What's Spinning
Friday, November 17, 2006
I spend all day at work listening to music. It's one of the few perks of being a systems administrator. What follows is the very first "What's Spinning," a catchy phrase stolen from a band discussion list I ran once.
William Elliott Whitmore - Song of The BlackbirdRIYL Mississippi Hill Country Blues, Deep Blues, Tom Waits, Johnny Cash, alt.Country
WEW is stunning. Gravel voices, storytelling lyrics, old school intrumentation and down to earth production mark this, as well as his previous, release. I can't recommend this cat enough. Honestly while it's usually hard to go wrong with a Southern Records release, this one is a real gem. Read more about William Elliott Whitmore on Wikipedia.
http://www.williamelliottwhitmore.com/
Bonnie Prince Billy - The Letting GoRIYL The Silver Jews, alt Country, Sufjan Stevens and his ilk
Will Oldham has been doing that unnecessarily-lumped-into-the-genre "alt country" thing for a long, long time... much longer than Sufjan and his kind. And, taking nothing away from those folks, he's much better at it. The Letting Go represents a step forward for Oldham, if that's possible. For the first time he has, under the Bonnie Prince moniker, managed to craft music every bit as embracing as his lyrics (in my opinion, of course). So often I find the new mainstays of the alt country genre to ultimately be, well, boring. The Letting Go, though understated, is anything but. This is a confident record well worth seeking out. Read more about Will Oldham on Wikipedia.
http://www.bonnieprincebilly.com/
Jamie Lidell - MultiplyRIYL Super_Collider, Prince, Otis Redding, Parliament, Motown
Multiply is a pretty amazing album. Lidell comes thundering out of Super_Collider, his collab with fellow electro-laptop producer Cristian Vogel, to produce a soul album that represents a stake in the heart of the perpetually disappointing "neo-soul" genre. Lidell's a total package; producing, songwriting, arranging, performing charisma, and a 3 octave set of pipes that almost seems ridiculous coming out of a skinny white boy from Cambridge, England. His live shows typically include extended improvisations, with Lidell wrangling equipment to sample, cut, chop and transform his voice and beatboxing stills into new and different tunes.
On record the man proves schizophrenically funky, easily sliding from Otis Redding stylings to Parliament-Funkadelic freakiness with a healthy portion of everyone from Sly to Earth, Wind and Fire in between. Add to all this just a touch of tastefully applied laptop weirdness (some barely dicernable without headphones... which this record is a treat to listen to via, by the way) and you've got Multiply. Somehow, despite the myriad of touchstones, the album manages to retain a cohesive feel due to how natural and genuine Lidell manages to sound throughout. I'm wearing this record, along with it's remix companion Multiply Additions, out. Read more about Jamie Lidell on Wikipedia.
http://www.jamielidell.com/
posted by josefek @ 2:44 PM,
