I’m keenly aware that my Top Ten for the year included very little in the way of the avant-garde in jazz. What can I say? My favorites were my favorites. Yet I can’t help but feel like some great “out” records got overlooked in the shuffle to compile these best-of-’08s, and so I’ve got a handful here of five avant-garde albums — three new releases, two archival — in 2008 that deserve your attention.

1. Keefe Jackson’s Project Project – Just Like This (Delmark)
All right, I’m cheating: Just Like This was a December 2007 release. Nonetheless, it set a great tone for the year, with rich, soulful free jazz placed into a big band context that was great fun to listen to and to decipher. I wrote at its release that “It’s no coincidence that Project Project is from Chicago: Just Like This places Jackson into the tradition of Windy City stalwarts like Henry Threadgill and Muhal Richard Abrams. Those giants aren’t yet passing the torch, but Jackson will be a worthy recipient when they do. ”

2. Wadada Leo Smith – Tabligh (Cuneiform)
An AACM stalwart since the ’60s, trumpeter Smith makes music as mysterious as it is cerebral and culture-spanning. Tabligh uses sinuous elements of European, Asian, and especially Middle Eastern music to forge musical links between Muslim religious rites (”Tabligh”), American musical traditions (”DeJohnette”) and even the civil rights movement (”Rosa Parks”). A quartet of legends young and old—pianist Vijay Iyer, bassist John Lindberg, drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson—make breathtaking contributions to the effort.

3. Mary Halvorson – Dragon’s Head (Firehouse 12)
28-year-old Halvorson’s debut as sole leader (she’s co-led sessions in the past) is very likely the most exploratory album on this list. The guitarist leads a Hendrix-inspired trio featuring bassist John Hebert and drummer Ches Smith through a set of her own intuitively designed compositions. Between her unconventional approach to structure and her thorny guitar style, however, it’s impossible to tell where composition ends and improv begins, and vice versa; the effect is not unlike watching a cat unfurl a ball of yarn, with no telling which directions the string might end up going but, ultimately, a layout of distinct but unusual patterns.
Read More “Jazz 2008: The Outliers” »

I discovered my rap, R&B, and chitlin’ circuit soul favorites via that old-fashioned medium, the radio, while finding my Spanish language, African, and indie-rock faves via the internet, publicists, and word of mouth. With the wealth of music out there, marketing and advertising gimmicks and strategy continue to be crucial in spreading the word to different audiences. As I note below, one of my top 10, Ms. Jody, got local WPFW radio play on one program, but since her Southern soul label doesn’t send her music to rock-oriented publications or websites (and provide them with an angle spelling out why her music should be of interest to their readers), or get her on soundtracks (hello M.I.A.) many folks have no idea she exists.

1. Tha Carter III, Lil Wayne

Yea, Tha Carter III is uneven but the singles from this sounded wonderful on the car radio. It was even fun hearing 14-year-olds at little league games trying to recite the gloriously ragged, tongue-twisting lyrics of “A Milli” and high-schoolers on city sidewalks chanting the “Whee Ooh Whee Ooh Wee (like a cop car)” verse from “Mrs. Officer.”

“Mrs. Officer”:

It’s been an interesting year in music: Latin urban music wars, an emo-turned-Latin pop star, evolution of an R&B crooner, a hip-hop Renaissance, the continuation of the “outernational” movement, and Kiwis wooing the ladies. One of the most diverse Top 10 list—a little something hopefully most can enjoy. I certainly have…

1.

Los de Atras Vienen Conmigo, Calle 13 (Sony International)

Calle 13 have the gusto and fortitude to give the world of Latin urban music a shot in the arm, mixing electic beats with cheeky Spanglish lyrics, and dismissing their competition (particularly reggeaton acts) as tourists in their genre.

2.

MTV Unplugged, Julieta Venegas (Sony International)

An accidental pop-rock star after toiling as an emo rocker in the ’90s, Venegas has spent this decade playing the joyful, universally appealing norteño music of her native Mexico.
Read More “2008: Latin Urban Music Wars, Hip-Hop Renaissance, and Digi-Bongo-A Cappella-Funk-Comedy-Folk” »

You haven’t had enough of the lists yet, have you? Good. Here’s one more quick one: my list of favorite shows of the year, mostly in D.C. but also ranging north to Baltimore and south to Charlottesville (links all lead to photos):

1. St. Vincent at Rock & Roll Hotel, February 26
2. Nels Cline Singers at the Paramount Theater, June 6
3. Tim Berne’s Bloodcount at An Die Musik, February 9
4. Amanda Palmer at the 9:30 Club, November 18
5. Wilco at Lyric Opera House, December 14
6. Salome at DC9, August 10
7. Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin at Blues Alley, March 3
8. Earth at Rock & Roll Hotel, May 4
9. Nobu Stowe at George Washington University, September 7
10. Evangelista at Velvet Lounge, April 16
11. Boris at the Black Cat, July 8
12. Škampa Quartet & Iva Bittová at the Library of Congress, April 11
13. Dälek at Rock & Roll Hotel, February 27
14. Kamelot at Jaxx, October 16
15. Woven Hand at Iota, October 17

This year, as always, I struggled with whether to give more weight to the albums I admired as complete works, or the ones that contained the greatest number of blazing singles.

Album artistry won out, for the most part. The Renaissance, 808s & Heartbreak, and New Amerykah, Pt. 1: 4^th World War, for example, are discs that I listened to from beginning to end, over and over again. T.I. and Lil’ Wayne’s projects, on the other hand, were included off the strength of a few insanely catchy tracks on each one. The yodeling O-Zone sample on “Live Your Life” and the man-made siren sound effects on “Mrs. Officer” made up for the less exciting moments on Paper Trail and Tha Carter III.

Still, some albums were such bricks that not even the sickest, most unbelievably catchy singles could save them. So, as much as it pained me to overlook the trashy goodness of T-Pain’s “Can’t Believe It” and “Chopped n Skrewed,” they couldn’t quite make up for the rest of Thr33 Rings. Sorry, Teddy P. Maybe next year.

Read More “Music 2008: Saying Goodbye to Pain” »

Every year there’s always tons of records that deserved more time, that flew under the radar or just got lost in my stacks and/or hard drive. Here’s a few that I thought were worthy of sharing:

U.S. Girls: Live On WFMU

U.S. Girls is Megan Remy. She plays through messed-up keyboards and loves the sound of a messed-up drum machine. Her myspace page claims she’s from Philly. Her music comes from no place. Imagine Bruce Springsteen as a avant-goth kid bellowing through a messed-up microphone. Remy makes noisy anthems for people who hate noisy anthems. [She also does a lot of covers including a dirty version of a Springsteen tune]. This set is a live one done for the famous New Jersey station. I found it as a download on a message board. You can find it on WFMU’s Beware of the Blog. The blog claims she’s from Chicago. Does it matter?

The blog does have a pretty damn good summation of the U.S. Girls’ set up and sound:

Packing nothing more than a reel-to-reel tape deck, a mic, and 2 stomp boxes, U.S. Girls delivered a maelstrom of classic pop filtered through something unknowable and kinda crazy, I don’t know what it is.  I’ll indulge the facile “A meets B” thing by saying imagine Phil Spector covered by The Conet Project

Listen to her version of the Dave Clark 5 song “Bits & Pieces”:

Read More “Music 2008: A Few Forgotten Favorites” »

Fifth in a series of 6, we asked DC’s favorite recording engineer Don Zientara for his take on the state of recorded music in 2008.  He responded in limerick form (and in an interview at his studio in Arlington):

There once was an audio format called mp3
Where parts of the digital word were sent off to sea.
The data was minced,
for the song that convinced
us that vinyl more pleasing, you see?

Don Zientara is owner of Inner Ear Studios, and has engineered records for such bands as the Bad Brains, Minor Threat, Rites of Spring, Scream, Nation of Ulysses, Fugazi, Lungfish, Jawbox, the Dismemberment Plan, Q and not U and many others.  He also writes and performs his own music, and has released two solo albums, Sixteen Songs and Clocks & Watches.

All contributors to this series were guests on DISSONANCE, a DC punk oral histories show on Radio CPR. Don Zientara’s interview can be heard here.

While gathering info for my piece “Beats Working” (featured in this week’s 2008 Music and Arts in Review issue), I spoke with several DJs and promoters who had very interesting things to say, though space constraints prevented their quotes from making the print. Good thing we’ve got this spacious Internet to stretch out in.

Over the the next week or so, I’ll be posting a series of Q&As, quotes, and other additional insight from D.C. folks who are hard at work in the city’s dance culture.  The series will serve as a supplement to the article—which on its own is by no means an exhaustive survey of all the many great dance nights that are currently happening around the District.  Principally, I intended to spotlight the most successful stuff from ‘08, and promising stuff from ‘09 in the no-dress-code, no-holds-barred side of the D.C. dance scene. Hopefully, these posts will add to that scope.

First up is a full Q&A from Sean Peoples: In addition to running the Sockets CD-R label, Peoples is co-creator of the monthly funk and soul dance night Fatback (mentioned at the beginning of “Beats Working”), which celebrated its one-year anniversary last Friday. He already tipped us off to his some of his favorite things from ‘08, but here’s a more in-depth look at the progress that led Fatback from its origins at Local 16 and Dahlak to a packed house every second Friday of the month at Red Lounge, seven DJs strong. Follow the jump for the full text.
Read More “Beats Working Addendum Part 1: Sean Peoples” »

This year’s music issue contains a mix of great questions: If full-length albums are dead, why do so many people still want them? Is hip-hop growing up or having its Yacht Rock moment? Can lo-fi recordings compete with the digital onslaught? What are the most…distinctive music videos of the year? Have cutbacks at big labels been good for hip-hop? Why has D.C.’s DJ scene been so off the hook? Why did vinyl sell so well?

And Washington City Paper has all the answers:

• Brent Burton explains why people still buy full-length albums.
• David Dunlap Jr. measures the maturation of hip-hop.
• Casey Rae-Hunter explains how the Cassettes managed to get so big on, well, cassettes.
• Ted Scheinman and yours truly sorted through a shit-ton of music videos in order to recommend 10 must-sees.
• Ben Westhoff argued that 2008 was a great year for hip-hop, despite the dry spell.
• Cole Goins caught up with local DJs and found out the secrets to their dance-hall successes.
• Don Carr took stock of the District’s big vinyl sales.
• And of course, everybody had something to say about the 10 best albums of the year.

Where 2007 was my love-affair year with free jazz, 2008 saw my affections turn to extreme metal in all its varied forms. The sad departure of Transparent Productions meant a dearth of interesting avant-garde jazz in the District, and I replaced concertgoing expeditions to Sangha (RIP) and Twins Jazz with rather different expeditions to places like Jaxx and various smaller venues booking the more underground kinds of metal. My passion for music tracks closely with what I’m seeing in the live setting, so it makes sense that my 2008 list is dominated by the heavy, evil stuff. (My friends—and especially housemates—didn’t appreciate this so much.)

Be it metal, jazz, electronic music, free improvisation, or whatever, I’ve been convinced for a few years now that, industry woes aside, we’re living in a renaissance period with fascinating new music being made at an unprecedented clip. Granted, I have absolutely no empirical basis for this claim, but I present the following 10 recordings as examples of the freshness of today’s music-making scene…

1. One With Filth, Crowpath (Willowtip)
Pundits can quibble over whether or not “avant-garde metal” is really avant-garde in any meaningful sense, but the latest album from Swedish band Crowpath is an undeniably experimental and edgy slab of death metal. Compared to the band’s two earlier releases, it’s downright catchy and accessible, striking a perfect balance between challenging and immediately rewarding, but it’s still impossibly punishing. “Thinking man’s metal” is an overused phrase and too often refers to dry exercises in technicality, but it’s a perfect term for this recording.

Crowpath, “Cleansed In Chlorine”:

2. Doombringer, Nasum (Relapse)
A more than welcome posthumous live release from these grindcore greats. Although Doombringer clocks in at a mere 23 minutes, the 16 tracks here are meatier than most albums twice the length or more. Brutal and unrelenting from start to finish, like getting punched in the face repeatedly, by a guy wearing spiked brass knuckles. You know, if you’re into that kind of thing.

Nasum, “Inhale/Exhale”:

Read More “Music 2008: Alienate Your Friends” »