The Silent Ballet’s hot February topic was vocals. “Did Efterklang just make a pop album? Has Her Name Is Calla gone freak folk? Is Eluvium singing? Is there any Godspeed left in Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra?” Not that we’re completely opposed to vocals – high marks were given to Youth Pictures of Florence Henderson and Motion Turns It On – we’re just leery, and perhaps a bit saddened, when we suspect that a band is making a break for the mainstream. It’s human nature to want things to stay the same. Call it Classic Coke Syndrome. But change, whether we think of it as evolution or devolution, is inevitable.
Thankfully, not all artists walk in the same direction. The Album Leaf added a studio band, and new instrumental artists stepped into the empty shoes of the old. The future of instrumental-based music is safe.
A combination of dueling tastes and overturned expectations led to a February list that no one could have predicted. Many major releases are absent, and a rookie tops the chart. While the industry may be in flux, pleasant surprises continue to balance the disappointments. It’s almost enough to make one want to sing.
1) Daniel Bjarnason ~ Processions
Bedroom Community
Processions is a statement of power and purpose, a rebuttal of Glenn Branca’s diatribe about the lack of originality in post-19th century music. With his debut release, Bjarnason sends a jolting message to the modern classical community:new ideas are still out there. Wild time signatures, atonal clashes, and dissonant waves wage war with major melodies and starlit keys. Chaos threatens to engulf the battlefield, but order eventually asserts itself, planting a tenuous flag. If this is the future of music, it rests in capable hands. (Richard Allen)
2) Motion Turns It On ~ Kaleidoscopic Equinox
Chocolate Lab
From the very first riff of this powerful album, the listener is introduced to the best and the worst kind of “trip.” Here, madness takes over, shifting life into nano-time. Every ever-so-slow second unveils the enormous diversity of color and sound available to human comprehension. This band knows how to write complex, detail-rich pieces that appeal to the mind as well as to the body, and it plays these pieces with amazing precision and virtuosity. Listeners will encounter alternating passages of heartache, levity, sunshine and disturbed introspection. Some may be inspired to dance, or at least to jerk around. Those who thought Mars Volta was the reigning prog band were wrong. Jump on now, and enjoy the ride. (David Murrieta)
3) White Hills ~ White Hills
Thrill Jockey
The band is accustomed to Hawkwind tags, but on its latest self-titled opus, Brooklyn psych monster White Hills justifies comparison to such hipster kaabas as The Velvet Underground, Spacemen 3, and My Bloody Valentine. What sets White Hills apart is its willingness to indulge in molasses-lined groove explorations that go nowhere in particular but sound awesome the entire way. Propulsive numbers like “Dead” and “Three Quarters” posit the members as warriors at the edge of time. The band dives off these cliffs into languorous, spacious epics like “Counting Sevens” and “Let the Right One In” to swim through dubby, Devonian seas of primordial psych-ooze. The album’s second half is entirely mired in this place, until it finally pulls its face above the algae long enough to moan the bleary-eyed mantra of “Polvere di Stelle,” which suggests a band too busy transcending to rock properly – about what the properly dosed listener should be feeling at the same point. (Lucas Kane)
4) Deru ~ Say Goodbye to Useless
Mush
The hip hop heads have waited a long time to hear L.A.’s enigmatic Deru drop some new bangers. This month, the long-held breath of Deru fans was released along with his third studio album, Say Goodbye to Useless. Gone are the 21st century reiterations of De La Soul skits. More intense are the body-rockin’ beats, and these beats are considerably out of this world, since it is often hard to find a world that simultaneously enjoys a sweaty good dancin’ time and a mellow, blunted conversation. Deru stands at the intersection of so many styles, yet fuses them so perfectly, he may well be the first musician in this century to have made a deal with the devil at the crossroads. (Gabriel Bogart)
5) Eluvium ~ Similes
Temporary Residence
“Staring at the sky while you were blurring up the light, if the colors and the shades were clearly mortified, then all our concepts came running up the course, writing to myself then later questioning the source,” sings Matthew Robert Cooper in the second chorus of album opener “Leaves Eclipse the Light.” Hearing his voice, many of us wish that he’d been singing all along. In his fifth full-length under the Eluvium moniker, Cooper finally lets the listener into his head, sharing his thoughts and concerns about the world while his signature instrumentation and near perfect ambience play in the background.Similes might well be his bravest album to date, and old and new fans alike will be equally pleased with closer “Cease to Know.” Bucking the trend, Cooper makes the vocals work, and we are all the better for it. (Mohammed Ashraf)
6) The Souljazz Orchestra ~ Rising Sun
Strut
Perhaps the most engaging aspect of African music is its ability to cram intense rhythms and melodies into a small amount of space. Unlike Western music, which expands, African music condenses, placing rhythms over each other to create entrancing polyrhythms and technical marvels. The Souljazz Orchestra is another fine example of this standard, creating in Rising Sun a consistent album of funky grooves and memorable melodies. (Tyler Fisher)