revolution was nipped in the bud when a little group called NWA broke out on the West Coast with just as much anger and noise, but instead of promoting black people standing up and fighting the power, they glorified black people killing each other for no reason. The powers that be REALLY got up in arms about NWA and so of course every kid wanted to be them. Forget being a revolutionary. Well Ice Cube was having none of it, and he broke east to join up with the Bomb Squad. "Amerikkka's Most Wanted" is the product of this collaboration. These days, with Ice Cube regularly starring in family films, it's easy to forget that he was a very controversial figure in the early 90's. I remember reading a Newsweek with him on the cover pointing a gun at the camera. On "Amerikkka's Most Wanted," he does not tone down the violence of NWA *or* the revolutionary spirit of Public Enemy, and the Bomb Squad's production fuses the squall of noise we love from PE albums with the deep funk and banging beats of NWA, and they fit perfectly. This is probably their best production work; check out the title track, "You Can't Fade Me" and "Endangered Species". Cube's lyrics, as always, are hard hitting and full of internal rhymes, but delivered naturally and forcefully. Chuck D and Flavor Flav both make appearances, and Cube takes vicious shots at everyone. The misogyny is pretty heavy so watch out. Otherwise, to my ears it has aged pretty well, and is the perfect fusion of the heyday of pre-"Chronic" gangsta rap with fist-pumping rage at the system. No radio hits, just hard beats, hard rhymes, deep funk.

Joan Armatrading - Show Some Emotion

Solid, soulful songwriter album that I was lucky enough to find at a Goodwill store for 50 cents. Joan Armatrading has a nice raspy voice, and can belt them out. There are a couple slow'n'boring cuts on side 2, but the other stuff makes up for it. Her songs are in a rock/pop vein as far as songwriting is concerned, but she spices them up with some soul-stylings that keep things interesting.

Jay-Z - American Gangster

After "Kingdom Come" was declared a failure for going only double platinum, it was clear that Jay-Z had to change his game, something he'd never really done before. Not that "Kingdom Come" sucked or anything, it just didn't have that jaw-drop "oh shit!" quality that should accompany every new Hova release. My guess is Jay sat back and decided to make an album that reflected him as an artist and a person rather than trying to chart fifteen hits. At this point he's untoppably rich and famous, and could afford to just do it the way he wanted to. So, "American Gangster." First of all, it's clearly inspired by the movie of the same name, one of the lamest films by one of my favorite directors, Ridley Scott. There are lyrical references to and samples from it throughout. Luckily it doesn't bash you over the head. But the album does follow a loose narrative structure, almost making it Jay-Z's first concept album, except there's other tracks thrown in at various points.The production is exactly what the mature Jay-Z should sound like. The Black Album wishes it could have been so consistent. All thick soul loops from the 70's that give that feeling of class that always graces the best Jay-Z tracks, and I would say that in places it is the best it's been in that respect since "Reasonable Doubt." Jay's lyrics are pretty much perfect throughout, flashy without being flashy, because this is his serious record. The only real misstep is the last verse of the otherwise banging "Ignorant Shit", with its Just-Blaze flipped "Between the Sheets" (and the obligatory Biggie references that implies). Check out this home run derby: "They're all actors, looking at themselves in the mirror backwards, can't even face themselves, don't fear no rappers, they're all weirdos, De Niros in practice, so don't believe everything your earlobe captures, it's mostly backwards, unless it happens to be as accurate as me and everything said in song you happen to see, then, actually believe half of what you see, none of what you hear, even if it's spat by me. And with that said, I will kill n****s dead, cut n****s short, give you wheels for legs, I'm a K-I, double L E-R, see y'all in hell, shoot n****s straight through the ER, whoah, this ain't BR, no, it's S.C., C.E.O., the next Lyor, no, the next leader of the whole free world." In the last verse Jay complains of people complaining of his lyrics and something to do with Don Imus and Paris Hilton and the like; really, Jay's so far above that he could have just ignored it altogether. Oh yeah, and "Hello Brooklyn 2.0," a remake of a criminally overlooked Beastie Boys gem and featuring Lil' Wayne, should have been the dopest shit ever recorded, but isn't. Oh well. These lyrics aren't quite as tight-knit and multi-layered as the rhyme labyrinths on "The Black Album," or "Reasonable Doubt" for that matter, but Jay definitely gets across the whole idea that he's just so relaxed and laid-back and on top of his game that he can spit bombs without even trying, and isn't that what a Jay-Z album is really all about? It didn't work on his last album, but it really works here (example: "Party Life," where he finishes verses by detachedly marveling at the wit of what just came out of his mouth). "Just the sound of his voice is a hit!"Witness the triumphant return of Jay-Z. An overlooked masterpiece.

Apollo - Apollo

I'm a sucker for all things funkonaut. This album was released on Motown in 1979 with Berry Gordy's son Kerry as the leader. As soon as I saw the spaceship on the cover, the beamed-down funkateers, and the fact that there was a track entitled "Astro-Disco", I was powerless. I had to buy it. And I do not regret the decision. "Astro-Disco" is like 8 minutes of non-stop disco madness with lots of spaceship themed sound effects and an extended outro, hootin and hollering, and everything else that is good in the world. There's even a couple crunchy breaks! The rest of the album is no slouch either, with the disco cliches being just barely offset by synth squelches and the prominent space theme. "Space Cannibals" is as dope as it should be with a title like that, pretty much an instrumental funk jam with a lot of echoey savage howling and some equally savage guitar shreds, with the only lyrics being "all night long, all night long." And the last track is a ripping cover of the classic "Do You Love Me" that does disco justice to the original. My favorite shit in this world is when lushly orchestrated disco chords are melded with shimmering synth chords. That shit is all over this record.

Animotion - Animotion

Pretty standard early 80s new wave/cornrock. The single "Obsession" was apparently a minor hit when it came out, but I don't think I ever heard it before I dropped the needle on it in my living room. I actually like the B-side better, with it's "Eye of the Tiger"-esque power chords on a couple tracks. Also, I like any band with a singer named Astrid. Apparently they did a West coast reunion tour in 2008! Sorry I missed it, guys. How are the hairdos holding up?

Chris Anderson - Music Music Music!

I don't remember where I got this album, and even the trusty internet yields no evidence that it ever existed. I had to take a picture of my copy to prove that it does indeed exist. That level of rarity would make the digger in me drool all over the place... if only the album was any good. The back cover claims that Chris Anderson is a virtuosic prodigy with more organ chops than you could possibly imagine, but once you put it on it's pretty much just the same stuff you hear at every good ballpark in America, only with crappy programmed drums and a lot cheesier. I'm only reviewing it for completion's sake.

Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass - Volume 2

The creatively named second album from this perennially popular band is pretty much exactly what you'd expect. Catchy, upbeat, brassy, Latin, lots of horns, and some singing voices every once in a while. Bands like this don't seem to have the kind of success they had back then with Alpert and Dick Hyman and Henry Mancini and everyone. This is a fun album, and I bet all their other albums can be mathematically proven to be *exactly* as fun as this one.

Harold Budd/Brian Eno - Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror

Pull an all-nighter. It doesn't matter what you're doing, homework, partying, having a deep conversation with your mom, whatever. Just get more tired than you've ever been in your life. Drive four hours home and arrive in mid-afternoon on a warm sunny day without a cloud in the sky. Go to your room to take a nap. Close the Venetian blinds so that the sun filters in through them in strips of light that make the dust floating through the air look like a miniature armada of pixies. Lie on your bed and stare at the ceiling through those strips of light while the fan goes slowly around at its lowest setting. If you are lucky enough to be effortlessly synesthetic, you will be hearing "The Plateaux of Mirror". The pianos are venetian blinds, little strips of white comfort, echoing streamy wisps of light to your tired eyes. Your well-made bed is a bath of soft synth pads massaging your back. Birds are flying by, chirping, they are probably outside but they might be right next to you. Close your eyes if you want to. Draw a picture if you want to. Write a letter if you want to. You are safe at home.

Ahmed Abdul-Malik - Sounds of Africa

It seems like a recipe for cheese flambe. Get a jazz trio, add an African instrument and African influence, and voila! Cheese!Luckily, that is not the result. I bought this album on a whim, the vinyl was shrinkwrapped and I could not check it out beforehand. I brought it home not really knowing what to expect. Ahmed Abdul Malik plays bass and oud, and the compositions are very catchy melodies without a hint of the schlock you might think of when you hear the phrase "world music." Instead it's pretty much hard bop all the way, but with a thicker percussion sound. The grooves are very deep, and there are extended percussion and oud solos on the second side. The early sixties must have been a great time to be a jazz fan. I HIGHLY recommend this album to anyone who is into jazz or percussion in any way, shape or form. It is available as part of the reissue "Jazz Sounds of Africa" which also contains the album "The Music of Ahmed Abdul Malik," which is not as amazingly good but still worth having.

2Pac - All Eyez On Me

Tupac gives the impression at almost all times that he is completely obsessed with death and violence, to the point where the only light at the end of the tunnel is dying and going to heaven. You could argue all day about how much this attitude contributed to the escalations and wars that eventually did him in. He's always making a big point of pointing out that he's one second away from death at all times. See "Only God Can Judge Me," "Life Goes On" and pretty much any other song. When he says "I'd be lyin if I said that I never thought of death," I pretty much want to say "no shit dude, how bout thinking about something else for once?" "I Ain't Mad At Cha" is the most well-known place where he departs from this attitude, letting a couple old friends know that he's okay with them having moved on and made a life for himself. The tragedy is that Pac himself never was able to move on. This is the most well-known 2Pac album, and it's no surprise because it is pretty much chock full of classics, especially on the jam-packed first disc. Apparently Pac got a deal to be released from jail if he would sign with Death Row, and there are all sorts of rumors around that, but even if he recorded this album with a gun to his head, I have to agree that shifting to the G-Funk sound and finding a MiniMoog in the basement was a good career move... well, sort of, since it probably played a part in leading to his death. Still, there's probably no better CD to have in your drop-top while you roll around sun-stained summer streets. It starts off dope with "Ambitionz as a Ridah" and then goes into a couple misogynist anthems, "All Bout U" and "Skandalouz". The intro to the latter is one of my favorite moments on any disc, not the talking but the bassline that unfortunately disappears once the beat drops. "How Do U Want It" is almost East Coast-styled hip hop with Method Man and Redman, and "2 Of Amerikaz Most Wanted" is straight classic collabo with Snoop Dogg. "I Ain't Mad At Cha" is probably the best song on here. Even though its hook is pretty bland, the piano riff, beat and concept are memorable, and Pac gets heartfelt in a way that sounds honest for once. One big problem with this disc: somebody decided to put on the "California Love" remix instead of the original banger that was a massive hit. The second disc is good too, if not as inspired. It starts off strong with "Can't C Me", which sounds at first like a retread of "Dre Day" until you realize George Clinton is all over it and Pac is spitting the hardest lines of the whole album. It's the only time on the double-disc set where he really gets INTO his lyrics. The next few songs are good too. But the rest... eh.. "Thug Passion" just can't hold a candle to "California Love" despite Zapp & Roger being on it again, and most of the other songs sound like outtakes. Tupac's flow is consistently good, but its consistency is the type where every verse uses the same words, rhythms and concepts, and it really needs a strong song structure and hook to bring it to greatness. The first disc has all that in spades, and I would have to say that if this had been released as a single album, it would be an all-time classic. Wow, longest review yet.

The Essential Airto Featuring Flora Purim and Special Friends

This double LP appears to be a greatest hits compilation, but the total lack of liner notes, the 1976 release date, and the more album-sounding tracklist/flow made me skeptical. On the back I found "originally released as BDS 5085 and BDS 21-SK". Thanks to the internet I was able to find (after wasting more time than should be necessary) that these are Airto's first two albums, "Natural Feelings" and "Seed on the Ground", from 1970 and 1971 respectively. For some reason they are packaged backwards in the double LP with the second album as disc 1. Well that's all irrelevant I guess, because they play like one long album. This is back when an album was 30 minutes, and a double LP was an hour. The music is fantastic. It is light and jazzy, Brazilian, funky, and does not blast off into fusion madness, instead going for listenability, unlike some other albums from this period with these artists, like Return to Forever or Flora's solo stuff (or the Miles Davis stuff Airto was guesting on a couple years later). I don't know from Portuguese but I inexplicably find myself singing along. My mom would get down to this. Sometimes Flora's singing goes crazy: as always she is a singer who clearly inhabits a body, screeching and cooing, becoming one with the echoes of her voice through the landscape. I highly recommend anything by Airto, especially if Flora's on it.

Tangerine Dream - Alpha Centauri

This album, named after the closest star to our solar system, plays, as a lot of early TD stuff, like a sort of cosmic symphony. It opens with "Sunrise in the Third System, which sounds like an overture on mostly organs, eventually fading into a screeching Moog flying through not-too-distant-by-interstellar-standards-space. There are more acoustic instruments on this than on most of Tangerine Dream's other albums, but true to form they are not really played like acoustic instruments. You might hear a few guitar notes in the background, but like every other sound they're only connected to the overarching rhythm in a vague way. There is rhythm here, but like everything about TD's sound it is too huge to comprehend while listening to it. The second track, "Fly and Collision of Comas Sola", is based around a slow-burning organ chord progression that sounds very reminiscent of Funkadelic's "Maggot Brain," but instead of a lightning-hot guitar solo, it features slowly building backgrounds of Moog, thunder, and eventually flute and massive toms and cymbals exploding all over the solar landscape. The title track is long and slow, with lots of LFO's modulating pitch (emphasis on the L). The flute plays a melancholy and meandering melody while shimmering organs and Moogs map out the surface of the distant sun. This is not the best Tangerine Dream album to start with but it's still great, especially the second track.

Aceyalone - All Balls Don't Bounce

In the triumvirate of Haiku D'Etat, they say Myka 9 is jazz, Abstract Rude is soul, and Aceyalone is poetry. The other two show up frequently on this album, but poetry dominates. The instrumentation is appropriate to an open-mic or spoken word jam: lots of upright bass, not too in-your-face drums. Very much a slam type of vibe, much more so than say, Quest's "Low End Theory." Aceyalone's lyrical performance is continuously astounding. Even on the more traditionally hip-hop tracks he continually seems to forget he is rhyming, letting fly some non-sequitor like he forgot the beat is there - then wrapping it back together into the rhyme structure in a craftily purposeful way. And it always sounds very organic. The first few tracks are pretty much hip hop, then it ventures closer to spoken word territory in the middle with a lot of extended riffs on circuses and things. A couple love songs are included, like the weird "Annalillia?" about a girl who rejects him at the bar, then later reveals that she's married with kids. Nothing ever happens. Then there's "Makeba," where he reminisces on an old love and gets a little sidetracked again "we'd have kid, after kid, after kid, after kid, after kid, after kid, after kid, after kid, after kid, after kid, damn that's a lotta kids." For the last few tracks the reverb and delay is turned way up for extra spookiness. You'd think a refrain like "make way for the glory of the b-boy kingdom" would be uplifting and anthemic, but it's almost dark and creepy, with the verses making the chorus extremely ironic, with their references to the power struggle and oppression. Overall this is probably the strongest solo album from a Freestyle Fellowship member and I couldn't recommend it highly enough.

Daft Punk - Alive 2007

You might not expect the crunchy, razor-precise productions of Daft Punk to translate well into a live recording, especially given the programmed nature of the music, but with this tour album (the recording of a full show in Paris) they manage to avoid the pitfalls of boomy sound and predictability. Daft Punk specializes in funky hooks, robot sounds and four-on-the-floor beats, especially on their excellent first two albums, "Homework" and "Discovery". I never really got into their third, "Human After All," as much, because it goes for more of a hard rock sound (while still being Daft Punk). But here I start to see where they're coming from. In live performance, having every bass thump hit like a crushing power chord is just way more powerful. Every time you think the energy could not possibly get any higher, it does. Every time I listen to the album I want to turn the volume up another click or two every two minutes or so. And it certainly doesn't hurt that the crowd is going absolutely apeshit from beginning to end. The album plays like a Daft Punk megamix, weaving all their many hits into each other in ways we usually don't expect. Lots of songs are sped up considerably, not only for the purpose of cramming more of them into the 70-minute playing time but also just to add that much more urgency. Funky disco basslines like "Burnin'" and "Around the World" are turned into crushing fist-pumping anthems. Talkbox/vocoder masterpieces like "Around the World", "Harder Better Faster Stronger" and "Television Rules the Nation" are turned into different elements in the same massive adrenaline rush. Squeak and squawk blasts like "Rock N Roll" and "Rollin and Scratchin" are minimized in annoyingness by being turned into one. And the biggest downfall of Daft Punk's studio work - that you might not want to listen to the same 2 bars 164 times in a row - is circumvented because no song plays for very long before elements of another are rammed into it sideways. I have only one complaint: the song "Too Long" (one of the most apt titles in music history) is thankfully not included in its entirety, but elements from the outro crop into the mix at probably five different points, and for what seems like five minutes each time. If they'd filled that time with "Revolution 909," "High Fidelity," "High Life" or "Musique" (or all the above) I would have been happier. But hey, that's a small complaint. If you have to own only one Daft Punk album (and I'd feel sorry for you if you had only one) this is probably the one to get. But go ahead and get em all.

Michael Ackerman - It Takes A Year

Windham Hill records tends to specialize in the remarkable ability to take music, and suck everything interesting and exciting out of it, leaving records that doctors can play in their waiting rooms and no one will complain, because they don't even notice the music is playing. I received this record in a giant pile of discarded ones found in an alley, and probably would not have bought it on my own. It consists of a number of solo guitar pieces that are flawlessly played, but aren't complicated enough to sound flawlessly played. On a couple tracks on the second side, rhythm comes pretty close to appearing, but is held in check. At times the playing approaches the style of Leo Kottke or John Fahey, but it never goes far enough out on a limb to be confused for either of those masters. I thought it might take a year to get to the end of the record. If someone gives it to you for free, put it on when timid souls enter the living room. Otherwise, avoid.

Latyrx - The Album

This album (aptly titled "The Album") is odd right from the outset. On the first track, Lyrics Born and Lateef are both rapping at the same time to the same beat, growing in intensity and syllables until it reaches a sort of poetic climax. It's almost impossible to listen to either of them until you realize that they are panned hard right and left, and if you adjust the balance on your stereo you can listen to one or the other. Obviously that's not what they really wanted you to do though, because you are only listening to half your stereo at that point. Luckily after that verse ends they don't try the same trick again. These guys come from the same camp as Blackalicious, and have a similar sound and subject matter, but I like both their flows better than the Gift of Gab's because his, while technically amazing, are so scientifically precise as to be almost boring. Lyrics Born has quite a bit of soul and can actually sing pretty well too; Lateef is more of an emcee's emcee with a very freestyle-oriented flow. There's a fair bit of freestyling on this album ("The Album"), and in general it has kind of a pieced-together, not too cohesive feel to it. I'm also not a huge fan of the production, but the lyrics are clearly the star of the show. The individual tracks contain, at times, some pretty wowing showmanship. Good to have in your shuffle.

Steely Dan - Aja

The closest thing possible to a perfect album. Seriously, how is this possible? "Aja" straddles every line perfectly: precision and soul, tight song structures and loose jams, understated mixing and glitzy overproduction, sanity and madness. Apparently Fagen and Becker ditched their band to record this album, going with session pros instead. I can't think of a worse idea, and yet it was the best choice anyone ever made. Every note is so spot-on perfect that it should sound sterile and lame, but it doesn't, because even the most jaded pro couldn't avoid the crunchiness of this writing.The songs are pleasant to listen to, almost fading into the background like a nice wallpaper, but they start creeping into your soul like the finest acid. Before you know it you've got tears of laughter in your eyes while you sing the darkest of lines like "I'll learn to work the saxophone and I'll play just what I feel, drink Scotch whiskey all night long... and die behind the wheel". This is one 70's jazz-rock album I'll never get sick of.

Tool - Aenima

I was introduced to Tool by some guitar tablature in some guitar magazine when I was about 12 or so. I loved the sycopated power chord rhythms, and the creative use in general of guitars, something I wasn't seeing a lot of in other bands of the time. I didn't actually hear anything by them til a couple years later, when the guitar technique was trumped in my mind by the amazing sound and soul of the singer's (Maynard James Keenan) voice, and the weird creepiness of their videos. These days I can't eat the stuff up the way I did as a preteen, but I still have a lot of respect for Tool, despite their unfortunate name. I have a deficiency in my ability to weather a whole album with the same instrumentation throughout, and this album is no exception. Even though it ventures into other territory some, it's pretty much strictly guitar band crushing for the most part, following a pretty standard hard-rock song structure. It's saved for me by Keenan's totally awesome singing, or would be if the songs were a little more distinct from each other. For now I'm still stuck in the "mad respect but I can't really listen to it too often" zone with this. That said, I'd go see Tool perform live in a second if someone offered me tickets. I'd even pay to see them, and that's something I can't say for most metal acts.

Alarm Will Sound - Acoustica

There are a lot of things that could go wrong with a project like this. The idea is a live band playing note-for-note transcriptions of the music of Aphex Twin, crazy polyrhythms and all. It could easily be too sterile, too transcribed, too soul-less. Luckily this band plays well enough not only to hit all those weird notes and timings, but plays with soul too. Their selections are a little different from what I would choose. An Aphex overview album without "Bucephalous Bouncing Ball," "Vordhosen", or anything at all from "I Care Because You Do" seems pretty lacking to me. But the songs they chose sound great, and at least they included "4", which may be the most representative Aphex track of the lot. I don't know how often most would listen to this album since it's sort of a novelty and really doesn't depart from the original visions very much, but it's still good. Also, it sheds light on what is probably a rarely noticed phenomenon: Aphex's music is very similar to that of the Mothers of Invention.

The Orb's Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld

I'm not particularly into trance music, to the point where I don't even know the names of all the different sub-genres and everything. I have no idea why I bought this album in the first place but I'm glad I did. The first track, "Little Puffy Clouds", is the catchiest track, the most annoying, and the least typical of the album's sound in general. After that it goes into verry long soundscapes that, although they do feature pulsing and pretty much never-stopping beats, are much more suited to a cushy couch or beanbag chair than they are to a dancefloor. I absolutely fell in love with the track "A Huge Ever-growing Pulsating Brain at the Center of the Ultraworld." It was my first exposure to the epic electronic slow-burner, and it really did sound to me at the time like I was floating through the most bizarre and distant reaches of space. It also contains a sample of Minnie Riperton's "Lovin' You" with her insanely high-pitched voice, arranged and reverbed so that it sounds like she's calling us back to earth but can't quite get in touch.

Count Bass D - Act Your Waist Size

Count Bass D has always been a sort of hero of mine. He seems to be completely independent, he records everything himself, he comes from the background of playing the piano, hell, his last name is even the same as mine. And he has a style all his own. His punchlines are little snippets of rearranged wisdom like "don't feed the mouth that bites you". His production is glitzy and dirty at the same time, and particularly soulful on this release with a lot of singing and slow jams, but a different type of slow jam: this is hip hop all the way. The engineering sounds like he didn't bother to check his levels - or he just turned everything way up. It's not overcompressed, it's just clipped into madness. Normally I would hate this but on this album it works for the lo-fi sound he's aiming for. And I know he did it on purpose because there was no trace of it on "Dwight Spitz."

The Beatles - Abbey Road

"And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make." This probably isn't true for everyone, but when I hear the Beatles sing it, there's no way it couldn't be. The Beatles probably both made and took more love than anyone else in history, and Abbey Road is the perfect swansong for the greatest band ever. This album stands out in their catalog for a few reasons: it's very McCartney heavy, it is more old-school rock'n'roll oriented, the second half flows together like the world's first megamix, and it marks the moment when George Harrison became a great songwriter in his own right. First of all, yes there are more McCartney songs than anyone else's, but no one really gets the short end of the stick here. Lennon's "Come Together" opens the album with the kind of creepy weirdness you could only expect from him. Who is this no-shoeshine-wearin' Coca Cola drinkin' invisible arithmetician? Is it John? Is it the listener? Just some hippie? Why are we coming together? It doesn't matter because you have to sing along regardless. Then there's Ringo, whose "Octopus's Garden" is basically a kids' song in the vein of "Yellow Submarine" but whose innocence belies a load of sincerity, at least to me. I mean, what better way to express your fondness for someone than to say to them: "I'd like to be under the sea in an octopus's garden... with you." ?George's two songs, "Here Come the Sun" and "Something", are undeniable standouts. "Here Come the Sun" is like a wonderful reward for sitting through the madness that ends "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" (to me one of the only skippable moments in the Beatles catalog, or it would be if only skipping it didn't slightly dull the sweetness of "Here Comes the Sun"). And "Something" is probably, to my mind, the greatest, most beautiful love song ever written. My favorite moment: "Goooooolden slumbers fill your eyes... Smiiiiiiiiles AHWait you when you-u rise, slee-eep pretty darlin' do not cry... and I will sing a lullabyee...." and everything that comes after.

Coldcut - Let Us Play

This album came out in 1997, right at the peak of the popularity of the DJ Shadow style of ominous instrumental hip hop. Although I'm pretty sure Coldcut had been doing his thing for a long time already, it's hard not to hear the influence of "Endtroducing" on this. A lot of dark basslines, sampled drums with rolls, and a little too much of the late-1990s obsession with filling instrumental tracks with spoken-word snippets from instructional and sound-system-setup albums. I wish I'd come across this album at the time it came out, or within the next couple years at least, because this sort of stony hip-hop meld is exactly up the teenaged Vortex Ranger's alley. It outdoes Shadow's opus in quite a few ways, including its polyrhythms, synth lines and general flow of quite a few of the tracks. I doubt it could make the claim "Endtroducing" made of being made entirely of sampled sound, but twelve years on who really gives a shit? This is actually a lot trippier and scarier. Next time you smoke a fat one and go for a drive through abandoned streets in the rain, throw it on and see if you don't agree.

Zenlo - Skeletal Anthics

I try never to judge an album by its cover. Okay, I lied. That's often all I really have to go on. If I'd found this album in the back of a crate in a basement somewhere with a release date of 1972, I would have grabbed it up in a second, portable turntable or no. The cover is so reminiscent of Giorgio Moroder's "From Here To Eternity" that I would have had to assume Moroder was paying this guy tribute. Well, if any tribute is there it's in the other direction, because this album just came out last week. It's probably coincidence, because "Skelethal Antics" is nothing like Moroder in sound or substance. The music is minimally arranged, usually just a repeating bassline and a cheap-sounding, none-too-funky drum loop with someone wailing on a wind instrument that sounds somewhere between trumpet, soprano sax and harmonica. Yet somehow it is haunting, always just this side of grooving, often just this side of sad, and not categorizable with any words more specific than "weird." The second half loses the drums but doesn't add anything else, mostly just drones and sound effects. Is it recorded on a Tascam 4-track? It almost never has more than two or three instruments playing at once. Kind of refreshing. My only wish is that the weird up-beatness returned somewhere before the end. As it is the second half starts to grate on the nerves. Still, and again, if I'd found this record in a moldy basement somewhere, released in 1972, I would have come home, put it on and been amazed at my prodigious crate-digging skills. It sounds like the kind of dark, arcane gem I'm always dreaming of digging up from yesteryear. The fact that it is brand new gives me hope. Now I have one more actually living artist to keep tabs on.

The aural equivalent of icy-hot

I picked up Portishead's latest album, "Third," way back in June, and it was decidedly inappropriate for the trip to the beach that I was taking when I popped it in my car stereo. Given that I picked up this year's summer album, "Tha Carter III" on the same trip to the wreckid store, it was almost no contest. But six months on things have changed.As a longtime fan of Portishead, I kept giving it more chances over time, and I did love it, but in an intellectual sort of way, as in "I'm glad Portishead is still great and not stale", without ever really being inspired to hear the thing very often.Last night was the first real snowfall of the year, and today as I drove around the cold leafless landscape with wind on my nose, I listened to "Third" again. Why did they put this out at the beginning of summer? It is a winter album through and through. Stark icy soundscapes and Gibbons' ethereal love lyrics are like the Grinch's little heart plugged into a stompbox and amplified through frozen cones. You lick this music, your tongue will get stuck. Even on "The Rip," where a bubbling synth arpeggio carries the dream-lyric "White horses come and take me away" into soulful oblivion, well, it feels as warm as the sun, but also as chilly as January. "Plastic" starts with crackling snares that don't have enough heat energy to carry themselves to the end of the bar. So I take back my early-summer thoughts about this crunchy masterpiece. It's not just a second coming of Portishead; I will think it a classic for many winters to come.