Glaciers of Ice – November Edition

It’s a new month, let’s see what those hip-hop rascals are up to. Read my latest Glaciers of Ice column for Lostatsea.net here.

Review: Ghostface Killah – Ghostdini The Wizard of Poetry (Def Jam)

Ghostface’s new album is disappointing, to say the least. Read why here or below.

When Ghostface’s new r’n'b-based album was announced, you may have thought of “Holla,” the track off of 2004’s The Pretty Toney Album that featured him rapping over a virtually untouched Delfonics song (“La La (Means I Love You)”). Unfortunately, you thought wrong.

Ghostdini is, in many ways, a very traditional hip-hop album, almost every song featuring Ghost’s rhymes book-ended by lustily sung r’n'b hooks. The supporting cast is mostly up to the task, but in an extremely unexceptional manner. Raheem DeVaughn helps out on two songs, “Do Over” and “Baby,” the latter heavily soaked in AutoTune. John Legend contributes an uninspired vocal refrain to the silky funk of “Let’s Stop Playing.” “Lonely” finds Jack Knight singing the hook, supplementing the storyline of a seriously humbled Tony Starks, whose girl is clearly cheating on him – “Someone been sleeping in my bed, eating my food… walking around in his boxers, like everything’s cool.” Infidelity pops up many times on the album, best exemplified in the aggro “Guest House.” This is one of the better songs on the record, featuring Fabolous as the cable guy Ghost’s lady is messing around with.

This is the Ghost we know and love, spinning outlandish tales, making mundane occurrences exciting – “He watching BBC, eating a salad / I’m on the couch hitting the chalice, checking my texts”). “Stapleton Sex,” on the other hand, features some of the most visceral rhymes about sex since Ironman’s “Wildflower.” What started as silly innuendo on Raekwon and company’s “Ice Cream” has progressed to the literal – “My face is wet, got hair on my tongue / Guess I’m a greedy nigga, absorb pussy juice like a sponge.” That’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Ghostface’s latest effort is no masterpiece, and feels a bit lazy and strung together. Everyone keeps talking about how impressive it is that he retains such legitimacy as he enters the realm of “elder statesman of hip-hop.” But if Ghostface Killah really wants to earn that title, he’s gotta practice a little quality control.

MP3: Pierced Arrows – “Paranoia”

From the ashes of Dead Moon rises Pierced Arrows. They have a new album, Descending Shadows, coming out on Vice on Feb. 2. It ain’t pretty, no. It’s gritty r’n'r based on minimal, thumping bass and drums, ragged guitars, and too-much-whiskey vocals. Listen to “Paranoia” here.

New Releases: Liars – Sisterworld (Mute, 2010)

Liars will release a new album, Sisterworld, on Mute in early 2010. Check out their cryptic new album website, full of nature scenes hinting towards something sublime. The album was recorded in LA, and the band had this to say: “We’re interested in the alternate spaces people create in order to maintain identity in a city like LA. Environments where outcasts and loners celebrate a skewered relationship to society”.

MP3: Trinity – “Roc Raida Tribute”

Trinity is a new super-group consisting of hip-hop legends AG, Sadat X, and not-really-a-legend DJ Jab. They’ve got a new album coming out next year, but they recorded a nice tribute to the recently departed DJ Roc Raida. Listen here.

Video: Vitalic – “Poison Lips”

This is not nearly as good as anything on his last album, but there’s lots of sexy makeup smearing going on in this new Vitalic video, for a song off his new album, Flash Mob.

Film: George Romero – Survival of the Dead Trailer

George Romero’s newest zombie installment, Survival of the Dead, has screened at several prominent film festivals, but has yet to find a distributor in the U.S. Why is this? Maybe, six films in, he’s run out of steam. Maybe, as Andrew and I have discussed lately, we need a high quality, seriously written movie or TV series, injecting fresh vigor into the zombie trope. This doesn’t look like that. Still, I can’t wait to see it. Watch the grainy trailer below.

MP3: Jokers of the Scene and Acid Girls – Bright Black Magick Mix

Jokers of the Scene have teamed up with Acid Girls for a tour and a mix. Download here. And tourdates on the flyer:

MP3: Xiu Xiu – “Volcana! (I Hope Your Train Crashes Remix) (The 6ths)”

Cut and paste experimentalism from Xiu Xiu for you today. This song appears on SCORE! 20 Years of Merge Records: The Remixes!, out November 20th. Listen here.

MP3: Senor Kaos – “20 Years High & Rising (Homage To De La Soul) Feat. Von Pea & Homeboy Sandman (Produced By Dave West)”

The title says it all. Senor Kaos likes to pay homage while those he’s paying homage to are still alive. Not a bad concept. Listen to it here, off his new Walk Softly & Carry A Big Brick album, which you can download here.

Review: Imaad Wasif – The Voidist

Sometime Yeah Yeah Yeahs member and solo artist Imaad Wasif’s latest, The Voidist, brings his classic rock traditionalism to the forefront. Read all about it here or below.

Despite, or perhaps because of, his indie rock pedigree, Imaad Wasif is something of a classic rock purist. From 2006-2007, he toured with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs as an auxiliary guitar player, and he cut his teeth in the LA band alaska! and Palm Desert-based lowercase. The Voidist, however, his third solo album and first for Tee Pee, is everything these past and current projects aren’t.

It seems that Wasif’s heart lies in the big, traditional rock riffs and the folksy plucking of bands like Led Zeppelin and their ilk, as opposed to the dancey post-punk or lo-fi experimentation he has flirted with in other projects. An element of mysticism pervades his music, as it did on his last solo album, Strange Hexes, from the dreamy “Our Skulls” to the Olde English folksong meanderings of “Widow Wing.” These moments are nice, and showcase a confident singer/songwriter working in a medium and style that suits him well, but the traditionalism that he clings to isn’t always very exciting or inspiring. Songs like the pop-rock “Priestess,” that chug along at a brisk pace and are actually more conventional in some ways, fare better.

Over all, while one can’t argue with the conception and arrangement of Wasif’s work, there is nothing that stands out here. Perhaps that is not what he was going for. Perhaps his goal was simply to a make a no-frills rock and roll record with deft guitar playing and sweet singing that is removed from any trends or fads. In that, he has succeeded.

Review: Atlas Sound – Logos

Bradford Cox’s (Deerhunter) side project, Atlas Sound, just released a new album, Logos, on Kranky. Read my review here or below.

The subtleties between Bradford Cox’s two main musical outlets, Atlas Sound and Deerhunter, can be, well, subtle at times. In general, though, the former has been the testing ground for Cox’s experimental solo work, while the latter has consisted of his more rock-oriented (but still experimental) full band arrangements.

On the new Atlas Sound album, Logos, these lines are sometimes crossed and blurred. “Sheila,” for example, a droning but somehow poppy dirge, would feel right at home on the last Deerhunter record, as Cox intones, over and over, “We’ll die alone, together…” Over all, the new album has a more organic, cohesive, ensemble tone and construction than the previous Atlas Sound album, Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel. Songs like the eight-minute long “Quick Canal,” featuring Stereolab’s Laetitia Sadier on vocals, though, hearken back to that first record, as a whispering programmed drum track skips along under synthesizer waves and thumping bass. The same can be said for the ambient electronics of “Kid Klimax.”

But from the album’s acoustic/IDM opener, “The Light That Failed,” to the ‘60s pop-referencing collaboration with Animal Collective’s Noah Lennox, “Walkabout,” Logos is clearly an ambitious evolution in sound. Whether trading riffs with his fellow band members in Deerhunter or digging into the recesses of his mind with Atlas Sound, Bradford Cox continues to make fascinating and beautiful music.

MP3: New Jackson Five Songs

Can’t get enough MJ, especially now that he’s dead and gone (or so he would have you believe…)? Then check out this preview of some unreleased Jackson 5 songs, from the new album, I Want You Back! Unreleased Masters, out November 10.

The conspiracy deepens:

MP3: Mates of State – “You Are Free” (The Mae Shi Remix)

Is this the real Mae Shi or the splinter cell that called themselves The Mae Shi? Hm….

Either way, here’s a song off the recent Mates of State remix album, Re-Arranged: Remixes Volume 1, now available digitally.

LAS Best Albums of the Decade

Read my intro to today’s installment of Lost at Sea’s 2000-2009 Top 50 Albums here. And yeah, the word “douche” needs to be used more in music writing.