Jan. 08, 2008 - Issue #638: Come out, Comrade

New Sounds

Various Artists
Art of Field Recording: Volume I
Dust to Digital

EDEN MUNRO / eden@vueweekly.com

Folk music originated as a communal experience, with the idea that it was music made by the people for the people at the forefront of its values. As such, field recording—the act of taking recording equipment out of the studio and capturing a performance in another environment—became an important part of documenting the music that would go on to influence people like Bob Dylan, who in turn passed along many an old tune to younger bands. Arguably the most famous folklorists were John Lomax and his son Alan, but there were many more back then and the technique of field recording has continued—even proliferated with the advent of small and affordable digital recording technology—to the present.

Art Rosenbaum is one folklorist who entered the field during the late 1950s and never left, continuing to play an active role in recording musicians of a wide range of styles even today. Much of Rosenbaum’s work remained unreleased for many years, but the collector is now getting his due with one boxed set of his recordings currently available, and a second volume scheduled for release this year.

Art of Field Recording: Volume I consists of four CDs arranged thematically—Survey, Religious, Blues and Instrumental and Dance—and includes a book of nearly 100 pages of Rosenbaum’s notes on each song, along with many of his drawings and paintings and his wife Margo Newmark Rosenbaum’s photos capturing images of many of the performers. It’s an extensive work that sheds another light on the music that provides the often unseen backbone for many of today’s artists.

The songs selected for this set are culled from an extensive collection, so Rosenbaum has included music that is both well-performed and well-written, as well as being of historical interest to anyone with a mind to investigate just where many of the lingering themes in popular music may have come from, or through, as in many cases these recordings capture performances of songs that have lengthy histories of their own.

What makes these recordings so special, though, are the unique qualities that are captured in the best field recordings. On the Survey disc, there is the 1978 recording of Sacred Harp singing group performing the minor-key “Eternal Day,” from The Original Sacred Harp songbook, at the Georgia Sacred Harp Convention, where voices overlap, occasionally breaking down into laughter before coming back together, and the sound of the environment is captured along with the singing, serving to make the recording sound more immediate than pristine studio performances tend to. On the same disc is “Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down,” performed in 2006 by Sister Fleeta Mitchell and Rev Willie Mae Eberhart, both musicians nearly a hundred years old at the time, and the sparseness of the recording, featuring just vocals, piano and tambourine punctuates the song’s lyrics, resulting in an almost terrifying sound.

Over on the Religious disc there is the 1978 performance of “Lonesome Valley” by Lawrence and Vaughn Eller and Ross Brown, where the placement of banjo, guitar, fiddle and voices in the sonic landscape puts the listener right in the middle of the recording, while Brady and Lucy Barnes’s 1983 performance of “Walk with Me” stands in contrast, sounding very much like a living room concert performance.

It’s the ability of a skilled folklorist to capture the nuances of a performance in a natural environment that makes field recording an impressive and welcome approach to the cataloguing of music that might otherwise be left alone to be passed along from singer to singer. Rosenbaum has caught some truly breathtaking performances on tape, and this set provides an opportunity to sit back and explore the roads that folk music has travelled through the years, and continues to travel into the future.




Apostle of Hustle
UKing Tour EP
Arts & Crafts

LEWIS KELLY / lewis@vueweekly.com

Founded by Andrew Whiteman of Broken Social Scene fame, Apostle of Hustle is a curious amalgamation of Canadian indie rock and traditional Spanish music. The group’s latest disc, an EP of remixes, collaborations and previously unreleased material, is sort of like the band itself: a strange mix of sounds and styles that somehow ends up working far more often than not.

Though only six tracks long, UKing feels a little loose at times. The first two tracks in particular veer a little too close to rampant self-indulgence. The record picks up considerably from there, though. The final two-thirds of UKing make it well worth the six bucks it will set you back.




David Buchbinder
Odessa/Havana
Tzadik

LEWIS KELLY / lewis@vueweekly.com

Odessa/Havana, the brainchild of veteran trumpeter David Buchbinder, is a refreshing and fascinating take on jazz. Buchbinder and a cast of Canadian jazz all-stars throw Cuban and Jewish folk music in the pot together and see what comes out. The result is much less weird and twice as awesome as you would expect. The styles fit one another like two pieces from a 2000-piece puzzle: complementary, intricate and absolutely unique. There are times when the sound is distinctly Jewish or Cuban, but much of Odessa/Havanna is a wonderful alloy of the two. At times it can slip into the territory of pretentious, boring jazz noodling, but such occasions are few and far between. Odessa/Havanna is a great record for anyone with a thirst for musical adventure.


 

The Burning Hell
Happy Birthday
Weewerk

BRYAN BIRTLES / bryan@vueweekly.com

Tapping into a long line of predecessors that includes Tom Waits, Hayden and Leonard Cohen, Burning Hell leader Mathias Kom presents deeply despondent but curiously beautiful visions of the world in a low-pitched growl reminiscent of a back alley drug dealer who insists on a fresh boutonniere every morning. And his co-vocalist Jenny Mitchell sounds as fragile as a tubercular 13-year-old selling matches in Dickensian England. Happy Birthday is full of anti-love songs and heartbreakingly hilarious truths such as in the lyric “The second cigarette never tastes as good as the first,” as well as slightly kooky Monster Mash-ish ear burners like the sixth track, “Grave Situation Pt 1.” If this band doesn’t hit town soon, I’ll be forced to fly to its hometown of Peterborough—somewhere I swore I’d never go again—to see them.


 

The Feminists
Can’t Scream Loud Enough
Space Dog

BILL RADFORD / bill@vueweekly.com

This album is actually much better than the cellophane cover art led me to believe. Can’t Scream Loud Enough is the third album by Vancouver’s the Feminists, and with it the band deserve to get onto your radar. It’s a beautifully melodic record, with some great moments. It’s easy to picture a live show where people will be screaming the Feminists’ refrains on songs like “21st Century Ghost.” I don’t think this record will make the Feminists a household name, but there may be such a record in the band’s future. Keep them in mind, and if you have a chance to see them live, I’d go for it.


 

Dave Matthews Band
Live At Piedmont Park
RCA

JONATHAN BUSCH / jonathan@vueweekly.com

Live albums to the Dave Matthews Band are like, well, live albums to the Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Neil Diamond or any other musician most likely found under the Christmas tree of a retired middle-class father who occasionally tokes up in the basement since the kids moved out. In that sense, DMB have affirmatively carved out a niche market for a fanbase that just can’t get enough. The band’s seventh live effort is a recording of a benefit for a historic park in Atlanta, Georgia, roping in two of the Allman Brothers on a cover of “Melissa” and DMB’s own “What Would You Say;” they are the most charming items on the lengthy three-disc set, neatly tying together musicians from two generations in their unabashed predictability.


 

Beanie Sigel
The Solution
Rocafella/Def Jam

ROLAND PEMBERTON / roland@vueweekly.com

Don’t get it twisted: even though this album samples James Blunt, features a shockingly great sung hook by P Diddy and opens with an R Kelly collab, Beanie still has the cred to maintain your belief in his gangster. His stepfather recently got immolated by some anonymous thugs and if you can’t tell by his occasionally jail-rape themed raps, Beanie is a genuine ex-jailbird. In a genre dominated by the quest for authenticity, the first step to enjoying this music is knowing you’re in the hands of a professional (a capable emcee) and a guy not entirely unlike Léon the Professional (an assassin played in film by Jean Reno).
Sigel seems desperate for mainstream success on this, his third album, but it isn’t prohibitive. Some people can’t forgive the hyper-violent undertone of gangster rap, but, as someone who watches movies that glorify violence but also show the results of a remorseless lifestyle—like The Professional—I have no problem enjoying this record. The standouts include the minimalist dub reggae of “Go Low” and the completely vociferous military dirge of “You Ain’t Ready For Me” which features perfect vocal interplay between Sigel and Styles P of the Lox.

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