Good news on the horizon for fans of sad German electronic-influenced pop! The Notwist have plans to release The Devil, You + Me, the follow-up to their fantastic 2002 album, Neon Golden, this spring. The band has actually been putting out music since the late ’80s, but Neon Golden was the record that brought them out into the great shining beacon of relative indie stardom. It’s not that the members of the Notwist have just been sitting on their hands all this time — they collaborated with Themselves in 13 + God, Micha Acher is in Ms. John Soda with Stefanie Böhm and runs his own studio, his brother Markus plays guitar in Lali Puna — but there’s certainly been some anticipation in regards to their next output. Finally, a sign of life. And if it proves to be indicative of all that The Devil, You + Me is, good things are in store.
Though Markus’s vocals are half-whispered in “Good Lies,” and often sound as if he’s too forlorn to get all his words out, they carry the song; it’s their very fragility that makes them so alluring, and so strong. His lyrics are both thoughtfully detailed (”We carry them home with us/To our bedside table and our coffee sets”) and catholic (”Let’s just imitate the real, until we find a better one”), as they lay themselves out and repeat throughout the piece. While Neon Golden relied heavily on what soon became the prototypical indie-electronic percussion (the soft blip, the chirp), here the band uses a bass drum and bass guitar to keep the eighth notes constant and steady as the guitars and soft keyboards play above. “Good Lies” is immediately melancholic and distantly gorgeous, the kind of thing that strikes you unawares and, once it hits, is difficult to dislodge. If the rest of The Devil, You + Me is as strong as this, the Notwist may not have the leisure of taking six years before their next release appears. Which isn’t a bad thing at all.
Eagerly anticipated within the electronica community, Autechre’s first full-length album in three years, Quaristice, isn’t scheduled for release until March but is presently available for digital download at Bleep. One of the iconic IDM duo’s most easily enjoyable releases in many years, the 80-minute, 20-track album should delight longtime fans and newcomers alike. After three years of silence, it’s a relief the album isn’t as forcefully experimental as some of Autechre’s more inapproachable releases of this decade, most notoriously Confield (2001), though thankfully challenging all the same.
The Raveonettes‘ third album Lust Lust Lust is the sound of a band rescuing their career from the clutches of cliché and rediscovering the magic that made them so exciting originally. The opening track “Aly, Walk with Me” serves notice that things are going to be a lot different, the menacing prowl of the verses giving way to a deafening burst of white light/white heat noise halfway through the song. Anyone fearing that Lust Lust Lust would be another record lost to over-production and slickness should, once they regain their hearing, be ecstatic. The duo recapture the fire, mystery, and dirty glamour of their early records and add a sharper melodic sense on a batch of songs that will stick to you like a sharp knife between the ribs.
Clinic’s last proper album, Visitations, was an excellent distillation of the cranky, cryptic art-punk that they’ve been churning out for over a decade. However, the album’s staggered release dates — in fall 2006 in the U.K. and early in 2007 in the U.S. — were confusing and might have led to Visitations getting less attention than it deserved. Clinic are already taking steps to avoid the same thing happening to their upcoming fifth album, the emphatically named Do It!: This Friday, Feburary 1, the band will offer their new single “Free Not Free/Thor” on their website as a free download. Described as a “warped pop amalgam filled with songs about living for the day, love, escaping witch hunts and more,” Do It! arrives on April 8th.
“I went to Africa the first time to learn from all the masters; after 40 years I went to give something back,” says fabled drummer Steve Reid, speaking by phone from his home in Switzerland.
Reid is speaking excitedly of Daxaar, the new album by the Steve Reid Ensemble. It drops in early March on Domino, the feisty, adventurous indie that has given us Franz Ferdinand’s debut, Robert Wyatt’s Comic Opera, and Animal Collective’s Strawberry Jam to name a few. “The title means combining the musical tradition of Dakar, with the sound of where I come from in the Southeast Bronx,” he explains.
Perhaps the best thing about the holiday season is unexpected gifts and iTunes delivered a nice one yesterday: the first official reissue of Keith Richards‘ first solo single, “Run Rudolph Run/Pressure Drop.” Originally released in 1978, the same year Some Girls hit the stores, this has more than a dose of the cheerful hedonism of that album’s “Before They Make Me Run,” but it hits harder. Stripped of flanged guitars and harmonies, this is overdriven rock & roll boogie, tougher and sloppier than Chuck Berry’s original, and all the better for it — it doesn’t sound like a Christmas song, it sounds like a party. So does the cover of “Pressure Drop,” performed with that song’s originators, Toots & The Maytals. Keith was just beginning to fall in love with reggae — he started to dabble on Black & Blue a few years earlier — and this performances has the giddy enthusiasm of new love, a perfect flip to the A-side, where Keith once again pledges devotion to his first love. This may not be earth-shattering — it’s simply Keith doing what he does best, which is reason enough to celebrate finally having this available in some legit fashion, and not stranded on bootlegs and hard-to-find 45s. We’ll all have a merrier Christmas now.
Six Degrees Records, San Francisco’s independent modern world music label, has made a name for themselves over the past 10 years. Their rep is for issuing innovative recordings by musicians and producers from all over the globe, many of whom have unique takes on melding world music traditions with the digital age. Their impressive catalogue includes recordings by Ceu, Cheb i Sabbah, Karsh Kale, Bebel Gilberto, Banco de Gaia, the Real Tuesday Weld, the Bombay Dub Orchestra, Willie Porter, King Britt, DO (Omar Sosa and Greg Landau), DJ Spooky, Steve Tibbetts and Chöying Drolma, and DJ-composer-producer Tom Middleton, one half of Global Communication; Middleton’s autobiographical Lifetracks album is being reviewed — and enjoyed — globally. Here’s a sample from the cut “Serendipity.” The label also released the 2007 Latin Grammy winner for best Flamenco recording, Techarí by Ojos de Brujo. Here’s a sample. They’ve done a number of soundtracks too, including the award-winning Genghis Blues. Six Degrees is a music freak’s label if there ever was one.
We’ll make this short and sweet. RCRD LBL is a website that provides label-supported streams and absolutely free, legal, digital downloads of tracks from indie labels like Dim Mak, Ghostly International, Warp, Kompakt, and Modular by some pretty big artists (Art Brut, Grizzly Bear, Bloc Party, Justice), as well as some who are far below the radar, like Kings and Queens, Youthmovies, and Jacques Renault. Some tracks are exclusives, some aren’t, but they’re all free. Registering so far hasn’t netted spam, but some killer info. Their statement of purpose is on the home page and it’s well worth a few minutes to scope out. Just go here to find out more.
Good news on the horizon for fans of sad German electronic-influenced pop! The Notwist have plans to release The Devil, You + Me, the follow-up to their fantastic 2002 album, Neon Golden, this spring. The band has actually been putting out music since the late ’80s, but Neon Golden was the record that brought them out into the great shining beacon of relative indie stardom. It’s not that the members of the Notwist have just been sitting on their hands all this time — they collaborated with Themselves in 13 + God, Micha Acher is in Ms. John Soda with Stefanie Böhm and runs his own studio, his brother Markus plays guitar in Lali Puna — but there’s certainly been some anticipation in regards to their next output. Finally, a sign of life. And if it proves to be indicative of all that The Devil, You + Me is, good things are in store.
Eagerly anticipated within the electronica community, 
Clinic’s last proper album, 
“I went to Africa the first time to learn from all the masters; after 40 years I went to give something back,” says fabled drummer Steve Reid, speaking by phone from his home in Switzerland.
Perhaps the best thing about the holiday season is unexpected gifts and iTunes delivered a nice one yesterday: the first official reissue of 
Six Degrees Records, San Francisco’s independent modern world music label, has made a name for themselves over the past 10 years. Their rep is for issuing innovative recordings by musicians and producers from all over the globe, many of whom have unique takes on melding world music traditions with the digital age. Their impressive catalogue includes recordings by 