Brass Trax

New Release Round-up: Forge Your Own Slits

By Rick Sawyer
November 20th, 2009

This week, we feature a batch of reissues and new albums that hone in on the groove, hearty listening for early winter that will keep you warm at night.

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Brass Trax

The Pleasure of Pain Teens

By Rick Sawyer
November 13th, 2009

Pain Teens sounded like Texas. The band took the tape manipulations, decontextualized vocal samples, and motorik beat of industrial music and wed it to something uniquely Texan: fuzz guitar psychedelia.

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Brass Trax

OOIOO: Armonico Hewa

By Rick Sawyer
November 10th, 2009

The recent release of OOIOO’s sixth studio album Armonico Hewa represents fresh evidence, if anybody needs it, that Yoshimi P-We’s all-woman noise outfit is more than a Boredoms side project.

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WEEK IN RELEASES

11-03-09: From Brasil to Blaxploitation

By Rick Sawyer
November 3rd, 2009

Old and new favorites dominate this week’s new release round-up. Two smoking live sets from venerable figures in contemporary jazz offer the latest disproof of the music’s demise. A collection of soundtrack music from the 1970s challenges the myth of “blaxploitation,” and a pair of releases from young musicians in Brazil and Texas promises the world a bright and funky future.

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Brass Trax

Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original

By Rick Sawyer
October 29th, 2009

Robin D.G. Kelley’s massive new biography Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original is first and foremost a demystification of the composer’s life. Kelley, who holds a chair at the University of Southern California, spent 14 years researching the book, and it’s the most comprehensive biography yet of its subject.

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Brass Trax

The Action is Here! A Look at Rhino’s Latest Nuggets Triumph

By Rick Sawyer
October 18th, 2009

If the box set is about to die, at least it’s going out with a bang. Where the Action Is! is one of the best designed box sets in the history of the product.

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Brass Trax

The Sounds of Soft Machine

By Rick Sawyer
October 8th, 2009

Soft Machine was the product of the same remarkable cultural shift that gave us electric Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix, the moment when the formalistic silos that held different genres of music suddenly collapsed and rock, jazz, blues, Indian music, and modern classical could mix with whatever happened to be on the turntable.

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Obituary

The World Mourns “La Negra”
Mercedes Sosa, 1935-2009

By Rick Sawyer
October 7th, 2009

Mercedes Sosa, an untiring voice for the dispossessed and the persecuted, a leftist in politics and spirit, and an enchanting contralto, died on Sunday. Sosa was one of Argentina’s best-known pop exports and one of the finest singers of her generation.

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