Minus the Bear was one of those indie-rock bands that experienced “synth creep” as 1980s-style music came back into fashion over the past decade; its last two albums, Planet of Ice and Omni, increasingly utilized synthesizers at the expense of the mathy guitar rock for which the band was known. Its newest, Infinity Overload, is a step back towards its roots, with moments of quirkiness and energy that were largely missing from Ice and Omni.
First released last September, Cloudeater’s Sun and Sidearm was a moody, melodic debut LP that blended rock, pop, and electronics to spacy and sexy results. The highly textured seven-song release called upon many timbres, but it leaned on worming bass lines and cooing vocals to set the tone.
Did you catch this last week? That’s right — it’s the first track and video from Converge’s All We Love We Leave Behind, a brand-new dose of hardcore pyrotechnics due out in a scant five weeks.
Syncing with the blazing tempo, director Max Moore’s cinematography offers ultra-low-attention-span cuts with a dark, blue-grey palette. Try to count the many quick tie-ins to vocalist Jacob Bannon’s cover art.
Remember when “indie rock” bands used to play…*ahem*…rock music? If you’re under the age of 20, you might not — but either way, get acquainted with the recently reactivated Casket Lottery.
It takes a certain type of self-confidence to Sharpie tits on a map of the United States and call it album art, or loop the sliced-up laugh of Woody Woodpecker for three-and-a-half minutes and call it an opening track. It takes a very different type of self-confidence to craft something as complex, varied, and yet wholly likeable and listenable as “Prettyboy,” one of the most intrepid compositions on Dan Deacon’s newest release, America.
With the forthcoming Mumps, Etc. LP promising another new direction for indie-hop group Why? — this time with expanded orchestration — its Sod in the Seed EP comes to whet its fans’ appetites. And though its material is nearly all exclusive to the EP (only the title track is a repeat), at six songs and 17 minutes, it’s short and distinct.
If the appeal of a cover tune rests on an artist’s ability to emulate a preexisting song and bring new flavors to it at the same time, then the remix is something of an estranged relative. With remixes, the implicit goal is to stretch an existing piece of music as far as it can possibly go. Remixers are thus encouraged to let their musical personality eclipse the composer’s. They are essentially hired to take risks, to reconstitute, and to deconstruct — even altogether ignore — the mood, structure, and musical components with which they’ve been given to work.
The end results often qualify as works of art unto themselves, yet they also exist more or less as novelty items. Arguably, few remixes connect with more than a limited niche audience — even for fans of groups like Massive Attack and Depeche Mode — and the thought of a group of remixes working together within the larger framework of a full-length album remains an anomaly.
But that isn’t stopping experimental rock trio Battles from trying.
Having come back into fashion a decade ago, afrobeat isn’t so much resurgent as it is enduring. These days it might even more popular than it was in the 1970s — setting off dance parties, blasting over café speakers, occupying whole sections at record stores, and even influencing indie-rock records. Its immersion into the global mainstream is in large part due to the revived interest in Fela Kuti, the Nigerian afrobeat rebel whose life is chronicled as equal parts musical innovator and controversial social activist. Over the years protégés of Kuti’s Africa ’70 band have exploded everywhere from San Francisco to London, but none may have been more instrumental to afrobeat’s second coming in the States than the Brooklyn-based ensemble Antibalas.
After a hiatus that saw front-man Kele Okereke testing the solo waters of R&B-inflected electronics, London indie outfit Bloc Party has returned leaner, meaner, and more dynamic than ever. Some studio banter between tunes is a dead giveaway that Four is a more documentary approach than the boys have taken previously. Rawer sounds and a live recording environment make this the closest to representing the band at its naked best.
Minus the Bear: Infinity Overhead (Dangerbird, 8/28/12)
