Slash’s solo career is in full swing, despite his ongoing membership in Velvet Revolver. The veteran guitarist has demoed 14 songs for his upcoming solo album and plans to recruit a number of vocalists to sing them, although no specific names have been revealed. [NME.com]

Paul McCartney returns to dance music with the Fireman, a long-running collaboration with former Killing Joke bassist Martin “Youth” Glover. The duo will release Electric Arguments, the Fireman’s first album to feature vocals, on November 13th. [Guardian.co.uk]

The 2008 CMJ Music Marathon Festival is approaching. This year’s event features shows by Coheed & Cambria, Bear Hands, Crystal Antlers, Beach House, Broken Social Scene, Cool Kids, Deerhoof, Donavon Frankenreiter, Gang Gang Dance, and many more. Pre-register for the event here. [CMJ.com]

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[This “Collateral Damage” is the first of a projected series of pieces on musicians whose careers were shortened by the vicissitudes of war.]
 
Since the ’90s, there has been an increased awareness of significant composers whose lives and careers were cut short by the horrors that consumed Europe between 1941 and 1945, and whose names and artistic legacies had gotten lost as a result. This process has added a new dimension to our understanding of music in the 20th century. Along with Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and Richard Strauss, we now recognize names like Ervin Schulhoff, Viktor Ullmann, and Gideon Klien as major voices of their time. However, one name continues to elude even that list, though it belongs there -– that of Dutchman Leo Smit. (It doesn’t help that another eminent American composer and pianist of the same name lived somewhat later, adding to the confusion.)
 
Born in Amsterdam in 1900, Leo Smit dropped out of high school in order to enter the Amsterdam Conservatory; he was the first composition student in the conservatory’s history to graduate cum laude. In 1927, he moved to Paris and lived there 10 years, operating on the fringes of “Les Six,” the group of neo-classical composers that included Francis Poulenc and Darius Milhaud, whose work he greatly admired. He married in 1932, and after a year spent in Brussels, Smit finally returned to Amsterdam in 1938 to accept a teaching position at his alma mater.

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While Tio Bitar saw Gustav Ejstes relinquishing some of Dungen’s instrumental duties to other musicians, specifically guitarist Reine Fiske, 4 is the closest he’s come to employing a full-time band. The Swedish frontman confines himself to the piano and microphone this time around, only taking occasional stabs at flute and violin, while bassist Mattias Gustavsson and drummer Johan Holmegard join Fiske in creating Dungen’s sonic stew. As before, the band brews up a nice mix of psychedelic rock, free jazz, and other vintage genres associated with mind expansion and counterculture ideals. The folk influence that peppered earlier releases isn’t as prominent here, however, having been replaced by a newfound emphasis on piano. The instrument lends new, softer textures to several songs, especially when combined with washes of woodwinds and strings. “Marleras Finest,” in particular, mixes piano-fueled jazz with vintage elevator music, sounding like something that would’ve piped through the speakers of a 1960s dentist’s office after a laughing gas leak. Elsewhere, the bandmates turn their amplifier knobs to the breaking point while pummeling through a series of improvised psych-rock freak-outs. “Samtidigt 1″ is a freewheeling guitar showcase taken from a jam session — it fades in and fades out, seemingly stretching on for hours on either side of the recorded snippet — while “Samtidigt 2″ reprises the same approach several tracks later. Holmegard peppers his percussion with Mitch Mitchell-styled fills, and Fiske fills every inch of space with slashes and stabs of crunchy, distorted guitar, aptly earning his keep as the band’s second-in-command. There are well-crafted songs here, too: “Mina Damer Och Fasaner” begins like a Brill Building ballad before settling into a bass-boosted groove, and “Det Tar Tid” finds room to showcase Ejstes’ talent for stacked vocal harmonies. In short, 4 offers a cross-section of the band’s catalog, mixing the structure-based songs of Tio Bitar with the instrumental workouts of albums like Ta Det Lugnt. Ejstes’ fiddle playing is certainly missed, but that’s a minor complaint from an otherwise top-notch effort.

Tell Tale Signs, the eighth installment of Bob Dylan’s “Bootleg Series,” will be streamed exclusively by NPR Music starting on September 30th at midnight, a week before its official release date. [JamBase.com]

Allegedly featuring a track with contributions by Andre 3000, Nas and Young Jeezy, Jay-Z’s Blueprint 3 will be released on December 2. [Idolator.com]

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band will play the halftime show at Super Bowl XLIII in Tampa, FL on February 1. [Billboard.com]

DJ AM was released from a Georgia hospital on Friday and will continue recovering from the second and third-degree burns he sustained in September 19th’s plane crash at home. Former Blink 182 drummer Travis Barker is expected to leave the hospital within two weeks. [PopEater.com]

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Looking like a Euro-pop album from 1997 or 1998, Something Else’s sleeve design would be much more indicative if it grafted a bunch of little Robin Thicke heads onto each dancing and playing body in Ernie Barnes’ Back to Sugar Shack, the painting used for Marvin Gaye’s I Want You. Not only would it be apt, it would play to Thicke’s predilection for populating his covers with several images of himself. But it would obviously cause some problems. While a few songs do modernize the sound and feel of Gaye’s steamy 1976 classic — filled as they are with serene sexual energy and lush, impeccably layered arrangements built on rolling bongos, liquid basslines, and Thicke’s acutely Gaye-indebted upper register — there are several inspirations floating throughout, including indications that Thicke has a deeper understanding of Brazilian music, correctly believes that Philadelphia International did not flame out in the mid ’70s, and has transitioned into doing rocking R&B a la Van Hunt (cool, relaxed, natural) rather than pre-New Radicals Gregg Alexander (forced, awkward, unintentionally seriocomic).

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Regarded as one of the most inspired English songwriters since the 17th century, the British composer Peter Warlock (1894-1930) is long overdue for a revival. Under his given name, Philip Heseltine, he edited music from the Elizabethan Age, co-published the music journal, The Sackbut, and wrote music criticism that was notorious for its scathing tone. But under the Warlock pseudonym, he wrote some of the most memorable vocal music of the 20th century, including the popular Christmas carols, Bethlehem Down and Balulalow. While his life was tragically short and his posthumous reputation somewhat tarnished by reports of his alcoholism, rumored Satanism, and suspected suicide, Warlock is more happily remembered today for his gentle, melodious, and often bright music, and particularly admired for his tasteful blending of serene lyricism with modern spiciness.

Capriol Suite for string orchestra and the song cycle on poems by William Butler Yeats, The Curlew, are Warlock’s best-known works. Yet his numerous songs for voice and piano and choral works deserve a much wider audience.

The Nash Ensemble - Capriol Suite
Basse-Danse
Pavane
Tordion
Bransle
Pieds-en-l’air
Mattachins

Tudor Choir - Bethlehem Down

Adrian Thompson - The Curlew: I cried when the moon was murmuring to the birds

Alexander Hardy, treble - Balulalow

Christopher Maltman, baritone - Peter Warlock’s Fancy

John Mark Ainsley, tenor - The Wind from the West

Polyphony - I Saw a Fair Maiden

Andrew Kennedy, tenor - A Sad Song

Benjamin Luxon, baritone - Mr. Belloc’s Fancy

Norman Bailey, baritone - There is a Lady

Ian Partridge, tenor - Jilian of Berry

At the outset, Double Night Time might be met with some degree of slight, partially greed-related aggravation. Morgan Geist’s first true solo album since 1997’s lost classic The Driving Memoirs, nearly half of it is made from previously released material, and its featured vocalist is Jeremy Greenspan, whose Junior Boys — more so than ever here — are stylistic peers. It could be speculated that, several years removed from peaking in notoriety with the Metro Area full-length, Geist wanted to make a Junior Boys album, yet the seed for this set was more likely planted with “Ghost Trains.” A darkly shimmering track Geist produced for Erlend Øye’s Unrest album, that song predated the JBs’ debut, indicating Geist’s shift from Metro Area’s modern post-disco/pre-house to winsome electronic pop with vocals. Five years later, he finally explores the form to its full album-length extent.

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The evolution of Andrea Mangia (a.k.a. Populous)’s music mirrors Morr Music’s development from a home for abstract electronic music into an outpost for charming electronic pop: His debut, Quipo, reveled in warm textures and atmospheres; Queue for Love added touches of soul, hip-hop and jazz, as well as nods to vintage electronic music from the ’60s and ’70s; and Drawn in Basic serves up deceptively simple songs that have an added charm thanks to the vocals of New York-based MC Short Stories. Short Stories’ boyish voice — which recalls Air and Darkel’s Jean-Benoit Dunckel — is the perfect complement to Drawn in Basic’s electronics, which are so basic they’re almost rudimentary, but delightfully so: The beats thud and fizz and the synths buzz and bleep like toy instruments. These simple parts come together in surprisingly, remarkably affecting ways, as on “Man Overboard,” which sets its hopeful-yet-pleading chorus of “I’m not giving up” atop tidal wave-sized synth swells. At four minutes and change, it’s one of Drawn in Basic’s longer tracks; most of the songs barely make it to the three-minute mark. Despite their small size, they have big hearts.

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