New albums we listened to this week
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
Craig Leon | Robin Thicke | Brian Eno & Karl Hyde | Rod Piazza and the Mighty Flyers |
Craig Leon | A-
Anthology of Interplanetary Folk Music Vol. 1 (RVNG Intl.) unearths and precisely replicates two utterly fascinating albums of early synthesizer music (Nommos and Visiting, from ’80 and ’82) envisioned by this NYC composer as emulating the extra-terrestrial musical transmissions central to the star-gazing cosmology of Mali’s Dogon people. The music — full of ritualistic repetition and otherworldly texture; warm drones and curious rhythmic shifts — is as timeless, ancient and alien as its labyrinthine backstory.
—K. Ross Hoffman
Robin Thicke | C+
Paula (Star Trak) is neither as angry as Blood on the Tracks nor as strange as Here, My Dear, and not nearly as strong as those too-obvious predecessors. The Latin guitar muzak that opens the album devolves further in later songs into a lounge-band sound, complete with vocally mugging backup singers. The sensitive souls of the Web call Thicke’s tactics creepy. I say, blue-eyed boy meets a brown-eyed girl, ain’t that the sweetest thing?
—Dotun Akintoye
Brian Eno & Karl Hyde | B
The sound of Hyde’s guitar on High Life (Warp) is a source of irritation, until it slides into an approximation of Afrobeat groove, which lasts just long enough to almost lose your interest until passages of “DBF,” “Moulded Life” and a few others come in, and the synths and drum machines start going off like Eno walked into the studio one night, turned everything on and opened fire with an assault rifle. Message on an Oblique Strategies card: The problem isn’t new tricks, it’s remembering old ones.
—Dotun Akintoye
Rod Piazza and the Mighty Flyers | A-
Piazza’s processed mouth-harp stings and screams at the heart of every cut on on Emergency Situation (Blind Pig). Take “Frankenbop,” where Piazza’s harp floats over Miss Honey’s barrelhouse piano, teasing the horns and daring you to shake it a little harder. Then catch your breath with some Chicago style and a little R&B. The title song is a Piazza plaint — “An emergency situation, gotta change my occupation” — threatening to sell the equipment if work doesn’t pick up. If this record doesn’t change that nothing will.
—Mary Armstrong
