A Baltimore score minus the Bmore bore

Being an artist in Baltimore must be tough these days. The unadulterated success enjoyed by 'The Wire' has meant that the media spotlight now shines on a hitherto unknown corner of the US. Baltimore is perceived by some as the 'new' New York and as such any cultural output is now prone to critical scrutiny. Step forward Dan Deacon, who fearlessly dives head-first into the dangerous waters of the ‘difficult second album’ and emerges with his head held high.

Just like his counterparts at the HBO smash hit, Deacon is acutely aware that individuality is a more admirable creative path to take than that of simply following the crowd. He first came to my attention after Huntleys and Palmers rinsed the much-lauded ‘Wham City’ and although I didn’t love that track, I knew that this guy was onto something. With his latest offering ‘Bromst’, Deacon avoids the pitfalls of many other musical residents of his city by shunning the dross, monotonous sounds of the Bmore genre and opting for inventive, fresh and avant-garde sounds that at times make the listener feel that he has mistakenly boarded a malfunctioning waltzer (minus the vomit of course).

The prevailing sentiment to be taken away from this album is that you are listening to someone with an abundance of creativity and talent, who may be but a few short steps from reaching genius territory. ‘The Wire’ may be gone for good but rest assured – plenty of magic will still appear from way down in the hole.

Dan Deacon – Build Voice:

http://www.zshare.net/audio/58776628658499a7/

Dance Mother

Any excitement gathering around Brooklynites Telepathe last year was public executed with a live show that suggested broken beats are made with broken instruments. Cheap ones. Melissa Livaudais and Busy Gagnes wailing out of time and tune with each did nothing to help their cause either.

Thus, despite the Chrome’s On It and Devil’s Trident e.p.s being two of my favourite releases of last year, I lost the inclination to get to bothered about their debut album Dance Mother, a feeling compounded on seeing that three of the nine tracks on it came from the aforementioned releases.

Perhaps there is something to be said for the role expectation plays in our eventual opinion of things. Whatever the case, Dance Mother has blown me away. Having not listened to Chrome’s On It, Devil’s Trident and the other previously released track Lights Go Down for a while, they sound startling, especially Devil’s Trident on which they growl aptly “it was a basic sensation, it is a basic sensation”. It sounds both futuristic and primal.

These songs sound like they have come from a future when the only musical influences that have survived are Eighties synth-pop, nursery rhymes and hip-hop beats- which have been reclaimed from the hands of so many turgid rappers and taken once more as the innovative tool they used to be. Take Trilogy- Breath of Life, Crimes and Killings, Threads and Knives with its barrage of low-riding gangsta synths; it is like a classic West Coast hip-hop track, albeit one with the BPM’s reduced to the pace of a pounding heart, a sound that befits the ache Telepathe infuse it with.

That said the real strength of the album lies in the way the girls utilise Dave Sitek’s production. Due to the school talent show style of their vocals, Telepathe are never going to sound slick, a fact that means Sitek’s production can never sound too polished and end-up overwhelming, as on TV On The Radio’s last album Dear Science. More radical though, is the effect generated when the girl’s adolescent vocals combine with his wall-of-sound construction; this combination causes the music to swell with an odd nostalgia which is completely heart-breaking. This is especially true of the stand-out tracks In Your Line, Can’t Stand It and album highlight Michael, which seems to use the Aurora Borealis as a backdrop for the chorus. It is at these moments when their glitchy futurism reveals itself to be something more ethereal.

In a year when strong albums are coming out of the left-field at a dizzying rate, Telepathe have created something unique that demands your attention.

Seek.

Telepathe- Can't Stand It

Telepathe- Michael

Der Raeuber Und Der Prinz

Naming your new band after one of your all-time favourite tracks is a very risky move, as it invites, perhaps even demands comparison, giving said new act a lot to live up to. This is especially true of Ralf Beck (Unit 4) & Sebastian Lee Philipp (Noblesse Oblige), who have named their new project Der Raeuber Und Der Prinz after the seminal DAF (Deutshe-Amerikanishe Freundschaft) track from 1981.

Both acts hail from Dusseldorf- which if their music is anything to go by, is an industrial hinterland- but share more than geography. Clearly Beck and Phillipp are inspired by the EBM (Electronic Body Music) movement that DAF pioneered. EBM, also known as industrial dance, came about at the turn of the eighties taking its inspiration from punk’s DIY ethic, lacing it with desire to move away from the instrumentation and rock style of punk. This quickly caught on and gave us the likes of Throbbing Gristle, Fad Gadget, Cabaret Voltaire and Nitzer Ebb.

Der Elektrische Reiter is an exceptional example of people taking their influences and crafting something that manages to move beyond imitation and homage into genuinely fresh territory. A lot EBM and the industrial music of the time felt like it had been steeped in the atmosphere of the Cold War (whether that was a fear of Nuclear War or an escape from the doom and gloom), Der Raeuber Und Der Prinz do is replace this with the claustrophobia of our surviellance society. Building on a primitive drumbeat the track builds tantalisingly, helicopters swoop over-head, guitars, voices and electronics drone below, all the while managing to include the folksiness inherent to much of Krautrock. There is more than a hint of Glaswegian drone rockers Mogwai and London’s Balearic shoe-gazers A Mountain of One, in there too.

Starting off with Stevie Wonder-like keys, Torpedovogel crafts many of the same elements into a buzzing, menacing track centred around a metallic melody, that rewinds itself, about half-way through then lurches forward again with even more menace than before.

Enjoy.

DAF- Der Raeuber Und Der Prinz

Der Raeuber Und Der Prinz -Der Elektrische Reiter

Der Raeuber Und Der Prinz- Torpedovogel