Burnt Fur
Unfurl
(New Shiner)
Burnt Fur is a maddening blend of so many dance-pop/New Wave influences that it gets a bit dizzying. You can hear elements of '80s acts like The Cars, U2, The Smiths, Herbie Hancock, The Eurythmics and The Cure, with some crisp, Blondie-esque guitar sounds and even a few Thomas Dolby-worthy drum machine breaks. There are a few newer industrial tannins a la Nine Inch Nails and the Dresden Dolls, and they've even thrown in some vintage video game sounds that I think are from Defender. Really a great effort, with solid grooves and good songwriting—if they dropped a little extra dough to re-do the vocals in a top-notch facility, it'd be a huge hit. If it was 1986. —Tom Sturm
Various Artists
African Scream Contest: Raw & Psychedelic Afro Sounds from Benin & Togo 70s
(Analog Africa)
Compiled by the esteemed blog Analog Africa, African Scream Contest offers 14 tracks chock full of distorted organ solos, clanking polyrhythms, and punch-drunk horns. And yes, there's plenty of soulful screaming. Funk fans will thrill to Ouinsou Corneille's "Vinon So Minsou" which delivers an insistently slinky bassline worthy of James Brown. Rock fans will marvel at Le Super Borgou de Parakou's "Congolaise Benin Ye," whose angular guitar riffs sound distinctly post-punk. Not everything here is solid gold—notably the incongruous Afro-Cuban jam that ends the collection—but the best tunes make this an exciting addition to the 1970s African explosion. —Jeff Jackson
Pauline Oliveros
Four Electronic Pieces 1959-1966
(Sub Rosa)
These early recordings by influential experimental composer Pauline Oliveros were made using oscillators and tape. There are a lot of atmospheric sci-fi echoes and wooshes and sizzling, shrill frequencies, like dental drilling or swarms of insects in an electric cloud. The sounds unfold at an unhurried, almost glacial pace. The work of Oliveros hasn't exactly aged well for the average listener, and these recordings will likely be of interest only to students of avant music of the last 50 years. —John Adamian
M. Ward
Hold Time
(Merge)
A couple summers back I discovered M. Ward. He was only a couple albums into his career, full of dreamy acoustic experimentation and skewed lyrics. He remained in my mix for months. Despite the proliferation of CDs that followed, I couldn't get enough. Three songs into Hold Time, I was thinking he'd done it again, but then things went awry. Ward's been adding his ingredient to a lot of other people's recordings lately, as well as producing other artists' albums, often to great effect. But these outside influences seem to have clouded his senses. For every song with a delicate melody and thoughtful sentiment, there's another that tries way too hard and gets lost beneath layers of production both murky and quirky. —Mark Roessler
