James Blake

The Groove Seeker: James Blake

On a weekly basis, The Groove Seeker goes in search of killer grooves across rock, funk, hip hop, soul, electronic music, jazz, fusion, and more.

James Blake: James Blake (Atlas Records, 2/7/11)

James Blake: “The Wilhelm Scream”

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After gaining significant attention in 2010 with three EPs — The Bells Sketch, CMYK, and Klavierwerke — London-based electronic producer James Blake is releasing his self-titled full-length on Atlas Records.  The EPs established Blake as a new go-to producer, whose soul-noir brand of dubstep has surprised many with its low-energy beats and restrained, ultramodern approach.  Blake’s music is a staggering, spacious collage of R&B and nu-soul samples suspended over deep drum kits, skittering glitch pulses, and highly saturated vocals.

But with so many musicians following the same avant-garde, cut-and-paste approach, Blake’s earlier music doesn’t so much break barriers as it tests fertile grounds.  Though the EPs contain danceable grooves and imaginative arrangements, they remain stamp-less, sounding like the supplementary material to an experimental music seminar on producing and remixing beats.

“Limit to Your Love,” the first single to his upcoming album, covers Feist, reducing the original to its simple piano phrase with a tension that lies somewhere between nerve-biting silence and wall-shaking bass.  But more importantly, the song reveals a voice capable of channeling the faint intimacy of Bon Iver and the soulful croon of Bill Withers.  It’s a warm vocal style that is crucial in realizing Blake’s appeal.

The Groove Seeker: Beep’s City of the Future

On a weekly basis, The Groove Seeker goes in search of killer grooves across rock, funk, hip hop, soul, electronic music, jazz, fusion, and more.

Beep: City of the Future (Third Culture Records, 1/18/11)

Beep: “Robo Pup”
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San Francisco-based trio Beep has tapped into a fresh vanguard with its upcoming release City of the Future. The indie-rock-meets-experimental-jazz trio is commanding without being loud, making the dynamics and improvisational strategies of jazz accessible to a whole new audience. City of the Future contains pieces that advance rather than deconstruct in an accomplished style that forgoes any art-school tropes narrowly associated with the experimental tag.

Produced by Eli Crews (producer for Deerhoof and Why?), the record is marked by passionate percussion and a broad sense of what a melody can sound like. Making avant garde sound closer than ever to the present, Beep has found a sound that mixes the vibrancy of the modern rock recording with the experimental subtleties of a jazz record.

The Groove Seeker: Zoon Van Snook’s (Falling From) The Nutty Tree

On a weekly basis, The Groove Seeker goes in search of killer grooves across rock, funk, hip hop, soul, electronic music, jazz, fusion, and more.

Zoon Van Snook: (Falling from) The Nutty TreeZoon Van Snook: (Falling From) The Nutty Tree (Mush Records, 12/7/10)

Zoon Van Snook: “Lomograph”

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As Zoon Van Snook, UK-based oddball producer Alec Snook has released his debut album, (Falling From) The Nutty Tree. It’s a chameleonic kind of record; Snook uses everything from folk, jazz, hip hop, and IDM to create his style of cut-and-paste electronica.

Though the album has its scattered and weird moments, Snook’s knack for melody and rhythms make for an approach that is more contemplative than erratic. With plucked and chimed melodies over heavy, glitched-out beats, the record has a warm, well-textured sound.

Aside from Snook’s support of English indie bands I Am Kloot and Skunk Anasie, listeners received their first taste of his aesthetics with Snook’s 2008 four-track EP, Interviews and Interludes. The song “Bibliophone” from that record is a stuttering display of found sounds, household objects as percussion, reverse sampling, and temporal masking that makes for an experimental, glitchy IDM odyssey.

Epstein

The Groove Seeker: Epstein’s Prefuse 73 / Jaytram / Epstein

On a weekly basis, The Groove Seeker goes in search of killer grooves across rock, funk, hip hop, soul, electronic music, jazz, fusion, and more.

Epstein: Prefuse 73 / Jaytram / Epstein (Asthmatic Kitty, 12/14/10)

Jaytram: “You Know They Out”

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Though Roberto Lange’s year has been busier than usual, the multitasking musician (also known as Helado Negro) has found the time to pack in another release before the year is over. Well, kind of. The back catalog of Epstein, Lange’s longtime electronic project, has received a complete cut-and-paste overhaul by beat conductor Prefuse 73 and drummer Jaytram (of Yeasayer), making for a record aptly titled Prefuse 73 / Jaytram / Epstein.

It is a fitting year-end release for the NYC-based artist and producer, who, in 2010 alone, released a new Epstein full-length, a new Helado Negro EP, worked on a number of remixes, and saw Asthmatic Kitty reissue four Epstein records that were never released outside of Japan until now.  The re-releases spawned not so much a remix album but an absolute dismantling and revision of his obscure recordings. The albums, recorded with Miami-based Beta Bodega label, serve as a wealthy groove print for Prefuse and Jaytram, who respectively split the duties.

Daft Punk

The Groove Seeker: Daft Punk’s Tron: Legacy soundtrack

On a weekly basis, The Groove Seeker goes in search of killer grooves across rock, funk, hip hop, soul, electronic music, jazz, fusion, and more.

Daft Punk: Tron: LegacyDaft Punk: Tron: Legacy soundtrack (Walt Disney Records, 12/7/2010)

Daft Punk: “End of Line”

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Daft Punk fans have been waiting five years for this.  Tron fans have been waiting close to thirty years.  As the Tron: Legacy soundtrack is Daft Punk’s first release of new material since 2005 album Human After All, there seems to be no other logical way that the French DJ duo could have staged its return.

In a perfect marriage of aesthetics that only the Master Control Program could have arranged, Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter have left their grand discothèque anthems and enlisted an 85-piece orchestra to build an ambitious sonic accompaniment to Tron: Legacy’s parallel digital universe.

Woima Collective

The Groove Seeker: Woima Collective’s Tezeta

On a weekly basis, The Groove Seeker goes in search of killer grooves across rock, funk, hip hop, soul, electronic music, jazz, fusion, and more.

Woima Collective: TezetaWoima Collective: Tezeta (Kindred Spirits, 11/15/10)

Woima Collective: “Wayna”

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The Woima Collective has produced a remarkable set of Ethiopian-styled grooves with its debut record, Tezeta, released on the Netherlands-based record label Kindred Spirts. Including the brass-section members of the internationally respected German funk outfit Poets of Rhythm, the Collective channels the sweet funk and jazz rhythms of Mulatu Astatke, with a sound that matches his legendary 1960s and ’70s recordings.

Black Mountain

The Groove Seeker: Black Mountain’s Wilderness Heart

On a weekly basis, The Groove Seeker goes in search of killer grooves across rock, funk, hip hop, soul, electronic music, jazz, fusion, and more.

Black Mountain: Wilderness HeartBlack Mountain: Wilderness Heart (Jagjaguwar, 9/14/2010)

Black Mountain: “Wilderness Heart”

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Thanks to endless comparisons to bands such as Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, and Black Sabbath, and tagged as a band obsessed with ’70s stoner rock, Vancouver-based rock outfit Black Mountain has a lot to live up to.  But beyond the umbrella terminology and exhaustive retro comparisons, the group doesn’t receive enough credit for striking a modern chord with mainstream and underground-minded audiences alike.

Majeure

The Groove Seeker: Majeure’s Timespan

On a weekly basis, The Groove Seeker goes in search of killer grooves across rock, funk, hip hop, soul, electronic music, jazz, fusion, and more.

Majeure: TimespanMajeure: Timespan (9/14/2010, Temporary Residence Limited)

Majeure: “Teleforce”

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Majeuere is the side project of A.E. Paterra, drummer and one half of Pittsburgh-based electronic prog-rock duo Zombi. Much like the Lovelock moniker of bandmate Steve Moore, Majeure doesn’t stray too far from Zombi’s glimmering, cinematic, sci-fi synths, stabbing analog Moog lines, and minimalist Krautrock grooves. But for Paterra’s debut release, Timespan, the drummer brings a whole new meaning to the long player. The album is a grand, three-track journey through the nebulous ocean of space — an ambient and energetic sci-fi rock record in a musical universe where the Solaris and Bladerunner soundtracks merge into one.

Free Moral Agents

The Groove Seeker: Free Moral Agents’ Control This

On a weekly basis, The Groove Seeker goes in search of killer grooves across rock, funk, hip hop, soul, electronic music, jazz, fusion, and more.

Free Moral Agents: Control ThisFree Moral Agents: Control This (Chocolate Industries, 10/12/2010)

Free Moral Agents: “North Is Red”

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Mars Volta fans know Isaiah “Ikey” Owens as a master keyboardist, also lending his talents to the related experimental dub/reggae side project De Facto. But Owens’ own one-time side project, Free Moral Agents, has transformed into a full-time band with a second studio release, Control This.  Though his musical associations are enough to give him reputable standing as a versatile and adaptable session player, Free Moral Agents is far from sounding like a complex math-rock outfit.

The band’s music is, however, complex in its own way.  Control This is an omnivorous kind of record — as diverse as it is visionary — and is comfortable in taking on different musical personas at once.  Over a combination of ambient pop and trip hop, crunchy guitar riffs and avant-garde fusion motifs construct a critical foreground, and the esoteric vocals of Mendee Ichikawa make for a strong and fitting melodic element.

Calibro 35

The Groove Seeker: Calibro 35’s Ritornano Quelli Di…

On a weekly basis, The Groove Seeker goes in search of killer grooves across rock, funk, hip hop, soul, electronic music, jazz, fusion, and more.

Calibro 35: Ritornano Quelli Di...Calibro 35Calibro 35: Ritornano Quelli Di… (Ghost/Nublu, 7/13/2010)

Calibro 35: “Death Comes at Midnight”

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During the 1970s, the Italian film industry produced approximately 250 films that fell under the Italian cop sub-genre poliziotteschi.  The films were ultra-violent takeoffs of American cop and mafia movies such as The Godfather, The French Connection, and Dirty Harry. Always brutal and sometimes filled with nonsensical violence, poliziotteschi films had it all: car and motorcycle chases, political corruption, mafia wars, heists, shootouts, tough rogue cops, and not to mention properly trimmed mustaches.

To match the over-the-top action, films began replacing traditional orchestrated scores with driving sounds that drew influence from rock, funk, and jazz.  A close listen beyond the double-machine-gun-toting criminals and the occasional poor dubbing job reveals the swankiest music ever set to film.

Garage a Trois

The Groove Seeker: Garage a Trois’ Power Patriot

On a weekly basis, The Groove Seeker goes in search of killer grooves across rock, funk, hip hop, soul, electronic music, jazz, fusion, and more.

Garage a Trois: Power Patriot

Garage a Trois: Power Patriot (The Royal Potato Family, 10/26/09)

Garage a Trois: “Rescue Spreaders”
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Garage a Trois is the improvised groove child of saxophonist Skerik, drummer Stanton Moore, and 8-string guitarist Charlie Hunter.  The trio made a grand debut in 1999 with Mysteryfunk, a raw EP of completely improvised recordings, foregoing interest in post-production effects and multi-tracking.  In 2002, percussionist and vibraphonist Mike Dillon was added to the mix, giving the group a new tonal texture, and the band began rooting its music in powerful repetitions à la Critters Buggin, Skerik and Dillon’s former band. The departure of Hunter in 2007 led to a temporary void that was filled by rotating musicians, most notably John Medeski.  Soon after, jam keyboardist Marco Benevento was chosen to permanently fill Hunter’s place.