Reviewed by Eric Saeger There’s no lack of cred here – among other things, Cantora Records launched MGMT’s Time to Pretend EP into low orbit – and this SoCal guy-girl duo have their vibe down pat: George Thorogood hijacking White Stripes. This’d be a logical tour pairing with Band of Skulls, whose less rootsy, more […]

Reviewed by Eric Saeger German DJ Apparat is ambient fetishist Sascha Ring, co-owner of IDM/techno specialty label Shitkatapult. Knowing this now, you may be shocked to learn that his contribution to the DJ-Kicks series is comprised mostly of ambient techno with broad hints of IDM. A study in hypnosis through repetition, this album finds Apparat […]

Reviewed by Eric Saeger Perhaps owing to this Frisco-area producer/DJ’s maturity, I don’t have a huge issue with this album, which is normally the case when I’m presented with novo-80s disco. It’s odd to see the words “mixture of Rick James, Scary Monsters-era Bowie, Kool & the Gang, Cee Lo and Snoop” forming on my […]

Reviewed by Eric Saeger With the one-off ‘concept album’ experiment from The Decemberists that was 2009’s Hazards of Love now in the books, the band turns again to the hayloft-indie space while claiming that 3-minute pop songs are more difficult to put together than conceptual magnum opuses. Were he alive, Bach might not agree, and […]

Reviewed by Eric Saeger Seattle-based jazz chick Coss is making waves in New York, based not just on her Presidential Scholorship to William Paterson University but for her vice-like grip on new-jack bebop. Everything is in place on her all-original debut – agreeable moods, impeccable engineering – making this an instant classic for oldbies and […]

Reviewed by Eric Saeger Ronnie James Dio died recently, leaving several generations of headbangers understandably distraught; Dio made Bruce Dickinson seem like a helium-filled piker. The lineup of Black Sabbath in which he was front-guy was a legendary thing, combining Dio’s wizards-and-dragons trip with the hard acid-metal pioneered by Iommi and his peeps. This 2007 […]

Reviewed by Eric Saeger Maybe you knew that Will from TV’s Lost in Space was making blues-rock albums, and if so, may I suggest that you get some semblance of a life, because all that sort of knowledge does is make music writers jealous. For those who have lives but find this curiosity curious, yes, […]

Reviewed by Eric Saeger With 20 years of singing primordial disco-house under his belt, Owens is without question the Barry-White-and-Smoky-Robinson-rolled-into-one of the genre. Are you jealous, though, particularly when you consider that no one most of you know has ever heard of him? I mean, there are major velvet-rope hits and collaborations with people like […]

Reviewed by Eric Saeger One scrap of unkillable rock n roll wreckage you may not be familiar with is Robert Wyatt, who fronted 60s/70s band Soft Machine from behind the drum kit before he summarily quit to immerse himself in other oddball projects in between permanently losing the use of his legs. He’s legendary stuff […]

Reviewed by Eric Saeger I can allow for vanity releases (the press blurb is that this is the record company’s first release), and I can deal with someone wanting to take some of John Cougar’s pie (if there is any – know anyone who bought the latest John Cougar, I mean Mellencamp, album?). I can […]

Reviewed by Eric Saeger This first proper US release from the UK DJ duo is a mix saluting the Fixed night, the diverse weekly party at New York’s Tribeca Grand Hotel. Listener reviews of the pair’s work are usually quite mixed, giving the impression that SMD’s attention is as deficient as that of a kid […]

Reviewed by Eric Saeger Bletch. “Too much clarinet” shouldn’t even be on the list of possible complaints one could have about a non-jazz record. Okay, this being rubber-stamped as an Americana record, pretty much anything organic can pop up in the recipe book (except fricking clarinet, come on), and I don’t envy the road Apollo […]

Reviewed by Eric Saeger A pioneer of laptop-bedroom DIY, Emil Amos has been water-against-stoning at this project for 2 decades now, when not busy drumming for the experimental bands Om and Grails. Actually the songwriting count for this project is at the 4-digit mark, meaning many, many ideas died so that this could exist, a […]

Reviewed by Eric Saeger It’s easy to see – once you suspend all disbelief that improvised jazz can be anything more useful than the noise of 2-year-olds bashing away at Yo Gabba Gabba toys – how this Brooklyn-based French saxman has a few big awards swinging from his pelt. Most of the genre’s output is […]

Reviewed by Eric Saeger If I recall correctly, I took one look at the the turn-of-the-century flying-machine on the cover of Nobacon’s 2007 album Library Book of the World and labeled the stuff steampunk. He did keyboards for accordion-anarcho-poppers Chumbawamba, which is one big curveball in itself, and his musical (and sometimes real-life) agitprop could, […]

Reviewed by Eric Saeger Another Cali-alt-rock thingamajig that’s done famous things of which you’re blissfully unaware (snippets of their stuff have appeared on Jersey Shore and Real World). The synopsis is that San Diego band Echo Revolution are pretty much a next-gen Smiths, unafraid to throw in xylophone and all the modernity such ‘curveballs’ bring […]

Reviewed by Eric Saeger Nice Americana collection from the Utah-by-way-of-California transplant. In the main her voice is a Jewel clone, but this album’s no mawkish mess, particularly when her small battalion of plugged guitarists takes over and threaten to go completely Allman Brothers on the stuff (Staying Behind, I’m Ready). Calling Your Name is a […]

Reviewed by Eric Saeger It’s not for me to judge how difficult Indian tabla drums are to play, or if any given John Bonham wannabe could blow Sameer Gupta away on the things. The setup is 2 bongo-looking drums, each played with a separate hand. They don’t look too difficult to me, but I thought […]

Reviewed by Eric Saeger To Westerners, Japan is sugar-rush spazz central, bursting with frenetic android babes like 5678s and all sorts of metal. DJ duo Boom Boom Satellites fall into this pack by myna-birding Prodigy; with the pair’s crashy guitars and cybernetic predelictions they’re to hard post-punk what Pendulum is to metal: an improvement. This […]

Reviewed by Eric Saeger Being that this Belgian electro-rock quartet’s 2006 debut album Bring It On had plenty-enough comparisons to Depeche Mode, it’s a mystery why they decided to force-feed themselves Speak & Spell every morning on the commute to the sessions for this album. But then again, like everything else from everyone else over […]

Eric Saeger Saving Abel are part of the messed-up new generation of post-Molly Hatchet southern-rockers, struggling to get porno chicks and find their way in a world where it’s not copacetic for bands to come right out and say they’re mostly in it for porno chicks and pinching out totally awesome guitar solos. There has […]

Eric Saeger You know what’s funny these days, you take a band like this, strip off one guitar layer and all the hooky stuff and it’d be Instant Bowery Ballroom Indie-rock with no chance in hell of ever getting mainstream love. We begin with the run-around-the-city-holding-hands makeout-rock of “Come On,” half Libertines and half Rod […]

Eric Saeger Lofty street-wise hard rock blurring the lines between grunge and air-punch-indie. Arthur Shepherd’s voice is half Chris Cornell on the good side and Scott Stapp on the bad but does avoid the hickish inflections that made Creed so hateable for a large segment of the music-listening public – it’d be fair to say […]

Eric Saeger Considered the jazz pianist’s breakthrough album (a popular 1955 collection of Duke Ellington covers generally doesn’t count in the snobby view of Monk completists), this 1956 classic is one of a handful of monumental albums that recently received the 24-bit remaster treatment at the hands of Riverside Records label owner/producer Orrin Keepnews, who […]