Major Lazer - Free The Universe - released February 2013 (Mad Decent)

Genre: Dance, Electronic, Dancehall

Regularly loud as hell but equally adept with quieter moments, the producer named Major Lazer who is alternatively named Diplo but also known as Thomas Wesley Pentz crafts some really enjoyable and striking fusions of Jamaican dancehall and extroverted American dance music. 

Sounding like something related at times to the loud and nasty music Skrillex, Major Lazer is far more textured and studied compared to to that producer's aggressive style and the dancehall fusion gives it a gonzo edge that works for the high-energy party music this is.

Major Lazer uses a lot of guest vocals to give the tracks some individuality and some are a little startling. He does the Jamaican dancehall/left-field dance thing best on banging tracks 'Jet, Blue, Jet' with Leftside+GTA+Razz & Biggy, 'Jah No Partial' with Flux Pavilion, 'Watch for This (Bumaye)' with Busy Signal+The Flexican+FS Green and the opener 'You're No Good' with Santigold+VYBZ Kartel+Danielle Haim+Yasmin where the Jamaican accent drives the proceedings. The track 'Jah No Partial' has a mean breakdown section that is very reminecient of Skrillex. Amber Kaufman of Dirty Projectors singing a quiet but excellent track called 'Get Free' is a definate standout. Timberlee and Peaches have a slightly nasty workout called 'Scare Me' which has a groove that is only slightly spoiled when Peaches starts her contribution with some purposefully dumb metaphors. On the topic of Peaches' lyrics, the line 'I can feel your Wiki leak' is actually just weird rather than sexual, it's a slight complaint to a fun track. Shaggy and Wynter Gordon do each side of relationship quiet well. Pop man Bruno Mars with help from Tyga and Mystic do a stupid and frothy track called 'Bubble Butt' that only missteps when Bruno gets a little too explicit. Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend does a ballad called 'Jessica' that didn't hit as well as it should but it lends to the variety. Overall the vocalists are a good mix and seem to bend themselves to the spirit of the extroverted music rather than divert from it. For any producer the art is to find a way to get the best from each artist inside the guise of his/her music and Major Lazer has carried that off well.

RATING : 4/5 STARS

Lil Wayne - I am Not A Human Being Volume 2 (deluxe edition) - released March 2013 - Cash Money/Universal Republic

Genres: Rap, Pop-Rap

Redundant, irritating, muddled and embarrassing but picks up towards the end, is how I would describe this album. A lot of rap music is dismissed as violent misogynist thuggery and this is the basic mold for this release, I believe that is simply all entertainment and being outrageous is simply a marketing tool. This isn't to say I don't know when something is bad, this album is bad, but I don't get surprised by the adolescent nonsense. If you really like hearing about Lil Wayne's penis then this album will be the best thing you've ever heard but for me it was boring.

The pop side of his sound comes out in 'Curtains' and towards the middle it stops being outright disposable hedonism in 'God Bless Amerika', rap-rock or metal comes out in 'Hello' which is carried off with intensity but for the most part the album can be avoided. These highlights don't redeem the meandering of the first half and the obnoxious lyrics.

RATING: 2/5

Here is a video for 'God Bless Amerika' by Lil Wayne 

Disclosure - Settle - released June 2013 (PMR/Universal)

Genres: Electronic, Dance, House

Disclosure are somewhere between a the madcap music of producer Luke Vibert that is aimed at private listening on headphones and more commercial music like Basement Jaxx, they are British and quite good at striking a chord between the experimental and the commonplace. Somehow the album is neither experimental noodling or easily dismissed dance-floor fodder. The tracks seem simple on the surface but there is great precision used. The bedrock of each track is similar, incessant beats behind repeatitive sampled vocals with what sound like analog synth forming the melodies/everything else. The complexities is in the range and the how packed with ideas everything is while keeping the palette of sounds limited.

There are obvious singles on this set and they should be tearing up charts even if they aren't. The guest vocalists, which there are a lot of, are all on-point. Never do the tracks seem boring.

Rating: Strangely satisfying 

Watch below for the single track 'Latch' by Disclosure. 

Ludovico Einaudi - In A Time Lapse - released January 2013 (Decca Records)

Genre: Classical, Electronic, Ambient

Like much of the output of neo-classical composer Max Richter, who is German while Ludovico is Italian but recorded this album in Germany, this music seems like it was written for a movie that hasn't been made. It has an unobtrusiveness that sounds as if to let pictures evolve in front of it without taking away its focus. There is no movie or television show attached to this music as far as I know so this feeling of the music being background is intended. The job then is to make this understated music demand some attention if listened to closely as it sounds perfect as background ambiance. Einaudi is mostly successful with this task but his clear unhurried piano can get tiresome at points, he isn't as repetitive or hypnotic as Phillip Glass nor as complex as slightly jazz influenced like Steve Reich and he isn't as experimental as Max Richter. He's kind of in the middle, which is to say he is pleasant without really pushing anything. He attempts a few moods but there is not as much variation as this type of music can promise. He relies on a chamber orchestra with slight electronic touches which means muffled flourishes to introduce and end some pieces. The electronic parts are smartly used but it would have been better to use them as more of a full instrument rather than a bookend.

In the end, this music is neither as experimental or strictly acoustic, it's middling. The music is soothing and pastoral while occasionally suggests something a bit darker but it's neither here nor there.

RATING: 3.5/5

Below is a youtube link to a live 75 minute recording of the set 'In A Time Lapse'

The Cat Empire - Steal the Light - released May 2013 (Two Shoes)

 Genres: Ska, R&B, Afro-Cuban Jazz

Mixing a whole bunch of styles into a cohesive sound must take a lot of effort but this Melbourne band pull it off with splendidly. The percussion is right up-front in the mix and it keeps the music bopping along nicely. There are no tracks that have big standout instrument solos but the Cuban jazz influence is very present, especially from the type of Afro-Cuban music from the late seventies and early eighties.There are times when the music dips into dance music of the House variety (see the opener 'Brighter Than Gold') and other times were it is straight-up Rhythm and Blues (see 'Am I Wrong' and 'Don't Throw Your Hands Up') but the whole album retains the same good-natured extroverted vibe.  'Prophets in the Sky' has a Afro-Cuban jazz and slightly kitsch Mexican vibe mixed into a Ska groove. 'Steal the Light' is more in a Ska vibe but has a big horn-led chorus that shuffles in a way that suggests dancing and lots of it, accompanied by a wordless chant. 'The Wild Animals' is the closest to a manifesto for the album with lyrics about escaping the office and getting in touch with your wild-side, with a lot of turntable work and a percussive hip-hop feel. 'Still Young' is a bouncy ska song with a simple message 'while you're still young, find your heart and find your song'. The song 'Like A Drum' is more in line with Brazilian or Afro-Cuban music and the lyrics are mostly sung in language. 'Go' is probably the most driving song on the album, detailing how you've got to let go of your 'omnipresent phone' as staring at it is letting the real world's beauty pass you bye, to Mexican horns and a Ska beat. 'All Night Loud' is a great end coming down from a good time.

Happily mixing styles from everywhere, this was a thrilling and fun release. I don't particularly like the cover-art but the music inside is quite winsome. The message is clear, be as weird and as mixed-up as you really are and don't let it stop you.

4.5/5 STARS 

  Below is video link to 'Brighter than Gold' by the Cat Empire

Paul Kelly - Spring and Fall - released November 2012 (Gawdaggie)

Genres: Folk, Singer/songwriter

Paul Kelly knows exactly which buttons to push on this superb batch of very short understated songs. Kelly spends equal time writing about love's joy and the coldness when it ends, literally spring and fall. All the songs are driven by his voice accompanied by guitar but there is a large amount of instrumentation behind him packed into what seem at first to be quiet folk songs. The album feels like it was written for intimate rooms rather than large pop audiences as the arrangements are bare-bones and mostly acoustic. The set is over in a little over a half-hour totaling 12 songs (one is a hidden track at the end of the 11th) which detail new love, continued devotion, new hope, despair, infidelity, broken relationships and change. Kelly crafts intricate detail into all the characters in his lyrics on this disc but there are no longer story songs, here he is focused intently.

All the songs on this album find their marks. Brilliant.

Rating: 4.5/5

Here is a video link to 'New Found Year' that kicks off the album Spring and Fall. 

Melbourne Ska Orchestra - self titled - released 8th March 2013 (Four|Four/ABC Music)

Genres: Ska, R&B

This record is a hoot! You can really hear on all the songs that the band has been practicing these for some time because the arrangements are just right and although there are like 26 (possibly more) members of the band the sound never sounds crowded. Every song is extroverted and joyous.

The linear notes of the record have a little context to what 'ska' is for all the kids who weren't around when it was last popular which would probably be the eighties. There were plenty of 'ska-punk' or 'trumpet-punk' bands through the nineties that played a version of 'ska' but the genre has fallen away a little since it was last heard from bands like Madness and The Specials. Ska has influenced much of popular music today as it was a logical step from melding Rhythm and Blues with Jamaican Mento to give the music the distinctive synchopated rhythm.

The first hearing of this band was on the Freeview Advertisment that plays on free-to-air television on most channels here in Australia, which is accompanied with the song 'The Best Things in Life Are Free". This song  comes towards the end of the set and it a great way to see out the show. There are plenty of gems that crop up before this with 'Lygon Street Meltdown', 'Time to Wake Up', 'The Diplomat','Learn to Love Again',  'He's A Tripper' and 'Papa's Got a Brand New Ska'. The opener is a version of the theme from the T.V. show Get Smart and it gets everything cooking.

The band can be charged with being a little too reverent and not pushing boundaries of ska music but they show how flexible Ska music is, journeying from times that step closer to Rock-Steady and other closer to Latin music. You could also say that the approach is a bit shallow but that isn't the point, the point is to lose yourself in the music and enjoy it on its own level. 

RATING: 4/5

Here is the video to 'Lygon Street Meltdown' 

(Italian food is delicious after all!)