Recent listening and self-promotional blurb

[Andre LaFosse <altruist@earthlink.net>]

No Top 10 list, but these are some things that have caught my ear
lately:

Stereolab -- "Dots and Loops"

Very post-modern, deadpan-ironic take on the whole '50s Space-Age
Bachelor Pad/Futurist Lounge Music idea.  Not the sort of thing I would
have expected myself to like from the descriptions I'd heard of it, but
I played a promo copy at work and really enjoyed it.  Still can't decide
how much of it should be taken seriously and how much is a wry
commentary on the retro-futurist slant.  Bonus points for several
odd-metered tunes, some jungle excursions, and the ever-popular cool,
detached European female vocalists crooning heady obscurities over the
whole willfully cheesy thing.

Spring Heel Jack -- "Busy Curious Thirsty"

This might be the best jungle album I've ever heard (which, given my
pedigree, isn't necessarily saying much); I'd personally have to give it
the nod over recent outtings by Photek, Squarepusher, Talvin Singh et
al, even though SHJ are generally not taken very seriously by the jungle
community at large.  Big band brass samples, distorted basslines, and
some allusions to Gamelan and 20th Century classical music (including
one drumless 9-minute atonal epic that I still haven't made up my mind
about).  But it just seems to *work* more consistently and engagingly
than any other drum-n-bass disc I've run across.  Party music with
brains, perhaps...

(I doubt any one else on the list will know anything about these last
two items, but if nothing else I might win an award for most obscure
entry:)

Zvuki Mu -- [don't know the title since I can't read Russian]

A compilation album of the group Zvuki Mu, one of the definitive
underground bands to emerge from the '80s Russian rock scene.  This
seems to be a compilation CD of various pieces from their career.  Some
truly beautiful and disturbing material here.

Center -- "Made In Paris"

A 1989 album by Center, another one of the premier '80s Russian rock
bands, who recorded this record for Polygram France at the height of the
post-Gorbachev media feeding frenzy that surrounded Soviet rock music at
the end of the 1980's. Between the atypical harmonic sensibilities, the
Russian lyrics, and the glossy '80s production aesthetic, this is like
'80s AOR radio from another planet.  

[For the truly obscurely-inclined, I'm currently working with Center
leader Vasily Shumov on a series of remixes of material from this
record; you can download files by checking out
http://music.calarts.edu/~shumov/radio/band/.  There's much looping to
be found, though perhaps not quite of the variety you might expect... 
For more info on Shumov and Center you can check out two home pages, at
http://home.earthlink.net/~lavausa or 
http://music.calarts.edu/~shumov/radio/]

--Andre