New Music Scan

JARBOE: The Men Album 2CD (ALP 167CD) 19.00
"Six years in the making, Jarboe's The Men Album project is finally revealed via a twenty track double-CD, showcasing the impressive range of her interests & artistry. The Men Album brings together an eclectic global roster of artists from diverse musical backgrounds whose only commonality, for the most part, is Jarboe herself. Beyond the music, The Men Album examines the dreams of a woman and the exploration therein of her identity as seen through the 'masculine gaze.' Featured artists include veteran performers: Blixa Bargeld, Alan Sparhawk, Jim Thirlwell, Edward Kaspel, David Torn, Chris Connelly, David J, Mika Vainio, and many more collaborators.



MORRICONE, ENNIO: Happening CD (ACMEM 058CD) 16.00
"This album is the fifth of our very successful El's themed Ennio Morricone compilations. Morricone Happening is a psychedelic montage with the centrepiece being the music from three important soundtracks from the maestro's oeuvre; The Serpent (Yul Brynner, Dirk Bogarde, Henry Fonda), Bluebeard (Richard Burton) and Burn! (Marlon Brando's best screen performance). With this album we reach the point where Mojo and Q should be writing about Ennio Morricone as the master of psychedelia. This music is far ahead of it's time....if you want a glimpse of what pop might be in the future."

Artist:	GRUBBS, DAVID
Title:	Two Soundtracks for Angela Bulloch
Label:	SEMISHIGURE (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	SEMI 007CD

"David Grubbs (Bastro, Gastr Del Sol) has a long-standing history of collaboration and interest in contemporary visual arts. This new mini-album features two compositions commissioned by Angela Bulloch for two of her installation pieces. The two pieces on this CD accompany the works 'Z Point' and 'Horizontal Technicolour,' two major works that make use of -- or, rather, are connected to --Antonioni's 'Zabriskie Point.' 'Z Point' is based on original film material of the famous desert explosion from the final scenes, whereas 'Horizontal Technicolour' uses material filmed by the artist herself at Death Valley, a setting similar to the one used in the final scenes from Antonioni's film. The two pieces by David Grubbs are beautiful and intricate works in which the original Antonioni soundtrack, the translations of the film in other languages, and his own sound palette come together. They show yet another different approach to his diverse musical capacities and are maybe closest in spirit to his Thirty-Minute Raven mini-album on Rectangle. The CD comes with a 12-page booklet with previously unpublished stills from the Death Valley desert taken by Angela Bulloch."

Artist:	VERLAINE, TOM
Title:	Warm and Cool
Label:	THRILL JOCKEY
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	THR 162CD

"Warm and Cool was recorded with the help of Television band-mates Fred Smith and Billy Ficca (also of Verlaine's earlier band, Neon Boys), as well as Jay Dee Daugherty (The Church) and Patrick A. Derivaz, who helped engineer Television's 1992 self-titled album. Verlaine and his collaborators created the album mostly by improvisation and recorded the tracks with a minimum of rehearsal. Unlike most of Verlaine's work, Warm and Cool is entirely instrumental, with guitars often filling the traditional role of a voice in the melody. The album was initially released in 1992 in the wake of a short-lived Television reunion and the rise of Nirvana into a musical environment that clearly favored loud guitars and walls of sound. Warm and Cool's sparse sound scapes represent a clear rebellion from that. Now in 2005, Warm and Cool is being reissued in the midst of another Television reunion."

PURCHASE Black Sheep Boy Appendix

Okkervil River
Black Sheep Boy Appendix CDEP / 12" (JAG089)
Okkervil River’s Black Sheep Boy Appendix is not just a companion piece to their critically-acclaimed 2005 release; it’s also a condensed, alternate vision of that record’s imagery and themes, with the ultimate intent to exhaust and destroy both. This ambitious mini-album rounds up and reworks the band’s favorite unfinished songs (tracked for the Black Sheep Boy full-length) and then punctuates and bookends them in brand-new compositions; in the process, it shows songwriter Will Sheff and company both revisiting themes from their past and shooting off in some startling new directions. “Missing Children” entombs an unnerving fairy tale monologue in an arrangement that recalls The Marble Index or Tilt; its melody is reprised twenty minutes later in a frenetic and jangly rocker that might have been hatched from the side of Love’s “A House is Not a Motel.” In between is everything else; suffocatingly lush string instrumentals, skittering found sounds, lean rockers, deafening epics, the rhythm section interrogating the lead singer, and “Black Sheep Boy #4,” which messily dispatches the Black Sheep Boy character in a lurid crime scene high on a plateau of hallucinatory, cinematic folk.