“Hallo?” Jahmek Power shouts into his mobile phone, the sounds of a raging party drowning out his valiant attempts at being heard. “I’m at a pahty. I’m going to leave the building because it’s way too loud.” Once outside, the situation gets worse as party-goers start asking the artist known as Jammer for directions. “This is the pahty here. I’m doing an interview bruvva,” he says as his patience wears thin. “Because I’ve come outside, they think I work here or somefink.”
     Contrary to what it might sound like, Jammer is in fact an extremely professional fellow — particularly when compared to his fellow grime masters, like Dizzee Rascal, Wiley, and Tinchy Stryder. Grime superstars (and unknowns) are notoriously unreliable, notoriously competitive, notoriously antagonistic. Jammer is none of these things. “A lot of people didn’t expect to be in the situation they are in,” Jammer says of the grime mentality. “They had a talent. They loved music. They done it and didn’t know they were going to get that much interest. I don’t think they was really ready for it. I’ve been doing this for ten years. I have an understanding of how things work and how necessary it is to let people know about what’s happening.”

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This Portland, Oregon, threesome is known for its free-form experimental style of progressive rock. Electronic instrumentation and vocals that sound like discount Damon Albarn have resulted in Menomena being filed in the indie slot. On its fourth full-length, Mines, the trio have created a scaffold upon which to arrange its wandering jams. Not losing its exploratory tendencies or curbing its quality musicianship, Menomena has used this framework to create defined songs instead of dense, meandering sounds. More emotional than before, the unfortunately named “Oh Pretty Boy, You’re Such A Big Boy” offers honking horns and measured organ stabs that speak straight from the heart. Theatrical to the extreme, the chorus of “Five Little Rooms” blasts against tethered piano and thunderous drum work. While these two are the standouts on Mines the album has a solid hold on melody that has eluded Menomena in the past. The band is developing a distinct song structure without losing any musical chops in the process — the best of both worlds.

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Angela McCluskey’s mother promised her that one day she would look like a Christmas tree. And she does. Depending on when you catch her and what your mood is, McCluskey could be a haphazardly-but-enthusiastically-decorated-by-the-kids tree. Or she could be a candle-lit, comfort-bringing, anticipation-ridden, pine-scented tree. Most of the time, McCluskey is both.
     It is this combination that attracts young and old, famous and infamous, rich and poor to McCluskey’s side. At her 17th anniversary party with husband Paul Cantelon, McCluskey’s home is bursting. The cross-section of guests represent the Los Angeles melting pot, which one rarely sees gathered in the same place. Star-studded, but not glittering, McCluskey has a way of humanizing everyone that comes into contact with her. There is no distinction between McCluskey’s goddaughter, Riley Keough — Elvis’ granddaughter — or Alison Owen, the mother of McCluskey’s other goddaughter, Lily Allen.
     McCluskey brings the notable and the obscure together, breaking down the reserve of the former and bringing up the assurance of the latter. Within her inner circle, which McCluskey calls the “Ring Of Fire”, there is a core of seven girls who serve as each other’s security blankets.

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The Global Peace Initiative will be unveiling its second Peace Monument in the city of Liverpool, UK, on October 9, 2010. This monument has special significance on numerous levels. The location is chosen specifically as the place where John Lennon’s spirit was born. Its unveiling will occur on the day of Lennon’s birth, when he would have turned 70. It also coincides with the start of a two-month-long citywide festival celebrating Lennon and his spirit. The festival ends on December 9, 2010, 30 years, to the day, after Lennon’s assassination. (December 8, 1980 if you were stateside, December 9, 1980 if you were in Europe.)
     The vision of venerable art aficionado Ben Valenty, the California-based Global Peace Initiative was launched in 2003. The idea is to create seven monuments, one for each continent. The first, in Asia, was erected in Singapore in 2005. For the European installment, Valenty discovered and subsequently commissioned 19-year-old art prodigy Lauren Voiers of Ohio. Specializing in surrealist and cubist styles using oils, Voiers started by creating renderings of the monument. These renderings are transferred to three-dimensional representations and created in pieces. Voiers will then be hand-painting the 18-foot structure, which she has titled Peace and Harmony.

Jazz — African style — is Ethiopia’s Mulatu Astatke’s specialty. The veteran musician first reached Western ears with the domestic release of his work with the Heliocentrics, the third installment in the Inspiration Information series. On Mulatu Steps Ahead, the listener is exposed to Astatke’s work across time and space. Collecting together compositions written in the East Coast of the United States all the way to the South of France, it draws from Astatke’s thirty-plus years of musical experience. Mulatu Steps Ahead is a lot more structured than the Inspiration Information collaboration. This can best be attributed to the jazz scaffold that the album is built upon; Mulatu Steps Ahead has strung the Afro-jazz thread throughout. Like the soundtrack to a Discovery Channel program on lions, exotic, hollow woodwind sounds mingle with noodly, self-involved jazz passages, creating a dusty, calming blend. One can almost smell the shimmering heat rising from the ground on “Assosa” while the moodiness of the aptly titled “Mulatu’s Mood” is palpable. Jazz en Afrique.

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Buy this at iTunes. After the jump, check out a video in which Mulatu Astatke discusses the making of his first album in over two decades.

Everything about Massive Attack feels contradictory. The core members, Robert “3D” Del Naja and Grant “Daddy G” Marshall, are polar opposites. The former: diminutive, fair, pointy, reserved yet articulate. The latter: oversized, dark, rounded, affable yet hesitant. Not since the collective’s second album, 1994’s Protection, have these two made music in the same room.
    Starting as a reggae sound system collective, the Wild Bunch, they represented an array of cultures, backgrounds, ethnicities, and traditions. This array drove the collective and gave birth to Massive Attack and the inimitable flavor it had — and has. “We were literally white straight through to black,” says Marshall amidst babysitting his three children in his Bristol, England, home as he placates them with a DVD of Up. “We spread from Italian culture through Spanish roots to Black culture. Coming from all walks of life, it was funny to have us all in one group.”
    What has been heard since Protection — on albums like Mezzanine (1998), 100th Window (2003), and their latest Heglioland — is the individual members working on their own, then bringing their ideas to each other, ready for a face-off. More often than not, it is Del Naja’s vision that bullies itself to the forefront. On 100th Window — which should have been billed as Del Naja’s solo album — there was no input from Marshall, and erstwhile third member, Andrew “Mushroom” Vowles, who had since departed.

No one can accuse Caribou’s Dan Snaith of stagnation. The one man behind Caribou’s experimental operation delves into dance music deeper than ever before on his latest full-length, Swim. Looking back rather than forward, Swim re-imagines the rave sounds of the early ‘90s with ‘00s geek-chic style. Snaith’s signature psychedelic swirls oscillate in and out of the arrangements in varying volumes. This provides the backdrop for the minimal techno bumps and distorted vocals Snaith himself is providing. More than the passing reference to Hot Chip and Arthur Russell must be made, as Snaith borrows his ideas generously from Hot Chip’s nerd-electro and Russell’s fringe-disco. The scratchy plinks of “Hannibal” and falsetto-voiced “Leave House” are fodder for adult dance music. The ambient burps and messy synths of “Lalibela” make it sound like it’s being played backwards (if it weren’t for the incomprehensible vocals), where one can snatch a word or two here and there and realize this is the direction the song is meant to go. This is the type of dance music grownups can get with.

After the jump, check out the video for “Odessa”.
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When you are a young, smart group, whose initial recordings are done without much supervision, there is a good chance your later albums will turn out sounding entirely different. This is the case with Northern California’s The Morning Benders. For the band’s follow-up to 2008’s Talking Through Tin Cans, group leader Christopher Chu takes on co-production duties with Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor. Attempting a lo-fidelity approach again (as on Tin Cans), Big Echo crackles with the hiss of purported vinyl. “Cold War (Nice Clean Fight)” is the most upbeat with a bouncy acoustic guitar and thrumming bass drum tightened by a simple chorus. “All Day Daylight” has a bit of a bite with edgy riffs and hand claps. But for the most part, Big Echo is slow and calculated, the rhythms moving at a leisurely pace. This unhurried attitude is also adopted by Chu’s vocals, which harmonize fluidly, reverberating with the others. Keeping with Tin Cans’ spirit of brevity, none of the songs on Big Echo take too long to get to the point — or labor it once they arrive there. The Morning Benders may not win any originality points, but they have climbed up a few rungs on the songwriting ladder.

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Buraka Som Sistema do it as well live — if not better — than in the studio. Taking the input of Angolan analog techno and modern Portuguese dance, and mixing it with the almost forgotten experimentation of kuduro, the Portuguese collective has created a ferocious new animal. This mixture is explored in-depth on its full-lengths From Buraka To The World and Black Diamond. Buraka’s installment in the FabricLive series showcases what it does live. Raging electro stabs and belching basslines race through this devastating mix. Skream’s “Fick” honks away as Zomby’s “Dynamite Sandwich” rubs and flutters its way to the declarations of Crime Mob’s “Rock Yo Hips” and the hiccups of DJ Malvado’s “Puto Mekie”. The best bits on FabricLive 49 are Buraka’s own compositions and remixes. These escalate the energy level to another place, crunching and smashing everything in their path. The mix moves rapidly, giving you only the choice parts of the selected cuts. This is done skillfully with tracks so appropriate, it propels you around the dance floor — the rapid shifts unfelt.

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In And Out Of Control is the Raveonettes’ happiest album to date. The Danish duo, whose adulation of the surf rock of the ‘60s and the shoegazing rock of the ‘90s is well documented, shrugs off both those characteristics this time around. Instead of Everly Brothers harmonies and twanging guitars, there are big choruses and bubblegum pop. The subjects broached on In And Out Of Control are uncomfortable in nature and read like public service announcements: “Boys Who Rape (Should All Be Destroyed)”, “Suicide”, “D.R.U.G.S.”, and “Breaking Into Cars”. But the goofily upbeat way the two deliver their messages disguises serious lyrics in a haze of sing-along-able fun and lightheartedness.

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The Raveonettes – Suicide