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Artvoice Weekly Edition » Issue v6n13 (03/29/2007) » Section: Left of the Dial


Tracey Thorn: Out of the Woods

It’s easy to think of electronic music as drivel for glowstick-waving shitbrains. After all, dance clubs are the only places that play it on the regular, and they tend to stay away from anything that’s going to make you think. But as tempting as it is to have this mindset, it just ain’t true, sister. By digging just a little deeper than the dance floor throb-fests, you’ll find some of the most exciting, subtle and beautiful music of any genre. And if you’re an especially lucky boy or girl, you’ll find Tracey Thorn’s Out of the Woods sitting on your shovel. The new solo release from Everything But the Girl’s enchanting vocalist is a complete gem.



My Brightest Diamond: Tear It Down: Remixes for Bring Me the Workhorse

Shara Worden’s participation in Sufjan Stevens’ touring band the Illinoisemakers undoubtedly helped shine a light on her own work and indubitable status as an artist in her own right. Stevens’ Asthmatic Kitty didn’t hesitate to issue Worden’s debut as My Brightest Diamond—2006’s Bring Me the Workhorse—helping to cement her as a premier voice in the indie folk circles. Who would figure that My Brightest Diamond’s record would also make ideal base material for a group of remixers? Yes, this is abstract and dramatic, cabaret-touched folk rock that you can dance to. Tear It Down is an artfully done digital reshuffling and reinvention of Worden’s work with her acrobatic voice at the center. DJ Kenny Mitchell has “Freak Out” refigured as a Chemical Brothers-style floor stomper with block rock’d rhythms and an MC break by Nimnomadic. The mystical, operatic grandeur of “Magic Rabbit”—a track that finds Worden at her most Kate Bush—is stripped by Alfred Brown to make it a no less magisterial into pocket chamber wonder. Cedar AV resculpts the haunting “Disappear” into atmospheric symphony of techno pop.



Bugallo-Williams Piano Duo: Stravinsky in Black and White

A couple of years back, the formerly Buffalo-based Bugallo-Williams Piano Duo dazzled the world of two piano playing with the release on the Wergo label of their CD Conlon Nancarrow: Studies and Solos for Piano. The disc featured pieces that Nancarrow had composed for mechanical, or player piano, back in the 1940s and 1950s. These pieces were never meant to be played by human hands and are, according to Amy Williams, “both virtuosic in a psychological sense and in a physical sense.” The pieces ask the brain to process rhythms that are definitely not in the normal range of experience, and then to somehow make them come to life at the keyboard.





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