Months in the making and years in the waiting, ALARM Magazine is back! We’ve been quiet on the publishing end since our release of Chromatic: The Crossroads of Color and Music last year, but we’re happy to announce the bimonthly return of the mag, now with an increased focus on rock-’n’-roll culture and lifestyle.
The Mars Volta: Noctourniquet (Warner Bros., 3/27/12)
At the start of spring, The Mars Volta released one of its most diverse, balanced albums to date — spiraling through progressive melodies, pop structures, and synthesized effects. Noctourniquet delivered on all fronts, and “The Malkin Jewel” was one of its standout singles.
Because the world needs more awesome super-groups, Christian Eric Beaulieu of Triclops!, Cedric Bixler Zavala of The Mars Volta, and special guests Mike Watt (Minutemen) and Rachel Fannan (Sleepy Sun) have coalesced as a project called Anywhere.
The group’s style is a blend of Eastern-influenced acoustic/psych punk, and you can hear the jangly, falsettoed, self-titled single below. Anywhere’s self-titled debut is out in the USA on July 24 via ATP Recordings.
Scott Morrow is ALARM’s music editor. Patrick Hajduch is a very important lawyer. Each week they debate the merits of a different album.
Grand Pianoramax: Smooth Danger (ObliqSound, 5/3/11)
Grand Pianoramax: “Roulette” (radio edit)
[audio:https://alarm-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Grand_Pianoramax_Roulette_radio_edit.mp3|titles=Grand Pianoramax: “Roulette” (radio edit)]Morrow: Conceived as something of a live piano-and-drums experiment, Grand Pianoramax is the principal project of pianist Leo Tardin. Once “a New Yorker from Switzerland” and now “a Berliner from America,” Tardin uses a small arsenal of instruments — grand piano, Fender Rhodes, K-Station, harmonium, Phillichorda — to achieve a diversity of sounds for his duo’s spacey, funky, classically infused music.
Smooth Danger is the duo’s third and newest album; released overseas last fall, it sees a US release in a few months. Though it doesn’t depart much from its predecessors, it cuts back a bit on guest vocalists, allowing the duo’s music to better stand on its own. And it deserves to, thanks to its combination of killer melodies, synthesized grooves, and classical piano that overlay tight, rapid rock and boom-bap beats from new drummer Dominik Burkhalter. (The former drummers, by the way, were no slouches: Deantoni Parks [The Mars Volta, Meshell Ndegeocello] and Adam Deitch [Talib Kweli, John Scofield].)
