Hiatus Kaiyote - Tawk Tomahawk - released July 2013 on the Flying Buddah label

Genres: Soul, Rhythm and Blues

At best, this is a promising debut from an Australian act that should produce greater stuff in future and at worst it is kind of frustrating in that it doesn't play to its strengths. This Australian  soul outfit who formed in 2012 try very hard, possibly too hard, as the production choices on this disc saps energy from their talent and the lead singer fights the music to be heard. The ever present bass has an enveloping hazy sound that seems lifted from dub but it doesn't quite fit the most prominent singing style chosen here which is indebted to soul acts like Nina Simone or a slightly freakier equivalent.There is also keyboards that are way to far to the front of the mix and guitars that are buried too far in it. The vocals sound at time behind the bass and keyboard which makes the music sound like it should be center stage leading to the feeling that the songs were an afterthought.  This may have been the case, I don't know. It's just a strange fit. It would probably make more sense in a live setting and if I see this band playing near me I would definitely check them out.

I knew very little about this group past what I read in the linear notes, where I gleamed that the lead singer goes by the silly moniker of Nai Palm, but I had very high hopes on my first listen through the tracks. I was pleasantly surprised that it had the uber-cool sound of a producer like Flying Lotus, who apparently has been promoting this band, but he doesn't deal in songs much and is more in the realm of stay-at-home with headphones dance music.What is here is songs and occasionally aimless instrumentals. Overall the lyrics are stream of consciousness rants but that isn't a problem, even when the lyrics get really strange, it's that the singer seems to want to desperately stand-out  but hasn't got much to say. She caterwauls and then croons, she tries everything to fights the monstrous bass sound and the result is a knotted up album that would work better in snippets in a mix-tape or DJ set. This isn't too harsh a criticism as there is good stuff here, the track 'Nakamarra' is the least complicated by intentional weirdness and it sounds competent. The singer does, for the most part, go up and down her register and all across a wide range of vocal styles effectively but like any young act it lacks refinement.

A very promising new act but the album is mixed. If you're a DJ you'll get more out of this disc than a casual listener who will find it something worth admiring but not something to love.

RATING: 2.5/5 STARS 

Below is the song 'Nakamarra' by Hiatus Kaiyote.

Edgeland - Karl Hyde (Universal Music) - released April 2013

Genres: Electronic, Ambient, Alt-pop

Former vocalist for the electronic act Underworld, Karl Hyde's first venture into a solo recording starts with an absolute stunner in the song 'The Night Slips Us Smiling Underneath Its Dress' that has the same transcendent post-modern feel that typified his previous act's best work but with a greater focus on his lyrics. This track is filled with drugged excitement, a cold echoed piano eventually turns the corner into a warm guitar solo. The lyrics seeming to detail in a pastiche fashion a night out in Lewisham at 2am involving laughter, African Queens, a car crash, drugs and some lonely time travelling through it as a passenger in a black Mercedes with a very tired driver. It is a great start but nothing else gets to this song's high but some do come close. The following song 'Your Perfume Was the Best Thing'  is almost a standard pop song save for a few abstract lyrics and has the pronounced chorus to prove it, it is memorable. 'Shoulda Been A Painter' is a bright sounding song filled with wonder. 'Boy with the Jigsaw Puzzle Fingers' has a kind of unfurling wonderment in the face of the chaos of modern city living.

The feeling of wonderment seems to be the main feeling of all the characters on this album and it seems that these characters are all travelling somewhere in a city somewhere watching life around them. It has the perfect ambient backdrop of keyboards with electronic clicks and beeps to underscore Hyde's lyrics with copious amounts of filters over those. If I had a distinct criticism of this music it is that it drifts a bit like ambient music can, it becomes mood-music that only appeals to people in that mood, the lyrics can occasionally become meanderings. There seems to be only a few tracks that take hold of the listener but overall the album hits its mark without exceeding it.

RATING: 3.5/5

Here's the video for Karl Hyde's single 'The Boy with the Jigsaw Puzzle Fingers'

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