Music

It was early afternoon on a day in late December. It was warm, like it had been most of that December, and as I ran along Halsted Avenue to the Iguana Café, I began to sweat. I was late for a meeting with Usama Alshaibi, the Iraqi-American filmmaker who had recently finished his first feature-length documentary, “Nice Bombs.”

After waiting nearly five years for producer/rapper extraordinaire El-P to release a follow-up to 2002’s Fantastic Damage, fans now have available a sophomore effort that doesn’t disappoint. I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead, with its heavily layered, dark, atmospheric, gritty, and synth-saturated sound, feels like the hip hop soundtrack to a science fiction film.

Evidence (of Dilated Peoples) has done a remarkable job constructing The Weatherman, plotting a well-developed theme and incorporating it beautifully into his songs, a feat of sequencing that is a lost art on most current albums.

Aren’t you tired of waiting two or three circulations around the sun for a new full-length disc? Well, The Mars Volta has you covered. According to the website for Gold Standard Laboratories, the prog-fusion masters will be heading into the studio in April to record a new full-length album, which is tentatively slated for a late-summer release.

If you need some blast beats with your electronically infused, semi-ambient noise rock, then Genghis Tron is the band for you. The three-piece electro-grind outfit has announced that it will be recording at GodCity Studios with Kurt Ballou (Converge) in August for a forthcoming album on Relapse Records.

Best known for his work with quasi-legendary genre destroyers Mr. Bungle, Trey Spruance brought his Indian/surf/spaghetti Western creation Secret Chiefs 3 through Chicago last weekend alongside showy progsters Sleepytime Gorilla Museum.

After receiving loads of critical acclaim in the U.K., Amy Winehouse is finally letting Americans in on her unique soulful sound with Back to Black. Upon first listen, Winehouse’s noticeable aspect is that her voice has a ’50s/’60s jazz/old soul sound to it.

The liner notes for Tinariwen’s third record, Aman Iman: Water is Life, read like a story in National Geographic. Photos of a wild-haired, stick-thin man in an indigo robe with a guitar decorate each page and the story goes like this: Somewhere under a tent in a desert town in Kidal, a group of Touregs passed around a shoddy electric guitar hooked up to a battery-powered amp and sang ever-changing ancient songs.

Icelandic songstress and international icon Bjork will have her sixth full-length album released by One Little Indian / Atlantic Records on May 8, and it sounds mighty intriguing.

A complex blend of electronica, hip-hop, and dancehall makes Pale Fire (SOUNDiNK) an intricate ride down “I’m going to dance my ass off” lane. Tragically, this isn’t what I’m used to listening to, so you might finish this review and whisper, “What the fuuuuuck?” to yourself, but I’ll do my best to help you understand why this is a great piece of musical artistry.