Cosmic, Man

Take an hour to relax and enjoy Stuart Arentzen's "a suite of recent synth fiddlings" via SoundCloud.

Listen in the title link above, or spin it in the embedded player below. What to expect? Let's say you're having a bubble bath with Carl Sagan and then you realize it's not a bathtub but a wormhole that shoots you out of the Milky Way, through a black cloud of dark matter and eventually into a nebula where juggling is encouraged.

Wtht Vwls

Stones Throw always has something cooking. Even when the So-Cal hip-hop label's latest releases don't turn our crank, we pay attention because they do so much right.

Case in point: The preview track from newly signed beatmaker Mndsgn. "Txt" bumps a squishy, short reel of instrumental fun. The rest of the music arrives Aug 26, a nice way to extend summer as long as possible. We hope its all as good as this.

We'll be right back after these messages.

Stones Throw Records has always been about more than rap and hip-hop. Beats and rhymes are the taste-making label's bread and butter, but over the course of 17 years, label founder Chris Manak (aka Peanut Butter Wolf) has judiciously stretched beyond his backpacker music base, and not just via re-issued funk and soul sides.

To whit: Singer Anika just released her self-titled LP via Stones Throw. Anika sounds as if it could have been recorded by a German no-wave outfit in 1979. Chilly synths and thin drum machines sharpen the edges around Anika's disaffected voice, but instead of cutting, the music flickers and echoes like a weird daydream.

She proves what a great songsmith Ray Davies is [as if that needed proof beyond The Kinks -- ed.] by running his lonely waltz "I Go To Sleep" through the damp Berlin basement of her style, turning the lyrical ache into numb recitation while retaining the sweetness of the melody via snatches of barroom piano.



And because Stones Throw seems to be in the spirit of '79, after the Anika video plays you may also enjoy The Lions' "Roll It Round" (authentic Two Tone-ish reggae with a dub wash) and Chrome Canyons' "Generations" (analog synth/library soundtrack) -- which should start up in the video player automatically. If not, check them here and here, respectively.

The Typing Monkey may not be up on Homeboy Sandman or Jonwayne, but it's not like Stones Throw isn't giving us anything else to love.

Jazz Impressions of the Next World

We'd planned on posting something else today, honest. But then Dave Brubeck died, one day short of his 92nd birthday.

Good bye Mr. Brubeck and thank you for all the amazing music you made while you were here.


[courtesy of claudiofilippi1]

Norton!

Perhaps you missed the news about a "Frankenstorm" called Sandy that slammed into the Eastern Seaboard just before Halloween, leaving unavoidable destruction of the natural disaster sort.

As residents of New Jersey, New York, et al. clean up and assess damage, the staff at Norton Records found that their Brooklyn warehouse took quite a bit of water damage.

There are few things that make us sadder than books and records (CDs, LPs, 45s and such) being destroyed. And Norton does good work, providing new and re-issued music that concentrates on the r&b, soul, early rock, surf, garage, jump blues and general outsider tunes from the first half of the 20th century. They've also been re-issuing obscure pulp paperbacks too, which you can imagine got us all in a dither.

Norton's staff is still cleaning up the mess, but when they're done, help 'em out by buying something. The wheels of Capitalism are greased with your hard-earned dough, so you might as well grease the wheels you like, no?

Haunted Disco

Perhaps this stretches the thematic content idea a little thin, but music label Ghostly International gives out free songs often enough that it's like Halloween there all the time. Just drop by their Website and chances are they'll have some forward-thinking electronic musical delight to sweeten your ears and make your life better.

Though it's more than a month old, the nine-song Ghostly Essentials: Rarities Vol. 2 may have slipped past your senses. Rectify that as soon as you reach the end of this post, and in no time you'll be looking out the window at the changing leaves and graying skies while Locsil's cold, cosmic "Umbra" worms its ambient digital textures into your brain.

The Typing Monkey also digs the game of musical tag played between analog bleeps and something that sounds an awful lot like an acoustic guitar in "Between Rooms" by Myers Briggs. And the instrumental version of JDSY's "All Shapes" bounces with a flabby square-wave bass melody -- like The Great Pumpkin walking home all self-satisfied as the light of November 1st begins to bleach the sky.

Did we mention that it's free?

The "Monolith" Monster

CFCF (aka Mike Silver) plays the kind of mechanized electronic mood-pop you thought had gone away when your parents gave their Vangelis records to a charity shop. 

Where French duo Air and their many imitators gaze dew-eyed toward a floral, early 1970s space, CFCF looks straight down the barrel of the Harold Faltermeyer '80s. (Or if you really want to geek out, the Fabio Frizzi '80s.)

After winning a Crystal Castles remix contest, the Montreal native began loosing various remixes onto the Web, and posting his original compositions as well. An EP, Panesian Nights, came out in January '09 followed in October by a full-length, Continent.

While you wait for The Typing Monkey to review Continent, listen to/download "Monolith" and while doing so, pretend you're on a train to somewhere exciting.

Nice Up the Ghost Dance

Countdown to Halloween keeps delivering the goods, as we discover and explore other blogs created by people who love October 31 as much as The Typing Monkey.

One of these discoveries very much worth mentioning here is Distincly Jamaican Sounds, a music blog that posts some nifty singles and mixes of mostly reggae and dub. Since 2006, DJS blogger John (aka ReggaeXX) has been posting Halloween- and horror-themed mixes of Jamaican music every October.

Ska, rocksteady, reggae and dub frequently reference horror characters in their titles, if not in their lyrical content. And the party friendly sounds of vintage Jamaican music makes it an ideal soundtrack for a Halloween celebration, as we mentioned last year.

We're already downloading the generous amount of tunes posted for 2009 and will start digging our way through past years as well. (In 2007 he included a mix of garage rock, lounge and vintage r&b too, in case the sounds of Kingston aren't your thing. Isn't that nice?)

His Name Is Wigald

WIGALD BONING
Jet Set Jazz
(Compost)
Boning establishes a strong sense of mystery throughout -- as if his live horns, bass, piano, percussion and electronics are out to turn your weekend trip down the coast into a Hitchcock espionage thriller. Most of the compositions are mid-paced mood pieces, with wordless vocals and breathy reeds set against Latin bass and percussion.

A native of Wildeshausen, Germany, the multi-instrumentalist's career began with the jazz-punk outfit KIXX. But his second career as a comedic performer on a Saturday Night Live-type television show, plus his stated desire with Jet Set to recreate the music he heard on the radio as a child, gives a clear idea of what to expect. Italian cinema soundtracks of the 1960s and '70s, bossa nova, the more accessible West Coast jazz and early synthesizer exotica all pile into his memories.

A theatrical undercurrent of travel-weariness runs beneath most of the record. And given Boning's comedy background, it's easy to imagine his globe-trotting cast of characters putting limp, begloved wrists to their foreheads, overwhelmed by all the trans-continental fun their wealth and freedom allows.

But Boning's sense of humor and use of electronics sometimes works against him. The distorted speech in "Avalanche" feels weird, and the house track "Kobra Dance" crashes when the vocals come in, making it seem even more out of place among the other songs.

His best gag is the cover art, featuring Boning clad in top hat and tails flanked by two blonde stewardess types straight from the Matt Helm casting pool -- but all three are cardboard cut-outs.

Reference material: Anybody familiar with Piero Umiliani or Nicola Conte won't be disappointed with Wigald Boning.

Getting Instrumental, Part III

THIS IS THE END MY FRIEND

These final two reviews in this series essentially ignore the rules laid out by the title of the feature, but just a little bit.

WOOLFY VS. PROJECTIONS
The Astral Projections of Starlight
(Permanent Vacation)
In the 1990s this would have been alternately derided and embraced as boutique music -- that broadly defined electronic music that included other vaporous genres such as downtempo, chillout (shudder) and lounge. A programmed bass foundation, muted beats and swells of synth chords make good on the vaguely new-age/prog look of the cover art and album title. But the Fender Rhodes, occasional Euro-soul vocals and one-chord vamp guitar (heavy on the wah-wah pedal) gives Astral Projections just enough urban soul to make the rotation at a swanky clothing store. Contextually, pills and thrills from the night before hurls many club kids into the arms of this sort of come-down music. For the rest of us, the impression fades as quickly as the ink-stamp on our wrists. However, "Neeve" feels distinctly like a minimalist variation on The Rolling Stones' "Miss You." Weird, huh?

Reference materials: Both Woolfy and Projections serve in the Los Angeles soul-funk collective Orgone. So if the cosmic sounds of Astral Projections feels too scrubbed, Orgone is messier and more immediate.



CIRCLE RESEARCH
Who?
(Melting Pot Music)
Two Canadians take the Beat Konducta/Donuts style of public audition/audio sketchbook to a logical hip-hop-will-eat-itself conclusion. The snake has eaten its tail, and said tail is delicous. But where Madlib, J Dilla (and Oh No, and so many others) have dipped deep into their record collections for source material, Astro and Nik T, the duo comprising Circle Research, mined the major hits of hip-hop's Golden Age. So instead of sending the heads scrambling to find out which obscure jazz break these men looped, they're letting nearly everybody play "name the sampled sample." Clipping Biz Markie's shocked declaration from "Just a Friend" to make the track "Oh Snap!" barely scratches the surface of how Who? works. Yes, these 36 mini-tracks are pieced together from some of the most recognizable rap hits of the late '80s and early '90s, but they didn't just grab the hooks or make a stunted mixtape. Call it micro-remixing.


Reference material: Circle Research might be too heady for dance-ready fans of Girl Talk's extended mash-ups. Anyone who gobbles up Madlib's Beat Konducta volumes, or MF DOOM's Special Herbs series will find much to ingest here.

Getting Instrumental, Part II

SOMETHING FOR THE KIDS

DIM DIM
Whip
(Audio Dregs)

MINOTAUR SHOCK
Amateur Dramatics
(Audio Dregs)
Music aimed at children too often makes the mistake of aiming low. Underestimate a toddler's ability to grasp the esoteric pull of say, The Monkees over The Doodlebops, and you run the risk of raising a gibbering idiot.

While it's not clear who the intended audience for these two new-ish Audio Dregs recordings is, bet on the kindergarten set giving these discs two enthusiastic thumbs up. Also, please know that's meant as an endorsement from The Typing Monkey as well.

Dim Dim wins the duel with his ceaselessly bright, playful tunes. Jerry Dimmer, the Belgian musician behind the moniker, builds his songs around programmed drums and synthesized instruments -- including some fairly deep bass -- then lets weird vocal samples, melodic percussion and the odd guitar line strum run rings around the affair.

With any luck, some smart teacher or savvy babysitter is tiring out the kids by hosting playtime dance-a-thons with this stuff.

Minotaur Shock (aka David Edwards) stretches some of the cuts on Amateur Dramatics a tetch too long. Drawing from a broad emotional range and using the occasional vocalist
("This Plane is Going to Fall"), Edwards creates songs that alternate between nimble psychedelic pop and introspective digital oddities.

Various dance-music rhythms abound, but never long enough to really box Mr. Edwards' tunes into a specific genre. Shouldn't instrumental music work that way all the time? And what music isn't dance music? Wait. Why are we questioning our own critical position?

Enough. Here's one possible use for Amateur: Dig up a broadcast of Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker. Look for something aired on PBS for a reasonably faithful presentation. Start at Act II, or perhaps the end of Act I with "Waltz of the Snowflakes." Hit "mute" on the TV, crank up Amateur on the "random" setting, and enjoy a bit of cross-pollination.

Yes, Christmas was last year. We said this is one possible use. Make your own fun.


Reference materials: Dim Dim should be filed alongside Gershon Kingsley, Jean-Jacques Perrey and Looney Tunes. And if you really need to pinpoint Minotaur Shock's contemporaries, White Williams and Realistic come to mind.

Getting Instrumental, Part I

MUSICAL COCOONS

The TMI music library has a generous portion of instrumental selections, but very few could be classified as "ambient." As a style, ambient music can be dead boring (this means you, Brian Eno's Music for Airports) or so aimless and that it should really be tagged "pink noise for pretentious people."

Some fans of the form might balk at the suggestion of similarities between indie-approved ambient music and new age music, but the line is often as vaporous as the music itself. Besides, this kind of thing is all about mood and execution.

Here are two new ambient instrumental discs that made an impression, and yes, one even drifts into new-age territory.

NORTHERN VALENTINE
The Distance Brings Us Closer
(Silber)
The sprays of fuzz, feedback and (possibly imagined) overtones created by this husband and wife duo treads territory familiar to anyone reasonably familiar with shoegaze rock, especially the stuff that eschews drums completely. Distance marks the band's fourth LP, with a few EPs and live recordings in-between. Earlier efforts, per the band's MySpace page, have tribal elements. The lack of percussion here indicates a common evolutionary process for bands that produce this sort of trance-like material. "Born Yesterday" launches the listener gently down the stream-of-consciousness with a full 15 minutes of rippling static and drone. A short series of sci-fi pulses breaks up "Dimanche" just after the six-minute mark -- but don't let that jar you. This is ideal listening for a winter commute when it's not rainy or dark enough for something more immediate.

Reference material: If Seefeel's colder, cosmic crop-dusting experiments appeal to you, Northern Valentine will satisfy. And you should probably check out Louis and Bebe Barron's way-ahead-its-time soundtrack to Forbidden Planet.

UNLEARN
Places
(Noise Order)
This Seattle trio provides a perfectly good excuse for laying on the couch, after dark, staring at the mood lighting and waiting for a nice cozy feeling to kick in. "Whiteout" sounds like a medieval madrigal for the well-tempered synthesizer, and as such stands out from the rest of this debut LP. Unlearn uses keyboards, drums and guitar to weave gauzy stretches of chords that sometimes coalesce into twinkling melodies. Yes, there's some soundtrack sounding moments, but one of these guys might own Piana's Snow Bird -- and that helps keep it interesting.

Reference material: Unlearn's press materials mention the "conversation that Sigur Ros brought to the mainstream" but that band's from Iceland and The Typing Monkey didn't understand a word they said. Check out Piana, as we mentioned earlier.


Epilogue: If the suggestion that there's a permeable membrane between ambient music and the crystal healing power of new-age music has you composing an angry letter to The Typing Monkey, please listen to The Best of Hearts of Space: First Flight before you do. Or go to the Hearts of Space Website and read both "A Brief Profile of Space and Ambient Music" and "The N Word" from the "The Music" section of their site.