scissorkick

Hedzoleh Soundz

9. August 2010

This album was recorded in 1972, a year before the band, Hedzoleh Soundz, would rerecord several of the same songs for a classic Hugh Masekela album. Here are those songs, minus the trumpet and dub effects, but given a more primordial force by way of thick basslines, relentless percussion and heartfelt melodies. If the typical [...]

The Macrotones

5. August 2010

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A few weeks ago I found myself in Davis Square—just outside Boston—where I was unexpectedly greeted by the accumulation of vendors of decidedly quirky sculptures and paintings, selling their wares to decidedly quirky people that can only be an art festival. Fortunately, at the same time my ears were greeted by the groovy rhythm section [...]

New Jaga Jazzist Jam

4. November 2009

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The world’s greatest (and only) Norwegian 9-piece electro-afro-prog-whatever rockestra* has re-emerged from their lair with a new batch of indescribably brilliant songs for confused music fans worldwide. By “confused” I mean “awesome + eclectic.” I’d imagine that their lair is pretty sickly designed Scandinavian, with wood tones and tempered steel and smart Feng Shui and [...]

Chandeliers

18. September 2008

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I’m a bit at a loss for words after listening to The Thrush by Chicago’s Chandeliers. Perhaps I’m just being lazy, but I truly can’t remember the last time it was so hard to easily summarize a band’s sound with only a few words. To their credit, the quartet do a huge service to listeners [...]

DJ Mujava

23. July 2008

4 Comments

I try not to make a lot of bold predictions on SK. I am but one man with unpredictable, selfish and often misguided taste. Truth is, far too many people spend their days trying to forecast the next big trend in music. I’ll leave XLR8R to coin the next sub-genre and predict music’s next great [...]

Nomo

20. June 2008

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Michigan-based ensemble Nomo are back with their newest, Ghost Rock, just in time for the summer heatwaves that will undoubtedly settle upon us. I know I have today’s post categorized under “afrobeat” but the truth is that Nomo’s sound is much broader, fusing krautrock’s repetition, the deepness of funk, the borderless perspective of world music, [...]

Chico Mann

10. December 2007

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First off, apologies for being MIA for a few weeks. But good things do come to those who wait and today’s post is a can’t miss if you, like us, love music that blurs the borders between genres. The brainchild of Antibalas’ guitarist, Marquitos Garcia, Chico Mann, is what I personally like to call “8-bit [...]