Now this is my cup of tea, or more appropriate, my cup of soup. An album named after food. Ya-ka-may is a type of New Orlean’s street food: a noodle soup typically made with shrimp, chicken, roast beef, and almost always a hard boiled egg. Galactic reproduces the multi-ethnic spirit of ya-ka-may on record. The band pulled in a not so disparate mix of artists and sounds from the New Orlean’s music scene into one steaming hot platter of bouncing funk. Everyone from such legends as Allen Touissant (The Meters) and the Rebirth Brass Band and up-and-comers Trombone Shorty and John Boutté plunk down their unique sound into Galactic’s oh so tasty stew. The band generously offers up three tracks from the album, so listen in and if you dig it, expand your palate and buy it.
Happy Birthday
Today is my youngest son’s 6th birthday. Happy Birthday Jasper! What more can a six year old ever want on his birthday than a review on 3hive dedicated to him? Maybe he’ll appreciate it more in ten years. When he wakes up he’s gonna be appreciating the chocolate chip muffin I bought him from our local donut shop.
Back to Happy Birthday the band: the fine purveyors of music, Sub Pop, fell in love with Kyle Thomas’ work as King Tuff. He brought on Chris Weisman and Ruth Garbus about a year and a half ago to back him up on a bunch of new song’s he’d written. Sub Pop picked them up after they’d played five shows. And this wonderful album is the happy ending to chapter one of Happy Birthday’s hopefully epic journey. The skewed musical note sketched out on the cover together with their label’s name describe the band’s music to a tee. If I had to make up a genre name for Happy Birthday, I’d call it hand-clap doodle rock. They don’t actually use hand-claps on the album, but most of their songs are so fun that you wanna hand-clap your way through them. RIYL: Let’s Active, Daniel Pinkwater.
Earth Program
So one of the band members of Earth Program, I won’t identify her specifically, has been pestering me for this post for some time. I think she didn’t really realize that I had quietly retired from 3hive as a way to maintain sanity. Seriously, how can anyone actually listen to even a fraction of the music that’s out there and keeps on coming every day? It was her quasi-anonymous e-mail that did it; “Dear Editor, ” it began. Come on… As a disclosure, I knew this band member before there was an Earth Program, back when she was the complicated girl in the back of my high school Creative Writing class. She was as awesome then as her band is now, and I’m glad I unretired just to share some tunes I think a lot of you are going to like. I mean, just listen to “Eat Your MakeUp,” ok? Earth Program is pop enough to be bearable and strange enough to keep things interesting. Sounds like a fine time to be 20ish in Chicago. Oh, and hi Jen.
Inlets
Inlets’ first full-length album has been over three years in the making, and now fans can finally hear why it took so long. Sebastian Krueger is back with a lush slice of pastoral pop called “Bright Orange Air”, a teaser from the forthcoming Inter Arbiter LP. Equally gorgeous is the accompanying video, directed by Benjamin and Stefan Ramirez Perez. For those who geek out on this sort of thing: it was filmed, rotoscoped, separated into layers, and then run through AfterEffects to create seven different color textures from which they created a rich range of color. Yummy.
Lisa’s original post from 01/31/07:
Sebastian Krueger is the man behind what he calls “the bedroom fidelity project” Inlets. This perhaps makes him both faithful and musical? Ladies? He is also a generous man, and we here at the ‘hive appreciate good music even more when the artists who make said music decide to make their EP’s available for NO dollars to music lovers of the world. Krueger gets “sharing the sharing.” He just gets it. Back when I was a 3hive fan and not a participant, I used to be totally charmed by all this “this is totally a Clay band”, “oh such and such is Shan music for sure” business. Since I’m still pretty new, I’ll just say that Inlets is Lisa music–moody, instrumental, a touch earnest, but musical in a way that avoids sappy sweet sentimentality. And who doesn’t like a man who cut his teeth with My Brightest Diamond? So snatch up the Vestibules EP at luvsound while the gettin’ is still good.
Jaga Jazzist
The name suggests a one-person show, a jazzist of the Jaga persuasion, whatever that might be, but in fact, this is a nine piece band from Norway formed 15 years ago by a then 14-year old, Lars Horntveth. The name also implies perhaps a certain musical sound, but unlike say, The Jazz Butcher, Jaga Jazzist is quite jazzy. Jazzy’s the wrong word though because that makes it sound as if the band uses jazz flourishes and this couldn’t be farther from the truth. Jaga Jazzist is jazz. Jazz purists might disagree, but shame on them. Jaga Jazzist explores the boundaries of what jazz is and what jazz can be. More than that, Jaga Jazzist explores the boundaries of what music can be.
Let’s Say We Did
Sebastian Fors, Sweden’s answer to Jeff Tweedy, used to roll with a revolving cast of characters called The Ones That Got Away. He now leads a group called Let’s Say We Did. Fors’ groggy vocals and lovelorn lyrics cast a nice shadow against the band’s bright Americana pop. Frayed edges in the production make it feel old and familiar, like flannel on a cold day. Cozy up.
Buy the EP here.
Bonobo
It’s been almost four years since Bonobo (aka Simon Green) dropped a full-length on our ears, so pardon me if I get all giddy on you with this post. Bonobo gets heavy rotation in my mixes and iPod for their timeless, jazzy goodness. Like the right jacket, his music can class up any occasion. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been craving some new material. Two tracks from the forthcoming Black Sands album have been released so far, both featuring sultry guest vocalist Andreya Triana (whose pipes graced Flying Lotus’s Reset EP) and both have me salivating for more. If these two flavors any indication, we’ll see some interesting range from our man come the end of March.
Below you’ll find the video for “The Keeper” and both an album edit and a bumpin’ Warrior One remix of “Eyesdown” for your downloading pleasure.
Speaking of remixes, Bonobo is flipping the remix contest script and offering his remix talents to the song that gets the most votes. Get in on Bonobo’s own version of March Madness at bonobomusic.co.uk/remixcompetition (may the best bot, er…artist, win).
The Royal Chains
Sorry for the hiatus. Life got a bit hectic the last couple weeks, and since I’m pretty much navigating this ship solo (alas!) it doesn’t take much for it to veer off course. Queue The Royal Chains. I pulled this out of the latest stack of mail at random and the lack of effort and forethought paid off. They’re just a couple boys from Nashville via Brooklyn, Dan on guitar and Adam on drums and vocals, who describe their musical MO in the third person this way, “They write pop songs that are probably more rock. They write rock songs that are probably more pop.” I struggled to chose a song to post. The whole five song EP is pop rock solid. I decided on “Lucy Takes the Dare” (which leans toward the pop end of their spectrum), because I think it’s the hit. Which is funny because it’s not structured like a hit at all. The song builds slowly, taunts you with a couple pre-choruses, a meandering bridge, then finally, two minutes in, the title is sung three times, and the song keeps building right into the outro and it’s over and you have to hit repeat. There’s some nice texture looping in the background which reminds me of Howard Hello and if you mix in a touch of Superchunk, minus a bit of tempo, you get pretty close to how great The Royal Chains is/are (depending on your plural band moniker usage preference).