2022 continues to bring us happy surprises. In this instance it is the news of a November EP by Melbourne's No Zu. Creators of a heady, physical mix of funk, house, punk and whatever-the-hell-else-they-want-to-put-in that the band calls 'heat beat', they never fail to thrill the senses and move the feet. The EP, which appropriately is titled Heat Beat, will be out November 18 via Chapter Music. Take it for a test drive today via the first single, "Liquid Love". Is is a gooey, slimy delight.
If you've ever seen old clips of Dick Clark's American Bandstand from the '60s, you'll recall that Clark would briefly interview some of the teenagers in attendance after spinning a new song, and asking them what they thought of it. The most typical response was something equivalent to "I like it - it has a good beat and I can dance to it". One wonders what those interviewees, probably in their 70s at this point, would make of Melbourne's NO ZU, because NO ZU is all about the beat. And NO ZU's beat music is earthy, exotic, sexy, inventive -- they call it 'heat beat' -- and not very much like the music Dick Clark played.
How different? I'm glad you asked, because it is time to find out for yourself. This Friday, February 5, Chapter Music will release Afterlife, containing eight tracks of NO ZU's polyrhythmic global music, emphasizing percussion and completely club-ready. And riding the percussion are distinctive male/female vocals, jazzy frills and funk horns. It most probably is like nothing you've heard before, but chances are it will end up on your permanent playlist.
Of course, we wouldn't suggest you buy without trying the goods, so we've included some clips below. And we strongly suggest the wonderfully bizarre video for standout song "Ui Yia Uia". You may decide to buy this album just to have that song and a couple of others available for your party mix. You won't be the only one.
NO ZU are Nicolaaas Oogjes, Andrew Noble, Adrian Vecino, Mitch McGregor, Daphne Camf, Kieran O'Shea, Cayn Borthwick, and Becky Sui Zhen. Additional credits go to Nao Anzai, Adrian Tregonning, Sal Principato, Maria Minerva, Margarita Strateas, and Luke Hodgson, presumably because you can never have too many people contributing to your heat beat. And given the results, who can argue?
Mann Friday is a London-based band comprise of musicians from South Africa, Zimbabwe and Italy. Their decade on the scene has produced five studio albums and a number of fans of their Afro-folk-rock. But their remaining dream is to play a stage at Glastonbury. To that end, they have crafted this musical plea to the festival's organizer, Emily Eavis. The simple and sincere request to Emily is to "say yeah", and book Mann Friday for the gig.
We here at WYMA aren't going to pretend that Emily's job is easy, or that she can or should give in to every request for a piece of the stage. But we founded this blog to help promote the dreams of the artists that were reaching for a higher rung on the ladder. We think that "Say Yeah" is a fine tune, so from the suburbs of Seattle on a Sunday night, we'll make a long distance pitch to Emily: Say Yeah.
I find delight in being exposed to music I have forgotten or never heard in the first place. Every Wednesday the kids atReverberation Radio rescue artists and tunes from obscurity. This week the primary focus is psychedelia and near psychedelia from the 60's. Magna Carta were peers of King Crimson, ELP, Jethro Tull and Yes. I missed them the first time around. Prog-rock fans will enjoy their entire catalog. Peter Fonda was groomed to be an artistic Everyman for America's youth before he focused solely on films. "November Night" was written by an then unknown Gram Parsons. This recording features uncredited contributions by Roger McGuinn and David Crosby,
The playlist is a great starting point for discovering new music. Click on the artist's name and find out more about these artists from Allmusic.com or other web sites. You will be on an another trip to the center of your mind.
The weekly musical treat from the folks at Reverberation Radio opens doors to exploration of different genres, locales and approaches to music.. This week the music runs a musical odyssey from Germany to South America to Australia and to points unknown. This week's selections set a new standard for the obscure. Enjoy.
The folks at Reverberation Radio have once again pulled back the covers to expose long forgotten or never-known tunes. This week the music runs the gamut from Utah heavy metal pioneers Merkin Manor to Nigerien funkster Joe Moks back to Texan Wendell Austin's twisted country view of life and back to some tastefull blues licks from the "Iceman" - Albert Collins. Enjoy this Independence Eve musical interlude.
1. Le Seigneur Rochereau - Laisse-toi Aime
2. Wendell Austin and The Country Swings - LSD
3. Gortopia - Marley Purt Drive
4. The Cross Cuts - Lonely Beach
5. Joe Moks - Boys and Girls
6. Albert Collins - Thaw-Out
7. Regional Garland - Chillin’ Out
8. Tanya Tucker - New York City Song
9. Johnny Williams - Another Love
10. Merkin Manor - Goodbye
Reverberation Radio is a weekly gift which keeps on giving. This week is a trip into a dreamworld spanning decades and continents. Click on the artist's name and find out more from other web sites.
Taureg singer/guitarist Omara "Bombino" Moctar has released his third album: Nomad. The cover art - a wildman screeching away on his motorcycle, long scarf trailing in the breeze - gives some sense of the full-throttle proceedings inside the record. It's a session in which superstar producer and world-class rock guitarist Dan Auerbach (at whose Easy Eye studios the album was recorded) plays the role of facilitator and enabler. It appears that Auerbach only plays on one song, the joyous "Niamey Jam", but he clearly gives Bombino room, encouragement and the space to spread out and take these songs wherever they lead.
Moctar was nicknamed "Bombino" by one of the approving musical elders who helped guide him on his improbable journey from refugee to shepherd to Auerbach's Nashville studio. Tradition and heritage being very important to Bombino, you will hear echoes of other Taureg music and even song titles. But he's also a man of the 21st century, and after all his travels and travails, a fairly cosmopolitan citizen of this very small YouTube world we live in, so the album resounds with echoes of European and American guitar heroes like Mark Knopfler, Jimi Hendrix and Richard Thompson. Knopfler and Hendrix are mentioned specifically as influences, artists whom Bombino was exposed to by friends playing him videos. I would be surprised if he wasn't also exposed to Thompson, but even if not, I find a lot of similarities between their sounds - in a most enjoyable way.
Here's a video about the origins of the album and the relationship between Bombino and Auerbach:
And here's a short summary of his amazing journey, from the information on the Nonesuch website which accompanied this release: Before 2009, Bombino was little known outside Saharan Africa, where his career consisted of regionally available cassettes and roles in local bands. Born and raised in Niger, in and around the northern city of Agadez, Bombino is a member of the Tuareg Ifoghas tribe, a nomadic people descended from the Berbers of North Africa. The Tuareg people have fought the Niger government to secure their rights on numerous occasions, causing Bombino and his family to flee several times. During one such exile, relatives visiting from the front lines of the rebellion left behind a guitar and Bombino began teaching himself to play it. He eventually studied with the renowned Tuareg guitarist Haja Bebe, who asked him to join his band, where he acquired the nickname Bombino—a variation on the Italian word for “little child." Bombino worked regularly as a musician and also as a herder in the desert near Tripoli, spending many hours alone watching the animals and practicing his guitar.
I love the joyous abandon of "Niamey Jam", which features Auerbach on bass and everybody in the studio on something (including bassist/percussionist Kildjate Moussa Albade on cowbell!). I am also charmed by the sad, slow cowboy sounds of "Imidiwan" - the way it's played and arranged may be a confirmation of the universality of the experiences of cowboys, shepherds, desert dwellers everywhere. "Zigzan" has an Oriental feel to it, but the predominant tenor of the album is joy. Pure, unadulterated joy. Check out the video above, of the guys in the studio. And check out this live video of an encore at a show in Nashville, captured by John Brassil:
Nomad is a tremendous record - sure to be treasured by world music fans and anyone with an appreciation for blues-based guitar rock. Bombino's enthusiasm and talent are pretty much irresistible. You can learn more, listen to songs and order the record at the Nonesuch website.
Raul Malo is back where he started - with his mates in The Mavericks. Or, as he sings in the opening cut of In Time, "back in your arms again". The Mavericks seventh album, their first in 10 years, is a return to form (and it was always great form), and it explores all the familiar themes: memory, lost love, moonlight, jealousy and regret - but honestly, Malo could be singing the menu at Shoney's and it would be well worth listening to. The album pulls together rock, country, Tejano, Cuban and other musical influences - they're as impossible to pin down as ever.
Here's "Come Unto Me" from a performance at the 2012 Americana Music Festival in Nashville - tell me these guys don't rock:
For Malo, drummer Paul Deakin and multi-instrumentalist Robert Reynolds, keyboardist Jerry Dale McFadden and guitarist Eddie Perez, the joy of playing together again is obvious. They start off in pretty high gear, with the guitars and drums revved up, Malo just swings and swings through that lead track, and the pace stays pretty sprightly throughout. There are a couple of torch songs - of course there are, there may not be any more qualified singers alive today - but we don't get the first one until track five, "In Another's Arms".
For me, the highlight is the upbeat stuff: "Fall Apart" and "As Long As There's Loving Tonight" feature some great guitar work and show that Malo, swinging like Elvis, can lead these guys through rock songs as easily as he can front a Dean Martin-style love song or something more akin to son or bolero. "Born To Be Blue" is a bouncing bundle of surf guitar, Malo's voice and a knockout rhythm section:
With Lyle Lovett and Dwight Yoakam having released albums in 2012, this becomes the third very welcome "Nashville outsider" release in less than a year. The success of those three in the 90's always seemed like proof to me that talent this good can overcome an unwillingness to stick to "the formula" in country music, and gave me hope that more artists like them might make it onto the radio.
It hasn't been a secret that the Mavericks were back together - this welcome news was revealed early in 2012, and they even played downtown at the Nashville July 4 fireworks show. But to have a full album this good makes for a most welcome comeback... In Time is out this week - you can read more, listen or buy at these sites:
From Liverpool comes math-rock band Ninetails. They're playing with precision, but also with emotion. The bass lines are propulsive, the guitar playing is strong and vocals understated, in places reminiscent of Chris Martin and Thom Yorke. The band consists of Ed Black, Jordan Balaber, Phil Morris and Jake King. They are playing a heady mix of indie rock with world beat and dance-rock elements and some unexpected twists and turns that hint, to me, of a jazz background for at least some of these guys. Their new EP is Slept And Did Not Sleep, due for release Dec. 10.
Here's the video for "Maybe We":
And here is a live performance of "Rawdon Fever" (my favorite cut on the record):
On the video for the single "Cayucos" by Cayucas, the beach scenery is fitting: the reverb and acoustic strumming are reminiscent of Brian Wilson-style pop music. It's also got a bit of the same feel as Vampire Weekend, except it swings a little more "Caribbean" whereas VW stays more in an Afro-pop mode. This stuff is very catchy and upbeat:
Cayucas is led by Zach Yudin, a native of Southern California with a confessed love of classic beach pop. They have released a 2-sided single, "Cayucos" and "Swimsuit", which sounds a bit like a 2012 reimagination of "Sloop John B" - nice organ work, handclaps, with a lot of nifty little electronic touches.
You can listen and buy both songs here:
They will have an album out in 2013 on Secretly Canadian. Looking forward to hearing more.
Melt, the full length debut from Young Magic, probably sounds like nothing else you've heard lately. And I think that's a good thing. Every listener discerns different influences, but to me it sounds like a wonderful mash up of African rhythms, synthesizer dream pop, and trip hop, with a rubbery, elongated bass running through it. Here it standout track "Sparkly", which will serve to lure in all but the most resistant potential listener --
The band is based in Brooklyn, but quite appropriately for a band with such global influences, that is simply the current resting place Isaac Emmanuel and Michael both are from Australia, who traveled around the world separately before ending up in New York. Melati Malay, the other member, is from Indonesia. And the wanderlust not only informs the band's background, but the album itself. There are recordings from ten different countries, and contains samples of music from the band's travels mixed with the programmed percussion and synths; male and female vocals float over the mix.
Track three, "You With Air" --
The production on Melt is lush, and nearly all tracks bring little details to the party that flesh out the sound and distinguish Young Magic from their peers. The album is about textures and related nuances. Even the vocals seem part of the fabric of sound, rather than a separate statement, and are mostly chorus and often have a chant-like quality. But that is and observation, not a criticism; the approach fits the concept well.
"Night In The Ocean" --
If the question is whether there is a current album that is both relaxing and exciting, accessible and somewhat exotic, the answer it Melt. The album is released this week on Carpark Records. The band is touring this spring and will be at SXSW next month.
