Bassist/vocalist Justin Angelo Morey has a sharp ear for '60s R&B hooks and Zombies-style harmonies. "Gloomy Monday Morning," with it's farfisa organ grooves, is such a thorough psych-pop forgery that even Lenny Kaye wouldn't know for sure. And a lifetime of high volume pounding will do wonders for your rhythm section. Strawberry Alarm Clock could have benefited from such a stint on the New England basement-show circuit.

The Black Hollies w/ Title Tracks and Brian Scary and the Shredding Tears
@ Black Cat
$10 8:30 pm
1811 14th St. NW

From his collaborations with Sonic Youth, to his abstract guitar improvisations, to his seemingly bottomless catalog of drone compositions, Jim O'Rourke has made a lot of records. However, if one were to name the quintessential O'Rourke LP, it would have to be I'm Happy, I'm Singing, And A 1,2,3,4. Originally released in 2001 by the Austrian electronic label Mego, "I'm Happy" was O'Rourke's attempt at solo laptop composition, using an array of max/msp patches to generate heavilly textured compositions in the style of Brian Eno's Discreet Music. But every major O'Rourke calling card is here–from his preferred instruments (acoustic guitar and accordion), to influences, to the music concrete-style trickery (are those strings, or synthesizers, or both?) that he employed so effectively on earlier compositions like Tamper. But what's most striking is O'Rourke's use of melody.

Laptop music at the time–and especially among his peers on the Mego label–was an extremely noisy pursuit. At the time, to listen to a record by Pita, the alias of Mego founder Peter Rheberg, was like plugging a dial-up modem into a marshal stack and sticking your head in front of the speaker cone. On I'm Happy, And I'm Singing, And A 1,2,3,4, O'Rourke brought a more directly musical sensibility to laptop music–he swept out the noise, and instead, concentrated on manipulating simple and harmonious sounds.

The record's first track "I'm Happy" dices up organ and accordion figures, creating a blurry digital update of Terry Riley's organ/tape piece "Poppy Nogood & the Phanton Band." The final track, the somber 21-minute "And A 1,2,3,4," uses string section samples of varying length to create a gradually shifting drone somewhat similar in spirit to Gavin Bryar's "Sinking of the Titanic." But O'Rourke's voice is so present here that it's easy to hear elements of "I'm Happy, And I'm Sining, And A 1,2,3,4" popping up in his other work, even with rock bands like Sonic Youth (Murray Street's "Karen Revisited") or Wilco (A Ghost is Born's "Less Than You Think). Not just in the noisy parts, either.

This recent repressing, by Editions Mego, brings the album back into print for the first time in years with new cover art and a second disc of unreleased material. That new material is largely inessential–noisy asides that lack the coherence of the record's original tracks. But those three compositions hold up remarkably well, and listening to them again, you can hear how their influence has come to bear on numerous contemporary records, in both the pop and electronic worlds. Most of all, it sums up what O'Rourke's other work always suggested–that technology and musicality are not mutually exclusive.

You've heard Black Dice do shrieking hardcore-noise and you've heard them do meditative new-age bliss. Now, get ready for Black Dice's hiphop record. Sort of. Nobody's dropping any rhymes or boasts on Repo, the New York trio's 7th album, but there's lot of sampler twiddling. Had Boredoms crashed into J Dilla's studio back when he was making Ruff Draft, they probably would have wound up with something not entirely unlike "Earnings Plus Interest", which dribbles abstract noise hither-thither over a grainy break. Maybe it suffices to just say that Repo was made in the same spirit as an instrumental hiphop record. Diverse musical snippets and pop-culture references get mashed up and warped into unruly collages that bear little, if any, reference to the source material. "Glazin", for instance, jams layers a choir of cartoon mumbles over a slice of slippery Caribbean rhythm. The effect is, in a word, weird. As if Fruit Loops commissioned Paper Rad to make a Toucan Sam commercial. It's arty, for sure, but not without a sense of humor.

Black Dice: "Glazin"

PJ Harvey & John Parish: A Woman a Man Walked By (Island)
Those waiting for PJ Harvey to drop her voice back to a low growl, pick up an electric guitar, and put the ethereal genius of '07s White Chalk behind her, sorry, that might still be a few years away. A Woman a Man Walked By, Harvey's latest collaboration with producer/musican/songwriter John Parish–coming ten-years after their first shared record Dance Hall at Louse Point–is decidedly high concept, which is to say, weird. Parish–who also helped produce White Chalk–provides the music here, ten tracks that veer from slanted Beefheartian-blues of "Pig Will Not", to the ethereal folk of "Leaving California," while Harvey sings, hollers, and groans. It's theatrical, to say the least, and you don't have to wait all the way until Harvey yelps the tongue-twister "Lilly-livered little parts", during the title track, to figure that out. But Harvey and Parish's show, gothy and freaky as it is, is a riveting one, full of strong songwriting and soft heartbreaking melodies.

Thrill Jockey is currently streaming the entire record here.

Extra Golden: "Anyango"

Tim Hecker: An Imaginary Country (Kranky)
It's easy to see why the music of Montreal-based Tim Hecker is often tagged as "ambient." His swarming symphonies of manipulated samples and computer noise are certainly atmospheric enough to beg such a label, and yes, he was even featured on Kompakt's annual Pop Ambient compilation in January. But this is ambient music that grabs the listener by the collar, demanding attention with compositions so massive, so overwhelming and thick with laptop wash that they border on the aggressive. Hecker's new full-length, An Imaginary Country, offers more of the ghostly anthems he's know for, though his approach this time is a bit more pronounced than in the past. The distant transistor crackle exhibited on 2003's Radio Amor has come closer into range, and the distortion saturated refrains of 2006's Harmony in Ultraviolet have progressed in clarity. The bass throbs and overloaded organ of "Sea of Pulses" even sound like a slow-motion version of Dan Deacon covering Terry Riley. Whether it's background lush you're seeking, or an active exercise in melodic deconstruction, An Imaginary Country comfortably satisfies both niches.

Tim Hecker: "Sea of Pulses"

Kurt Vile: "My Sympathy"

Black Lips: "Short Fuse"

Pan-American: White Bird Release (Kranky)
Few early ’90s post-rock veterans can claim as much enduring influence as Mark Nelson. The billowing guitar drones that he made as both as a member of Labradford and under his solo moniker, Pan-American, showed a whole generation of young guitarists that you didn’t need chops, at least so long as they could afford some cool foot-pedals to play with. But the next generation hasn’t really managed to lap Nelson yet. On White Bird Release, his first Pan-American effort since 2006's For Waiting, for Chasing, Nelson’s vocabulary of lilting and slightly ominous textures still do the trick. The grainy e-bow drones of “So That No Matter” blurs into the processed percussion of "How Much Progress One Makes" and finally the chilly cymbal washes of “Dr. Robert Goddard." It's all basically one long-ass note, and one that Nelson has been playing for a long time, but it's a good note.

Thrill Jockey is streaming the album in its entirety here.


Filastine: Dirty Bomb (Soot Records)
Riding the wave of bass-heavy globalization comes Barcelona-based DJ/producer Grey Filastine's sophomore full-length, another modernized mish-mash of urban dance trends and provocative world grooves. I first got word of Filastine through his fantastic contributions to volume 6 of Violent Turd's Shotgun Wedding mixtape series in 2007, shared with the like-minded DJ/Rupture, who runs the Soot imprint that released Dirty Bomb. The new album offers an equally exhaustive, globe-trotting survey for the worst case of ADD: Bollywood breaks meet Baile funk; plunderphonic collages get juxtaposed with African and Indian percussion; and dubstep bangers mingle with hip hop funkiness — all peppered liberally with noise and effects. Many tracks feature original vocals by singers and MCs from a wide array of backgrounds, languages, and style, augmented by a healthy stash of politically-charged samples. In essence, Dirty Bomb emphasizes the traits that define a really good DJ: one with an ability to connect such varying musical cultures with fluidity and appeal, exploiting the elements that define them while also highlighting their commonalities. But most importantly, you have to make the people dance. Good thing Dirty Bomb has that covered too. (Cole Goins)

Filastine: "No Lock No Key (Feat. DJ Collage)"


These Are Powers: All Aboard Future (Dead Oceans)
When your punk-rock band is sample based it's kind of hard to, you know, bring-it. Whacking a rubber pad just doesn't have the same urgency as smashing a guitar. But on All Aboard Future, These Are Powers have persevered in creating jibbering electronic rhythms heavy enough to go head to head anything that can be wrought from a Marshall stack. Early on, the band traded in vicious, if somewhat typical, post-punk that owed a heavy debt to Bad Moon Rising-era Sonic Youth. However, now that the machines have taken over, These Are Powers is on its own turf. With their squelchy electronics "Double Double Yolk" imagines a funkier, sexier Throbbing Gristle, but there's not a whole lot of precedent for the circuit-scrambled rhythms of "Easy Answers." There are a few saggy moments–the Lovecraftian digression of "Parallel Shores", the forced spookiness of "Sand Tassels"–but sampler or no, These Are Powers hit loud and hard here. All aboard, indeed. (AL)

These Are Powers: "Life of Birds"

The Gris Gris: "Down With Jesus"