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Marley and You: Chicago’s Reggae Scene

Article
A.V. Club Chicago
January 2009
Link


The Eternals perform “Billions Of People” at the Empty Bottle in 2007.

While Chicago attracts its fair share of touring acts, it’s not exactly a reggae hotbed. Our cold Midwestern metropolis with frozen streets are better suited for caribou than Caribbean music. But if you look in the right places, plenty of venues, performers, and club nights exude positive vibrations. For instance, Bob Marley’s backing band The Wailers performs its classic 1977 Exodus album in its entirety at the House Of Blues on Jan. 23. In preparation, Decider shines a light on where reggae shines in Chicago.

WHERE TO SEE IT
The Wild Hare
With its reverent shine of Marley posters, thatched roof bars, and DJ Booth, Wrigleyville’s The Wild Hare might seem a bit cheesy, but its recent renovations have modeled the venue after a speaker-filled truck from an original Jamaican soundsystem. The roots of this club, which boasts a slick stage set-up, run deep. Zeleke Gessesse, an Ethiopian refugee who played in the band Dallol and toured with Ziggy Marley & The Melody Makers, founded this pillar of the city’s reggae scene in 1986, originally calling it the Wild Hare & Singing Armadillo Frog Sanctuary. It currently plays host to solid local groups like Indika, Gizzae, and Dub Dis and touring acts like Capleton, Toots And The Maytals, and Burning Spear.

WHO TO WATCH
Papa G
A hardworking DJ with residencies around the city, George “Papa G” Olivos flies the reggae flag with pride, literally in his case—he hangs a red, green, and gold Lion Of Judah flag behind him at every gig. “It’s a powerful, unifying symbol,” he says, “one of the symbols that attracted me to reggae.” Other imagery played a part, as well: As a teenager growing up in Chicago, he was drawn to the music after dropping acid and watching the Bob Marley documentary Time Will Tell. When he performs at clubs like Subterranean, Evil Olive, Sonotheque, and Butterfly Social Club, he spins sets that stroll through reggae’s many sub-genres, from slow-burning roots reggae and lover’s rock to more frenzied modern dancehall.

MC Zulu
With his deep, accented voice and rhythmic flow, Panamanian-born Dominique Rowland, who goes by MC Zulu, has the cadence and presence of a classic dancehall vocalist. But he aims to be anything but standard issue. Calling his style “electro-reggae,” Zulu adds his gruff voice to the work of genre-crossing producers like Montreal’s Ghislain Poirier, who blends bass-heavy rhythms into forward-thinking club burners. “Reggae is open source music open to interpretation by many people,” says Zulu. In that spirit, he has collaborated with artists ranging from Ghislain Poirier to Chicagoan DJ C and the frentic, glitchy Mochipet.

The Drastics
“Someone has a voodoo doll of us, I’m sure,” says drummer Anthony Abbinanti, of the live dub band The Drastics. He’s not referring to the group’s Caribbean heritage (they formed in 2004 through a Chicago Reader ad), but rather the strange string of accidents that has put two of the band’s members in the emergency room in the past six months (five have been injured in the past two years). That hasn’t prevented them from refining their experimental dub sound, normally a studio creation that they recreate on stage with delay and reverb. Solid, slack rhythms and the occasional bright blast of horns feature heavily on albums like Waiting and Chicago Massive. Plus, their 2006 song “Ransom The Senator” may have predicted this whole Blagojevich mess.

The Eternals
From the British DJ Don Letts to Bad Brains, punk and reggae have always shared a certain rebelliousness and political message. That relationship forms the core of The Eternals, which weaves dub and punk into its sinister, singular, and captivating musical hybrid. “Reggae is a huge influence over what we do,” says Damon Locks, the group’s frontman. “We stretch in a lot of different directions, but a lot of the building blocks of what we do have roots in Jamaican culture.” Locks’ claustrophobic, edgy vocals sit well with the band’s textured, twisting grooves.

WHERE TO BUY IT
Dusty Groove
The economic realities shuttering records stores have done a number on specialty reggae shops, but a few spots remain. In addition to Reckless Records on Milwaukee, which has a good vinyl selection, Dusty Groove has a decent reggae stockpile, especially if you’re searching for some of the recent reissue compilations issued by labels like Soul Jazz.

Interview: Buzzcocks

Interview
Pitchfork
January 2009
Link

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While the mantle of punk rock elder can be uncomfortable and ultimately a bit awkward, the members of the Buzzcocks have managed to maintain their dignity and humility three decades into their career. Perhaps it’s because, even with solo careers and a shifting lineup, the Manchester band keeps churning out new music, including 2006’s Flat-Pack Philosophy, that doesn’t distract from its late-1970s legacy, a string of classic singles and albums that were honest, energetic, and direct.

Recently, that legacy has been revisited and celebrated. Deluxe reissues of the group’s first three albums, Another Music In a Different Kitchen, Love Bites, and A Different Kind of Tension, filled with unreleased tracks and demos, were released by EMI UK in October, and the band just kicked off the Another Bites Tour, featuring performances of their first two albums front to back, this month. And in a true exercise in rock star canonization, guitarist and vocalist Pete Shelley’s signature mangled red Starway guitar– a hefty chuck broke off when he threw it onto the floor during rehearsal– was reissued in a limited-edition series by Eastwood.

According to Shelley, the missing chunk of the original guitar is in the hands of Howard Devoto, an original member of the Buzzcocks who left the band after just a few singles and formed his own group, Magazine, which is also reformed and riding the touring circuit. In back-to-back phone calls, the two core members of the Buzzcocks, Pete Shelley and guitarist/vocalist Steve Diggle, spoke candidly about the legacy of punk, Who-style destruction and Steve’s super-human strength onstage.

Pitchfork: When did the idea for the Another Bites tour occur?
Pete Shelley: It’s been around for a while. I suppose Brian Wilson is doing the whole concept with Pet Sounds, performing an album the way it was meant to be heard. It’s not something people do these days. I sit around and cherry-pick tracks and put my MP3 player on shuffle and find things I never thought I owned. We also got word from EMI that they were doing deluxe versions of the re-releases, more of a reason to do the shows. They’ll be out by the time we tour. We’re still waiting to hear from our agent to determine which ones to perform in the States.

Pitchfork: So there’s a chance this tour will come to the States?
PS: Yeah, the plan is to play in April and May in the States.

Pitchfork: A lot of your lyrics discuss romance, alienation, and anxiety. Have those feelings changed over the years?
PS: I suppose it’s mellowed. The songs, a lot of them, I wrote as circumstances demanded. They’re putting forward a point of view that I don’t necessarily believe in. It’s almost like the history of philosophy, where you study ideas which are not necessarily right, but by finding out why they’re not right, you can go on to find out new ideas. Does that make sense?
Read more…

Instant Gratification: Sites Make Music Collabs Easy

Article
Remix
January 2009
Link

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Instant access is something today’s music fans expect. Now, a number of companies are tapping into mobile technology to simplify collaborations between artists. Along with Websites offering new tools for musicians and music fans that crossbreed social networking and online recording applications, it’s becoming easier to share and edit songs before they’re finished.

Indaba Music (www.indabamusic.com) allows users to integrate the work of numerous musicians into sessions with its in-browser editing console. The site recently introduced IndabaVox, allowing musicians to record vocals or melodies on their phone or mobile device and instantly integrate them into a session. The feature also lets users set up conference calls with other participants.

MixMatchMusic (www.mixmatchmusic.com) wants to build up a community based on the free exchange of musical ideas while making money for artists. Users make and upload songs or “stems,” which can be combined by other users via the site’s online sequencer to create a song. When these songs are purchased, $0.85 of every dollar goes to the artists, with a $0.15-cut for MixMatchMusic.

MyCypher (www.mycypher.com) aims to expand cross-cultural collaboration and awareness in hip-hop via a social-media setup. Users can call a toll-free number and record their lyrics, which are then posted on their profile, where they can build up a library of freestyles.

While bandwidth issues and technological limitations mean these programs lack many of the features of in-studio technology, they still can engage artists and fans and become catalysts for new types of interaction. While recording its latest album, Third Eye Blind posted parts of unfinished tracks on Indaba, inviting feedback throughout the recording process. Other artists, including Mariah Carey and The Roots, have held remix contests on Indaba. And MixMatchMusic created a Remix Wizard, a customizable widget that allows artists to open up their songs to remix contests.

Franz Ferdinand: Tonight

Music Review
Remix
January 2009
3.5 out of 5 Stars
Link

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Franz Ferdinand hasn’t lost its propulsive pace on Tonight, but like the Greek hero alluded to on lead single “Ulysses,” the group is searching for something. There’s plenty of swagger out of the gate. The dark, slinky “Ulysses” boils over with crunchy synths. “No You Girls Never Know” doesn’t diverge from the formula that served the group well so far, unfurling streamlined riffs and witty lyrics that build into a boisterous chorus. But Tonight experiments with a variety of new guitar sounds and synths, and more often than not tightly folds them into the group’s muscular pulse. “Send Him Away” rolls forward with ribbon-like, African-inspired guitar lines. “Live Alone” kicks off with a wash of noise and bright digital disco pulse; “What She Came For” ends with a bluesy ruckus; and “Bite Hard” morphs from a piano balled into a floor-stomping groove. The album sticks to tight, three-minute songs except “Lucid Dreams,” a comparatively epic eight minutes that attaches a slowly unfolding patchwork of grinding guitars and fat synths to the end of a slightly unhinged Franz song. While some odd turns mean it’s not as consistent and catchy as earlier discs, this album proves the stylish band still deserves the marquee-worthy title.

Andrew Bird: Noble Beast

Music Review
Remix
January 2009
3.5 out of 5 Stars
Link

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Multifaceted musician Andrew Bird doesn’t let his big vocabulary—lyrically or musically—spoil his refined chamber pop. On Noble Beast, Bird incorporates tasteful flourishes into his polymath approach, sounding more breezy and stripped down than he did on Armchair Apocrypha. “Anonanimal” and “Effigy” open with crisp, clipped guitars, while “Not a Robot, But a Ghost” shuffles by with a fuzzy backbeat. The bookish songwriter blogged about the making of this album for The New York Times, and while his prose is clear, it can’t compare to his lyrics, which are as brainy and mysterious as his music.

Vapour Trails: Revisiting Shoegaze

Feature
XLR8R
January 2009
Link

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It’s known as the Holocaust, but it’s greeted like the rapture. A sound engineer says it sounds “pretty similar to a jet taking off,” and it has the decibel readings to prove it (roughly 130). “The sound moved my face,” blogged Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox. “My balls retracted.”

That sound is the live rendition of “You Made Me Realise,” the signature track with which My Bloody Valentine, reformed after 13 years of silence, has been ending each of its reunion-tour sets–a cacophonous, hypnotic, fill-the-void version built from a multi-octave sea of bent tones.

“It’s interesting and fun, in a cruel way, watching the audience react as the song progresses,” says Ger Colclough, a monitor engineer on the tour. “You can see the different emotions and feelings they go through as the song reaches its peak, from the fascinated look, disbelief look, shocked look, and back to the final look of amazement.”

This sonic gut-check has become part of the mythology of My Bloody Valentine, and of the shoegaze sound itself. Once dubbed “the scene that celebrates itself,” the term “shoegaze” was christened in late-’80s England to describe a group of bands who combined ethereal, swirling vocals and layer upon layer of distorted, bent, and flanged guitar. Ultimately, it referred more to these floppy-haired bands’ lack of rock ’n’ roll antics on-stage–their habit of gazing downward at their myriad guitar pedals–than their music. While hazy and narcotic-sounding, the bands that fell under this banner were far from homogenous. If anything, their common link was expanding the sonic vocabulary (if not always at MBV’s deafening levels).

With modern acts like Ulrich Schnauss and Asobi Seksu heavily inspired by the shoegaze sound, the recent release from Spiritualized (an offshoot of the even gazy-er Spacemen 3), and reunions of seminal bands like My Bloody Valentine and Swervedriver, we decided to track down members of Slowdive, Lush, Ride, Chapterhouse, and more to talk about the glory days and the genre’s continued relevance.

Shoe-Ins
Miki Berenyi (Lush singer/guitarist)
“Shoegazing was originally a slag-off term. My partner [K.J. “Moose” McKillop], who was the guitarist in Moose, claims that it was originally leveled at his band. Apparently the journo was referring to the bank of effects pedals he had strewn across the stage that he had to keep staring at in order to operate. And then it just became a generic term for all those bands that had a big, sweeping, effects-laden sound, but all stood resolutely still on stage.”

Andy Sherriff (Chapterhouse singer/guitarist)
“For us, it had quite a lot to do with the fact that we weren’t too good at singing and playing at the same time, so we had to look down at the guitar all the time to see. We played a lot of barre chords, chords that go up and down the guitar neck, so you were kind of looking where you were going.”

Adam Franklin (Swervedriver singer guitarist)
“Shoegaze wasn’t a favorable term when it first appeared. Partly, you think about the bands having sloppy fringes, stripy shirts, and Chelsea boots.”

Brad Laner (Medicine singer/guitarist)
“It never had any resonance for me. If you see any footage of us, we were jumping around and being spazzy all the time. We rocked out. I don’t think you’ll find any band of that period that would identify itself as a shoegaze band, and any band that identifies itself as that now is probably not worth listening to.”

Miki Berenyi (Lush)
“Funnily enough, [the tagline] ‘the scene that celebrates itself’ was actually the invention of Steve Sutherland, then editor of the Melody Maker, and was originally meant as a compliment! It referred to the fact that, as a movement, we were actually all very friendly and supportive of each other, rather than backbiting and sniping, which was supposedly the norm. It was actually pretty annoying getting lumped in with bands we didn’t think we sounded anything like, particularly because such comparisons were more often used against us.”

Andy Sherriff (Chapterhouse)
“Now the term has been appropriated by fans, the way a lot of insults are. And people use it in a way that’s totally non-derogatory.”
Read more…

Group Dynamics: Referential Sampling and Precision Recording Gel On Herbert’s Big Band Opus

Interview
Remix
November 2008

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The medium and the message are never separate in the music of Matthew Herbert. Spun partly from esoteric samples — the sounds of laser eye surgery, drums recorded in a hot air balloon or condoms dragged across the floor — his songs appear to be some form of sonic alchemy or voodoo, but every note and noise fits into a larger political context. It’s part statement, part adherence to a code (Herbert’s Personal Contract for the Composition of Music) and partly a play on the storytelling potential of audio over visual.

“People have a very different level of expectation and cynicism when it comes to sound,” Herbert says. “I think this obsession with the image is at the heart of what’s wrong with our society.”

But behind the philosophical rigor, post-modern critiques and stunt sampling lies an appreciation for the art and craft of recording. Herbert’s latest, There’s Me and There’s You (!K7) fuses experimental samples with a big band. While he and the engineers he works with are rigorous — 13 tracks were recorded in one meticulously planned day at Abbey Road Studio Two — he can also be incredibly flexible.

“I tread a very fine line between absolute precision and couldn’t give a shit,” he says. “I’ll spend a great deal of time researching the right mics for trombones, and then I’ll happily turn up at a session and record with my mobile phone. It’s much more about the story than the intention of the music.”
Read more…

Execution’s Doorstep: True Stories of the Innocent and Near Damned

Book Review
Playboy.com
November 2008
Link

9781555536787

Execution’s Doorstep: True Stories of the Innocent and Near Damned
by Leslie Lytle
Northeastern University Press, 300 pages, Hardcover $29.95
Reviewed by Patrick Sisson

In many prison dramas, punishment for wrongfully imprisoned inmates comes at the hands of monstrous fellow convicts or sadistic guards. But in real life, the true hell just might be inside the heads of the innocent men behind bars. Execution’s Doorstep tells the stories of five Death Row inmates who were eventually vindicated and freed. Anti-death penalty activist Leslie Lytle interviewed the men, their families and their principal defenders to expose the mental anguish of those awaiting the slowly moving wheels of the legal system. Her resulting account details how over-zealous cops and prosecutors, and occasionally incompetent public defenders, conspire to place men in cells barely larger than dog kennels, awaiting death. Convicted on shaky evidence, coerced testimony and dubious claims from jailhouse informants, these men had to wait years for their appeals to be processed.

Lytle’s dry prose adds few literary touches to the inherent human drama and she does little to enliven the sluggish legal system’s machinations. But she has the benefit of working with incredible stories. Other writers have chronicled similar accounts much better, including journalist John Conroy, whose reporting for the Chicago Reader was a source for Lytle’s piece on Hobley. But detailing prisoners’ slow crawls through the courts to freedom (if not justice) are precisely the type of record an advocate like Lytle wants to leave. Like similar travesties of American justice, such as Abu Ghraib, these reports prove great evil is often simply the result of laziness, incompetence and negligence.

Morgan Geist Courts His Dark Side: Double Night Time flips disco’s switch

Interview
Earplug
October 2008

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It seems like Morgan Geist should be happy. After all, a bar mitzvah is a big deal for any parent, and the producer’s label, Environ, just became a man. But, after 13 years at the helm, Geist seems to be souring on the industry that’s brought acclaim to his label, his collaborations with Metro Area, his solo albums, and his Unclassics collection (a series of offbeat and long-lost disco absurdities). It’s this frustration that informs some of the darker themes on his new solo album, Double Night Time, which features vocals from Junior Boys’ Jeremy Greenspan. Earplug contributor Patrick Sisson connected with Geist to discuss the industry’s fiery crash, the “nocebo” effect, and licensing misadventures.

Earplug: How was the Environ bar mitzvah earlier this year?
Morgan Geist: It was really fun. There’s not a lot that puts me in a good mood about music anymore. It was well attended, and a lot of old friends came. We had knishes from Knish Knosh, and I got all of their ridiculous party favors — like maracas with the Star of David on them and inflatable synthesizers. I think Environ is perceived as a serious label, so it’s fun to do something that wasn’t very serious.

EP: What’s putting you in a bad mood? What are your thoughts about the industry?
MG: What are my feelings on the Hindenburg a moment after it’s exploded? It seems like it’s in a tailspin that it’s never going to pull out of — at least in terms of recorded music. I’m happy to be proven wrong, but I don’t see how that can happen. I’ve been doing the label for so long that it’s sort of burned me out, even the creative side. Everybody has their own take. Mine is especially negative because I signed up to be a recording musician. I’m very lucky because people will have me DJ. The Internet is destroying recording musicians’ careers. It’s not hyperbole. I’m making a fraction of what I once made. I don’t want music to turn into something I hate, but it’s starting to. I need to figure out what I’m going to do — if it means quitting completely or quitting the label. But I love making music. I’m one of these people who like recorded music more than live shows, which I know is at odds with the way a lot of people feel about pop and dance music.
Read more…

Rough and Raw: Commodore Computers and Lampshade Mics Factor into Yo Majesty!’s Fresh Sound

Interview
Remix
October 2008
Link

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Few rappers, especially those with a song called “Kryptonite Pussy,” attempt to book a tour with their pastor as the opening act. But that’s the way Shunda K (LaShunda Flowers), half of black Christian lesbian rap duo Yo! Majesty, operates. As her partner Jwl B (Jewel Baynham) explains, their message is about being real without being sanctimonious.

“Don’t be afraid to be yourself, or life isn’t worth living,” Shunda K says. “Whether you’re gay, straight, homosexual or bisexual. People told us we weren’t going to make it. But we kept our eyes on the prize, and everything came to pass.”

The group’s eclectic debut, Futuristically Speaking… Never Be Afraid (Domino, 2008), lives up to that ideal of self-actualized rap that’s not too serious to party. They embrace their faith and get freaky, tackle obsessive relationships and drug dealing, all while broadening their sonic palette. When Yo! Majesty emerged from Tampa Bay in 2006 with a MySpace following and the Yo! EP — then a trio that included now-departed member Shon B. — the focus was on raucous, unapologetic lyrics and a stew of hip-hop, electro and Miami bass. Jwl’s penchant for taking off her shirt mid-performance also drew attention.

“People always say I have beautiful titties,” Jwl says. “But they also say our show was the bomb. We’re saying some real shit out of our mouths. Normally you don’t hear that out of anybody’s mouth.”
Read more…

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