Friday, November 25, 2016

RedBelt - Beautiful Surround


RedBelt - Beautiful Surround 


RedBelt sure loves uptempo punky rockers. Their first release, Beautiful Surround, is packed with an assortment of souped up ragers that come flying out of the gate and hit listeners like a jackhammer. They have a strong melodic streak that keeps the song popping and jumping from the first note on and those melodic strengths are a compelling juxtaposition with the fiery attitude that they manifest. Half, at least, of the songs on their debut utilize this approach, but there’s nothing wrong with that. The band’s debut is likely a little too long for even the relatively short length of the album’s individual tracks, but they keep the energy level dialed up throughout and longtime fans of rock and punk alike will find much to like about their sound. This four piece from Milwaukee, Wisconsin brandishes considerable musical firepower from the first song on and their signature mix of three part harmonies and melody augmenting the songs clearly reveals them to be a band who hopes to be around for years to come. 

“American Mercy” is the album’s first high point. This is an impressive confluence of punk, melodic rock, and straight up classic rock. Lead guitarist Mike Mann proves time and again on Beautiful Surround that he could lift any rock band up with the fury and skill he has as a player. He has an excellent partner on the instrument with second guitarist and lead singer Kevin Brown. Brown’s voice is more than adequate to handle these songs single-handedly, but the addition of two other backing singers, Mann and bassist Ricky Ganiere, only further strengthens Beautiful Surround. “Shoot It All the Time” brings slide guitar and acoustic into the mix. These additions alone help the song stand out from the remaining dozen, but Brown’s vocal and the thunderous rhythm section performance give it even more muscular grit.  

“Sweet Release” is one of the hard-hitting punk rock songs on the album and has a skeletal power that explodes at crucial points and peaks nicely at various points during the song’s length. The intensity dies down a little for the song “Cold”. It’s the most obviously melodic effort on Beautiful Surround, particularly its vocal melody, but it doesn’t give up any of its gravitas to achieve that effect.  “30 Seconds”, unquestionably, is the most raucous reference to alternative and punk rock on the album. It clocks in at just under three minutes and there’s no wasted motion at all in the band’s efforts to hit their audience right between the eyes. “Throw Away” is their most fleshed out, fully developed effort in this area and nicely incorporates alt-rock, classic, and punk rock posturing in a single song better than any track before or after. The final track “Hard Light” doesn’t lean as heavily on Mann and Brown’s axe work and, instead, the rhythm section ends Beautiful Surround with a different sort of intensity than what the band has offered us on the preceding tracks. The album could be a 2-3 songs shorter for an even greater impact, but RedBelt are going to linger in memories regardless if they overreach a little here.  

8 out of 10 stars 


Robert Fulford

Jemima James - When You Get Old


Jemima James - When You Get Old 


Jemima James’ album from Team Love Records, When You Get Old, has been released with a companion piece, her thirty seven year old intended debut At Longview Farm. It’s instructive to compare the two albums. Both albums have a lot of musical credibility they derive from their command of traditional American music, but they put that knowledge to work in distinctly different ways. At Longview Farm is a product of its era more so than When You Get Old – besides the fact that there’s a bevy of instrumentation employed on the first album that is missing from her follow-up, the production wholeheartedly encourages listeners to hear both works as emerging from completely different contexts. At Longview Farm’s ten tracks are musically substantive, but they are also clearly geared for radio play. The thirteen songs on When You Get Old, however, have a sound and approach that signals they were truly written and recorded for no one else by Jemima James. She presents them in such a way, however, that those who share her tastes will find it well night impossible to not admire them as well.

She opens When You Get Old with its title song. While there’s a wealth of autobiographical musings in this song, there’s an abundance of humor as well. It isn’t jokey or punch-line oriented; instead, James conveys the darker humor of the piece through her vocal delivery and phrasing. The music has a deceptively light-hearted bounce as well that belies the song’s more serious subtext. She uses organ on “Magician” to further flesh out the color in its quasi-waltz time arrangement, but it is her voice and lyrical content working with the arrangement that really makes this song a success. The sleepy slide guitar stretching out over the even-tempered shuffle fueling “If I Could Only Fly” underplays the yearning at the heart of this song, but James really does well with weaving seemingly contrasting elements in a song into something lucid and credible.  

The tempo picks up some on “If It’s the End” and some of the darker humor present in songs like the title cut returns here. James gives this song a much straighter delivery than the earlier track and the music certainly doesn’t attempt approximating or exceeding the jauntiness of the first song, but the sighing with a smile resignation in the lyrics is difficult to ignore. Harmony vocals make a significant contribution to When You Get Old and few songs benefit more from their use than “Bats in the Belfry”. The same lazy bluesy feel surrounding the earlier “If I Could Only Fly” is strengthened further on the song “One and Only” along with some tasteful brush drumming that gives the track a consistent, but never overpowering, pulse. James ends When You Get Old with “Nothing New” which somehow manages to be a little moodier than the earlier songs while still affirming life before she exits. It is, for all intents and purposes, a solo performance sans any sort of double-tracked or harmony vocals and, like the rest of this album, James carries it off with subtlety and panache.  

9 out of 10 stars 


Shannon Cowden 

Martin X. Petz - Broken Man


Martin X. Petz - Broken Man 


The best songwriters resist pigeonholing. It might be easy for the uninformed to give Martin X. Petz’s latest full length album Broken Man a single listen and slap an ill-fitting label on it as faith-based or intended for adult oriented radio play. The source and appeal of this nine song work, however, is much broader. These are songs that attempt to dramatize Petz’s own interior struggles, but they just as often look outside the confines of self and connect wonderfully with facets of our lives that, undoubtedly, resonate with a wide swath of potential listeners. His lyrical content avoids inaccessible or high-flown moments of pseudo poetry, but make no mistake that Petz isn’t a superior writer when compared to many of his contemporaries in the field. There’s great intelligence and literacy driving these songs. He emerges from this album not just as a gifted songwriter and musician, but as a storyteller with a voice that’s an ideal vehicle for communicating with his audience. 

The title song incorporates a full band, but their touch is light. Petz keeps this track clipped and doesn’t waste a word or note, but the atmosphere of the song keeps the energy level at an engaging medium. It’s a credit to his songwriting skill that Petz never lets things get too overwrought, but his plain-spoken depiction of despair will be an affecting listening experience for many. “Noble Blues” takes on some of the full band trappings heard on the first song but tempers them somewhat. The result is a much more intimate approach for the song’s first quarter before Petz opts for ramping up the musical stakes during the remaining duration. The album’s third track “Fall” is constructed around a tasteful half shuffle tempo accentuated by understated drums. His vocal shows all of the care and sensitivity for phrasing apparent on the album’s first two songs and there’s some tasty lead guitar here as well. 

A classic count-in opens “Heart & Home” which, as the title implies, celebrates the connections that sustain our lives. The arrangement is full of the sound musical decisions and compelling playing that characterizes the album as a whole, but it does more than that. The song has a great uplifting swing that picks listeners up and keeps them engaged throughout the song. “Count” reaffirms the virtues that guides much of the album’s songwriting with a clean, uncluttered track primarily centered around Petz’s evocatively recorded vocals, his guitar, and light percussion. “They Say (You’ll Know)” has much of the same breezy confidence heard on the album’s best songs and a light shuffle pace that keeps things moving without ever forcing them along. Broken Man’s final song, “Chained”, has much of the same musical focus characterizing earlier tracks like “Count” and relies on intimacy to make its case to the listener.  

There’s deceptive simplicity here, but Petz is a songwriter who realizes the virtue of a song having no more than it needs to get its message/point across to the listener. The nine songs on Broken Man do not pretend to remake the wheel artistically – instead, Petz is a fine product of the singer/songwriter school of popular music and excels at giving his audience entertaining musical material along with substantive words that will reach and touch many hearts.  

9 out of 10 stars 


Lydia Hillenburg

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Django Mack - ‘Round Christmas


Django Mack - ‘Round Christmas 


Music devotees are familiar with the customary glut of Christmas music releases that has long been a staple of the business. It’s usually a safe bet. The better performers choose top notch material and put it over with all of the skill and technique that’s helped them to build successful careers. No one questions the sincerity of such efforts. It’s entertainment and serves a purpose. Sometimes, however, an artist doesn’t restrict themselves to sentimental and hopeful invocation of the season. Django Mack’s latest release, a single entitled “’Round Christmas” is a heavy duty lyrical drama with an elegant, slightly ghostly performance from sharp collaborators who play to Mack’s voice well while never neglecting the arrangement. It’s accompanied by a bonus track called “Big Black Dog” that highlights Mack’s talent for shifting gears.  

The single has persistent and precise drumming without ever cluttering things up with too much percussion. It’s illustrative of one of the central qualities present in Mack’s music. His memorable vocals never attempt biting off anymore than they can chew and the musical backing never attempts to overshadow his role in the performance. “’Round Christmas” hits listeners with the gloom more or less from the first line on and Mack doesn’t bother with allowing the audience any sort of release. The release comes in the form of often beautiful guitar work accompanying his vocal and the delicacy of their performance is another of the track’s highlights. The effects surrounding the lead guitar give it an assertive side when required and the song peaks at just the right times.  

His lyrics for the track will definitely capture the attention of first time listeners who appreciate that sort of thing. Some of the lines and rhymes alike are a sort of inevitability that marks the best songwriting and never seem forced. Like his vocals and the arrangement, Mack doesn’t waste a single word in the songwriting process and everything sounds tuned for maximum effect. 

The second song “Big Black Dog” is a funny romp, but it has musical value. Mack is in high-spirited form from the first line on and his vocal locks in really tight with the vibrant, energetic piano that’s pushing the track forward. Mack has some great backing singers working with him on this song too, but he uses them lightly and thus makes the presence all the more memorable. It’s a great song because it shifts the mood of the release so well, but more so because it shows off Mack’s ability for excelling with very different styles within the same wheelhouse.

This isn’t just some novelty tune for the holidays that you quit playing by December 27th. “’Round Christmas” traffics in much more serious emotion than those sort of songs and has the sort of sharp-eared music that suggests he wants to write and record music that invites multiple listens and more. “Big Black Dog” is every bit as entertaining, albeit in a different mode, and makes a great match for the single.  


Aaron Ellis

Kelly McGrath - You and Me Today


Kelly McGrath - You and Me Today 


Despite its painful subject matter, Kelly McGrath has returned with a new single that rates among the most beautifully penned numbers of the year. This harbinger from her soon to be released fourth album shows that her musical evolution is ongoing and that she continues improving with each successive release. This single is perhaps the best job of song construction she’s managed yet – “You and Me Today” has deliberate pacing and assorted passages that hang together nicely with the pleasant sense of inevitability. Experienced listeners will often recognize where McGrath is going musically but she gets there so artistically that it’s impossible to not enjoy the journey. She is nominally an Americana artist, particularly since she’s based out of an admittedly more cosmopolitan than ever before Nashville, but the reality is that McGrath is much more of a comfortable fit in the singer/songwriter school of performers with irrepressible commercial appeal.  

This is much more than some weepy overwrought tribute to her dead father. McGrath fashions some beautiful melodies to help depict for listeners her journey in grappling with the enormity of her loss and reflecting on the significance of the relationship with the man. Her voice reflects the miles racked up in dealing with these truths – it emotes beautifully, aching one moment, scaling great heights in the next. She plays her cards right with the phrasing as well and never renders a single line in the song in some cheesy, off-putting way. Her voice likewise shows how much she listens to the band’s performance. Her singing dovetails neatly into every musical movement and truly embodies what it means for a human voice to serve as one more instrument in a musical performance. 

Her lyrics could do for all of the Hollywood moments, the common images we would associate with this topic, but instead she takes on a more introspective tint while still peppering the track with a number of relevant details that help create a narrative. The song has a great running time to pull this off and never wastes the audience’s time at all waiting for payoffs that never arrive or fail to satisfy. The chorus is the song’s big top moment and it doesn’t disappoint, but even then, McGrath is clearly determined to do this song the right way and resists any urge for vocal showboating.  

Certain musical performances stand out. The guitar work on “You and Me Today” essentially acts as a second voice answering McGrath in an elegant quasi-call and response fashion. It’s the central way “You and Me Today” delivers its melody and, in the end, melody is the key to making this subject easier to handle. McGrath never cheats the listener though. This is a challenging track emotionally and shows Kelly McGrath has developed into a fully-realized artist unafraid to bare her pain in her art. 

Aaron Ellis

Friday, November 18, 2016

Jemima James - At Longview Farm


Jemima James - At Longview Farm 


The album At Longview Farm was initially recorded by Jemima James in 1979, but was shelved and never released until now. Team Love Records is the label for James’ son Willy Mason and, following the release of his own debut, Mason began pushing label co-owners Conor Oberst and Nate Krenkel to investigate the possibility of releasing his mother’s long neglected collection. The ten songs on At Longview Farm have a wide ranging command of American popular music styles without ever overexerting in an effort to impress its audience. This isn’t a confessional album in the mold of Joni Mitchell’s earlier work, but instead shows great imagination in the songwriting that’s much more the wont of a storyteller than heartbroken poet. James gathered some great musicians to accompany her on this album and there are a number of tracks that are clearly intended to push outside the relatively narrow confines of the folk rock genre towards something much more commercial that, nevertheless, doesn’t pander to her desired audience. 

Those more commercial efforts, like the opener “Sensible Shoes”, “Easy Come Easy Go”, and “One More Rodeo” more often than not embrace uptempo energy to help put over their pop-oriented sensibilities. They never entirely abandon the folk music influence woven through her songs and while they make their concessions to the marketplace, in the form of catchy choruses for example, they retain great substantive value both lyrically and musically. Melody is one of the hallmarks of the collection and there isn’t a single track that doesn’t benefit from James’ skills in this area, but the musicians playing with her on this album are equally responsible for realizing its musical potential. Manifesting the necessary restraint to play simply and coherently isn’t always easy for well-versed and proud musicians, but the best technicians in the genre are those who serve the song first and eschew any ego trips. The stamp of this can be discerned on every track.  

There’s a solid storytelling aspect that defines many of the songs. “Havana Cigar”, “Jackson County”, “Billy Baloo”, and the final song “Water at the Station” are all full of simple, conversational elegance and flashes of real poetry thanks to her frequently deft use of imagery to make a point. They likewise gain much from her phrasing – there’s never a single passage on the album as a whole where James fails to sound completely invested in the moment. Her ability to make full use of her talents as an interpreter of Americana musical traditions helps strengthen the album as well. Tracks like the aforementioned closer, “Book Me Back in Your Dreams”, and “Precious Love” are all solidly rootsy affairs that always sound credible rather than studied recreations of old-timey tunes.  

Sometimes better late than never really has meaning. Fans of folk rock and singer/songwriter works will keep coming back to this over and over and finding new riches in the impressive array of songs James brought to this release. At Longview Farm references the long tradition of American popular music without ever being beholden to it and makes a personal statement that’s revealing and highly entertaining.  

9 out of 10 stars.


Charles Hatton

Wednesday, November 16, 2016

Leo Harmonay - The Blink of an Eye


Leo Harmonay - The Blink of an Eye   


The Blink of an Eye is one of 2016’s best albums in the folk/blues vein. Much of it is powered by acoustic instruments, but that shouldn’t confuse listeners that the collection is some elevator music approximation or soft-pedaled imitation. Each of its ten songs are marked by unquestionable authenticity and are never content simply aping the genre basics. Harmonay, instead, consistently attempts expanding the vocabulary of the form with unexpected instrumental moments and novel turns on tradition that never sounds out of place in this context. He has an unique vision for traditional music that reflects his personality and experiences in a way that few performers of this style manage in the modern era. There’s no self-indulgence here either and Harmonay’s voice is quite up to the task of retaining the listener’s attention over the course of The Blink of an Eye’s ten songs.  
“Up to You” starts The Blink of an Eye off with a blues song. It isn’t some clumsy or hamfisted attempt to summon the form’s expected turns but, instead, takes on the style with surprising ease. The personal desperation in the lyrical content never goes in for melodrama either and, instead, speaks with the same plain-spoken physicality that the drumming embodies in its bare bones approach. “River Dancer” has much more sophistication than the first song, but it isn’t radically different in tone and temperament from the other tracks. The same attention to detail that fuels the lyrics of songs like the opener is just as present in these more poetic-minded outings and the same unerring instinct for artistic taste stays just as steady here as elsewhere. The musicianship is quite high here, but naturally keeps its focus on remaining accessible to listeners. Backing vocals have a significantly positive effect on “Washing Myself Clean”, but it isn’t because Harmonay needs the singing help. Instead, the chorus of supporting voices gives the song a light suggestion of gospel that many will enjoy. He reins in his adventurous edge on the song “Wounds of Love” and gives listeners one of The Blink of an Eye’s most accomplished folk tunes. He backs it up with a sparkling vocal full of emotion and smarts.  
“Gone Are the Days” has a rough-hewn sound quite unlike many of the others songs and Harmonay’s vocals are more than up to the task of match its forcefulness. “Dirty River Town” is, like “Wounds of Love”, a pure and unadulterated folk song that doesn’t run very long but has an impressively complete feel and seems to encompass an entire world in less than three minutes. The album’s conclusion, “The Joy in Our Sadness”, is the most musically ambitious piece on this release and has a great lyric that speaks to the heart with clarity and just the right touch of poetic grace. It ends The Blink of an Eye on an elegiac note, but listeners won’t walk away disheartened. Despite its often rueful or sad demeanor, these are ultimately life affirming songs that Harmonay invests with gentleness, passion, and patient artistry.  
9 out of 10 stars


Aaron Ellis

Tuesday, November 15, 2016

Jamie Kent - All-American Mutt


Jamie Kent - All-American Mutt 


Making over two hundred live appearances a year, placing high on the bill of major music festivals, and touring with iconic musical units has prompted a blossoming in Jamie Kent’s talent that was always coming. It was just a matter of time. His promise has been evident since his 2009 recording debut and the ever increasing profile he’s enjoyed since then is a testament to talents that set him far apart from today’s average Nashville songwriter. His skills for exploring a variety of different musical styles in a convincing fashion isn’t common magic and his comfort singing in these different modes has no discernible differences. The ten songs are well balanced in their stylistic spectrum and never favor one approach over another. This gives the release an ultimately cohesive effect that few albums ever really achieve and the masterful track listing plays a significant part in that.  

The title song starts off the album with confidence and music that’s never ornamental. There’s flair in the bass line that listeners would have never associated with a Nashville based musical outfit even twenty years ago. The rock and country influences informing this performance match quite well and the populist feelings of Kent’s lyric get a fantastic vocal from him. There’s a bit of Jimmy Buffett creeping in on the good time vibes of “Last Call”, but Kent plays this song a little straighter and it creates a nice contrast. The layered musical arrangement powering “Home Again” has simplicity working for it as well, but Kent’s songwriting once again accomplishes surprising result through stark contrasts. The soft ache of the playing here dovetails nicely into Kent’s muted and sorrowful vocal. The inventively played and arranged “Be Your Man” ranks as one of the most jovial moments on the album and the upswing of Kent’s vocals reflect the same yearning.  

“Diamond” is the album’s breeziest number by far, but it never feels rushed. This is an outright love song filled with that first flush of commitment you feel when it feels like you’ve met the partner of your dreams. There are hints of other things going on lyrically here, but the dominant mood is quite upbeat. All-American Mutt’s greatest ballad comes with “Red Rover” and, in part, the reason for the song’s stature is thanks to Kent dueling with second vocalist Michaela Anne in a slowly developing and deeply emotional duet. The song’s musical arrangement has an almost painterly quality – the sparse elements gain added emphasis over time and, eventually, the incandescent individual parts of the song result in a much greater whole. The final blast of fun for listeners comes with the track “Sheila” thanks to guest Huey Lewis’ rollicking harmonica and the inspiration in Kent’s vocal. It’s his most playful performance by far. All-American Mutt is a powerful album from beginning to end and there are no real lulls in the journey. This is a well-presented musical affair that doesn’t cheat the listener and engages them on a physical and mental level alike.  

9 out of 10 stars 


Montey Zike

Monday, November 14, 2016

Alessandro Coli - I Betcha'


Alessandro Coli - I Betcha' 


Alessandro Coli’s journey to musical stardom began with his discovery of Queen’s music at the age of ten and reached its first peak with his appearance on the Italian television talent show Io Canto at the age of fifteen. He released his first Italian language single in 2011, “Sento Che”, rocketed to the top of the Italian radio charts in only ten days and lingered in the Top 30 for over a month. Sony Music subsequently released his first digital EP “Senza Paura”. His first American release in early 2016 “Flames” showed that his music has appeal that spreads far beyond the European continent with its strong showing in the Billboard Dance Club charts and the new release “I Betcha” shows all the elements of important growth that expanding his career requires and is a top shelf dance pop track that engages the mind as well as the body.  

The core of the song is Coli’s vocal. It takes a good and causally phrased lyric and vividly dramatizes it without ever milking the material for melodrama. Rueful breakup songs are quite common and, unfortunately, the approaches taken to these songs by a vast majority of their authors varies little, but Coli is extremely personal and knows how to put that across to listeners in an uncluttered and relatable way. The music strengthens everything further. The typical formula for this form is that the music takes precedence over the lyrics, but Coli overturns the formula by putting these qualities on equal footing and tailoring each to complement the other. The mounting air of the song is expertly handled, never rushing its climatic final effect, and Coli shows the same patience by carefully and rhythmically following it closely. 

Chris Rodriguez produced Coli’s first English language single and this second stab into America features the same solid musical judgment about presentation. It’s another complementary element in the musical mix that helps push this much further over the top than “Flames”. There’s a sense of momentum that’s undeniable in the song and mimics the same gathering steam that is pushing Coli harder and harder into the future. The song’s length is absolutely perfect and shows the kind of focus that the genre demands to hold the attention spans of dancers. Everything else after that is spectacularly tasty gravy. 

Passion always spurs the greatest artists, regardless of medium. Musical artists are often some of the most passionate in the arts and often, in our modern age, those artists are inspired by older musicians at a very young age. The turning point of Alessandro Coli’s nineteen years came with discovering his father’s Queen collection when he was only ten years old. Freddie Mercury’s iconic artistry fired the spirit to create and share his own voice with the world and that inspiration continues to push him into the future with strength and artistry.   


Charles Hatton

Phantom Phunk - Arboles Ossific


Phantom Phunk - Arboles Ossific
 

Some bands can and want to do it all. Phantom Phunk from the South Florida doesn’t restrict themselves in anyway and anything that works to improve a song falls within their wheelhouse. The artistic bravery pushing this sort of confidence to the fore can be heard across the board in the band’s first release Arboles Ossific. It’s a ten song collection that leaves few stylistic stones unturned in the band’s search for the right mix of musical ingredients and their instincts for what works and what doesn’t couldn’t be better developed. The four piece eschew virtuoso and star trips, preferring to largely remain anonymous in the hopes that their work speaks for itself, but it is apparent that, despite their relatively young ages, they possess a combined talent that would be the envy of much older and established headliners.  

The combined talents are fully evident from the first song on. “Snowy in Florida” will leave you breathless just listening to it because the band literally never rests for even a nanosecond. They come at the audience with a wide variety of emotional tones ranging from full-on rock attack to knotty progressive influenced passages. They pull back on that in your face approach on the album’s second track “Sip of Wine” and show listeners the first example of their ability to create suggestive musical landscapes with precisely chosen notes and a sense of restraint that may not be so evident on other songs. They also distinguish themselves lyrically with by exploring the love song theme with a distinctly different and almost literary voice. Their engines rev again for the uptempo romp “The Unheard Spirit Symphony” which, if one wanted to, can be viewed as a natural “sequel” of sorts to the situation depicted in the song before. It has a strong commercial feel too which, thankfully, never panders for the listener’s attention.  

They turn in a more traditional direction with the track “Hey There” and the classic rock tropes that they throw towards their listeners find their mark. “Looping”, indeed, has a gentle looping sort of effect in its arrangement and its uptempo energy, while not quite as frantic as the earlier song “The Unheard Spirit Symphony”, easily carries listeners along to the song’s inevitable conclusion. The album’s sole instrumental track, “Distant Kaleidoscopes”, proves without any doubt that the band can succeed in delivering compelling performances sans lyrics and provides a brilliant segue into the penultimate track. “Tommy’s Cosmic Avocado” might be bizarrely titled, but the song is anything but. It’s the album’s longest track but never sacrifices accessibility to make some grand statement.

This is a band with a boundless future. As mentioned at the beginning, this is a band capable of doing anything and they cut a vivid swath across this ten song collection pursuing their musical ambition and scoring in a big way. Phantom Phunk’s Arboles Ossific is the first salvo of what will surely be a musical run full of fireworks and creativity. 

9 out of 10 stars. 

 
Montey Zike

Thursday, November 10, 2016

Project-TO - The White Side, The Black Side

 
Project-TO - The White Side, The Black Side 

Producer Riccardo Mazza, filmmaker Laura Pol, and keyboardist Carlo Bagini form the three piece collective Project TO. This Italian based collective must immediately rank as one of the most challenging techno/electronic units working today and certainly one of the most ambitious of our time. Anyone who consigns the genre to the dance floor alone and believes it incapable of making a sustained, substantive artistic statement is well advised to hear their first album The White Side, The Black Side. The dozen songs comprising their debut are electronica at its most challenging, yet satisfying, and tied in with an impressively ambitious multimedia concept that few outfits of any ilk or genre would dare attempt. Project TO not only attempts it, but they succeed beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. 
 
The album’s dozen cuts are portioned into two sets of six – the white side and black side. Traditional electronica rules the day on the white side. There are enormous beats set to rattle your speakers and wide-open rhythms that streak along from the first second and rarely pull back for long. There are even inklings of melody peeking out from the techno textures on the white side, though Project-TO rarely emphasizes them. The white side makes frequent use of the human voice – the opener “I Hope” features voice over samples and other tracks, like “Look Further”, make even more expansive use of the human voice’s possibilities within this musical context. The black side’s reinterpretations, or “photographic negatives” as Project-TO refers to them, are stripped back recastings of the white side originals, often darker and much more narrow in scope. Few combinations embody this more than “Rebirth” and its twin “Black Rebirth”. The former takes a number of surprising turns throughout and has a dramatic arch that’s impossible to ignore, while its counterpart is a full on auditory bludgeoning of sorts with much more density and a straighter approach. 
 
The final song for each side, “Roger” and “Black Roger”, are ideal parting examples of Project-TO’s methodology at work. The white version is a frantic, rousing finale that amps up all of the elements defining the earlier white songs with an extra dollop of intensity added for good measure. Its black side opposite is the thrilling climax to the album as a whole and turns its white side partner inside out – this is a true photographic negative of the earlier, dead-eyed and impossibly strong, and closing the set out under the cover of darkness. The White Side, The Black Side goes places where few release, especially debuts, dare travel. This is a collective intent on taking a popular art form never really renowned for longstanding artistic value and to fashion something from it capable of withstanding the slings and arrows of posterity. The twelve songs resulting from these ambitions are ample evidence that they have succeeded. Few albums this year will make the mental and physical impact on their intended audience that you hear here from Project-TO.  
 
9 out of 10 stars 
 
David Shouse

Tuesday, November 1, 2016

John Hickman – Remnants



When John Hickman said farewell to his longtime career as an aerospace engineer and began work on what would eventually become this album, he showed enough wisdom to recruit the best session musicians in the Seattle area. The twelve songs on Remnants benefits enormously from the highly polished and creative backing Hickman receives from these collaborators. The production stresses guitar work, vocals, and the rhythm section giving the songs a nice balance of the upper and lower register. His vocals aren’t quite mainstream pop owning to a bit of a nasal quality in his tone, but his range is quite surprising and he has intelligent phrasing and a talent for emotiveness that will surprise many.  

His voice gives a sharp melodic lift to the otherwise romping, synthesizer laced rock track “Cascade”. It opens on a resounding note and Hickman responds with a rousing, challenging vocal that commits itself to every word.  “Escape” has a similarly urgency balanced out against a compelling rock dynamic powering the song. Once again, the rhythm section sets a massive tone and has moments when the track sounds positively monolithic. The beaming pop rock energy of “Hello Hello” has some teeth as well, thanks to the electric guitar and the drumming, but he conclusively proves he can bring off a breezy pop gem with the best of them. Equally so, Hickman is quite adept with the acoustic guitar and his resplendent turn on the largely folky song “Passing Thru” is another sterling example of Hickman’s talent for touching on resonate musical themes without relying too heavily on formulaic elements. 

The Dystopian sci-fi lyrics and darkly lyrical piano opening “Remnants of the Human Race” create a mood quite different from anything preceding it. Though there are later songs that run longer, it’s difficult to escape the feeling that this is one of the album’s key pieces. Hickman invests an impressive amount of emotion into this elegiac number. “Soiled Dove” is some more top shelf pop with superb melodies courtesy of piano and discreet strings underpinning the song. The drumming, so brash and physical on earlier songs, tempers its touch on these later, much more considered efforts. The harmony vocals have quite an ethereal touch and the song has a steady glide many listeners will find very appealing. 

The brash exuberance that seems to have disappeared from the album returns with a vengeance on the song “Talk”. Enormous synth lines draw most of the listener’s attention and certainly serve as the lead instrument, but there’s subtle secondary things going on and the entire thing wouldn’t have a chance of holding together if it wasn’t for another volley of incredible drumming. He turns introspective again on the track “What They Told Me” and it makes for one of the most effective songs on Remnants. Hickman’s vocal and lyrics embody the best about this album – his personal bravery, the open-heartedness of his vocals, and the effortless way he connects with his audience. By any measure, Hickman’s debut is a resounding success. 

9 out of 10 stars 


Joshua Stryde