I think we’re entering the HAL-3000 phase of electronic music, in so much as saying that manipulated tones are starting to breathe. Now first off, I loathe techno. The few raves I attended as a teen were definitely not for the purpose of the music. The whole DJ house-beat, communal sweat-off thing never grabbed me, and I’ve kinda always looked down upon so-called “electronic” music. And I only mention this because in laymans terms, Dan Deacon’s latest album, Bromst, would be classified as electronic music, and quite simply it’s already one of my Top 20 albums of all time.

As I did a full interview with Deacon for State of Mind, (viewable at www.stateofmindmusic.com) I’ve had a few months to continually redigest the early copy of Bromst I received. Now if you’re familiar with Deacon, you know that his live shows are absolutely rediculous, and essentially just involve him making a bunch of crazy looping tones and patterns with structured chaos ensuing. Well this new album was made with the intention of Dan performing the music live with a full ensemble -- thus, there is a thickness and far more tangible quality of these songs than anything he’s ever done before. It sounds cliche’, but this album is overwhelmingly organic. He’s using real instruments for the first time, all be it they occasionally get recycled into something brand new and unfamiliar, but he’s never before used piano riffs, for instance. The result is a massive new era wall-of-sound. Each song climbs and reforms into huge moments of beautiful modern psychadelia. And these tunes really are beautiful, they have the power to bring stashed emotions to your brow, they cause a sonic release, a relaxation from a tenseness you weren’ t even aware of.

“Snookered” is frankly amazing. It’s a movement of build and release, but in a completely unexpected way -- when all the patterns interect towards the end, it’s utter euphoria. As Dan said, “I wanted this album to be more of a celebration and less of a party.” If you’ve already taken Animal Collective’s latest Merriweather Post Pavillion as your guiding torch into a new modern era of emotive, manipulated sound, then Bromst will quite frankly knock you on your ass. Gonna be tough for something to come out to beat this for “Album of 2009″ in my book. Here’s “Snookered” -- sorry, Youtube is the only thing I’m good at embedding.

DOOM, previously known as MF Doom, Victor Vaughn, King Geedorah, Zev Love X and Daniel Dumile, released his last proper solo album five years ago. At that time, he was incredibly prolific, releasing multiple albums a year with an astounding quality-to-filler ratio.

Consider: In the span of three years he released MM.. Food, Madvillainy (as Madvillain), Take Me To Your Leader (as King Geedorah), The Mouse and The Mask (as Danger Doom), Vaudeville Villain and Venomous Villain (both as Viktor Vaughn). Four of these albums are truly great, and the rest are pretty damn good. Since then, Mr. Dumile has kept a considerably lower profile with a smattering of production work, a few guests spots and a handful of tracks.

Given his relative silence, his latest, Born Like This, is like the welcome return of an old friend. The question remains, does it measure up?

The short answer, is almost. While Born Like This does not match the quality of Doom’s best work, it’s a satisfying listen with all the standard DOOM elements in place. His rhymes are as surreal and associative as ever. The production, most of which has been provided by Metal Fingers himself, delivers.

DOOM’s best albums usually contain reoccurring themes, as in the case of MM.. Food’s preoccupation with consumption, or they are held together by a playful immersion in a particular persona, best exemplified in Take Me To Your Leader. Born Like This sort of amalgamates those two. Its theme is an immersion in the DOOM persona. That may sound like a cop-out evaluation, and it is. The truth is, whatever whimsical force shapes Born Like This, it’s not as apparent or striking as we’ve come to expect.

One track needs to be mentioned, as it has in every review I’ve read. “Batty Boyz” comes off as an ignorant and anachronistic tirade against homosexuality. I’ve scoured the ‘net in the hope of finding a lucid justification for a song focused on the gay subtext of superhero comics, but try as I might I just hear a string of gay jokes. Please, someone enlighten me, because it’s got a great beat and I don’t want to have to skip it every time I play the album.

That said, Born Like This is DOOM being DOOM (or MF Doom being DOOM, I suppose.) Fans shant be dissapointed, and he may well continue to expand his audience with this mostly great album.

Karin Dreijer Andersson of the Knife goes solo, and the result is nothing short of fabulous.  Press play, and a deep, emotional, sound swirls around you creating the feeling of dancing through a misty, magical forest.  The hopeful and catchy beats float from the speakers while  traditional instruments (steel drums and congas) spin the modern electronics towards a grounded musical experience.   The image provoking lyrics, sometimes more like  chants,  reminisce childhood.   The ghostly voices bounce between tracks, some high, some low, some sweet, and some scary.

Check out this spooky video of their song “If I Had A Heart”

This album is a daydream, opening a mind filled with stories told through synth-pop sound.  Though the tracks stand beautifully alone, it should be listened to in it’s entirety.  Fever Ray is a wonderfully haunting masterpiece that brings you on a journey, solid from start to finish, and leaves you wanting more.  I’ve got a fever…ray…!

Mastodon. Well their last album, Blood Mountain, was and still is a Metal Masterpiece. Full of thick riffs feet thumpin’ drums and vocals that summed up their entire existence as a band, as well as a good story line and a progressive nature. Now on to the follow up. Crack The Skye. Damn! Metal Masterpiece number two under their belts. This album is amazing,which i would totally expect from a band of their caliber. The album is a RIFF MONSTER taking your consciousness on a trip to different dimensions of sound and space. The riffs never stop coming through the entire album. It’s beautifully blended classic rock/psychedelia but much much heavier and much much better than any classic rock or psychedelic music there is. I said it. I’m not even a big fan of the aforementioned genres, but by God Mastodon does it perfectly and with all the driving force you’ve come to expect from these southern boys. The heavy riffs and ethereal bass synth sweeps (a 1979 Moog Taurus Bass Synth. Same one Geddy Lee uses by the way.) permeate every track. The vocals on this album come straight out of the heart and have a cleaner sound and feel, which is evident by the start of the first track. The songs build continuously to a climax that is supernaturally marvelous, full of cults,bears and spirits. It’s pure metal bliss. Rasputin even makes an appearance!
Banjo Riffs? In Metal? Yep. They Got ‘em. Tambourine? Yep. One Zappa-esque Breakdown.
You got it. Brendan O’Brien does another great job producing, although not my favorite sounding album (I preferred Matt Bales’ talents to O’Brien’s) the music sounds like nothing they have ever done before. And it’s beautiful. These guys are moving into an area of sound that is very reminiscent of King Crimson and a little splash of Rush and Tool and Zappa blah blah blah. Mastodon fans will not be disappointed but astonished and excited. They are planning a tour in which they will play the album in it’s entirety. I for one am psyched, so stop by the store and pick it up. Come take a trip to space on speedy metal riffs and acid-drenched soul. Crack The Skye Motherfuckers!

IF you haven’t already heard, Burlington’s been home to the members of one of punk’s major unsung progenitors – “Death” and their current champions (and offpsring) Rough Francis, for quite sometime now. But lately – With the glut of coverage in local and national News their recently reissued full length … For The Whole World To See on the Drag City label has been reportedly hard to come by in some circles.  *Cough* Brooklyn *Cough* – We got our hands on another 6 copies of the vinyl – So if for some reason you havn’t picked it up, now would be a good time.

I went to the midnight screening of The Watchmen last night. My rock-bottom expectations were surpassed, and I was surprised to be at least occasionally enjoying a mostly competent, dumbed-down, over-stylized adaptation of a great comic.

I’m mentioning it here because of the amusing effect the soundtrack seemed to have on the audience, who were mostly teenagers. With the exception of a terrible cover of “Desolation Row” by My Chemical Romance, the songs in the film were all classics, including tracks by Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix And others of their ilk.

The audience snickered at a lot of these tracks. During The Comedian’s funeral, when “Sounds of Silence” played, the audience nearly erupted. Granted, it was a lunk-headed musical choice, way too obvious, but laughter? Has the musical lexicon of the past several generations finally become a punch-line for the new generation?

Had the whole film been received as tongue-in-cheek and laughably silly (which it is) it wouldn’t have seemed so odd. However, for the most part, the audience appeared engaged on the films terms.

I have no thoughtful explanation or insight on this one. It was just odd.

(For the record, Doctor Manhattan’s penis was greeted with much more laughter, but I don’t think that had anything to do with ironic amusement.)

So I was just looking over the list of this year’s Grammy winners -- I…don’t…know…why… but anyway saw that Best Contemporary World Music Album went to Global Drum Project with Mickey Hart and Zakir Hussain. Now to be honest with you, I think any year that one of these guys releases an album they give the World Beat award to ‘em, probably always a sure bet to the vote casters. In fact, I’m pretty sure this album came out in 2007, but must have slipped by last year and this year they must have not had any worthy competition. I doubt Mickey Hart is pulling off the genious move that Radiohead did of releasing their physical U.S. version of In Rainbows on January 1st, 2008 so that way it tops everbody’s lists last year and then gets another ressurection an entire year later when it finally gets nominated for a grammy. Anyway, I went back and pulled the album out and it actually is great -- not so much of a new-agey feel as one would think, more of just alot of polyrhythms bouncing off one another.  Parts of it actually sound alot like My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. But if you’re looking for a good mid-day stare-at-the-ceiling album, Global Drum Project should top your list. It’s definitely modern trance, along the lines of Soundtribe Sector 9’s Peaceblaster from last year, but obviously alot more drum-focused.

Which also reminds me, if you’ve never read Hart’s Drumming at the Edge of Magic, it’s an incredibly interesting book. Not just for Deadheads and stoners, honestly. I think alot about one chapter where he talks about how rhythms naturally want to align -- that juxtaposed beats will pull towards one another. Supposedly, if you take two analog watches that are off from one another by half a second, and put them next to one another in a drawer, within a couple weeks they will become synchronized. He thus claims that all the modern anxiety in the world stems from the thousands of radio waves and power cables surrounding us that are all vibrating at very large rates. So our own bodies’ natural clocks are trying to speed up too much to align with the super fast rhythms all around us. Here’s a clip that shows the idea, however coupling crossover and flexible oscillation speed up the process enormously: