Year: 2011
Origin: Mopti

Sorry Bamba reached out to the world to create a presence in the Mali music culture that is still felt today. Expanding the reach of international music culture, Thrill Jockey collected a great example to what Sorry Bamba was capable of, starting with this nine-year retrospective.

The son of a noble, Sorry Bamba was born in Mopti, a cultural city at the banks of two rivers, The Niger and Bani rivers. This hotspot for growing cultural hotbed of tradition, created a conflict for Sorry Bamba’s needs. In a caste-based society, Sorry was not allowed to play music, a rite exclusively reserved for the griots, a Western African storyteller.

All of this is important to the build up to Sorry Bamba’s career because being orphaned, he turned to music for comfort, especially the six-hole flute that you hear in his music on Volume One.

When Mali gained its independence from France in 1960, Radio Mali was created to help promote what quickly became a musically rich cultural heritage. Even though Sorry’s Group Goumbé, now called Bani Jazz, had been working to modernize the nation’s sound before this, they became an important development to the expansion.

Why his life up to this point is worth researching is because the music you hear from 1970 to 1979 is his most important. You experience the relics from his dynasty as the leader of the Regional Orchestra, a group that developed out of the Bani Jazz group and then morphed into the Kanaga Orchestra. During this time he won six National Biennials, winning the grand prize in 1976, 1978, and 1980.

In addition, the music you hear on this volume reflects elements of his life up this point. On “Yayoroba” you immediately realize how advanced the city was at production quality. Same goes with Sidhi Torri. Both reach out to traditional Mali musical culture, but where the two differ is that Sorry Bamba incorporated ‘60s psychedelic rock and ‘70s jazz and latin elements into his music. When Bamba breaks off into a flute solo on “Boro,” you immediately get a rift between the past and the present. The Santana-influenced guitars and percussion merge in and out of traditional rhythms. And “Astan Kelly” bears resemblance to the Fania New York latin scene. The strange funk extracted from “Sayouwe” is everything Herbie Hancock would have concocted.

The live version of “Sékou Amadou” gives us an appreciation for how trance-like emotion and expressiveness of the orchestra. And “Aïssé is pure beauty with its Spanish influences. This offsets one of the more badass jams put in a song, the repetitiveness of “Bayadjourou” and power put into the musician’s skill make it a tough song not to lose control over.

I will say that I am not sure how much of an influence all of this had on Sorry Bamba’s songwriting, but it sure is a coincidence how Sorry Bamba was able to put all of this together in a timely fashion.

One thing I can say is that you never feel like you deviate from the essence of what music from Mali has to offer. Bamba never forgets his roots even when he’s spiraling out into an immense jazz-like solo.

Origin: Various Locations
Style: Electronic | Soundtrack Music

Say what you will about the film Tron: Legacy, (looking back, critics had mixed reactions while fans gravitated more toward the film - http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/10011582-TRON_legacy/) beside the visceral imagery, the soundtrack by Daft Punk is truly awe inspiring. Of course a soundtrack of this electronic caliber was begging for a remix, and it got it in a big way. Reconfigured features some of today’s best DJ’s like Paul Oakenfold, Kaskade and Avicii. It also bolsters remixes from electronic pioneers The Crystal Method, drum and bassers Photek and the godfather of techno himself, Moby.

This album is an accentuation to the flavor of the purely digital world Daft Punk created with the score. The revamped version of “Derezzed” by The Glitch Mob adds more substance to the original single by adding big baselines and hearty back beats.

The track entitled “The Fall” of the original soundtrack is purely epic in its intensity; however, the remixed version done by M83 vs. Big Black Delta adds vocals, which intensifies the song even more. With the addition of heavy break beats, it makes this track very ominous and catchy.

“End of the Line” gets mixed twice. The first mix by Boys Noize is a heavy bassed-out techno version, while the second mix by Photek offers a history lesson in classic drum ‘n’ bass. Other tracks of note are the heavy house of “C.L.U.” remixed by Paul Oakenfold and the ambient “Solar Sailer” mixed by Pretty Lights.

While enhancing the textured feel of most of the original score, this album is missing the overly sonic bass of dub step which could have added some dimension to the album. Reconfigured keeps the spacey and dream feel of Daft Punk’ digital soundscape. If only it could have focused even more on current trends.

Song Listing and Remixer (I recommend that you listen to the original soundtrack first to gauge the extent at which the remixes are made.)

1. Glitch Mob – Derezzed
2. M83 Vs. Big Black Delta – Fall
3. Crystal Method – The Grid
4. Teddybears – Adagio For Tron
5. Ki:Theory – The Son Of Flynn
6. Paul Oakenfold – C.L.U.
7. Moby – The Son of Flynn
8. Boys Noize – End Of The Line
9. Kaskade – Rinzier
10. Com Truise – Encom Part 2
11. Photek – End of the Line
12. Japenese Popstars – Arena
13. Avicii – Derezzed
14. Pretty Lights – Solar Sailer
15. Sander Kleinenberg – Tron Legacy (End Titles)

Origin: Richmond, Virginia
Style: Ambient

For Waiting, For Chasing is one of the greatest ambient albums. I am intrigued by everything that lies within. A classic that was left obscured by time, the album gets a resurrection. It’s not as well known as Quiet City, or 360 Business/360 Bypass in which Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker from Low participated in, but it shows a departure of the guitar/piano fueled concoction of the earlier work and brings in ambient texturing of the past.

For Waiting, For Chasing is a lost treasure, and for me, it defines the true spirit of ambient. There is meaning in this release that goes beyond minimalism and drone for its own sake. You feel and breathe in as this album comes to life.

As Trebuchet Magazine called it, “For Waiting… is quite firmly in the centre of contemporary electronic genre placating terms and references such as drone, post-beat, electro acoustic, electronica or even soft-sonics.” (http://www.trebuchet-magazine.com/index.php/site/article/pan_american_-_for_waiting_for_chasing/)

The man behind the project, Mark Nelson of Labradford fame, spread out his wings and looked from within as For Waiting, For Chasing is an album that makes you feel alive. By sharing the intricacies in sound, Nelson forces you into this parallel world where you realize every fiber of time and slows things down to the sounds of silence. Feedback, soft hum, strange noises, timeless movement and echoing hypnosis makes you aware of every strange little sound you have grown to expect daily. It’s like the occasion where you realize you are breathing and amazed, you stop and experience each breath until it becomes routine again. Nelson makes sure you take nothing for granted.

I love this album because it makes me think of these simplicities. And as Culture + Pleasure describes this album as “a work of calming restraint, it’ really impossible to fault this musician and his ability,” (http://culturepleasure.blogspot.com/1007/10/pan-american.html) it still holds up to be a remarkable piece of work.

Where “Love Song” slowly builds depth through subtle layering, “Still Swimming” keeps things linear. He muffles the noise to flicker like sun beams blasting through water. And with random intervals of deep sea bass thumping, Nelson really presents the feeling that you are floating underwater.

The song that provides any kind of emotional change is “The Penguin Speaks” with its unnerving presence, like you are waiting for something in an empty room and every sound that presents itself is a shock to the senses.

The album ends with dark minimalism, and “Amulls” leaves us with thought-compulsive moments of lucid tranquility, giving us the full realization that this album is completely under-appreciated and received by few who sought after it’s initial embrace. At least you have that chance again with the hunt being a little easier this time.

Origin: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Style: Indie Psychedelic, Electronic

It does not seem like time has passed since Black Moth Super Rainbow unleashed Dandelion Gum. It was 2007 and it was this album that made us take notice not only of the band who would turn modern day dreamy psychedelic upside down, but their label Graveface, which have since released offshoots of the band: Tobacco and Seven Fields Of Aphelion to name a few.

Why in four years are we seeing a re-issue? Last year, flood waters attacked the Graveface headquarters and the stock was damaged, leaving this freak-out beast out of print. Like us, the band felt that the album was too good to ignore, and luckily they brought the album back in print while expanded it to create this mega release of epic proportions.

What does expanded mean? The album has an additional 14 songs that were recorded roughly around the same time the album was created. That’s a hefty experience to the already intense experience of the original grouping of songs.

Not only do you get to relive the acidic effects of what sugar and candy does to a group of people and their sound —  each song is a re-telling of the effects each person had on candy made by these two mysterious women out in the forest. It’s like giving the most haunting of shoegaze and post punk bands a mound of pixie sticks and a rare ‘60s psych collection, as well as hours of Black Sabbath and tell them to record songs. Charged like a pagan ritual, the quick-paced “Lollipopsichord” and the monster opener “Forever Heavy” are important staples to the overall sound of the band, while being an important charge to music culture of the 21st Century. I’m not sure what the immediate effects were when The Zombies released the complex Odessey and Oracle, but I imagine it to coincide to the effects Dandelion Gum had on us in 2007 versus now. Looking back, this album is more important than we could have originally perceived.

The end of the original album, “Untitled Road Demo” and the beginning of the expansion, “Hidden Track,” transitions like a rusty acoustic lo-fi piece before bouncing into a sluggish break beat and 8-bit translucent electronics with total synth snarl.

This leads us into the explosively rambunctious “The Dark Forest Joggers.” Always experimental, don’t expect the additional songs to go beyond the means of perception, these are indeed BMSR songs you can hear and feel and can best be described as a compliment to the core of what Dandelion Gum provides with many of the songs standing up just as tall as the ones that made it on the original.

Without a doubt, this album is an absolute must and could very well be considered one of the greatest albums of the universe.

Origin: Ireland
Style: Electronic

It happens in threes. Analogue Bubblebath 3 is the third release in the Analogue Bubblebath series, marking this the third release by Richard D. James, under the AFX pseudonym.

James is better known for his work as Aphex Twin but is also known for a slew of other monikers like Polygon Window and Mike & Rich.

Not that sources like Trouser Press or the Internet give AFX much credit, if any at all. It’s understandable given the anonymity of James’ project that paired up with early Aphex Twins releases: the album was released in a clear slimline jewel case, wrapped in bubble wrap with no liner notes, and no print on the disc. Unless you were lucky enough to snag a copy of the vinyl at the time of its release from Rephlex Records, you were left trackless. The album used random decimal numbers as track names. I cannot even imagine talking to James today and him being able to flawlessly remember a track like “.000890569.” It would be a prestigious bet to have him be able to rattle off every track name from memory and see how far he gets.

Analogue Bubblebath 3 came right before Warp and Warner Bros. picked him up to release Selected Ambient Works Volume II. Understanding the scope of Selected Ambient Works, 85-92 (Volume I) and its sparseness, you can only imagine James using AFX to embrace his wild side and signs that eventually point to I Care Because You Do, and Drugz.

I had always found it odd that he just went from his ambient work to a more brazen guerilla electronic approach without a gradual transition. I now can use The Analogue Bubblebath series to bridge the gap between the two varied styles and have it make sense. It does not just make this an important release in that aspect, but looking back, it is more important to the history of electronic music.

“.55279037732581” (try and remember that) explores an obscene view of electro destruction that pummels you over the head, and “AFX/6” is the Aphex Twin we are all well-acquainted with. But it’s the song “.215061” that makes us aware that he can dabble in traditional acid house while making it seem very interesting, even if it was made 18 years ago. And “.1993841” is what I envision to be the early conceptions of Polygon Window.

Very few tracks seem dated, and the songs that do are so far gone with ‘90s sentimentality that they fit right next to Plastikman’s first album. The lines are obscure enough to make you appreciate how far he was willing to go even in a normal context. You can almost taste the blotter sheets just from the sound.

For James, Analogue Bubblebath 3 further confirms him as a true electronic auteur.

Cross Reference: Aphex Twin, Polygon Window, and Mike & Rich.

Origin: Montreal, Quebec
Style: Metal

If you want a perfect example post-millennium Victory Records-style hardcore that is influenced from the classic Victory days (think Warzone), then this album is it. Not only does it shine on the Victory roster, it shines within the bands hierarchy of releases.

A sound that is influenced from south of the border, the band holds tight of that East Coast mentality. However, there is a certain sign that the band, or part of the band was leaning towards another direction, that of the Northwest sludge scene and bands like Clutch and Alice in Chains. But A Perfect Murder does not stray too far and head back into hardcore territory towards the end of the release.

However, before this album, the band was as heavy as steel girders into the metal scene. They ripped and shredded with the best of them. What caused the shift in dynamic is uncertain, but they did create a significant change in their sound just from the previous year.

Soon after this release, the leave of an original guitarist eventually caused a doom and gloom scenario that would ruin the band until 2007 when they tried it one more time and released War of Aggression.

Cross-Reference: Warzone, Sick Of It All, Clutch

Rema-Rema was a band that became as important for what they musically created as for what the members became.

An early imprint on the 4AD label — the label’s fifth release — Rema-Rema’s sound serves as a sonic monument to what the 4AD imprint started as, which was nowhere near the iconic sound we now know 4AD for; that being bands like Cocteau Twins, Pixies and Lush to Dead Can Dance. At the time, 4AD was bringing in singles from the Axis label as well as a serving as a subsidiary to the Beggars Banquet label. This not only brought in short-lived bands like The Bearz and The Fast Set, but also bounced off single releases from Bauhaus (“Dark Entries”) (Dave Thompson, Alternative Rock. Miller Freeman Books, San Francisco: 2000, p. 738-39). Rema Rema also gave 4AD owner Ivo Watts-Russell the hope that 4AD would become a lasting label and a reason for continuing (http://www.4ad.com/remarema/profile/).

Wheel in the Roses — their only release — begins “Feedback Song” with (guitar/vocals) Gary Asquith and Mick Allen (bass/vocals) howling “Rema Rema” over and over like wolves clawing into the night. The song turns into a Velvet Underground-inspired number as guitar feedback, with the help of other guitarist and original member of Siouxsie and the Banshees Marco Pirroni, drapes over a brooding minimal rhythmic pulse. Drummer Max Prior (her real name is Dorothy), pounds out a lethargic tribal beat that almost defies to keep the song together.

The mono recording presents a ghostly feeling to their noisy dance-based title track. By the end of the song, you will not forget their name.

Even though you may have a difficult time differentiating between the two, the final two songs are recorded live. “Instrumental” gives off the illusion of an instrumental piece, but its deceiving title makes for their most accomplished number on the album as the vocals  sound like a lower-lipped Lux Interior singing “You kicked me right between the eyes.”

“Fond Affections” highlights the minimalism of the band as well as the atmospheric effects from keyboardist Mark Cox. Whether intentional or not, the echo effects of the vocals that dissipate to crazed laser blast guitar notes is what gives the song its aura.

Despite its quick listen, these are four songs that are worth going over again and again, each time getting even more wrapped up in their amalgam of experimental post punk and minimal pop sound.

Years later, the band would later help contribute to This Mortal Coil’s It Will End In Tears, as well as having TMC cover the song “Fond Affections” for the debut. Big Black remembered Rema Rema with their cover of “Rema-Rema.” (http://systemsofromance.blogspot.com/2007/12/rema-rema-wheel-in-roses-ep.html)

As quickly as the band formed, it disbanded shortly after the EPs release. Pirroni went on to join Adam and the Ants. Asquith, Allen and Cox formed another short-lived 4AD band called Mass. Asquith went on to join Renegade Soundwave while Cox and Allen stayed with 4AD to form Wolfgang Press.

Max Prior became friends with members of Throbbing Gristle after sharing the bill at several gigs. She went to form El Trains and then a solo project under the name Dorothy, collaborating with Genesis P. Orridge. Her final stop was with Psychic TV after expressing a mutual disinterest with the doom and gloom and destruction of late ‘70s punk (http://kidshirt.blogspot.com/2006/01/story-of-i-confess.html).

Origin: Los Angeles, California
Style: Punk/Hardcore

If the Clash taught me to fight for my rights, Youth Brigade taught me that the youth can make positive change. One of the rare West Coast bands that really made a difference in the social aspect of punk rock was also one of the lesser known bands at the time, unless you were entrenched into the Los Angeles punk scene or saw one of the several re-releases of Another State Of Mind.

It was a hot summer in 1987. Skateboarding was a brutal affair that sometimes led from overtly steamy August nights to air conditioned abodes. What do skaters do when it is too hot to skate? They watch videos of other people skating — Tony Hawk, Lance Mountain, Mike Vallely.

“Oh, look at that trick.”
“Damn, I cannot believe he just cleared that entire staircase, that guy is insane!”
“I need to go try that trick out now.”

What do you do if you are a skate punk? You intermingle skate videos with your favorite hardcore punk vids or watch movies like Repo Man and fake mosh around the room to Iggy Pop.

One day I was at the record shop scanning through cassettes, adding things like Bad Brains or X Ray Spex or Gorilla Biscuits to my collection. As I was about to check out with a handful of tapes, I spotted a VHS release of Another State Of Mind. I went over to see what it was about and noticed familiarity within the description: Minor Threat, Social Distortion, and some band called Youth Brigade.

After a night shedding blood and sweat out on the pavement, myself and a few others settled down with some cheap burritos, cheaper beer, and that video. In a haze of cigarette smoke, we were mesmerized at the documentary and how well it captured the movement. These bands gave us a perspective of punk rock that none of us were fully able to experience in the scale of a small town environment. The interviews while on tour, the community aspect, and the devotion these bands had were inspiring. This was our Endless Summer for the punk generation.

And it was this inspiration that made me go out and find a copy of Sink With Kalifornija.

In the year 1984, Los Angeles was a strange conglomeration of inner city conflict glossed over by the event of the 1984 Summer Olympics, and the impending Presidential election between Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale. The punk and hardcore scene in 1984 was a raging fire of social and political protest against the state of the country. Reagan Youth came out with Youth Anthems For The New Order, Black Flag with My War, and Agnostic Front with Victim In Pain. The charm about Youth Brigade was that they focused more on positivism and the individual. Towards the end of a horrible cover version of “Duke Of Earl,” the band goes into a military drum cadence in punk rock speed while the three brothers — Mark, Shawn, and Adam Stern — bounce the call and response, “Who’s an individual?” “We are individuals.” This is further enhanced as it goes into the song “What Will The Revolution Change.” They knew that their music would not change the state of affairs in this country, as well as the world, but they did know it could create a reaction in the individual and help people come to a realization that to have a better life, it begins with the “self,” a similar concept for Shawn and Mark Stern and their creation of BYO (Better Youth Organization) as a means to promote the positive things within a punk rock structure (http://www.readjunk.com/interviews/youth-brigade-and-byos-shawn-stern).

It also had a lot to do with seeing Youth Brigade in action. During the film, they shot a live version of the song “Violence,” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6BuoXNGbMg) and to see the way the band communicated with their audience was something the kids could bond to. It gave them hope, even from within a chaotic frenzy of the mosh pit.

And what is odd is that the most popular song from the band is only featured as a live version; a handful of live songs got added to the end of the album to celebrate their last show with Adam, as he left the band and went to art school.

But luckily this release did give a full retrospect of the band as a whole and a degree of success after a career start that was plagued with problems. They initially released Sound and Fury before pulling it from the shelves, re-recording it, and re-releasing it later because of dissatisfaction from its bad sound quality (“All Music Guide” entry on Youth Brigade).

Sink With Kalifornija builds positivism with activism. Although imperfect, the Stern brothers gave 110 percent with their band and label. This album is a collective of songs that provides an essential retrospect of the band with the racing “Sound and Fury” to the punk anthem “Fight To Unite.”

Overall it was a West Coast philosophy that Youth Brigade fell into. Unfortunately, the band did not proceed along the successful path as bands like Bad Religion, but the Sterns stayed true to their beliefs as they do to this day (Shawn Stern gets interviewed at the premiere for Punks Not Dead – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzj0TmZUIWM ), a noble persistence to what the band was always about.

Sink With Kalifornija is an album that if you had not lived it, may not make such an impression beyond a few exceptional standout punk anthems, unless you have an appreciation for the history of punk rock. The live songs are raw, messy, and outdated to modern recording techniques, and part of this album needs a degree of toleration especially the faux rap on “Men In Blue,” but you cannot deny the influence these guys had on the local punk community that eventually reached out to the world.

Cross-Reference: Bad Religion, Crucial Youth, Gorilla Biscuits

Origin: Louisville, Kentucky
Style: Noise Rock

Purchase this album at Indie Rocket

Louisville, Kentucky, does not seem a likely city for a band like this to properly exist. You have to drive about 300 miles north to the city of Chicago and engulf yourself with the musical verbage of the Jesus Lizard or Rapeman via 1990 for the concept of the Young Widows to make sense . For Chicagoans, the obliteration of post-punk into a secular chant of jangling guitar noise incorporated with accentuated pounding bass and drum accompaniment gave the windy city a sense of identity.

But then again, 2006 does not seem like a good time for a band like this to exist. Or maybe it was the perfect time for this music to stand out. With indie rock all over the place and bands looking deep into the heart of rock and roll for expression, Young Widows do as best as any to bastardize the style and send it all crashing back down.

Where Big Black created, Young Widows progressed.

Originally the vocalist for the Louisville hardcore act Breather Resist, Steve Sindoni, left the other three members standing around while he went and formed the Jade Tree act Pusher. Wondering what they were going to do with a vocal-less band, it was a decision to continue on the path of Breather Resist and develop a sophomore album sans Sindoni. As they were developing the songs, something happened, their sound was no longer the belligerent hardcore the band had initially created. So instead of keeping the same name to coexist with the new style, they took on an entirely new persona. The change was drastic. Sure there are hints from their hardcore past as in “Glad He Ate Her,” but to even compare this with what Breather Resist did is insane. It’s a monumental shift in sound and style that one could argue sounds a little too close to what The Jesus Lizard did in the past (http://www.absolutepunk.net/showthread.php?t=167788) or (http://www.drownedinsound.com/release/view/8027).

With more of a bass and drum accompaniment, the low end is muddy and the notes are distorted down beyond coherence. And the guitars on this album are like shrapnel. With Breather Resist, their was a distinct direction, with Young Widows the only direction this band gives is the driving force of the rhythms that pound into your skull like ramming your head into the corner of a door frame and pulling the splinters out.

Whatever happened between the gritty hardcore days to the sloppy and oddball time configurations, it’s a choice that was well made and a direction that could be developed well beyond what Breather Resist could do, even if the Young Widows sound too much like they sit around the shrine of David Yow.

If you are or were not dedicated to that unruly sound of late ‘80s/early ‘90s Chicago, you probably won’t find this album as appealing to those who are. Taken as a whole, Settle Down City is an opus of austere angularity, individually, and the songs are hardly distinct to pick out of a lineup with the common ear.

Features ex-members of Breather Resist

Cross-Reference: Big Black, The Jesus Lizard, Rapeman

Origin: Hoboken, New Jersey
Style: Indie, Instrumental

Calling Yo La Tengo composers is a paradox. In essence, the band has written, composed, and performed professionally for many years now. So the definition of composer has always been incorporated into the band’s psyche. But from a classical sense, we can take the term composer to a different level.

On The Sounds of the Sounds of Science, Yo La Tengo composed and scored nine instrumentals to accompany eight of French filmmaker Jean Painleve’s rare underwater documentary shorts.

According to an interview with v the band had not heard of Painleve prior to this project (http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/yolatengo/articles/story/5918908/yo_la_tengo_go_under_the_sea). It was the San Francisco International Film Festival who offered the group a chance to build a soundscape to these surrealist-like pieces.

Painleve was a devout fan of the “recording of reality” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Painlev%C3%A9). A student of biology and inspired by the Surrealist Movement, although he did not claim to be a Surrealist himself, he followed the likes of Guillaume Apollinaire and claimed that “cinema is a creator of a surreal life.” By using slow motion, accelerated speed and blur effects, Painleve took to the underwater to capture the aquatic life and ended up directing more than two hundred science in nature films in the early 1900s.

Jim Derogatis describes Yo La Tengo as a band that “has never stopped changing and evolving” (http://jimdero.com/News2003/June6YoLaTengo.htm), and this album helps accentuate that idea as well as correlate the two as seemingly a perfect fit, and a unique choice, rather than selecting some random ambient electronic artist to record some blurbs and hums.

Call it a sidetrack between And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out and Summer Sun, Yo La Tengo presents a collage of sound and motion within the construct of environment, which is the opposite of how the band has worked in the past and continues to this day. Kaplan said in the same Rolling Stone article is that they would try to “match the sound with the action.”

A great example of this and my favorite on the album comes early on with “Sea Urchins.” The song starts out with a normal rock construct, but about four minutes into it, the song turns into this mystic transfixing of soft reverb, sleepy-eyed beats, and hypnotic bass lines that is inspired by the late night surf ballads of the ‘60s. I may not have realized this before, but Yo La Tengo has fully convinced me that this is what life underwater sounds like. You can close your eyes and feel the motion of uncontrolled movement and swaying life on the sea floor.

And you don’t need Painleve’s documentaries to get a strong sense as to what these songs are trying to do.  The way Ira Kaplan and James McNew they utilize the guitars, as in “Sea Horse,” is modest and done with enough meandering for intrigue but keeps every one of these songs within perspective.

“Hyas and Stenorhynchus,” both from the crab family, gives a more space rock approach with a baseline that is uncertain to mimic the inconsistency in movement of the crab. The band moves on to the sounds of shrimp and conception of jellyfish, which is kind of amusing as to how that has been interpreted through music. “Liquid Crystals” is scattered song of no wave and free jazz inspired construction filled with chaos and spontaneous order.

One thing underwater that is predictable? Sex and the act of. My favorite song on the album is “The Love Life Of The Octopus.” If someone were to ask me what the love life of an octopus sounds like, I would probably make up some crazy squishy sound that comes across as a combination between wet socks in a shoe and bubbly farting noises. But somehow listening to the trio perform this song, I now have some artistic perception as to what that this process might sound like. I could describe their performance with words like repetitious and driving with accentuated jolts of feedback. They even end with a post-coital glow that will make you think, “Oh yeah. That octopus had a good time.”

Even though a diversion in the way Yo La Tengo’s career, the album is nothing more than captivating.

Cross-Reference: Stars of the Lid, The Ventures, Flying Saucer Attack