Here’s the short version of the review: fun, glitchy acid jazz done exactly right. Collective Acoustics are essentially a jazz trio creating feel-good grooves with feet firmly planted in electronica land, and BC>AD is a fast, cool ride through that hybrid space. Adding to the disc’s already considerable allure is this info, taken from the band’s bio: “All material is played on real instruments by real people and recorded with vintage and custom built microphones, preamps, delays, compressors and EQs. No samples. No Loops. No MIDI.”  This adds up to a genuine jam vibe with hints of Herbie Hancock, George Duke and Return to Forever hiding in the mix–have a listen to George Hazelrigg’s electric piano on “Don’t Text Me Bro” or “You Should Be Danson” for a solid hit of that bit of influence. “…Danson” is one of my favorite tracks as it hits firmly on my love of the traditional jazz trio setup. (Give me some Ahmad Jamal and I’m a happy boy.) Here, Geoff Hazelrigg lays down a steady, repetitive bass line for George to course over, and drummer Eric Hastings gets to show off a touch. Pretty sweet. The element that really makes BC>AD work is the underlying sense of musicians just loving the heck out of what they’re doing. The live-playing arrangement feeds that fire and pumps the results. Even the song titles play in, as evidenced by the two already mentioned–not to mention the best title here, “What Would Joe Jackson Do?” a great track that speeds along on a fast Hastings shuffle with comfort provided by lounge-smooth piano. Also worth calling out is the contribution of resophonic slide guitar by Troy Straszheim on the opening track, “Xeritown.” It adds a smoky, laid-back touch.

I must confess that BC>AD has turned me into a Collective Acoustics fan. It’s smart, polished and just downright fun. If you’ve got a taste for jazz in your musical palate, you need to give Collective Acoustics a listen. I’ll be over here, listening to BC>AD again.

Available from the Collective Acoustics web site.

Tympanik Audio’s 50th release continues their lineage of hook-laden glitch with this collaboration between Tapage (aka Tijs Ham) and Meander (aka Conrad Hoyer/Ophidian). While there’s not much that makes Etched in Salt stand apart from similar Tympanik releases—firing off a library’s worth of microsounds stitched together in frenetic rhythms over an IDM framework—it’s still a pretty cool ride. The disc first truly catches my attention with “Tolopea,” which pairs synaptic-firing speed glitches with a cool old-school synth melody. It’s like hearing your favorite old 8-bit video game theme song rear up in the middle of the sound. (There’s a similar run hiding in “Plankton,” adding its own hit of giddy cool.) This track also boasts a couple effective shifts of speed to give it a little more cred and intrigue in my mind. Perhaps oddly—and perhaps this is just me—I think the pair really hit it strongest when they ease back on the throttle a little. “Osedax” sets itself apart by its lack of high-speed beat and a focused concentration on wringing the most out of every sound to really create a powerful feeling, a better sense of emotion. That carries over into “Abyssal Plain” to lay out a stretch of music, before the final track sets in, that’s a nice change of pace from the overarching organized chaos. Overall, a strong effort from Tapage & Meander. For me, it’s more of a shuffle listen than a disc I’d just settle into, but it definitely benefits the shuffle flow!

Available from Tympanik Audio.

For his latest sonic guided tour to the shadowy, primal places inside ourselves, techno-shaman Steve Roach elicits the help of didgeridoo guru/ambient craftsman Brian Parnham. Together they carve out a deep and surrounding tribal journey that carries on the legacy of Roach’s desert-ambient works and also takes the listener into Serpent’s Lair-style darkly meditative spaces. Roach has said recently that he and Byron Metcalf are working on a follow-up to Lair, echoes of which were heard in the grooves the two laid down at Soundquest Fest 2010; between that, his recent Nightbloom release with Mark Seelig and now this, it’s clear that Roach is stockpiling and refining his grooves in this direction, perfecting his role as lower-world explorer. Wherever this trip is taking us overall, The Desert Inbetween is a stunning stop along the way.

The Desert Inbetween is as much Parnham’s disc as it is Roach’s, his serpentine didg coils burrowing into your head to control your mind under cover of Roach’s swirling sounds. On the lead track, “Opening Sky,” the didg pairs up nicely with Roach’s ambient guitar, the crying chord-shimmer that puts me in mind of Streams & Currents. There is a strong sense of trading off here, each man leading the way for a stretch, then letting the other take the front. In this manner, The Desert Inbetween slides, glides and sighs its way through crossfades of feeling, power and subtlety, energy and quiet. Listen to the eerie muted radio voices haunting “Ancestral Passage” giving way to rolls of thunder and desert-wind pads. Listen to the space late in “Return to the Underground” where the tribal briefly yields to the technical, with pulsating wave forms dripping over edgy pads—something of a wake-up call to your tranced-out mind. Or fall into the driving, percussion-fed downward charge of “Serpent Gulch,” a prayer filled with power and potency culled from a rhythm built on analog-synth lines, clay pots, drums and Parnham’s curling, insistently chanting didg. Then, when it relents for its last few minutes, accept that you have no choice but to follow that flow, your exhilarated pulse and breathing coming in line with the vast space that the duo lay out before you. They do it again with the ritualistic rhythms of “Somewhere Between,” about the darkest track here, featuring the rich tones of a waterphone vying with sharp metallic clanks and clatters, the patterns coming out like a makeshift invocation, Parnham’s hypnotic drones stirring the mix, bringing you back up to the soft space of “Spirit Passage,” which has a fantastic callback with the reappearance of the ghostly voices.

Like many of Roach’s voyages, this one wends its way to end in a contemplative space, the trip completed and you left alone to feel the resonance gently fade. After dwelling inside this music literally for hours on end (and gladly so), what strikes me about The Desert Inbetween, outside of its depth of effect, is the depth of sound. It is a richly dimensional concatenation of purposeful sounds that ricochet in rhythm around each other to create the space as they go, every one  of them integral. Parnham’s contributions of didgeridoo, synth and percussion help fill out and solidify the thing while adding his own new hues to a fairly familiar palette.

Take this journey often. The Desert Inbetween is a Hypnagogue Highly Recommended CD.

Available from the Steve Roach web site.

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peace & power,

John