Weekly Music Roundup: Korean Court Hardcore and a Timeless Soul Singer
Week of March 21. Our roundup of music news, videos, and songs just might help you get through the rest of the week. This week, the sounds of the Eiffel Tower, a long-promised Grateful Dead tribute, and a Korean hardcore court ensemble.
Anthony Hamilton’s Classic Rockin’ Soul
Grammy-winning soul singer Anthony Hamilton releases his latest album on Friday. It’s called What I’m Feelin’ and the first single, “Amen,” has been out there for a while; it didn’t leave much of an impression, despite (or perhaps because of) the presence of a couple of super-producers (Salaam Remi and James Poyser, whose work you know from Amy Winehouse and John Legend, respectively). But I’m happy to report that when left to his own devices, Hamilton delivers the goods. The album opens strongly, with a couple of Hamilton-penned tracks that feature his classic soul vocals over a stirring base of blues-rock and a gospel tinge. He’ll be coming to Madison Square Garden (a joint tour with Fantasia) on April 29, but you don’t have to wait to hear the album’s opener, “Save Me.”
The National’s Grateful Dead Tribute Is Coming. Finally.
It’s been five years since the indie rock band The National announced they were working on a tribute project to The Grateful Dead to benefit Red Hot, the organization that has fought HIV/AIDS for many years through a remarkable series of diverse CDs (among them Red Hot & Rio, Red Hot & Country, and Dark Was The Night – compiled in 2009 by The National’s twin guitarists, Bryce and Aaron Dessner). Now, finally, the band has announced that the massive new box set, called Day Of The Dead, will come out on May 20. Six hours of music. Almost 60 songs, most of them covers of the Grateful Dead’s own work but with a few of the folk songs that the Dead played for many years. And a cast of thousands (only a slight exaggeration) that includes Wilco, Bruce Hornsby, Minimalist pioneer Terry Riley, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Sharon Van Etten, Pulitzer Prize-winner Caroline Shaw, The Flaming Lips, and members of Yo La Tengo, Sonic Youth, TV On The Radio, and more. No early tracks as of this writing, although the full track list is quite promising. The National do several songs, including the folk song “Peggy-O,” which The Grateful Dead had adopted as one of their own. You can get a hint of what that track might sound like because The National have already played it live; take a look.
Jambinai Blasts K-Pop Back To Korea
South Korean pop music has begun to make global inroads, but with its group harmonies and Western-dance-music rhythms, the K-Pop style has done nothing to prepare the world for Jambinai, a South Korean trio comprised of two young women and one guy who mix Korean classical music with the dark intensity of hardcore and metal. Their album, A Hermitage, isn’t due until June 17, but the album’s closing track, “They Keep Silence” is out now.
The first sound you hear is Eun Youg Sim’s komungo, the Korean version of the large zithers found in Japan and China. The song is built on repeating, pounding rhythmic cells; and around the three-minute mark, where the electric guitar solo should go, you get a wailing solo on the piri, the Korean traditional oboe played by Ilwoo Lee (who is also the band’s guitarist). Bomi Kim plays the Korean fiddle, or haegum, and the group’s sound is rounded out by pummeling bass and drums, and a moaning sound that one could generously term “vocals.” It’s not Korean classical music; but it’s not like anything you’ve heard from Western rock bands either… yet.
The Music Of The Eiffel Tower
Back in 2008, composer/percussionist Joseph Bertolozzi released his Bridge Music, an album of music consisting solely of the sounds of the Mid-Hudson Bridge in upstate New York. Made by recording the sounds of the bridge’s struts and roadways and cables being struck, it was a musical descendant of David Van Tieghem’s groundbreaking 1981 video “Ear To The Ground,” where he basically played the streets of New York. Now, Bertolozzi is about to release his new album, Tower Music, built entirely from the sounds of the Eiffel Tower.
There is no processing, no additional instruments, just the recorded sounds of the composer striking the various parts of the tower, as he demonstrated to the New York Times in a video back in 2013. It was a multi-year project, and you can hear the opening track, “A Thousand Feet of Sound,” now. The full album is out on April 29.
Les Claypool And Sean Lennon Announce New Album
Les Claypool is the leader of the band Primus, best known to non-Primus fans as the band that does the theme song to South Park. Sean Lennon has led a shapeshifting musical life that has allowed him to find his own place, beyond the considerable shadows cast by his famous parents. Both are known for producing some truly strange takes on “pop” music, and have now released the alleged “radio single” from their forthcoming debut album. Will you hear this on the radio? I don’t know, but even before looking at the title of the song – “Cricket And The Genie (Movement 1, The Delirium)” – it sounded to me like they were about to cover David Bowie’s “Jean Genie” and at the last possible second thought better of it. The result is an unholy mix of late Beatles/early Pink Floyd pyschedelia with Claypool’s off-kilter funk and a dose of the twisted wit that has colored the music of both of these artists in the past. The album, Monolith of Phobos, comes out on June 3.
