I’ve been a patient boy. And today all my quiet suffering and yearning pays off. Hanne Hukkelberg’s new album comes out today and she begins touring the states this week. What Hukkelberg offers this time around on Rykestrasse 68 is fortunately more of the same: beautifully textured percussion, swaying rhythms and her exquisitely delicate voice. Her bicycle returns on this recording along with 29 other different instruments. The best way to listen to Hanne Hukkelberg is to simply shut up. Shut up your preconceived ideas of what a pop song should sound like. Shut up the glut of voices and sounds you’ve been listening to all day today and let her swab your skull clean, like a slice of aural ginger clearing your head of everything before it, and hear the world for the first time again.
A Cheater’s Armoury [MP3, 5.3MB, 128kbps]
(Original Post 10/25/05):
My eight year old started up on the clarinet this year in school. Never having played a reed instrument, I took a stab at it. Wow. Blowing into that little hole to produce any sound besides that of cats mating was impossible. Lucky for us and our neighbors, it clicked with my son much quicker. Segue to a recent CD shopping spree and I bought this Hanne Hukkelberg album based on the cover art alone. Several tracks feature a gorgeous clarinet and I was anxious to play it at home. The rest of the album was simply a wonderful surprise. Ms Hukkelberg’s calm, gentle vocals evoke a female David Sylvian, and her minimal, jazz-like compositions played on, among other things, pots, pans, wineglasses, and bicycle spokes, make for an organic version of Björk.
Realistic (brainchild of musician/motion graphics designer James Towning) started a la Negativland: whipping up a smirky hodge-podge of everything from self-help tapes to soap operas to classic rock. With Perpetual Memory Loss, Realistic rises to the next level, crafting some outright tuneful (if chaotic) thumpers from layers of sounds and samples. These tracks illustrate the contrast between albums, but don’t even represent the best that Realistic has to offer. Stream the whole album 
Like the 3hive crew, Meanest Man Contest connected in college while involved with the student newspaper. Unlike Meanest Man Contest, we haven’t collectively produced any original work (save for a few exceptions). We’ve spent most of our collective efforts talking up (via the airwaves, a print magazine and CD store—ah, those were the days) our favorite new artists such as Oakland duo Meanest Man Contest. These mild-mannered beat makers and rhyme sayers are steadily building their arsenal releasing tracks with Plug Research, RCRDLBL, Sneak Move, and Gold Robot, as well as showcasing their remixing skills working with the likes of Thee More Shallows, a track that MMC is kindly debuting today at 3hive. Their sound knows no bounds, from the smooth and easy flowing “I Was Only Kidding” to the dark and apocalyptic “Throwing Away Broken Electronics,” to the outright bouncy “We Wouldn’t Want It Any Other Way.” Don’t believe their moniker for a minute, Meanest Man Contest are nice boys making nice music.
Emma Baxter and Daniel Noble, recording as Orilla Opry for Montreal’s Ships at Night Records, make an awesome noise. Folk-influenced, stripped-down pop, sometimes harmonized, sometimes dissonant, with hooks and crannies and texture and detail — if Orilla Opry was a house, it would have character and heavy duty curbside appeal. Try “Riverside 2,” off their latest album Lighthouse for Stragglers’ Eyes, for one of the prettiest, most ear-pleasing songs of the year (well, technically, from late last year).
These United States fall on the Devendra Banhart side of the folk scale in terms of their “freakiness.” I imagine their songs would take you on quite the headphone trip; I’ve yet to put them to such a test. From what I’ve heard thus far from their forthcoming debut, A Picture of the Three of Us at the Gate to the Garden of Eden, my expectations are ratcheted up something fierce. It’s as if I’ve just picked up a new novel, fallen in love with the first chapter, and I’m feeling like I’m on the cusp of reading The Great Americana Novel. As if…
The day I’ve been waiting for has finally come. After waiting 19-odd months, today is the day we bring you a new song from the Ettes. Look at Life Again Soon, out March 11, picks up where their debut Shake the Dust left off, continuing their self-described beat-punk, adding a little more 60’s reverb to drench Coco’s coo-ing, a little more of Jem’s dirty bass, and whole lot of more of Poni’s pounding the snot outta her drum kit. Catch them if you can on their way from Florida to SXSW.
Bricolage plays the smart, snappy, pop music I enjoyed listening to as a younger man—back in my high school days and early college years. This is the sort of song I’d listen to while getting ready for a date, gelling and blow-drying my hair (when there was enough to warrant such a styling) and dressing according to the glossy templates found in men’s fashion magazines (not unlike the Bricolage boys themselves). The upbeat, breezy sounds signified the budding hope and possibilities every new girl, every new date, held. Currently living the myriad of possibilities one such date produced I still follow my youthful listening habits matching the music to my mood. And these days Bricolage-type moods grossly outweigh the stormy, dark, and depressing adolescent funks that often followed less successful outings with the young ladies of my youth.
It’s certainly not all-weather folk, but Ben Kamen’s somber strumming and vocalizing mingle nicely with the raindrops on the roof today. Kamen has a new EP that he’s giving away for free on his website, from which the two new tracks below are taken. That’s mighty nice of him. What’s nicer is that if you’re willing to do Kamen a Radiohead-style solid and pay for the music he’s otherwise giving away, he’ll send you a limited edition (1 of 100 — No. 98 is to the left) 3″ CD with a hand-painted cover. Now, perhaps you’re all iTuned out and that offer holds nothing for you. But if you ask me it’s good to remember that music ain’t just something you download – it’s something that’s created—and in this case created just for you.