Me'shell NdegeOcello - "Peace Beyond Passion" (Maverick/Reprise)
I'd have been a very contented bunny if Me'shell had just done a retread of
"Plantation Lullabies", which counts as the most amazing debut album I've
ever heard, but retreading anything is obviously not in her nature.
"Peace" is an utterly different LP. "Lullabies" was and still is a
genre-busting classic, but "Peace" defies categorization yet further.
Lyrically ever bit as tough, the focus has changed - the "politics, low
income housing and abortion" has given way to religion and sexual politics.
The musical scope has widened - the hip hop, funk, soul & jazz of the first
LP are all still present, but there are more rock, psychedelic and gospel
touches, less programming and less emphasis on catchy choruses. She still
plays some wicked bass too.
All of this is both good and bad news - I love this LP, but hardly anyone
bought the first one, and "Peace" is even less commercial. Me'shell has made
it clear in interviews that despite all of the great reviews and grammy
nominations, "Lullabies" has made her far from comfortably well off - in
fact it's put her in debt, and if this one fails to take off her solo career
may be at an end.
In other words: buy this LP. Fund my habit.
PS: caught Me'shell a couple of weeks back at Subterania. This makes it four
times I've seen her live, but this time around was the best ever - just
utterly fantastic, and has to count amongst the top five gigs I've ever
seen. She turned the gorgeous break on "Leviticus: Faggot" into a whole
track in it's own right. It's the sort of thing that makes me wish my head
had better playback facilities...
Nicolette - "Let No One Live Rent Free In Your Head" (Talkin' Loud)
One wonders whether some reviewers ever actually listen to the records. I've
seen this LP described (more or less) as "set to a soundtrack of skittering
jungle beats". Mind you, outside the dance music press, jungle beats are
always described as "skittering". More importantly this LP *is not jungle*.
It's _far_ more fun than that. Parts of this are probably the scariest
all-out noise assault to grace the "chart" racks of your local HMV for quite
some time.
Nicolette herself has been around for some while - she sang on some of the
early Shut Up And Dance hits which laid much of the foundations upon which
Jungle has been built, and also appeared on Massive Attack's "Protection".
Some of this LP is quite pretty and melodic, including the only track which
you could reasonably describe as "jungle" ("Song For Europe" - which if
you've heard any 4Hero/Jacob's Optical Stairway will sound quite familiar,
produced as it is by Dego.) But many of the backing tracks have a seriously
industrial feel. The high points of this are the two Alex Empire produced
tracks "Nervous" and "Nightmare", which are major noise onslaughts -
"Nervous" makes me think of Nine Inch Nails for some reason. The obviously
Kraftwerk-inspired Plaid remix of "No Government" is pretty good on this
tip, as is "Beautiful Day" which sounds suspiciously like Keith LeBlanc back
when he was noisy.
Me, I like this sort of thing - but if you're after a coffee-table drum 'n
bass LP, stick to EBTG :-)
Photek - "Hidden Camera" EP (Virgin/Science)
Now this *is* drum & bass. For a 4-track EP, this is priced at a ridiculous
7+ quid. But it's worth it. Over the past couple of years, Photek has been
producing some of the most innovative drum & bass around, and with this
first release on Science he's taking the opportunity to make less obviously
dance-oriented sounds.
There are two mixes of the title track here, but you'd be hard pressed to
spot anything they have in common. I've long thought that drum & bass's
playing around with rhythm has much in common with what Steve Coleman has
been doing in Jazz, and the first mix of Hidden Camera has now become
Exhibit A) in my case. This isn't some attempt at "fusion", but nevertheless
comes out sounding like it could be an M-BASE rhythm track, and the moody
paranoid feel of the track just adds to this. Funnily enough my brother said
exactly the same thing when I played it to him, without me saying a word.
The "static mix" is just as interesting, bringing in an absolutely *massive*
(and almost certainly frequency
shifted) funk electric bass sample, with a lot of space in the mix around the
shifting patterns of beats. The temptation to play this _extremely_ loud is
quite hard to resist... I think I'm with Oscar Wilde on this one... :-)
Steve Coleman and Five Elements - "Curves Of Life"
Since I mention Steve Coleman... he has a series of three LPs recorded live
in Paris out, but this is the only one that seems to have had a european
release so far. It's a mixture of tracks from previous albums and
improvisations. David Murray guests on a couple of tracks and the whole
thing just slams. Check out "Drop Kick" and "Fire Theme" in particular for
mad funkiness, and a gorgeous version of "'Round Midnight". Murray's solo on
"Fire Theme" is just beyond outrageous, and right after that the three
rappers from Coleman's "Metrics" band
(featured on one of the other LPs) drop in some freestyle lyrics before the
rest of the band wrap things up nicely - an odd but utterly thrilling
combination. Makes my hairs stand on end at any rate...
-------------------------------------------------------------
Mark Allerton Mark@warmspot.compulink.co.uk
http://www.compulink.co.uk/~warmspot/