Reid's professional career began at 16 as the house drummer of Harlem's Apollo Theater, with his first recording a year later behind Motown's Martha and the Vandellas. (Reid would eventually play on a number of Motown sessions, including the Vandellas' monster 1964 hit "Dancing in the Street.") From there, however, his work took a sharp left turn; after graduating from Adelphi University in 1965, Reid spent three years studying rhythm and percussion in Africa, working with—among others—Nigerian musician and activist Fela Kuti.

Upon returning to the U.S. he began working with similarly radical (in both music and politics) artists, including James Brown, Randy Weston, Ornette Coleman, Henry Threadgill, Sun Ra, and Miles Davis. After a brief career interruption in 1969, when he was arrested for draft refusal, Reid became an active participant in New York's 1970s loft-jazz scene; he played on the recently rereleased 1977 opus Odyssey of the Oblong Square.

In recent years, Reid gained an appreciative following among post-rock audiences via his collaborations with electronic musician Kieran Hebden—better known as Four Tet. Hebden and Reid were responsible for the two-volume The Exchange Session CDs, as well as two other discs.

Reid's legacy, while not well-known, is tremendous. He will be missed.

Spoon's Transference leaves Marc Hirsh underwhelmed:

Transference is larded with bits and scraps, which isn’t necessarily new—it’s practically all that 2002’s Kill the Moonlight was. Here, though, the scrappy pieces are presented as finished thoughts rather than experiments, and that’s where the trouble starts. “I Saw the Light” provides a keen demonstration: After a couple of minutes of a simplified glam shuffle, it tacks on an unrelated extended coda built around a repeated melody snippet played first on piano and then expanded to guitar. Like much of Transference, it’s a good idea in need of a song around it.

Mike Kanin has kinder words for Four Tet's There Is Love in You:

And though this recording sometimes suggests a return to its producer’s more melodically expansive tendencies, it also features some of Hebden’s most well-crafted stabs at the minimalist techno he was always meant to create. Take “Love Cry,” the album’s lead single. After a minute-plus wombidillic intro—designed, it seems, to allow for easy turntable transition—the thing launches forward with a set of beats as clean and focused as anything Hebden has ever done. As it grooves forward, the track picks up momentum, first mixing in vocals—a Hebden first—and then a repetitive synth-bass line that calls to mind some of the better, odd-disco-rooted techno minimalism of recent years. With “Love Cry,” Hebden’s got himself an honest-to-God hit.

*More British authors onboard the proposed Google books boycott, including J.K. Rowling and Phillip Pullman. (If you missed Ursula K. Le Guin's fiery anti-Google manifesto/petition, check it here.) And speaking of Rowling: the next two Harry Potter movies will screen in 3D.

*Louis Auchincloss dead at 92.

*Pete Doherty pulls some serious rock-star shit by bringing heroin to a court date. (The Daily Mail meticulously notes that the Libertines/Babyshambles star was in possession of £192 worth of the junk.) The excuse is actually sort of plausible—I've had the same experience with, like dollar bills:

[Doherty's] lawyer, Bruce Clark, said the problem was that the Babyshambles singer had too many suit jackets and had forgotten to check his pockets.

"My client has many suits and did not know there was anything in the pocket. He had been in and out of court twice before the package fell out of his pocket. He feels very stupid … but he accepts responsibility."

*My favorite film title from Sundance 2010, so far.

*More bad news out of Coachella.

*In this week’s paper, hitting streets today: Reviews of Four Tet, the beatin's, Spoon, Chekhov at Source, The Four of Us at Theater J. Plus: 44 Inch Chest and Wonderful World.

*Can anyone explain to me what the internets find so funny about the goddamn iPad? So Steve Jobs has a new toy, publishing industry saved, blah blah great, but honestly I'd rather follow Slash on Twitter.

*Inspirational track of the day ~ Bill Withers, "Use Me":

Neon Hates You/Smell Anniversary Fest: The Smell is the sort of DIY space that makes a scene. All ages, with a bent toward the experimental and interesting, this L.A. spot is about to mark its 12th anniversary with a weekend festival (Jan. 22 and 23) that seems heavy on the stuff it trades in: Participants include Mi Ami, Lucky Dragons, Foot Village, and Robin Williams on Fire. $10 (we repeat: $10) gets you in for both days.

Sounds Like Brooklyn Festival: We here at Festival Watch can kind of feel the Brooklyn hate. Being based, as we are, in the self-proclaimed “Live Music Capital of the World,” we've seen for ourselves what happens when every honky with a tonk feels like they have a right to be a rock musician. Brooklyn, we think, suffers from a similar sort of self-assuredness. Except there, the obnoxious proliferation of honest-to-God musical goodness almost seems to justify that sentiment. Which makes it all the worse.

As if to drive this point home, even academe has embraced the whole Brooklyn-as-the-edgy-Mecca thing—well, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, to be exact. Over the last weekend of January and the first weekend pf February, the residents of Williamsburg and Greenpoint (and at least some portions of Bed-Stuy) will, for the third time, presumably decamp and witness what BAM believes is a representative cross-section of their borough's sonic creativity. What, exactly, that means is a little unclear. Says press: “BAM's Sounds Like Brooklyn Music Festival celebrates some of the best music from the borough with two weekends packed with concerts at BAM and at clubs all over Brooklyn.” But the organization lists only the shows it plans to host at its own facilities. Performers there include Les Savy Fav, Vivian Girls, and the reunited Anti-Pop Consortium. Tickets for those performances are still available—and will be for the foreseeable future. Unless, of course, any of those bands can actually sell out the multitiered opera house that will host their performances.

As for the rest of the weekend, your guess is as good as ours. But if you should find yourself in Brooklyn, upset at the lack of shows that appeal to you, we’d remind you that there’s plenty of other stuff to do.

Noise Pop 2010: OK, so we realize that the last time we did one of these, we told you all about Noise Pop 2010. But that was before we found out that Yoko Ono’s Plastic Ono Band would be playing. And despite the hit-or-miss craziness associated therewith, we still feel like that experience is probably worth the $39.50 admission price. Of course, if you’re planning to be out there anyway (reminder: Four Tet, two nights of Magnetic Fields, and assorted other awesomeness is included), you could just get a badge.

2010 Tamworth Country Music Festival: Holy Keith Urban do Australians love them some country music! Don’t believe us? Check out the Web site for this year’s Tamworth Country Music Festival. According to these folks, their event is “[p]ossibly the biggest party in the whole of Australia…a mighty, large beast” which “almost doubles” the population of its host town, bringing in “more than $40 million to the local economy.” It seems like just about any band with even the vaguest hint of a twang can play—provided, of course, that the artists can get themselves to Tamworth, New South Wales. Basically, it’s a very South by Southwest. For country music. In Australia. Except there’s a rodeo.

And you won’t have to spring for a $600 pass if you want to have the option of going to every event. Nope, the honchos who run this thing have opted to make you pay for each individual show. Although we’re not sure which pay scheme would be the better bargain, we will say that the quaintness of traveling to a little place in Australia trumps the quaintness of traveling to Austin. 'Course, we do live in Texas...

2010 Noise Pop Festival: We here at Festival Watch are very stoked about the forthcoming Four Tet album (click here for a preview). And we are generally stoked about the city of San Francisco—even though our special lady’s brother has now moved from his North Beach digs that used to grant us a roof-top panorama that stretched from the Golden Gate Bridge to downtown. (We mean, shit, there are still Amoeba Records locations.) Anyway. In late February, the awesomeness of both Four Tet and San Francisco will be united under the auspices of the 2010 Noise Pop Festival. From Feb. 23 to March 1, various venues in that city will host the likes of that former member of Fridge, Atlas Sound, John Vanderslice, We Were Promised Jetpacks, and some band called Magnetic Fields. We’d like to think we could scrape together the dough for plane fare and the $150 that it’d run us for a festival badge. But then we’d have to write two Festival Watches a week for the next six weeks. And we don’t think that’s going to happen.

2010 Sasquatch! Music Festival: According to its Web site, the 2009 Sasquatch! Music Festival is, for the first time, offering its would-be attendees a chance to secure “a special discounted 3-day festival pass.” Like their colleagues over at Lollapalooza, the honchos in charge here are hoping that the lack of an official line-up announcement, with the exception of headliner Pavement, won’t interfere with the desire of festivalgoers to slap down $183.20. If they’re right, and you’re ready to make a relatively blind commitment, you have until the end of December to do so. If you’d rather wait to see who’s going to populate the Gorge Amphitheater over this coming Memorial Day weekend, you can follow developments through the festival’s Twitter feed.

Four Tet: "Love Cry"
Rhythm has always been integral to the schtick of Four Tet (AKA electronic musician Kieran Hebden), but "Love Cry," from a new limited edition 12" is the best he's ever done at making straight-up dance music. On last year's Ringer EP, Hebden shed his busy post-rock roots with four stripped-down and hypnotic tracks that borrowed equally from Villalobos-style minimal techno and afrobeat. "Love Cry" goes even further, ditching chords, melodies, and dramatic gestures for a killer pulse and a single note bass line.

Javelin: "Twyce"
Javelin may have a few rough edges—hiss-heavy production and high-frequency synth squeals—but the Brooklyn duo's music is mostly just smooth sailing. Listening to "Twyce," from Javelin's debut Thrill Jockey 12", is sort of like stepping through a Sandals advertisement and onto an actual Caribbean beach. Mostly because there's a ton of cowbell. The funky vintage keyboard parts, which suggest a sizable amount of time spent listening to Wally Badarou's Kraftwerk-in-the-Bahamas-album Echoes, doesn't hurt either.

Woodsman: "Dikembe Mutombo"
The American West is a fertile habitat for head-music. For instance, LaMonte Young, the Grandmaster Flash of heavy drone, found his original inspiration in the incessant winds of his native Idaho. But most people out there just seem content to tool around on a mandolin. What a drag. Denver Colorado's Woodsman, at least, are making good on all of that wide open space. "Dikembe Mutombo," has is thoroughly stocked with rippling guitar figures and post-Hawkwind trance rhythms.

Dinosaur Jr: "I Want You to Know"
Dinosaur Jr's great innovation was to take classic rock and play it at the ear drum-battering volume of hardcore punk. It's good to find that the re-united classic line-up still hasn't swerved from that original path. Indeed, everything on "I Want You to Know"–the chords, the melody, the lyrics–could pass muster in a late-'70s Grateful Dead tune. Luckily, all of it's cranked up into the red. Mascis' winding, slightly funky riffs are almost as dank as the record's cover art, which looks like something Ralph Bakshi might have drawn up for Ram Dass' answer to the Dungeons & Dragons handbook.

Yura Yura Teikoku: "Sweet Surrender (Remix)"
Mysterious Japanese krautrock band Yura Yura Teikoku, have been playing in Japan for nearly twenty-years now, but have only made it to the states only once. Here they get an out-of-the-blue remix from DFA, who pump the bass on "Sweet Surrender" up to slightly-irritating electroclash levels. But it would take a lot more than that to mess up this song's groove, which sounds like something that Can's Jaki Leibezeit might have pounded out during a spare moment of the Tago Mago sessions.

Four Tet + Burial: "Moth"
"Moth" finds Four Tet–aka drummer, beat-programmer, and all-around guru of clickety-clacking IDM Kieran Hebden–collaborating with Burial, the reclusive UK-based dubstep producer. Both artists apply their signature moves here, with Hebden providing the lush synths and Burial eventually dropping his trademark stuttering kick drum. The two styles merge surprisingly well, though, creating a bumpy but deeply hypnotic 9-minute groove.