brian

Artist: Rudi Zygadlo

Album: Tragicomedies

Scotland’s Rudi Zygadlo was introduced to me, for his 2010 debut the Great Western Layman, as a maker of something electronic called “dubstep”. He does do clever things with electro-sonic manipulation, about which more shortly, but that label slowed my recognition of what on Tragicomedies is at least as important: he writes excellent, distinctive vocal melodies. They’re graceful, and modest in scope, but full of odd intervals, sharps or flats where […]

Artist: Paul Weller

Album: Sonik Kicks

Paul Weller is a major star in England; has been since 1977. First he led the Jam, the most articulate and cautious of the first-wave punk stars. Then he led the Style Council, who made smooth soul/ R+B/ swing jazz musics. Then, under his own name, he spent two decades making rootsier soul-rock: brand new Classic Rock for the Adult Contemporary stations. I’ve never really been a fan. But suddenly, in 2012, […]

Artist: Mawwal

Album: High Hills in the Creaving Road

My largest musical discovery of 2012 was songwriter/ band leader Jim Matus, long-ago Berklee composition student and guitar student of jazz great Pat Metheny. First, I discovered his three albums leading Paranoise, who began as a skronky, brassy,  angular New Wave band for Start a New Race, but evolved — here’s the relevant part — into making heavy, hypnotic World Music with tunings centered in the Afghanistan/ Pakistan region. […]