One of the great things about all the Best of the Decade lists that have started circulatingly lately has been rediscovering records that you may have slept-on or too hastily dismissed the first time around. So it's been for me the past couple weeks with the Avalanches' sampledelic odyssey Since I Left You. Originally released in 2001, I errantly judged the record by the US single "Frontier Psychiatrist," which at the time—and recall, this was a crazy, pre-Girl Talk era in which people still enthusiastically employed the term "turntablism"—struck me as just another scratchy sample collage: a hip hop break, a big looming choral/symphonic part, a mess of spoken samples. (I also recall thinking that the video was annoying—it's in fact awesome.) And so I never really gave the record a chance.

So, yeah, it's an amazing album—crate digging as musical world tour, precursor of nu Balearica, etc, etc. Just the vocal on the introductory title track completely kills me. Or the chirpy dial cranking and ducking beat of "Radio." I've even really warmed to "Frontier Psychiatrist" in the context of the album, where it's pomp and chatter and humor land as not a relief but as kind of a detour from the half hour of breezy, beachy beats that precede it. I've come to appreciate the odd aleatoric effect of all those those dialogue samples (and they get bonus points for use of John Waters' Polyester).

I'm leaving on a little trip tomorrow night, and although I'm not sure how I'll be bringing my music with me—burn some CDs? buy an old, disposable iPod?—I know for sure that this record will be coming.

A GIVE benefit concert featuring Grand Archives, D. Black, Grant Olsen of Arthur & Yu, Kinski, Gabriel Mintz, Tea Cozies, and M.C. Tilson from the Saturday Knights takes place at the Crocodile Thurs. Dec. 3. Tickets can be purchased for $15 here.

Press release after the cut.

Former Turn-Ons frontman Travis DeVries releases his lushly melodic, Britpop-accented album, Death to God, under the group name deVries today on Noise on Noise Records. The record was produced and mixed by the great local studio guru Erik Blood and mastered by Kramer (ex-Butthole Surfers, ex-Bongwater, ex-Shockabilly, etc.). You can download a couple of tracks from the full-length, "Slowing Down" and "Darkest Summer." and check out more cuts here.

DeVries, who is now based in New York, currently has no plans for any live Seattle dates for deVries the band.

Press release below.

deVries is the new band of Travis DeVries, of legendary Seattle band The Turn-ons. In August 2009, Spin Magazine listed The Turn-ons in its “100 Greatest Bands You’ve (Probably) Never Heard” story. Peter Buck of R.E.M. described them as “…simply my favorite new Seattle band. If I said that their sound was a combination of the Velvets, T. Rex and Spiritualized with a dash of Yo La Tengo, it wouldn’t do them justice [Q Magazine].” Travis DeVries and The Turn-ons played sold out shows with widely known indie bands such as The Strokes, BRMC, and Interpol. They played their last show with The Jesus & Mary Chain in the spring of 2008.

deVries’ Death to God was recorded in Seattle in the fall of 2007 with the help of friends and members of The Turn-ons. It was produced and mixed by Turn-ons’ producer and member, Erik Blood (The Moondoggies, Tea Cozies, Romance) and mastered by legendary producer, Kramer (Galaxy 500, Low, Sufian Stevens). Travis moved to NYC in the summer of 2008 after the mixing of Death to God was completed. His sound hearkens to the reining days of Britpop/Madchester bands such as The Stone Roses and Suede. Travis’ lyrics touch on a wide range of range of topics from trans-gendered children (“Boys are Bores”), to global warming (“Slowing Down”), and economic upheaval (“Black Thursday Repeat”). His gift of weaving lush orchestration and intensely personal lyrics is a reminder of the days when music saved your life.

Track List
01. Intro — Death to God
02. Boys are Bores
03. Girl in the Fur-skin Rug
04. Broken Heart
05. What a Wasted Life
06. Mountain Meadows Massacre
07. Black Thursday Repeat
08. Cold London Town
09. Should to Shoulder
10. Slowing Down
11. Darkest Summer
12. Polar Shores
13. Out to Wastelands
14. Wherever You Are

Just in time for the holidays, Caffe Vita (along with several partnering businesses and organizations) are releasing GIVE, a compilation of exclusive tracks from 36 local artists—from Ben Gibbard to Gabriel Mintz—with all proceeds to benefit Arts Corps, Ballard Food Bank, Rainier Valley Food Bank, University District Food Bank and West Seattle Food Bank. Awwww.

The album is out November 17th at www.giveseattle.org, Caffe Vita, Easy Street Records, Sonic Boom Records, University Book Store, the Crocodile, the Sorrento Hotel (?!), and Neumos. A benefit show—not for the charities directly but to cover expenses not donated to the GIVE projcet—with details TBA, will be held at the Crocodile on December 3rd.

Full press release after the jump.

[Producer] Kevin Martin and vocalist Roger Robinson strikes me as a fantastical fantasy project hatched from two of Charles Mudede's biggest musical crushes—Burial and Tricky.

The duo's album on Hyperdub, Waiting for You... (due in November), sounds like an ideal merging of those artists' phenomenal talents. Difference is, Robinson can really sing, emitting creamy, soulful sotto-voce sentiments in wispy clouds over Martin's subtly noir-ish lovers dubstep; main exception is "Earth a Kill Ya," a doom-laden, Linton Kwesi Johnson/SpaceApe-style ecological-warning manifesto.

A decade ago, I wrote:

If one listens to "Feed Me" — an update of Bob Marley's "Concrete Jungle" — on Tricky's debut album Maxinquaye, their differences [between Marley and Tricky] become apparent. Though gloomy, Marley's "Concrete Jungle" was essentially inspirational: Out of the darkness of the city, he desperately hopes that "sweet life/must be somewhere to be found." But for Tricky, this concrete jungle is not something you faintly hope to escape, it is now your only religion: "You keep me singing while I'm drowning down into that two tone vision/I have been raised in this place and now concrete is my religion." "Feed Me" is fragmented, incomplete, uncertain. Tricky's is a world inhabited by burned out souls and "ghetto youth" who are not dangerous or potentially political, but vulnerable and not "free from love for one master."

Tricky is to Marley what SpaceApe is to Linton Kwesi Johnson. Tricky is in the aftermath of Marley, and SpaceApe is in the aftermath of LKJ. And where does this understanding locate Roger Robinson? He is in the aftermath of the Lonely Lover, Gregory Isaacs. Robinson is the dub of Isaacs. Proof? Listen to "Meltdown":

And then listen to Isaacs' classic, "Night Nurse":

• Christian Coomer

"Darling" is a sexy, self-assured romp that politely tells someone to fuck off. "Supernatural Help" is more playful, light-hearted at first with a staccato, bouncing piano line, but what her voice does starting at the 2:15 mark, combined with the flurry of piano... I get goose-bumps. "For Now" got re-recorded and sounds just as good as ever (although I do miss the whole "I literally recorded this in my basement" kind of charm present on the demo). Basically, every song is good if not great.

And now you can hear for yourself—Miss Johnston gave me permission to post one of my favorite tracks. It's called "Rain, Rain" and I fucking love it and I dare you to listen to this song and NOT feel at least a little bit better about fall and rain and all the miserable stuff that comes with it.

People Eating People - "Rain, Rain"

People Eating People is playing the Rendezvous November 12th with Julianna Barwick, Flexions, and Bill Horist.

Sub Pop subsidiary Hardly Art is giving music lovers an early Christmas/Kwanzaa/Hannukah gift with a label sampler that scoops up some of its best releases from this year. Download the compilation here.

The 15-track digital-only album contains tracks by Le Loup, Talbot Tagora, the Pica Beats, the Dutchess & the Duke, the Moondoggies, Arthur & Yu, and Pretty & Nice.

Featuring all three members of Truckasauras plus versatile hornman Anthony Moore, Foscil tend to get overshadowed by Truck, but, as I wrote about a year ago in Data Breaker:

Foscil deserve at least as much attention as their flashier, kitschier counterparts receive. They bring the funk with slightly more nuance and cerebral intensity, emphasizing impressive instrumental prowess over Truck's Game Boy bleepage, WWE footage, and American-flag capes (not that there's anything wrong with those things). Think of Foscil as Truck's more responsible alter ego.

I'm hoping to get a copy of the new release tomorrow and will give my impressions after some quality time with it.

Foscil play the Crocodile Sat. Nov. 21 with Head Like A Kite and Animals At Night.

Press release after the cut.

Normally the retail giant spotlights mainstream releases, but this week it includes Hudson Mohawke's glitter-glitch opus Butter CD (the power of a Rihanna recommendation? Or did Warp Records suddenly receive a huge influx of pounds?). I like this bit of ad copy describing HudMo's Polyfolk EP: "hyper melodic drum-and-synth sidewinders." Really honing in on Best Buy's demographic with that sort of talk.

This is all very peculiar... What next—Mike Slott 12s at Wal-Mart?

Pitchfork reports today that Norwegian disco auteur Lindstrøm will be releasing a 40 minute long version of "Little Drummer Boy" to be sold as a bonus disc via Rough Trade for his forthcoming collaboration with singer Christabelle, Real Life is No Cool. Lindstrøm's longest track previously was the title cut of his Where You Go I Go Too EP, which clocked in at just shy of 29 minutes.

I don't care how ridiculous the band has become over the years (more so than we could've ever imagined, surprisingly)—The Art of Drowning is still a great punk rock record and it always sounds best in late October.

Fuck you very much class of '89.

I had engineered a last semester that was a double block of Humanities, then T.A.-ing for my french teacher. As she didn't really need me, and knew about the punishment I took at the hands of other students, she would let me arrive late, but mark me as "Present" on attendance anyways. Many days I wouldn't arrive at school until 10:30 and would be gone by 2 in the afternoon.

The reason I was allowed to have such a slack ending to my high school career, was a trip to Europe with my Episcopal Church priest to help him with his doctorate studies work at Oxford University. What school wouldn't jump at the idea of one of their students having that kind of oppurtunity?

Little did they know that the real reason my priest was going was so he could travel around Europe fucking hustlers and old friends under the guise of giving a young student from a small town the "Grande Tour" made famous in literature of yore.

After a brief stop-over in London, off we went to the south of France, where I: partied with tax-hating ex-pat Brits, with whom I would sneak over the Spanish border to buy cheap gin to stow back to the small Basque village I was staying in; stayed with members of the Le National Front and inadvertantly almost got myself kicked out of France by poster-ing the downtown of a small village with far-right propaganda in the middle of the night; and got wrapped up into the middle of a feud between opposing families on different hills on either side of the village.

On to Greece, where I learned to chain smoke cheap turkish cigs, stayed in the Grande Bretagne Hotel and flirted with hustlers that used Syntagma Square as a street corner waving to our balcony from the park, eventually culminating in the priest fucking a guy in the bathroom, while I, very homesick and weary of the priest's shenanigans, had a phone conversation with my parents next door in the living room.

My travels with the priest ended in London. He went on to Oxford, then home, and I, finally relieved of the stress of hiding his secret life, was left with a nice family in south London's Dulwich neigborhood, who's crazy son and neighbors proceeded to introduce me to the nascent arrival of the rave and Brit-pop scene.

The son in the family was a young man named Jeremy Deller. From the moment I met him, Jeremy took me under his wing, seeing that he had a visitor to his time and place that was completely wet behind the ears when it came to big city life. Jeremy was getting ready his first ever gallery show, giant photographs he'd taken from the television of famous british vaudeville actors that no young American had ever heard of before. Jeremy wore dapper suits and had a collection of neck ties that literally fell out of the tiny attic bedroom of his parents house.

So many "firsts" during that stay in London. First true shephards pie, first time I ever got so drunk I puked (thanks to Hungarian wine and a diet of peanuts and raisins at Jeremy's opening), first time to Heaven (the historic london nightclub), first true rave, first time in a gay bar, seeing the Queen, ....

Most importantly, though was the first time I ever was alone in a big city, left to wander in and out of record stores and galleries, museums and corner shops, without having anybody waiting on me or pulling my sleeve to leave.

Operating out of the New Jersey suburb of Haledon, the Feelies sounded like the Velvets if they’d never met Andy Warhol, never did any drugs stronger than caffeine, never owned a black leather jacket, never considered adding viola to the mix, and never asked a stunning female Euro model to sing for them. In other words, the Feelies were a de-glamorized Velvets, a less citified Velvets, a Velvets excluded from Manhattan’s art-world glitterati. And, despite those hindrances, they sounded like a million bucks in hard-earned change.

Good god, does this band have a way with (wordy, twee, tragic) titles. Check out this tracklisting:

Romance Is Boring:

01 In Medias Res
02 There Are Listed Buildings
03 Romance Is Boring
04 We've Got Your Back (Documented Minor Emotional Breakdown #2)
05 Plan A
06 200-102
07 Straight in at 101
08 Who Fell Asleep In
09 I Warned You: Do Not Make an Enemy of Me
10 Heart Swells/100-1
11 I Just Sighed. I Just Sighed, Just So You Know
12 A Heat Rash in the Shape of the Show Me State; or, Letters From Me to Charlotte
13 The Sea Is a Good Place to Think of the Future
14 This Is a Flag. There Is No Wind.
15 Coda: A Burn Scar in the Shape of the Sooner State

Yeesh! The album, the band's third, will come out on January 26th via Arts & Crafts, and features guest appearances from like-minded mopers Zac Pennington of the Parenthetical Girls, Jherek Bischoff of the Dead Science, and Jamie Stewart of Xiu Xiu. Says Los Campesinos!:

It is a record about the death and decay of the human body, sex, lost love, mental breakdown, football and, ultimately, that there probably isn’t a light at the end of the tunnel.

Delightful.

Understatement is King Midas Sound's watchword, but this low-key approach somehow magnifies the songs' impact. Musically, this is the mellowest Martin—notorious for his extreme frequency fucking with the Bug, Ice, Curse of the Golden Vampire, and many other endeavors—has gotten since the ambient disc on the 1995 classic Re-Entry. But the cumulative power of Waiting for You...'s simmering, sensual sizzle and its aura of post-coital/post-breakup desolation keeps swirling through my head and gripping my heart with muted desperation.

Album of the year, unless somebody surprises the hell out of me in the next two months.

Seattle producer Ill Cosby releases a four-track EP today titled Lo Oyen. His two originals, the title track and "Kalakuta," get remixed by Birmingham, England's Emvee (Wireblock) and Austin, Texas' Dubbel Dutch (Palms Out Sounds), respectively. This is hectic, action-packed business for highly advanced dance-floors and sound systems equipped with large subwoofers. Cosby runs UK funky, house en Español, and humid afrobeat through his acute sensibilities (he's one of the most thoughtful commenters on this here blog and a discerning DJ, as well), cooking up some spicy DJ food with lots of rhythmic fiber, to boot.

Lo Oyen will be available for three weeks exclusively at Juno, then will have a wider release via iTunes, Amazon, and other digital outlets.

Cosby also just updated the website of his label, Car Crash Set, with more information on upcoming releases and new artists. You can hear more CCS music here. Finally, you can hear Ill's bass-heavy, avant-dance-music webcast, Cosby Show Nights, Tuesdays on glitch.fm.

Seattle hiphop producer/MC Datz Cold is making his five-track Paranekroi EP available for free through Halloween. Go here to download/listen to it.

Here's something I wrote about Datz Cold in 2004, which applies to the above release, as well:

It's tough to make dark hiphop without sounding at least slightly corny, but Seattle's Datz Cold (Jeremy Moss) instills a genuine chill with each of his tar-encrusted electro-funk tracks. Datz Cold's debut disc, 2003's A Green Hell, sounds like a lost gem from WordSound's Crooklyn bunker. "Surreal like Argento," Datz Cold raps on "Jaws of Life," and his own cuts exude the creepily gothic aura animating that Italian horror-film auteur's work. While Moss is retiring his Zero BPM label and Datz Cold moniker after this gig, he plans to continue creating sounds that give even thugs the heebie-jeebies.

Moss' current project By Proxy is also worth checking.

What a perfect record for (forgive me) Rocktober. I'm about halfway through the first track, and it's making me wish that I were running through the woods during a thunderstorm at night. While werewolves or something scary chased me.

UPDATE: Oh shit. Track two, "Geneva," just started and it sounds like the werewolves caught me. DOOM.

Seattle producer Splinters (Ben Torrence, currently living in Madison, Wisconsin, but planning to return here next August) is offering his new album, In the Footsteps of Insects, for free download here (though you can pay the man whatever you wish, if you so desire).

The third full-length by Splinters, the 16-track work finds Torrence honing his immaculately crafted IDM into compact pieces that are oddly funky and sweetly tuneful without being precious. The sound falls somewhere between Raster-Noton's scrupulously minimal abstractions and the Oval/Kreidler/To Rococo Rot axis of introverted melodiousness.

Torrence accurately describes In the Footstep of Insects as "a bug-themed affair full of crickety clicks, chirps, & buzzes, tech-hop-ish beetle hoe-downs, Summery melodic Dragonfly hums, and dubby techno crawlers." It's quirky without being gimmicky, full of fascinating details without seeming absurdly micromanaged. Once you get to know it, it's a real charmer.

Torrence—who plays in Bookmobile and the Lunch Buddy Program—is also offering his previous Splinters releases, Out of Elements, Metal Petals, The Watchmaker, and Arc EP, for free download. They're all worth exploring.

Well, duh.

The LA Times reports:

The Flaming Lips have already recorded a follow-up to “Embryonic.” The band will release a track-by-track interpretation of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” in the near future, which it recorded with Stardeath and the White Dwarfs, a band that features Coyne’s nephew Dennis.

Henry Rollins and Peaches make guest appearances on the album, Coyne told the crowd during a pre-concert question-and-answer session. A Flaming Lips spokesman says the album will likely be an iTunes-only release, at least initially.

The real question is: Will it be totally trippy when synced up with Christmas on Mars?

The Flaming Lips' new album, Embryonic is out now, and it is reportedly a fantastic return to freaked-out form for the band.

Converge are not the fastest metal band, or the most melodic, or the most technical. Instead, they are able to meticulously combine those elements to become one of the most perfectly balanced and unique. With every release they push their peerless sound in new and complex directions, continuously reaffirming themselves as one of the most important heavy bands on the planet. They’ve been putting out records for 15 years, and though they’ve spawned any number of bands that site them as influences, I’ve still never heard a single one that was actually able to duplicate their sound. Axe to Fall changes styles and moods several times throughout the record, moving from full-on barrage to stoned-out riffs, back to the brutal, then to clean, pretty melodies at the tail end. After this many years, it’s clear that Converge doesn’t feel their sound has to fit any specific category or genre, and that’s a refreshing attitude in a scene that feels stagnant all too often. More than anything, Axe to Fall feels like a record made by a band trying to keep itself invigorated with a genre it has already mastered — the fact that it’s also brilliant just comes with the territory.

[We receive a lot of quality electronic-music releases at The Stranger—way more than we can cover in the paper itself. With that in mind, I hope to frequently post brief reviews on Line Out of albums and EPs that I think deserve your attention.]

For a minute in the early ’00s, New York quartet Anti-Pop Consortium sounded like hiphop’s future. All three MCs flowed distinctively and smartly about the personal and political, the groin and the brain, while also producing spectacularly odd electro-funk backdrops. But the center could not hold amid all that maverick talent, and APC split in 2002.

Fluorescent Black is their comeback album, and if they’ve smoothed some of Arrhythmia and Tragic Epilogue’s serrated edges, they’re still plenty strange and inventive (the Steve Vai-esque metal fanfare that kicks off disc opener “Lay Me Down” is one of the greatest red herrings in recent musical history). Beans, High Priest, and M. Sayyid drop dense, dexterous, highly metaphorical verses that take several listens to absorb while producer Earl Blaize continues to hone his avant-bling tone painting and funky rhythmic extravagance (e.g., “Timpani” builds an off-kilter beat from said drum). Fluorescent Black can get the party started while also impressing the soundboys and literary profs. It excitingly fills the APC-shaped void from which hiphop was suffering.

As of yesterday, Jessamine’s self-titled 1994 debut album (the esteemed Kranky Records’ third ever release) was languishing in Everyday Music’s discount bins for… 95 cents. Huh.

Jessamine is a finessed updating of Silver Apples-style electronic rock, suffused with sublimely chilled atmospheres, eerie drones, an epicurean, space-rockish tonal palette, and hushed, ice-maiden vocals courtesy of Dawn Smithson. Seriously, although it could use a remastering (the CD sounds way too quiet to 2009 ears), this is one of the best (post)-rock records ever to come out of Seattle. And it's selling for 95 cents. Huh.

Now, through the good graces of Sony Music, Purdie's classic LP Soul Drums is being reissued Oct. 13, with eight bonus tracks cut in 1969, including a raging cover of Booker T. & the MGs' "Time Is Tight." Guaranteed, you've heard snippets of this album lifted for countless hiphop and dance-music tracks, but the songs themselves are worth hearing in their entirety. They're straight-up party funk, with some soulful Latin-jazz touches occasionally creeping in, all recorded in glorious analog in 1967.

Purdie has been one of the most in-demand session players in music history, providing rhythms for James Brown, Steely Dan, the Beatles, Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Quincy Jones, David Axelrod's many projects, Gil Scott-Heron, Herbie Mann, Hall & Oates, Last Poets, and many more. In the liners, no less a studio maestro than Pete Rock said, "Bernard Purdie is the most incredible drummer that I've heard outside of the drummers in James Brown's band. He is the most influential drummer of our time, including in hip-hop."