Ab-Soul – Control System (2012) [T.D.E.] // Grade: A-

With its swollen runtime, heavy roster of vaguely psychedelic sounding guests, song titles like “SOPA” and “A Rebellion,” and cover art that suggests some sort of convoluted mythology on par with Lupe Fiasco at his most shallowly obscure, I was initially worried that sitting through Ab-Soul’s sophomore LP Control System would be an unwelcome return to the most woeful of rap trends: backpack. Self important solipsism that purports to describe the “real world” while at the same time being instantly recognizable as the thoughts of someone who refuses to adapt perspective, backpack rap was, in a word, torturous.

But the name always chafed me: the backpack, to me, symbolized the juvenile. But while it often sounded like the dorm-room musings of a stoner college student, backpack rap was never imbued with the youthful energy and sense of naive fun that allows adults to not just instantly murder all young people. Luckily, Ab-Soul has energy and personality to spare. Not that Control System is manic or aggressive like, say, Flocka. It’s closest neighbor would be his Black Hippy crewmate Kendrick Lamar. But where Kendrick is more precise with his laserlike verses and wordplay, Ab-Soul raps admirably but not transcendently. However I might actually find his complex viewpoint more exciting than Kendrick’s, or at least more believable. Because while Ab can get pulled away on sojourns into profundity, he seems inevitably drawn to lines like “I’m a fuckin’ genius grippin my fuckin penis.” Which, for better or worse, is the type of genius we’re most drawn to. Remember, Indiana Jones is technically an Archeologist.

In general it’s just a much more fun record than I expected, but it has the smarts and hard work put into it that is missing from (and again) Waka. Don’t get me wrong, I fucking love Waka, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want a carefully worded boast that folds in around itself in complex ways sometimes. There’s also great features, including an absolutely monstrous Danny Brown on “Terrorist Threats”. So I guess Ab-Soul is one of the (not many) people who’s in on the secret: the backpack can work, if you just take out a book or two and replace it with a 40 oz.

Gap Dream – S/T (2012) [Burger] // Grade: B+

It’s quite frightening really to think about how quickly isolation can begin to dismantle you. It’s not the loneliness per se, but rather the way in which your frame of reference for behavior becomes cloudier with growing rapidity. Without context and point of reference, the “normalcy” of your actions become nearly unquantifiable. It’s this particularly quality which has always been fascinating to me in regards to musical projects constructed by one person. Especially when that person assumes multiple roles in the process, as Cleveland resident Gabriel Fulvimar did for his quite good debut album as Gap Dream.

A psych rock record positively bursting with sound and nuance, its firstly impressive that Fulvimar was able to accurately recreate the sound of a full band whilst simultaneously being what we would refer to as a “bedroom” artist. Armed with this knowledge, paying close attention to the stylistic weirdness imbued in Gap Dream is where it transcends basic enjoyability. Fulvimar is smart enough to frontload the thing with a generous serving of hooks, including on opener and album highlight “58th Street Fingers”. Observe the way the guitars tilt-shift into the picture on it, and the layered vocals whine around, never quite harmonizing but not grating either. It is both a perfect sincere execution, and an ironically distanced imitation of a jangly rock track with folky influences. Unfortunately it’s probably the most successful moment on Gap Dream, which is always a bummer to start with, but the rest is by no means bad.

Fulvimar does an extremely serviceable Squires cover with “Go Ahead”, and the simple boldness of putting a Squires cover (and not even “Going All The Way”!) on a debut album made me happily guess that Fulvimar was just listening to the song a lot and decided to record it. There’s just a spontaneity and unpredictability in Gap Dream that also never threatens its compulsive listenability. It’s funny what people can come up with on their own.

Squarepusher – Ufabulum (2012) [Warp] // Grade: B

Squarepusher, the man who pretty much single-handedly popularized breakcore, and therefore godfathered dubstep, is back. Up until Ultravisitor, his music was very much rooted in British electro, straddling drum’n'bass, acid, techno and breakbeats very smoothly, and making electronic music that’s perfectly audible even if you don’t like electronic music. Then with Ultravisitor, in 2004, when everybody and their goat had embraced IDM (the I stands for “intelligent”), he decided for some reason that he should start playing a bunch of instruments on top of his so-called “abstract” instrumentals. And he stuck his face on the cover. The record also featured canned applause; my take on it? He was tired of being idolized by the twenty-somethings, he wanted to make music that’s just more: more him, more complex, more popular. And it came out adult contemporary.

I have to assume it was a real walk through the desert for him, as he released a bunch of (very) self-indulgent records culminating with Shobaleader in 2010, a weird smooth jazz version of himself that I had all but forgotten until I looked up what his last release was. With Ufabulum though, Squarepusher left his qualms at the door. Perhaps energized by the newfound popularity of techno (at least in Europe), he is back to his first love: computer music. The opening track feels like that intoxicating initial thrust when you haven’t had sex in a while (shout out to The Josh Martinez for the metaphor), it’s textbook Squarepusher, upgraded to the future of now. Unreal Square adds a little bit of chiptune melody which turns into a happy IDM nightmare in the second half of the track.

Then there’s Stadium Ice, a synth-laden cinematic track that should find its way to an AMV soon enough. You may notice that we’re only three tracks deep in this album, and I have already mentioned each and every current trend in electro. What is he going to come up with next, you ask? Eyes full of hope! Hearts transported by joy! Hands reaching to the skies! Well, not a whole lot. I mean, yes, there are 6 more tracks, but they more or less rehash the first three.

Am I complaining? Eh, I could. But I don’t think I will. Even though they re-use a lot of the same elements, and actually take a lot of his old bag of tricks, each track has a wholly distinct feel, carrying both Squarepusher’s trademark and the signs of the times in their wombs. He’s back, yall, and he’s still more talented than 90% of the suckers out there trying to make pale copies of his stuff. Maybe he was just trying to show them how it’s done. Maybe it just felt good to find his old groove. It’s a harsh album, labor intensive, and possibly only a tiny bit of a bigger story that is being told (I guess that’s the “fabulum” part in the title). As I understand it, he has a live show going along with this record that takes cues from the packaging (which glows in the dark), glimpses of which you can see in the videos for Dark Steer and Drax 2. He also has a track-by-track run-down of the album on the Warp website.

Not having all cards in hands, I stay reserved. Enthusiastic, yet unsatisfied. If you’re going into this with no expectations, this is a great entry point into Squarepusher’s discography. It’s a solid album, that is very easy to listen to in one sitting. It is deceptively simple mostly because it has all the elements that are now standard fare in electro, but it definitely deserves a few listens to get the full scope. Will it stand the test of time? I don’t expect it to. Then again I don’t think I expected Go Plastic to age as gracefully as it did.

Merchandise – Children of Desire (2012) [Katorga Works] // Grade: B

Children of Desire, the second effort from Merchandise is a reviewers nightmare.  Its polished post-post-punk can easily be dismissed as shallow, and in a lot of ways this album does suffer from “heard it all before syndrome.”  Still, there is something intriguing about the sheer amount of influences on this album, and how they are fairly effortlessly amalgamated that makes it pretty obvious that this Floridian duo have much more to offer.  “Children of Desire” begs the listener to figure out whether it is the culmination of decades of  rock rebellion or just mere facsimile.  Unfortunately, the answer is painfully unclear.

This album is not merely the next step in a legacy of music that has travelled from the garages of America in the late sixties to London in the 1980’s and back again.  From early the early Los Angeles scene to the retro swag of artists like Interpol, edgy and dark psychedelia has always been a staple in rock’s underground.  This albums is fairly successful at tying all of these eras together, and in a fairly cohesive matter.  From an opener that screams Badly Drawn Boy to  dreamy Happy Mondays psychedelic (“Time”) to big Ray Manzarek keyboards (“Become What You Are”) this album almost seems like a yearbook of shaggy haired and heavy.  There are times when it doesn’t work.  The verbed drums of “In Nightmare Room” a reminiscent of some of the worst experiments of Siouxsie and The Creatures beater Budgie.

Still, for the most part Carson Cox and David Vassalotti weave together such a wide variety of sound that it can’t help but be impressive.  What’s best though is a deep Will Oldham influence that saturates most of the albums vocals and is most evident on the albums standout track “Satelite.” While writing this review, it becomes obvious that Children of Desire actually is a very solid LP, one that probably shouldn’t be downgraded due to a comprehensive set of influences.  Still, as any music reviewer knows, something the seems too good often leaves itself open to further scrutiny.

Music video wunderkind Spike Jonze made the leap to feature film in 1999 with the bleak existential comedy Being John Malkovich. Racking up three Oscar nominations, the film’s imaginative premise of getting to be somebody else for 15 minutes appealed to a mass audience – even if many were confused by writer Charlie Kaufman’s humorous approach to sexual identity, privacy, and megalomania. Jonze strung together an A-list cast (yes, even Cameron Diaz is great here) and as their puppet-master, pulled career-best performances out of the lot. 13 years later, the film gets a well-deserved Criterion Collection treatment.

After years puppeteering to a disinterested public on the street, disillusioned artist Craig (John Cusack) gets a job as a filing clerk schlub on the 7½ floor of a bizarre office building. He quickly becomes smitten with his sharp, sexy coworker Maxine (Catherine Keener). Forgetting about his dowdy veterinarian wife Lotte (Cameron Diaz), Craig pursues Maxine like a frothing puppy with a ponytail. In her belittling manner, she explains how she’s not interested.

One day at work, Craig discovers a small door hidden behind a filing cabinet. Behind the door is a portal that leads into the head of John Malkovich. After seeing through his eyes and feeling what he feels for 15 minutes, the portal spits you out in a ditch alongside the New Jersey Turnpike. The cunning Maxine quickly changes her tune with Craig once he tells her about the portal. While Craigs sees a chance to reach the apex of puppeteering by controlling Malkovich, Maxine sees dollar signs.

Lotte discovers her true sexual self after going through the portal and after a three-way with Maxine, Malkovich begins to catch on. In order to have Maxine to himself and to reach the level of artistic fame he always dreamed of, Craig shuts himself inside Malkovich’s mind and body – becoming the ultimate puppet master.

Looking back at Being John Malkovich, you almost miss how eerily prophetic it was. Because it’s so damn entertaining and funny, it’s easy to overlook the issues it raises about privacy – notably the looming end of privacy, which is something fucking us all up nowadays. Privacy is merchandise nowadays, with reality shows the most popular dreck on TV and personal information being bought and sold through the social media sewer. These accurate predictions made by Kaufman and Jonze don’t take away from the film’s wild humor, but they do make the subject matter more depressing in hindsight.

Being John Malkovich is presented by Criterion in its original aspect ratio of 1.85.1 with a 1080p transfer. For a contemporary film it’s a noticeably much better picture than previous releases. The sound mix is also a huge leap forward, especially during the portal sequences and the classic, frantic Malkovich, Malkovich, Malkovich scene. There’s about an hours worth of commentary from Jonze’s friend and “competitor” Michel Gondry, who speaks about his initial jealousy over the film and his collaboration with Kaufman. Lance Bangs cut together an all-new, 30 minute behind the scenes feature, which presents loads of on-set footage as well as interviews. There’s also a new interview with Jonze accompanied by on-set photos.  My favorite new feature is a conversation between humorist John Hodgman and Malkovich. Malkovich talks about his reactions to the script as well as the nature of his celebrity.

Features carried over from the 2002 Universal DVD include the hilarious LesterCorp orientation video and the American Arts & Culture piece seen in the film on Malkovich’s transition to puppeteering.

The booklet features a Q&A between Jonze and Perkus Tooth (the Jonathan Lethem character) which was cute, but left me wanting the usual analytical essay included in most Criterion booklets. Overall, this is a fantastic overhaul for the film – one of the first movies I obsessed over as a youth. Highly recommended.

Craft Spells – Gallery EP (2012) [Captured Tracks] // Grade: C

“Would you like to get away? Let’s get away,” sings Justin Vallesteros on “Burst,” the halfway point of his latest EP, Gallery. Perfect in that when I last visited the young, retro-relevant bedroom project, Craft Spells, unpacking his Idle Labor debut, I decided that though, decently appealing, he’d recently moved from Stockton, CA to Seattle, WA (he’s now in San Francisco) and I’d hoped he’d find a way to hinge some of that surrounding “rusty gloominess” into the mix. I hoped his skimming, retro-reverie would find its own way because for Vallesteros’ blurry buzzers, his candor for C86 felt drowsy in its own release. The debut just lacked a dazzle. Well, a year later, the baby-faced leader and his mates may have moved around, and even toured the world, but their brand new 5-song release finds them crafting many of the same spells as before.

You know it’s true, most of our lives lack any sort of pliable dazzle in our early 20s, so for that, Craft Spells gets some points, because as it stands, Gallery, again recorded at his parent’s house solo, plays with the same youthful innocence and bounding charm, but proves uniform in its underpinnings. For Idle Labor, I imagined this “dainty checklist” where its maker would cross off things he needed to hit, things like “afternoon dance appeal” and “twinkly release;” Gallery proves that he’s kept the thing in his back pocket since. Five songs at 25 minutes, Craft Spells pond-skip along again, feeling sourced and much too immediate in its crisp little package: “Sun Trails” feels like an waft over New Order’s “Temptation” and “Burst” is a song Vallesteros’ genre has plenty of; In press photos Vallesteros even does his best Morrissey, clutching a bouquet of pink flowers under an arm. Getting something to linger like rookie cards “After the Moment” and “Party Talk” are Craft Spells’ entire narrative and Gallery’s stab at this resonance is one of its longest, the prefab disco bob of “Leave My Shadow.” With something new to the mix, title-track “Gallery” is fronted with piano rather than guitar and rolls along with a myriad of percussive techniques.

This EP is fully an addendum, a comma to Idle Labor and for the hardcores there’s not much wrong with it- a fansite, Fuck Yeah Craft Spells exists if that means anything here- as this style of impacted and carefree sulk has come and moved in, rightfully fit to stay a while. Like the Instragram haze spread over the Craft Spells’ blog, the band may seem like a passing moment but for the music Vallesteros is making at such a ripe age, I’m going to round it all up on those points above for effort, the way that though glaringly sourced, Craft Spells package quite a pile of endearing moments under the relatively thin skin of theirs.

Lust For Youth – Growing Seeds (2012) [Avant!] // Grade: B+

Lust for Youth is part of the true new wave of post-industrial minimal synth music. Until recently, L4Y was a two-piece, but is now just Hannes Norrvide’s creative output. LFY have a long string of previous releases on labels such as Posh Isolation and NNA Tapes including a split 7″ in January 2011 with post-punks Blessure Grave kicking out a Misfits cover.

The new Lust for Youth LP, Growing Seeds (on AVANT! Records, Italy), shows the sound’s progression into a bit cleaner sonic territory than last summer’s Solar Flare. Not that it’s easy to get, there are layers of thick synth and the sound of underground grinders surrounding the militant lo-fi EBM and single off-time echo vox. Although Lust for Youth is receiving much attention, it seems the music remains coy and aloof. Just to reach in, it’s all very cloudy in there. Lines of sound and crunching mids obscuring those lines shaking under splitting highs and that single vocal echo like a dream of comfort lost from your teen years. The glue or maybe I should say cement of the sound is the pop melancholia melodies that trace the lines around your eyes and add a safe humanity to the otherwise atmospheric waves of noise riding bareback on a flatbed of kicks and militant love snares hissing like percussive snakes.

You’re going to listen to this and embrace the familiarity because it’s a glimmer of comfort, but the deeper you go into the sound, as your earbulbs expand and grip the dark, you’ll realize that you know nothing here. It’s just an avant garde game of cold war chess treading lost in a world turned accurate.

There comes a time in every aging, hedonistic skate-punk’s life when he has to put down the bong and put things into perspective. For some the transition to adulthood goes fairly smoothly with limited demons to shrug off, but for others it may take a few tries and you might not land where you expected. Such is the case with Fullerton, CA semi-pro skater Josh “Skreech” Sandoval – the subject of Tristan Patterson‘s beautifully melancholic punk-rock documentary Dragonslayer.

Years ago a crippling depression caused Sandoval to take a hiatus from the skateboarding world. He lost his sponsors and is homeless – crashing in different friends’ apartments and in tents on their lawns. He’s self-destructive – he admits that – and is rarely seen onscreen sober. But he seems more than content living this way; floating around, only slightly bothered by the fact that he’s a father to a six-month-old boy. it’s not that he’s a bad person and is consciously not being there for his son, I got the hint that the mother didn’t want Skreech around. Maybe she’s afraid of the contact high.

We follow Skreech and his tight-lipped true love Leslie around Orange County, Copenhagen, and Portland, OR as they pursue no concrete goal other than to exist. And get high, or course. Along the way Skreech competes in a few skate competitions – placing in 3rd or 4th.

He eats shit a lot and often throws up in between runs, but it’s obvious there’s nothing he’d rather do in the world. Interviews with his friends and Leslie are scarce and no real light is shed on Skreech’s past, but the film is so deeply intimate that any outside opinion of him would feel like an obstruction.

There’s no standard narrative running through the film. Patterson goes for an impressionistic approach that remains affectionate throughout. The shots are beautiful and show a huge amount of promise for Patterson as a filmmaker. The serene shots of empty, abandoned homes and pools make Skreech look like a skateboard warrior in the post-apocalyptic economic crisis.

There’s a remarkable scene at a drive-in with Skreech and Leslie that looks pulled right out of a Cassevetes film. The ending is bittersweet – a smirk tattooed on the face of adulthood. There’s no bullshit sentiment – just an honest, intimate portrait of Skreech and the ugly, fire-breathing, shit-throwing world he inhabits. Dragonslayer is now available on Netflix Watch Instantly. This is the second film released by Drag City. Their first was Harmony Korine’s Trash Humpers.

Simian Mobile Disco – Unpatterns (2012) [Wichita] // Grade: C+

Unpatterns is both better than I thought it would be and yet still not quite good enough to shake that nagging doubt about Simian Mobile Disco’s continued existence. I think back to “We Are Your Friends”, which will always be their signature track even if it wasn’t even truly them and yet still hangs heavy over every subsequent release. Much like their partners on that track, Justice, their first album Attack Decay Sustain Release, while by no means a perfect album, is an important one, or at least a noticeable signpost in the world’s collective re-embrace of hearty electronic dance music.

Also much like Justice, there was a certain feeling after those releases that they had done their work, so to speak, broken through some sort of wall preventing the country writ large from accepting synthesizers, house beats, and techno-chopped vocal samples, but as far as their actual music (especially outside of their signature release) we could kind of take it or leave it. Such is the danger of becoming a symbol. As such, their 2009 album Temporary Pleasure was largely forgettable, and I must admit I was surprised Unpatterns ever even came to be. Luckily for Simian Mobile Disco, it does an admirable enough job setting your head nodding, but beyond that it’s largely unexciting.

Strangely free of vocal samples (long a hallmark of Ford & Shaw’s work) Unpatterns is suited for the club much more than the rest of their ouvre. Everything sounds nice: Simian Mobile Disco knows their way around a sound and the production is nothing if not impeccable. But if the title and cover art are meant to represent some sort of break from convention, the boys are sorely misjudging their work. Unpatterns is essentially a lowest-common-denominator entry into a genre they helped refine in the first place.

Alabama Shakes – Boys & Girls (2012) [Rough Trade] // Grade: B-

Maybe I’m a weenie for arriving late to the party (or perhaps I should just follow Jack White’s recommendations more fastidiously) but I actually hadn’t heard of the Alabama Shakes, a Southern rock band who presumably never met a double whiskey with a side of heartbreak that they didn’t like, when footage of their performance on Letterman started making the rounds on the internet. Talk show performances are a strange art, to be sure, but everyone knows the marker for a good one is when the host genuinely seems elated afterwards, temporarily reminded that the fact that he does these every day doesn’t make them all the same.

After Alabama Shakes, and especially singer Brittany Howard, absolutely tore through single “Hold On” Dave seemed positively shellshocked. So was I. So I was excited to see that their debut, Boys & Girls, started with that same track. Then I was confused and dismayed to find that, while I had seen this exact same piece of music performed with a thunderclap of verve and raw power to spare, here it was anemic, inert, muddled, and lacking in soul. I honestly don’t know exactly what the fuck went wrong in about half of the recording and/or mastering sessions for Boys & Girls, but Alabama Shakes better change up their team with purpose.

Especially on its front half, the album is stuck in a bizarrely low gear, forcing Howard to tone down her caterwauling pipes and leaving her sounding like the mediocre singer that she most definitely is not. Look to the torrential breakdown of “I Ain’t The Same” or “Rise To The Sun” – where here voice is noticeably more front and center in the mix (consistency in mix is almost entirely absent here, making for a weird listen) for proof of her heroic abilities. The band too is needlessly neutered, only coming out to play at the very ends of tracks. The whole affair is a little more than confusing. Especially since I feel they can do so much better.