Looking for some charming twee pop to mix in with your favorite Camera Obscura songs while you're waiting for them to put out a new album? Look no farther than Tennis. Yeah, like the game, except it's a guy/gal duo hailing from this side of the Atlantic. They play some lovely catchy, seemingly simplistic, melodic songs that flow along swimmingly!
Yesterday I wrote about Nigerian legend, Fela Kuti. Today, I'll share a contemporary Nigerian-American artist named Iyeoka. Besides sharing a nationality though, her music is quite different than Kuti's afrobeat. About the closest comparison I can conjure up would be Ursula Rucker (who coincidentally released her latest album She Said just yesterday), although even that would be an uneven stretch. Iyeoka's album Say Yes is an interesting mixture of electronic soul/dance music, spoken word, and jazz, one that constantly shifts its approach from beginning to end.
Besides being a musician, Iyeoka also is a poet, which is where the spoken word elements of her album come into play (the powerful I Travel Home does an intense working of comparing her two worlds) and the previous comparison to Rucker. Visiting her website will reveal a whole body of poetic works, including the following poem:
This burgeoning optimism is also apparent in much of the material on her album, with The Yellow Brick Road Song, the opening track, being a perfect example. And although the realities of the world don't escape her (such as when she sings "Break down, break down down / The walls of happily ever after" in the similarly titled track), the album's title reminds us of Iyeoka's message, just as the closing lines of the last track My Current Anthem reiterate, "Remember the road is on time with your arrival / And your next moment to shine flies on the horizon."
Three tidbits of Fela Kuti news, in increasing order of excitement:
1.) I've posted a few times on Knitting Factory's reissue of the Fela Kuti catalog, and as all good things must come to an end, so does the roll-out of remastered afrobeat. Next week comes the final batch of Fela Kuti albums: ten albums from the end of Kuti's outstanding career including Coffin For Head Of State (1979) / Unknown Soldier (1980), Teacher Don't Teach Me Nonsense (1986), Original Suffer Head (1981) / I.T.T. (1980), Live In Amsterdam (1984), Army Arrangement (1984), Beasts Of No Nation (1989) / O.D.O.O. (1990), and his final release, Underground System (1992). This music comes from Kuti's life when we was touring around the world, bringing his music and his country's problems to audiences everywhere.
2.) In addition to this final set of CDs, Knitting Factory is also putting out a vinyl box set curated by none other than ?uestlove of The Roots on February 1st. Supposedly, it's the first in a series, and will include six albums handpicked by ?uestlove including Everything Scatter, Expensive Shit, Teacher Don't Teach Me Nonsense, Beasts Of No Nation, Fear Not For Man, and Sorrow Tears And Blood. All artwork (both label and cover) will be an accurate replica of the originals.
3.) I've been yapping about catching the musical Fela! on Broadway for a while now, but have yet to put my money (and car) where my mouth is. Well, thanks to London's National's Olivier Theatre, I'm not going to have to drive into the Big Apple to see it, and neither do YOU! On January 13th (yes, this Thursday), the production will be filmed live and broadcast to 86 movie screen in the United States (as well as to nineteen other countries). And lucky for me, one of those 86 screens is practically right in my backyard and I'll be attending! To say I'm eager for Thursday night to roll around would be the understatement of 2011. I've been listening to the Original Broadway Cast Recording (which features Antibalas as the backing band) for quite some time now, and even though the British broadcast will have a different backing band, I'm positive that they'll be (almost) just as good. To see if it will be playing at a venue near you, visit the National Theatre Live website (for both American and international showings).
Without further adieu, here's a song from this latest batch as played by the Broadway cast:
When I first started spinning Tree of Mystery, I thought it sounded vaguely familiar, like something that I should be able to place. After about the third spin, another band popped into my head: Ancient Astronauts, a band that I got turned onto about a year and a half ago. I went searching through my music, played their album We Are to Answer, and sure enough, it was a sonic step-brother. And then the truth hit me, Kabanjak, the musician behind Tree of Mystery, is one half of the duo that make up Ancient Astronauts!
While not having completely split from his fellow musician Dogu, Kabanjak's release Tree of Mystery (whose cover I really dig, check it below) is his first flying solo. It carries a lot of the characteristics of his work as an Ancient Astronaut, with melodies that alternately feel as if they're soaring in the sky and then swirling in a Middle Eastern desert. Every so often, scattered through his musical meditations, come rhymes laid down by guest vocalists. At some points it feels like you're meditating in the heavens, and others you're immersed right here in Earth, with no clear horizon distinguishing the two.
Silje Nes' music just oozes beauty. The Norwegian's voice is as delicate as a butterfly, as gently flowing as a brook. Opticks, her latest album, features the track she plays live above, and which you can download below. If you need an album to brush out the ruffles of life, a salve to sooth your soul, look no further than this one. What comes to mind to compare it to it This Mortal Coil, without the dramatic ups and downs, rather a gentle undulation.
For today's Jazz Brunch Jam, we're taking it new school, with the latest in Mark Farina's Mushroom Jazz Series, #7. Farina first introduced the series back in 1996, and his goal has remained constant since then: to collect and share some of the best and brightest in what would probably most neatly be called acid jazz. To simply let that term define all nineteen tracks would do it a disservice, though. Be prepared for a spectrum of cuts that loosely start with a jazz base and then add on some hip hop infused beats, moments of trippy loops, and dance floor inducing bumping. It's cool and it's hot, it swings and it chills. The grooves go deep, but not for too long.
