Styles: punk spiritual, art rock
Others: Tom Waits, Sonic Youth, Scott Walker, Liars
While Carla Bozulich may have left behind punk songwriting years ago, she remains true to punk’s spirit. More than any of her albums under the Evangelista moniker, In Animal Tongue shows how devotees of punk and charismatic religion share a hunt for raw, ‘authentic’ experience. Here, Bozulich continues the quest for authenticity — in her words: “real versus fake!!!” — in nine tracks that showcase her talent for welding fragility to strength.
More about: Evangelista
Links: Evangelista - Constellation
Styles: social documentaries
Others: Harvest of Shame, The Harvest, Which Way Home
It would be condescending to call The Inheritors a simple meditation on childhood poverty in Mexico. While it certainly examines childhood poverty, there is no narration or instructive animations, and there is only the slightest hint that the movie is edited to try to influence our feelings (as of course it was, except that most docs are acutely interested in letting the audience know exactly how they are trying to influence them, which undercuts their message).
Styles: political action thriller
Others: Elite Squad, City of God, The Shield
Released in 2007, the first Elite Squad turned out to be one of the most successful films to come out of Brazil in the past decade, gaining international acclaim by winning the Golden Bear award while stirring a long debate in its country of origin regarding police brutality and the battle against crime.
Styles: beats & samples, trip-hop, post-dubstep, kinda sorta not really witch house
Others: James Blake, Clams Casino, J Dilla
“A wandering minstrel he, a thing of shreds and patches/ Of ballads, songs, and snatches/ And dreamy lullaby…” Nice dreams, that would be. What possible teenage prodigy Alec Koone (a.k.a. Balam Acab) does extremely well are crisp crunchy beats immersed in a structuralized aural fog. In other words, this is music for stoners par excellence — not so much Wandering as watery eyes.
More about: Balam Acab
Links: Balam Acab - Tri Angle
Styles: sports doc
Others: various ESPN profiles, Le Mans, A Man and a Woman
“Ali Jordan Pele Senna” is the tagline running the length of the Senna poster at my local art-plex. One of these players doesn’t seem to belong. While Senna is certainly a streamlined, top-gear documentary that avoids major head injuries and bone-breaking collisions, it fails to accomplish one very essential task: convincing its audience that its subject is worth watching.
Styles: drama
Others: Lost and Delirious, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
As with many independent, coming-of-age movies, the temptation exists for the viewer to assume the narrative is based on the filmmakers’ lives. To a certain extent, there’s a degree of intentional fallacy in this: for instance, it may have been interesting once upon a time to know that, like the protagonist of Rushmore, director Wes Anderson produced plays based on popular movies in high school. But, over a decade later, does that lend any depth to our interpretation of the film? Probably not.
Styles: free improvisation, modern jazz, creative music
Others: Barre Phillips, Mike Bisio, Timo Shanko
Though perhaps better known as a guitarist, improvising composer Joe Morris has been almost equally present as a contrabassist for the better part of a decade. His rhythmic drive is impeccable and usually spotted within small saxophone-driven groups like those featuring altoist Jim Hobbs or baritone saxophonist Allan Chase. He’s also played the instrument in the fairly open-ended piano trio of Steve Lantner. That being said, and despite the presence of the bass as a frontline instrument in improvised music for over 40 years, Morris has tended to approach it as an ensemble player.
More about: Joe Morris
Links: Joe Morris - No Business
Styles: thoughtfull, light-as-a-pixie psych-/folk-tinged rock
Others: Tim Cohen, Black Fiction, Fresh & Onlys, Thee Oh Sees, Sandwitches,
Tim Cohen, we barely knew ye. Or, at least, we didn’t get the full picture. For that we have to travel back in time a half-decade or so to the days of Black Fiction, a brow-furrowing little gremlin of a kitchen-sink indie group that swung for the sky and ended up coming close enough to make the folks in the nosebleed section cheer.
More about: Magic Trick
Links: Magic Trick - Empty Cellar
Styles: field recordings, post-eai
Others: Annette Krebs, Taku Sugimoto, Masahiko Okura
When listening to a record on which Taku Unami performs, there’s a temptation to get lost in its empirical reality. Not in its sounds, per se, but in the methods through which they are generated, and doubly so with Takahiro Kawaguchi on Teatro Assente. This album, in the spirit of last year’s motubachii (Annette Krebs and Taku Unami; on Erstwhile), is a black box; sounds are abundant and varied, at times familiar and placable, but the listener really has no clue from whom or what many originate. And Taku et al.
More about: Taku Unami/Takahiro Kawaguchi
Links: Erstwhile
Styles: casiotone
Others: Casiotone, The Clientele, Boat, Department of Eagles
It’s not easy to find a lot of written information on bandcamping trio Ladies Auxiliary, but they have cultivated themselves a charming Polaroid mythos — carpet tiles and folding chairs replete with sprigs of eBay-sourced electronics — that explain the group almost as well. On their debut, My Side of the Mountain, Ladies Auxiliary are scrubbing all sorts of unspoken floors. They have a song about being careful.
More about: Ladies Auxiliary
Links: Ladies Auxiliary
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