I’m sure no one doubts just how awesome Jay-Z’s life is. He’s married to Beyonce, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, undoubtedly one of the greatest rappers of all time, and married to Beyonce. Besides, he’s never been shy about telling us all of this. You can’t have a Jay-Z album without some self-congratulation in every song, and we love him for it. No, I don’t doubt that his life his awesome, just that his latest album is.
Magna Carta … Holy Grail is far from a terrible album. The beats are fine, there is plenty of classic Hov lyrics and flow and some truly exceptional moments. For instance, Jay Z Blue and Nickels and Dimes are both excellent by any standard and F.U.T.W. is quite good. However, these stand-out moments are the exception to the mediocrity that defines this album. Even worse, they are often balanced by moments best forgotten. Letting Justin Timberlake take the first 80 seconds of your album takes quite some effort to forgive.
At 43, maybe we should expect an album that is more business than rap, and certainly the strongest songs are only about topics Jay could address at this stage in his life – fatherhood and philanthropy. Whatever the reasons may be, the result is album best forgotten. This is promising to be a very strong year for rap, but Magna Carta … Holy Grail doesn’t hold a place in it.
Deltron 3030 is a supergroup consisting of producer Dan the Automator, rapper Del the Funky Homosapien and Kid Koala. Their first and only album Deltron 3030 is a space rap opera that laid the seeds from which the Gorillaz were to grow. Their second album, Event II is set to be released this fall and they have started touring again. Today, they played the Stern Grove festival and they were incredible.
The set started with half an hour of Kid Koala all by himself. With no laptop and no headphones, he took us all to school in the art of turntabling. He started with a homage to Louie Armstrong that could have slipped into Future Shock with no questions asked. From there he dropped an eclectic set featuring a Jay-Z beat, his four-year-old child’s favorite song and “a song for the 50-year old women out there”. In case you couldn’t tell, it was great fun.
From there we had a lengthy break for set-up and then Deltron 3030 came out to 3030 from their eponymous album. This is my personal favorite Deltron song and it was excellent live. The song is marked by the soundscapes it presents and the backing symphony did a great job in setting the atmosphere. It was the trio though that owned the stage. With Del rocking a Star Trek shirt, Dan’s conductor guise and Kid Koala’s infinite charisma, they were by far the stars of their own show, as well they should be.
The set was a pretty equal mix of Deltron 3030 and Event II songs, which was an interesting mix of familiar and brand new. Dan the Automator had to teach us the chorus of one of the songs before it started and then cued us in so that we could sing along. Of course, for Deltron songs, the crowd came in knowing the words. 3030, Virus, Mastermind, Positive Contact and Memory Loss all had the crowd pumped from the opening bars. The new songs gave this concert a freshness I have rarely experienced. If the purpose of this tour is to hype Event II, then it worked for me. I am definitely stoked for its upcoming release. Having said that though, the standout moment of the concert came with the encore when they dropped Clint Eastwood, a song both Del and Dan played pretty large parts in.
Deltron 3030 was a landmark album and sounds as innovative now as it did nearly fifteen years ago. All three of the artists are rulers of the underworld in their own right and together they are unmatched. Their live show only bolstered my respect for them and I am very excited to see what will come next. This is the standard to which rap concerts should be held.
Bags and Trane features, as the name may suggest, vibraphonist Milt Jackson and saxophonist John Coltrane in their only collaborative record. Together with Hank Jones on piano, Paul Chambers on bass and Connie Kay on drums, this is a classic hard bop album and showcases both leading musicians to great effect.
One of the defining characteristics of this album is the great respect Bags and Trane show each other. Their solos flow smoothly into each other and their conversations, especially the one in the composition Bags and Trane, are perfect. Despite the quality of their rhythm section, their solos are the thankfully omnipresent highlight of the album. Take for instance the beginning of Late, Late Blues. The bass perfectly sets the base of the song which Milt Jackson then follows and quickly expands into a full blown solo played over the backing of the rhythm. That passage is jazz in its purest form.
The name aside, the album was done with Milt Jackson as session leader and all of the original compositions are his. The result is more relaxed than much of the music John Coltrane was putting out at the time, but that is no way takes away from the quality. This is very clean bebop and though it may be unhurried, it is brilliant.
This is an album that justifies the reputation of the artists who made it and deserves much more notice than it gets. This is an immaculate album, and while it may not be quite the masterpiece that its contemporaries Giant Steps or My Favorite Things are, it is a classic that any jazz fan should be proud to own.
Last year, on a particularly idyllic summer day, a couple of us decided to start a music review website that heeded neither genre nor country. We wanted to talk about hip hop as well as psychedelic rock. We wanted to talk about Chennai as well as Massachusetts. We wanted to make lists; lots of them, about lots of topics.
Now, a year later, some of those things have been done; yet many others still remain on the list that we’ve created for ourselves. It has been a great ride so far, and there is much more to come.
Keep your eyes on Top Five. As usual, we promise to give you the one-oh-one on the world of indie, India and beyond. Thanks for reading!
The best albums have a way of redefining the world in their terms. You stumble across one and then for a while it owns you. You hear it as the background to everything you do. You never play anything but them, but you can never make the music loud enough. The world fades and takes on the album’s tint. You feel yourself change. This is why I’m very careful about when I listen to Unknown Pleasures. This is why you should probably be careful around me while I’m on Yeezus.
I Am A God.
Yeezus is mean. This is not an album for radio. It doesn’t have to care about what you think and it knows it. This is about being a God, about being above the petty concerns of mortals. This is being Kanye West being nasty. The music is harsh, the lyrics are cruel and the album is designed to hurt. God is not forgiving, he is vengeful. If listening to this doesn’t make you uncomfortable then you haven’t heard it at all.
Due to that though, this album is intentionally hilarious. Kanye West has made an art of being over the top and this album is his masterpiece. Whether it is the ludicrous hubris of I Am A God, or the continuous conflation of African-American civil rights movements and graphic sex acts or even just him speaking Swag-hili, the irreverence of Yeezus makes for the funniest album that I have heard in a long time.
I Am A God.
Being a God has responsibilities as well though. You need to be greater than those whom you want to worship you. This may not be what you expected or are used to, but this is definitely a great album. Blood on the Leaves is his greatest song yet and New Slaves, I’m In It and Bound 2 are all cuts most rappers would kill for. While the album as a whole may not be as immediately listenable as MBDTF or even Watch The Throne, it is still very strong music.
In fact, it is astonishingly good music considering how intent it is on breaking new ground. Putting out an album this fresh is a difficult task in and of itself, and not only accomplishing that but also generating one of the best sounds of the year is incredibly impressive.
I Am A God.
This is not just an album, this is a cultural napalm bomb. This is the work for which Kanye West will be remembered. Pioneering, dangerous and very individual, this is the album that only Kanye could make and we thank him for it. Yeezus.
For those who have never heard of them, Metric are a wonderful indie rock group headed by Emily Haines and James Shaw, who also perform as part of Broken Social Scene. They are one of those bands which justify indie rock as a whole by releasing album after album of solid, intelligent music. Versatile and honest, their music is a pleasure to hear. Seeing them live though was a whole different experience. It was without doubt one of the two best concerts that I have ever been to.
Mona
The opening act was a Nashville-based rock act known as Mona. I had never heard them before and their performance made it abundantly clear why exactly that was. About the only thing that can be said to their credit is that they did have a very eclectic set list. Unfortunately, they could not even manage a jack-of-all-trades performance, coming off more as a four-to-six-of-all-trades performance. These things are regrettable, but they do happen. Let us pass on.
Metric
Metric live is a very different beast from Metric recorded. Their albums are often quite soft, but their concert rocked hard from can to can’t. There was improvisation a-plenty, there were guitar solos and distortions, they were almost an entirely new band, but in a really good way. We don’t go to concerts just to sing along to what we already know. We go to see the performers put on a show, and that should always result in something new.
Live shows are where many bands fail as their music just is not suited to the setting, but Metric put enough rock into their music to assuage any such worries. Emily Haines is an excellent front to the band, displaying enough energy to electrify a theater full of people nearly made catatonic by the opening act. This was an incredible performance in every way. It was mostly hits, but there were a few songs in there that I had never heard before. Their encore was also quite noteworthy. They started with the ever-fun Black Sheep from the Scott Pilgrim movie and also dropped in a really good version of Gold Guns Girls and a very intimate acoustic two-man Gimme Sympathy. Also, the lighting were incredible and it does make a difference.
All told, this was a great concert and I will definitely see them again when they next come to San Francisco. They may be very different in their shows when compared to their recordings, but it makes for a much better live experience. I enjoyed myself, and it seems inconceivable that anyone there did not.
There is a lot to talk about when reviewing “No Guns Allowed” from Snoop Lion’s latest album Reincarnated. The transformation from Dogg to Lion, the messages of peace, the imagery of the video and the news clips littering the song. This album is more than a new reggae release, this is a watershed moment.
More important though is whether it is good music. It’s okay. Diplo provides a solid background and Snoop, whose voice was always one of the most mellow in rap, sings quite decently throughout. His daughter Cori B provides a solid chorus and while Drake is nothing special, he does well enough. The song is quite listenable, just not outstanding.
The message though comes through quite strongly. The music video may be a tad overblown, but it says what it intends to. While his singing is not quite Bob Marley’s, it is certainly earnest. It feels good to see quite so positive a message from someone as large as Snoop Dogg and his past makes the statement stronger.
All told, this is a pleasant listen and made much more so due to the message. It may not revitalize reggae but it puts Snoop back on the map and not in a bad way.
Continuing with our love affair with the Kolkata music scene, one of our favorite musicians right now is the very talented Tajdar Junaid. Taj has been around for quite a while; he’s toured with Blackstratblues, provided music for Bengali art films, and was a member of the now-defunct Cal alt rock band Cognac. He’s just finished recording his outstanding debut album What Color is Your Raindrop, and plans to release it very soon. Tajdar’s songs have a certain wide-eyed beauty that reminds us of the smell of rain on grassy grounds, and we promise you’re going to like his music, too. Read on for a short interview with this gifted singer-songwriter.
Top Five Records: Tell us a little bit about the musical journey that paved the path for your debut album, What Colour is Your Raindrop. When did you know that you wanted to be a musician?
Tajdar Junaid: It’s all got to do with the Led Zep cassette that my cousin played when I was 13. I distinctly remember the song was “No Quarter” and then followed “Whole Lotta Love”. By then, I was sucked and swirling inside the speakers of my tape recorder. For two years, I kept persisting to get myself a drumkit but unfortunately we didn’t have enough space to accommodate one in the house. Those two years, I played drums on the school table and irritated my classmates by playing with pens on their back. My elder brother used to play guitars and there was a chord book around. When I turned 15, it dawned on me that my dreams of becoming John Bonham will never see the day, so I might as well learn the guitar to express myself. I started off with the chord book and the first song that I learnt was the riff to Nirvana’s version of “The Man Who Sold the World”. I used to save up my “lunch money” and go and buy cassettes. Of course I’d be hungry at school but man, when you hold that Led Zep or Metallica black album in your hands, you are so satisfied!
While in high school, I started looking around for a good guitar teacher and I was glad to meet Amyt Datta. He totally opened up avenues in my head I didn’t know existed. I started practicing more and more, and music slowly became a love affair. So the decision to become a musician was not a conscious one. It has been more about sticking to and holding onto what you love because it’s a peaceful feeling.
TFR: Your album has a rather peculiar and intriguing name. What’s the story behind it?
TJ: It’s named after a song which was written on a rainy day. It’s me asking you…”so what’s your story?”
Guess who the cute kid is?
TFR: We understand that there are eighteen different collaborators on your album – from all over the world and of all genres. How did that happen?
TJ: I feel very fortunate to have some very talented musician friends from all across the globe. Thanks to the internet, these songs travelled all across to be recorded. I heard Greg Johnson, who is a fantastic singer songwriter from NZ on a CD when I was in high school and had barely begun to play the guitar then. I wrote an email to him appreciating his music and he wrote back surprised to know he had listeners in India. We lost touch until about two years ago, when we exchanged some music again. He liked what he heard and he asked me to play guitars on one of his song. And when I started recording my album, I knew a song of mine “Mockingbird” suited his voice perfectly. I met Fred White (from the thrice Grammy Nominated UK band Acoustic Alchemy) over Soundcloud.com. We heard each other’s music and got excited about the idea of collaborating and mixing my album. Vishal Nayak , who is an old friend from Calcutta, went to study music at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. He played drums on a song of mine from his home studio in New York. Anusheh Anadil who is a fabulous singer from Bangladesh sang on a song too. Vache, who is from Armenia, played the traditional Armenian flute Duduk. Nitzan Sagie is a brilliant composer from Israel and I met him over Soundcloud.com. He contributed on a song of mine called “The First Year”. It’s a beautiful surprise when the universe opens up its avenues to you and you end up collaborating and making music with people who you have never met in your entire life.
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TFR: You went from guitarist of an alt rock band [Kolkata’s Cognac] to a solo singer-songwriter with a seemingly endless array of instruments and influences. Did that happen organically?
TJ: At one point of time I just got bored of playing the guitar and chanced upon Ustad Ali Akbar Khan’s music which completely changed my life and made me question my existence and role as a musician. I became curious and started listening to all the music I hadn’t heard before and learning new instruments with the help of the internet, such as the Ukulele, Mandolin and Charango. I realized my way to happiness is to remain curious and keep discovering my love for music in newer ways, similar to a kid in a candy store.
TFR: You have toured as a guitarist for Blackstratblues in the past. How did that situation materialize? Have you played for Blackstratblues after that?
TJ: Warren is a good friend and we have mutual respect for another’s music. Our common ground is our love for blues. He was preparing his first Blackstratblues tour in 2010 and I was visiting Bombay for a recording so it worked out well. I did play with him again recently and it was great fun.
TFR: Some Bengali friends of ours – ardent enthusiasts of the region’s cinema, of course – informed us of your role as music director/composer in noted films such as Iti, Mrinalini (about a suicidal once-famous actress) and Dui Dhuranir Golpo (about two young transgenders from Kolkata). Very impressive! Do you find that there are differences in the composition process between Taj, the music director and Taj, the solo musician?
TJ: If a scene from a film needs a simple melody, I should put aside my intellect and play a simple melody. And if a song on my album needs me to play a blues slide line,I should practice hard and learn to play that line because the song needs it. When I say “needs” I mean to say songs or any work of art has a life of its own and will tell you exactly how to shape it, only if one shuts his ego and intellect and listens quietly to the song or painting unfolding itself. It’s actually quite simple, we just love making things complex. But the bottomline of everything I do is to have fun and like what I do or else don’t get into it.
TFR: Our favorite song from your upcoming album is the mellow “Though I Know” [download from NH7 here], which reminds us a bit of Eddie Vedder (and occasionally Beirut). However, we think that the title-track “What Colour is Your Raindrop” has a strain of melancholic beauty that can often be found in Hindustani classical music. Tell us a bit about your undoubtedly wide spectrum of influences.
TJ: I’m in love with music and with everything it does to me. It makes me happy, brings me calmness, it excites me, makes me travel in my head. Over the years I’ve understood that all forms of music have something good to offer so absorb the good and the bad will filter itself out. I love the serenity and etherealness of Indian classical, I love Chopin and his melodies, I absolutely dig Albert Collins and all the blues greats, simply because it is very moving, And Thank you Lord for the Beatles. It’s silly not to enjoy so much goodness around you.
/ TFR: “Aamna” [another track from his album] is the kind of ethereal, delicate lullaby that parents should play to their young children. Tell us a few special things about this song.
TJ: Aamna is my pride and joy. She is my little niece who is one year , four months right now. When she was born I used to keep her on my lap and play music to her and put her to sleep. I am a musician and the truest part of myself that I can offer is my music. I wanted to gift her something that could put her to sleep even when I wasn’t around.
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TFR: We’re very intrigued by the instrument that you play on “Dastaan”. What is it? How many instruments do you play on this album?
TJ: It’s a 10 string folk guitar from South America called the Charango. I first heard it in the Ost for Motorcycle diaries and fell in love with the sound. I have played the guitar,charango,mandolin,ukulele,glockenspiel and sang on the album. I would like to learn the piano. It’s a beautiful instrument !
TFR: Finally, on a lighter note. Who is that cute kid on the cover of What Colour is your Raindrop? [see above]
TJ: It’s me when I was 4 years old . Calcutta used to have a lot of strikes then and the roads would go completely empty. I used to be amazed by the traffic police and delighted to see huge cars and trucks stop with simply one wave of their cane. So I was filled with pride holding that cane and posing on the empty road. Perhaps I was grinning and thinking I brought the entire road on a standstill.
You can listen to Tajdar’s amazing work on his SoundCloud or visit his website here.
It’s Saturday morning. The curtains in your bedroom are slightly parted, and there’s a pleasant breeze breathing through the window. A beam of sunlight, just warm enough, glances across your face and bathes the room in a tint of impossible comfort. You just want to lay in your bed forever, a frequent flier between ‘awake’ and ‘asleep’.
You’re not unique in this experience: we’ve all been there. The question is, of course, what should you listen to? That’s where we come in. Here are the top five songs to ensure you wake up to a lazy, relaxed and perfect weekend. Since this list could engender a vast number of possible choices, we’ve narrowed it down a tad by including only inputs from within the subcontinent. Enjoy!
1. You Can Wonder, by the F16s
The F16s are a four-piece indie pop act from Chennai with an impeccable sense of rhythm and tone. Their lovely song, “You Can Wonder”, instantly brings to mind drifting clouds, aquamarine waters and, undeniably, contented laziness. It’s like sipping a fresh lime cooler on a Hawaiian vacation. From the laid-back guitar to the mellow phrasings of the singer’s voice, “You Can Wonder” hits every note of the perfect breezy song. We agree with the F16s: this song lies “between a fantasy and what is real”, much like those fleeting moments where you can still kind of remember what you were dreaming about.
2. Summer State of Mind, by Plastic Parvati
At all of 49 seconds, this excellent song by Plastic Parvati (Kolkata-based The Ganesh Talkies’ Suyasha Sengupta) boasts of four lines of lyrics and an addictive tabla-like beat that will make your morning almost improbably happier. Besides, there’s also Suyasha’s voice: jazzy, quirky, and positively drenched in lackadaisy. We promise you that even in your sleepy lethargy, you’re going to press ‘replay’ as soon as this song starts fading out.
3. Sleeping in the Back of Her Car, by the Shakey Rays
Here at Top Five, we’ve already heaped a lot of praise for our favorite Chennai boys, The Shakey Rays. This beautiful track from Tunes from the Big Belly picks up from the “crazy, hazy night” before the lazy weekend morning in question. On this fateful night, the singer walks around with beer on his breath and a smile on his face, meets a girl, gets into her car and (surprise!) falls asleep. Like most material that the Shakey Rays put out, everything on this track just fits: the palpable jangly beauty of the guitars, their immaculately harmonized vocals, and pleasantly nuanced drumming on Niranjan Swaminathan’s part. Oh, and the lyrics. This song could soundtrack your dreams: let it.
4. Monkey in Me, by Nischay Parekh
Nischay Parekh is a young singer-songwriter from the storied city of Kolkata with a voice that was intended by God to sing softly over sleepy mornings. The pretty, happy “Monkey in Me” is, frankly, a bit of a sensory overload: reminding you of sugary doughnuts and morning coffee (with vanilla swirls!) as much as it does of the way that green, sunlit leaves sway in a gentle breeze. Apart from Nischay’s delicate and gifted vocals, we also eagerly doff our hats to Shaumik Biswas’ intuitive drumming and Rohit Kapoor’s talented bass-playing. “Cosmically speaking, I think I’d be dreaming if I fell in love,” sings Nischay, but we beg to differ slightly: you’re going to fall in love with this song (and Nischay’s music) because it is exactly what you should hear when you’re dreaming.
5. Bindya, by Sulk Station
After shuttling between Kolkata and Chennai, we’re going to direct you to Bangalore’s trip-hop phenomenon Sulk Station’s gorgeous track “Bindya”. On this song, Tanvi Rao recites a beautiful hymn-prayer with all the splendor and clarity of sunlight filtering through a pristine rural morning, and Rahul Giri backs it up with a subtle touch of his electronica. “Bindya” is one of those songs that, if heard in the correct moment, can leave you completely spellbound. That magical twilight zone when you’re just waking up is one of those correct moments.
The video for David Abraham’s “This Time Around” (see below) starts off with an intriguing black and white slo-mo drama about a young kid caught in the crossfire of a hostile home situation. Cut to a full-color drama of his parents making up: him with apology writ across his face, her accepting a red flower to match her blouse. Our young protagonist, however, is symbolically behind bars, helpless in his knowledge that the good parts always lead to worse ones. Pushed about and ignored in the dysfunction, he runs away, an act that – in the end – miraculously brings his parents together.
While the video itself is captivating enough to show promise, it’s actually the music that we want to talk about. On “This Time Around” (listen here), David Abraham a.k.a. The Koniac Net possesses an angsty voice that, while not new in alternative rock, is crafted with a precise balance of emotion. We really like his lyrics, too: carefully-refined anguish that focuses smartly on aesthetics as much as artistic intent. (“Last time to get all this right/Last try: please let me save your life/Even if it breaks my world apart/Even it if means we’ll tear apart,” he sings. We’re sold.) Neat little drum flourishes and some emotive guitarwork provide the tapestry for his vocals, and the end result is pretty darn listenable. Think Hoobastank with less self-importance, or the French Kicks with a little more vigor; all with a dash of Alice in Chains or Mudhoney, whatever floats your boat. Abraham’s music is kind of like “a mixtape for the indie music fan”, as he claims on the Bandcamp page.
“This time, I’m going to make it right,” sings Abraham on the opening lines of the song. Well, in our opinion, he’s done it pretty well the first time.
David Abraham performs under the moniker The Koniac Net (for reasons we are not entirely sure of, as it seems to be composed entirely of him). “This Time Around” is the first official video single release from his debut album One Last Monsoon. The music video is the work of UK-based Karakoori Productions. Check out Abraham’s Bandcamp page for more songs.
