Monka Magic Vinyl

Release Date: 6/21/2010 LP

IDR 235,000

Most people who follow Ariel Pink were introduced to him by 2004’s The Doldrums, the first non-Animal Collective release on that band’s Paw Tracks label. From the beginning, Pink was presented as an outsider, a recluse who obsessively recorded at home and had compiled hundreds of unheard songs. The notion that he was a supremely strange person making music in his own world was fully supported by the string of albums, singles, and EPs that followed. First, there was the music itself, which saw Pink using an ultra lo-fo recording set-up to re-imagine cheesy AM radio jingles and lost new wave tracks as surreal, art-damaged pop. His music could be bizarre and disturbing, with warped voices and dark subject manner evoking loneliness, bad drugs, and alienation; it could also be sweet and even sincere, celebrating the pleasure of a well-rendered verse melody and a good chorus.

Then there was the fact that the recordings themselves had apparently been excavated from a cache of material from another time: The vast majority of the music he’s released since 2004 was written and recorded years earlier, mostly between 1998 and 2002. So a certain amount of mystery was part of the package, and the recordings weren’t giving anything away. His releases never struck me as possessing the level of genius his most ardent supporters hear in them, but that was OK, because he didn’t seem like he was setting out to make masterpieces.

Something unusual has happened to Ariel Pink since he first started sharing those tapes with the wider world, though. Think of it like the cliché about The Velvet Underground & Nico, but on a smaller, more craft-y scale: His records didn’t reach a lot of people, but many of those who heard them were inspired to start home recording projects of their own. So as different kinds of lo-fi music bubbled up from the indie underground in the last couple of years— from more placid chillwave to roughed-up garage rock to abstract instrumental music— and many of these bands were talking about his influence, all of a sudden Ariel Pink started looking way ahead of the game. And now, he’s been given a chance to do something few artists working on his scale ever do: record an album more or less professionally for a large independent label and enjoy all the increased attention such a leap provides. He did not waste the opportunity.

Oddly, the difference in fidelity isn’t what sets this record apart from earlier Ariel Pink releases. While much of the tape hiss that marked those records is gone, along with the degraded audio quality that came off those old, decaying cassettes, this is still a pretty modest-sounding LP, recorded simply and cleanly but not, from the sound of it, expensively. Haunted Graffiti, which began as an abstract concept, has also turned into a full band featuring experienced members who’ve spent years playing in established independent acts, and each took care to get their various parts right. The vocal harmonies overlap just so, the guitar fills are in the right places, the drumming is tight and precise, and bassist Tim Koh in particular colors the songs with striking rhythmic and countermelodic depth. It turns out that these details make a big difference, even while the album adheres to the hazy overriding aesthetic of Pink’s earlier records. The fact that this is, in a sense, Ariel Pink’s first group of songs created to be released together and presented as a whole— as an album, rather than as a collection of songs recorded years ago— sets the table for a new focus.-pitchfork

Tracklist

01. Hot Body Rub     
02. Bright Lit Blue Skies   
03. L’estat (Acc. To The Widow’s Maid)   
04. Fright Night (Nevermore)
05. Round And Round   
06. Beverly Kills   
07. Butt-House Blondies   
08. Little Wig   
09. Can’t Hear My Eyes   
10. Reminiscences   
11. Menopause Man   
12. Revolution’s A Lie   

Release Date: 6/8/2010 LP

IDR 295,000

For being truly unique and wholly unpredictable, it is hard to fault The Villagers. By refuting almost every genre going, “Becoming A Jackal” is a charming, if slightly strange, effort.

Seemingly a twee acoustic ballad, there is little remarkable about the opening moments. Yet offbeat drums and echoed vocals transform it’s character, adding depth and substance to an already likeable melody.

Whilst there remains little overwhelming in total, each element complements the other in strange ways. Switching between robust piano and muted electric guitar is seemingly an odd choice for a self professing acoustic track, yet it works unquestionably with little reason as to why.

And it is this outlandish charm that appeals so much. In theory “Becoming A Jackal” should never succeed, yet with every listen it becomes increasingly evident that it does, fantastically well. Such an amalgamation of elements is peculiar, but in this case peculiar is good.-Words: Dan Grose

Tracklist

01. I Saw The Dead
02. Becoming A Jackal
03. Ship Of Promises
04. The Meaning Of The Ritual
05. Home
06. That Day
07. The Pact (I’ll Be Your Fever)
08. Set The Tigers Free
09. Twenty-Seven Strangers
10. Pieces
11. To Be Counted Among Men

Release Date: 6/15/2010 2LP

IDR 280,000

Second albums, as John Lennon once famously remarked, are what happen when you’re busy making other plans. Just ask Oxford five-piece Foals, whose career to date has been distinguished by colossal doses of hype and the sort of niggling pomposity which led frontman Yannis Philippakis to declare his ambition to write a “ballet with beats”. Foals, he seemed to be suggesting, were in the Future Business.

The band’s 2008 debut, Antidotes, delivered on the early promise of their cool-yet-frenetic style. But the widescreen production from TV on the Radio’s Dave Sitek hinted at the limitations of their approach – something, you felt, would have to give for Foals to step things up a notch. Their answer on Total Life Forever is to relax the binary plotting of their punk-funk jams and punch up the pop factor. If this all sounds distressingly unlike the future, that’s because it is. But we needn’t fret: the trick here is to locate a beating heart, the missing Z to their rigorous X and Y axes, without losing sight of what made them so exciting in the first place.

First single This Orient is compelling evidence they’ve pulled off the balancing act with panache, shades of Steve Reich infusing the swoonsome pop splendour Bloc Party could never quite muster. Meanwhile Spanish Sahara is a mortally-fixated centrepiece, inspired by the young Philippakis’ traumatic encounter with a dead dog floating in the sea. Building in vaguely post-rock fashion from stark beginnings that recall The xx’s tousled melancholy, it reaches a superb finale, easily the most affecting thing they’ve done.

Indeed, this album’s opening salvos make such light work of this lightening up business you’ll wonder if it’s The Mystery Jets’ new record you’ve walked in on, not Foals’. The chimed intro of Blue Blood features Yannis properly singing and could almost be Glasvegas, at least until it suckers you with an ace chorus that steps directly to the dancefloor. Miami is 80s stadium funk with barrelling bass and a strangely hip hop undertow. And the title-track feels similarly funky, but in a precision pop context. Elsewhere, 2 Trees finds subtler ways to grow: it’s a breathy beauty recalling the delicately-knitted textures of Can at their most blissed-out.

Total Life Forever’s break with the past is astutely judged, the execution is even better. For all their occasionally high-falutin’ talk of Arthur Russell and Fela Kuti and the Wu-Tang Clan as influences, Foals’ victory here is to loosen up and enjoy the moment. After all, the future can be a self-defeating business.-bbc.co.uk

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Release Date: 6/29/2010 LP

IDR 245,000

Suckers make music with personality. Just over a year ago, the Brooklyn indie rock outfit released its debut EP. It was buoyant and sweet and ended on one very high note: “It Gets Your Body Movin’”. The song is an arm-in-armer, a slow-burning summer anthem whose titular chorus demanded you sing along even if you weren’t surrounded by friends. The guitars were light and clean, but you could smell the booze on every single member’s breath, from the first chant to the wide-mouthed coda. Now that song sits at the halfway point of Wild Smile, Suckers’ first full-length and an effort that bubbles with the same wingnut energy that debut EP did. Its homestretch is still a revelation, and it’s not the only one to be found herein. Wild Smile is wild indeed, the band’s aesthetic and feel summed up perfectly by the cover art.

The trick is variety. Few songs (see: the forgettable “King of Snakes”) break free of the same blueprint— build gradually, build casually, and then get everyone together for a grand finale. Each is constructed the same way, but check out how Suckers decorate the dynamics. Opener “Save Your Love for Me” kicks off in soft-rock fashion, swaying just until the drums kick, the guitars gain Neil Young-like heft, and the vocals are vaulted into operatic heights. Listen closely and you’ll hear a guitar lick that was ripped from an Oasis song. But what’s remarkable is how much each song’s ingredients join without creating a mess. Suckers are rarely as sloppy as they seem. “Black Sheep” leans as heavily on Modest Mouse as the band has previously, its chorus probably screamed into pickups just like Isaac Brock. While “A Mind I Knew” morphs from organ grinder into tribal weird out, “2 Eyes 2 C” sounds like Auto-Tuned choir practice and “Roman Candles” gets by on whistling plus pinwheeling falsetto. There’s a lot going on. And what could have crippled Wild Smile unifies it instead, each influence made their own because they dab it with color and whimsy that’s distinctly their own.

Quinn Walker and Austin Fisher’s voices can grate a little, both ringers at times for two of the more difficult frontmen of the past few years: Alec Ounsworth and Wild Beasts’ Hayden Thorpe. But what could come off as pretense seems silly instead. As they take turns on highlight “Martha”, they do it with heart you can hear. When they combine to cry Martha’s name, horns bleating behind them, they sound free. That you can hear everywhere on Wild Smile and predictably, it’s how they choose to close shop: “Loose Change” features lullaby piano, “Seinfeld” slap bass, a Talking Heads riff, and a crowd of well-wishers to carry the last coda home. Everyone’s singing and everyone’s clapping and everyone sounds to be having the best time.-pitchfork

Tracklist

01. Save Your Love For Me
02. Black Sheep
03. Before Your Birthday Ends
04. You Can Keep Me Runnin’ Around
05. A Mind I Knew
06. Roman Candles
07. It Gets Your Body Movin’
08. Martha
09. King Of Snakes
10. 2 Eyes 2 C
11. Loose Change

Release Date: 6/8/2010 LP

IDR 245,000

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Release Date: 6/8/2010 LP

IDR 235,000

In 1999, before we started getting used to the idea of French-style house leading hipsters in droves onto dancefloors, Ratatat began whetting certain prescient appetites with gossamer dance tracks that sounded as if they had been grounded against gravel. It was that unswerving balance between a majestic tunefulness – theirs in particular articulated by a nous for classical music – and a cutting edginess that made Ratatat something of a precursor to the likes of Digitalism and Justice. Moreover, tracks like “Lex” and “Seventeen Years”, where pearlescent guitar hooks beamed in surprising comfort with Bach-like curlicues showed us that the Brooklyn duo could play Daft Punk at their own game, and then some.

Over a decade and three albums later, Evan Mast and Mike Stroud continue to display an unfailing capacity to innovate within a genre whose expiry date seemed imminent a year ago. Their poker-faced, ironically titled LP4, recorded in rural upstate New York, extends the bounds first disturbed of its foundations by 2008’s LP3. In fact much of what became LP4 was residual material from the LP3 recording sessions. So Mast and Stroud deserve a double pat on the back for creating their best album yet from scraps.

On LP4 the metallic crunch of albums past is macerated by material that sounds like it could have been produced by The Zombies had that band gotten hitched with Brian May sometime between the reigns of Atari and Beverly Hills 90210. (Preposterous, I know.) Stroud’s trademark guitar cries unfold and warp as if in permutations of the notorious guitar lick from said television show’s original theme song, jostling for attention with the duo’s tested baroque influences. Newfound sources of delight also figure here, including about a city block’s worth of sonic flotsam, vocal samples from a Werner Herzog film and snippets of an interview with Linda Manz of Days of Heaven fame that the duo conducted quite by accident-Popmatters

Tracklist

01. Bilar    
02. Drugs    
03. Neckbrace    
04. We Can’t Be Stopped
05. Bob Ghandi    
06. Mandy    
07. Mahalo    
08. Party With Children
09. Sunblocks    
10. Bare Feast
11. Graper Juice City    
12. Alps