Bibio, aka Stephen Wilkinson, has dropped his first album, Ambivalence Avenue, for the much venerated Warp records, following his time spent on Mush. It is a hazy lo-fi summer mix tape of a record, picking up on the melody of sixties and seventies pop, with an eclectic and updated glitch edge. His sound is probably most reminiscent of Boards of Canada (who apparently brought him to wider attention) and Koushik, who’s releases on the Stones Throw label are downbeat 60s pysche pop, soul and hip hop offerings with soft layered vocals drifting over, that occupy much the same space . Perhaps Ambivalence Avenue’s most surprising attribute though is this marrying the sound of the releases that built Warp records throughout the 90s and early 2000s, with undeniably appealing West Coast American pop.

Despite the similarities, Ambivalence Avenue has a wider, more varied base from which it draws inspiration than any of Koushik’s records to date. Bibio has dramatically expanded his sound, adding song structure, moving far beyond the ambition of the solid but somewhat limited Compost. Ambivalence Avenue effortlessly breezes through genres, maintaining coherence and wearing its influences on its sleeve; from the warped Sly Stone wah wah guitar funk of ‘Jealous of Roses’, with distant echoing vocals mixed down in the track, to the Boards of Canada homage ‘Sugarette’, which adds squelches of bass, cut up vocoder snippets and spectrum-esque bleeps and FX to the formula, while keeping the same dreamy atmospheric aesthetic.

Bibio doesn’t have the stylistic limitations of some of the Warp stalwarts most strongly associated with label, stretching his range far beyond the glitch electronic template. ‘Lovers Carving’ has a sunny and simultaneously melancolie guitar line leading into a lilting, uplifting, West Coast pop inflenced, hand clap driven number, with a hint of (now increasingly prominent) African melody. Maybe, dare I say it, even a touch of Paul Simon drifts into the mix. There is an indie folk presence, acoustic tracks where dreamy vocals and harmonies weave in and out, distorted harpsicord, bouncing flute, and wonky guitar loops infiltrate, while ‘The Palm of Your Wave’ sounds like a mellow Neil Young offering circa the After the Gold Rush era.The problem is that I can’t shake the feeling I’ve heard it all before, just not on the same album. It could be recreated through a compilation of the likes of Koushik, Manitoba (Caribou), Jackson and his Computer Band, Sly Stone, Boards of Canada, Four Tet, Neil Young, Flying Lotus and various Warp contributors. The transitions might not be as seamless, but the overall outcome would be the same. It could be said that this is the albums strength, its readymade feel, already in tune with what you want to hear next, but what Bibio lacks is a distinctive or definable sound to call his own; too often he is just content to emulate his inspirations, instead of taking a more progressive or avant-garde approach.

This is perhaps best personified on the cut up soul of ‘Fire Ant’, that starts out like a twisted J-Dilla or DJ Premier beat, before progressing with chopped vocals, synths and a fractured rhythm, but instead of forging into entirely new territory, ends up sounding like fellow Warp alumni Jackson, and the (so labelled) ‘intelligent dance music’ he served up on on tracks such as ‘Hard Tits’ or ‘Utopia’ on Smash in 2005 . The album closer ‘Dwrcan’ similarly suffers, which despite its hypnotising beat and ethereal sounds, feels like the it could be a contribution from of any number of Warp artists; the title even sounds like an Aphex Twin tribute. Too frequently the album comes across as offcuts of Campfire Headphase, Trans-Canada Highway, Out My Window, or Up in Flames. Indeed it could be argued that Boards of Canada, the much underrated Jackson et al accomplish some of these sounds with more panache and a more audacious approach.

The record is undeniably broad and still succinct, smoothly moving from one style to another, presenting a selection of well crafted and enjoyable songs, like a pre-made soundtrack to a dazed August road trip in some indefinable time period, or the score to your scattershot memories from summers past. It is without doubt a gratifying experience, not least because Bibio has good taste, and an album that will appeal to fans of all the artists mentioned above, but is that in itself really enough? What value is emulation, no matter how accomplished, without progression?

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Önce The Passing adında yumuşak bir karşılama ile belirdiler önümde ki tam bu sırada Randy arkada kıs kıs gülüyordu sanırım zira sonra öyle bir öfke ile belirdi ki şaştım kaldım. Şaştım kaldım diyorum ama bildiğimiz ele avuca gelir Lamb of God şiddeti olarak algılayın siz onu.

Yavaş yavaş aklımda kalanlara geçersek: Grace tezat yapısına hayran bıraktı, Broken Hands kalbimi aldı kaçtı zaten. Set to Fail keza çok gaz olmuş, çok sevdim. In Your Words sahneyi yıkabilir, ihtiyatla yaklaşmayı gerektirecek bir yapıda.

Kısaca hemen toparlamam gerekirse; akustik kısımlara bayıldım, Randy gözüme daha bir korkunç gözükmeye başladı, Chris zaten yine deli manyak işlere imza atıyor çaktırmadan, dinlerken ayaklarımı zor zaptediyordum otobüste, riffler çok gaz, sololar tadında, pek leziz.

Bir önceki ile karşılaştırma babında olaya bakarsak: Sacrament üstüne çok iyi geldi doğrusu. Zaten Sacrament filan hikaye geliyor bu albümden sonra. Ashes of the Wake ile yarışa soktuğum filan yok ama çok hayvan albüm olmuş bu. 2009′a sert bir giriş!

buradan

Done with its trip to the movies, New Jersey’s Yo La Tengo is gearing up for its next creative endeavor, the release of a brand new studio album. And a popular one at that.

No, the trio of Georgia Hubley, Ira Kaplan and James McNew haven’t gone all Nickelback on us. For the sake of this particular release, they’ve simply named their 12th (or 14th depending on how you count) Popular Songs. But that doesn’t necessarily mean to expect an album that will please Top 40 kids, or even longtime Yo La Tengo fans. You see, the content of this brand new offering, which is officially scheduled for release on September 8th via Matador Records, is billed as the band’s “bravest musical statement to date”. Yes, folks, we’re dealing with some irony!

Recorded in Hoboken and Nashville in early 2009 with longtime collaborator Roger Moutenot, Popular Songs is centered around a stylistic range billed as “startling,” with some parts sounding like the Yo La Tengo we’ve come to know and love and others not. The end result? “An epic work that’s cooly confident as it is wildly adventurous,” says Matador. But don’t take their word for it. Check out the album’s first mp3, “Periodically Double Or Triple” below for an early taste.

Additional details including a tracklist, information pertaining to a new Buy Early Get Now campaign for the album, and fall tour dates will be unveiled in the coming days - perhaps as soon as tomorrow.

In a world where even the generally mediocre likes of Snow Patrol can have honest to goodness mainstream pop success, it seems peculiar that Elbow have never broken through beyond a devoted cult following. (Admittedly, the fact that their new labels, Polygram’s alt rock imprint Fiction Records in the U.K. and Geffen in the U.S., are their fourth and fifth, respectively, after stints on Island, EMI, and V2, may have a lot to do with their lack of mainstream attention.) Exploring the fruitful middle ground between early Radiohead’s mopey art rock and Coldplay’s radio-friendly dumbing down of the same, Elbow makes records built on a balance of things not often found together anymore: strange musical textures alongside immediately accessible pop song choruses, or unexpected left turns in song structure paired with frontman Guy Garvey’s warm, piercing vocals. It’s no surprise that Elbow are regularly compared to old-school prog rockers like Pink Floyd and Electric Light Orchestra: they’re proof that records can be cool and commercial at the same time, an idea that’s not particularly hip in this day and age. Yet a song like “Grounds for Divorce,” which puts a sharp, wryly funny Garvey lyric against a clanging, Tom Waits-like arrangement and throws on one of the album’s catchiest tunes for good measure, or “Some Riot,” which filters a yearning, lovely melody for guitar and piano through so many layers of effects and processing that it can be hard to tell what the original instruments sounded like, isn’t afraid to display its accessibility even on its most experimental numbers. At the album’s best, including the spacious, atmospheric balladry of the opening “Starlings” (imagine if Sigur Rôs} could write a pop song as emotionally direct as {Keane’s “Everybody’s Changing”) and the potential radio breakthroughs of the soaring, semi-orchestral epic “One Day Like This” (complete with choral climax!) and the wistful “Weather to Fly,” The Seldom Seen Kid is Elbow’s most self-assured and enjoyable album so far. [The U.K. version added "We're Away" as a bonus track.]

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Review

It's been a while since something, musically speaking, caught me by surprise in such ways that I felt compelled to announce it in such ways. So here I go, let me try to translate in a few paragraphs the magnificence of this work.

The band's style is defined as "Avant-garde metal" and really, there's no other way to put it. Extreme metal, carefully arranged melodies, electronic/industrial touches, folk-ish passages, all kinds of vocals, all of them of great performance quality, this album has it all, mixed and diluted in ethereal ways to create a certainly corporeal piece of music that's ready to rock the socks off of anyone who's looking to be blown away.

Let's vivisect this work and separate it's parts in a detailed manner.

When you put the album in whatever means you have to reproduce it, you'll find yourself in the face of an ambient intro, which will expand and expand until it explodes into metal, right in your face. The ambiance will remain and take an important place in the whole album albeit interrupted sporadically. Keyboards are half of what makes this such an unique piece, layers and layers of different melodies and tones, some just meant to be a background sound to give certain songs a darker or more mysterious feeling, extraterrestrial at times, other being crucial part of central melodies, the synthetic sounds give this album a futuristic, if not technological feeling once in a while, the rest of the time sounding even shy and melancholic.

The guitars are heavily distorted, something that rarely goes along with such predominant keyboard work (see: most myspace black ambient bands), but this concert of heavy chainsaws blends in perfectly in the mix, being loud enough but not quite occupying the spotlight, even during the most extreme parts. As of the melodies, we've got practically anything, from doom-ish chugs and extended riffs to fast and furious black metal-ish powerchords and tremolos (from time to time this reminds me of Negura Bunget, if that's any encouragement for you). And spreade all across the album you will find clean passages filled of an almost nostalgic nature, highly technical and experimental melodies interlaced in defying ways, folky, even dancey moments and enough dissonance to make any Blut Aus Nord fan become interested.

It is worth mentioning that folk, or rather, folk-like melodies are clearly the inspiration for some of the main melodies in songs like Köd Utánam and Ûrhajók Makón, which I feel gives the whole album a more deep meaning and artistic target, even though the lyrical themes already seem to be quite profound, from what I gather, since they, supposedly, focus in themes like "time and space". Go figure.

Vocals. Now, this element is as special as it gets. First off all songs are sung in their native Hungarian, which, or so I feel, is one of the most intriguing European languages. That makes it a pleasure for me to hear clean male and very beautiful female vocals, all of them very well arranged, very elegant and pleasant. The growling is not particularly unique but does set a great mood and goes along with the music nicely. The pitch reminds me of Garm in Nattens Madrigal, but a bit less guttural.

Drum and bass are, and I don't think many people will be surprised, the least outstanding elements of this piece, nonetheless, they do find their place to shine, and oh man do they shine. Drums especially. While programmed, you can tell the programmer has a lot of talent and he's not just an empty-headed bastbeat-machine like most black metal these days (not to say this is black metal, most of the extreme parts do resemble it a lot). There's a passage in the first song, some time after 7:15, in which the drums take a central part, backed up by keyboards and eerie sounds, it maintains a rather jazzy rhythm for some minute and a half, and that's just some part in the first (and second longest) song in the album. Which, by the way, is an immediate highlight.

Apart from these elements, there's the use of violins and similar instruments in certain key parts, these parts tend to aim for a folkish spirit and melodies. You could also listen to other stuff like flutes and instruments I cannot name. But then again some of those might very well be the result of the clever use of keyboards. The use of samples from dialogues or origin unknown is also a practice that I appreciate when not overdone, and that's what I also found in this album. Just a little mention.

How can I close this review? This album is so vast it's hard to enclose it in a few paragraphs. If you like experimental, avant-garde, unique, fresh and eclectic (that is the key word here, perhaps) metal (or music in general), then you should really consider giving this album a listen or two. But beware, this is one of those albums that will either be idolized or ignored, treated as the new edge of experimental music or just a bunch of guys playing random shit. This is an album that demands more than just one or two spins in order to make his point valid. But really, go listen to this already.

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