Eunice Kathleen Waymon AKA Nina Simone was one of the greatest American musicians to have ever lived. Only one of her albums ever made the Billboard Top 40 in the US.

For a quick-and-dirty demonstration of just how influential Nina Simone was to the music world, here is an abbreviated list of musicians who have covered her songs or cited her as an influence: Mary J. Blige, Lauryn Hill, Alicia Keys, Timbaland, Talib Kweli, Mos Def, Jeff Buckley, Aretha Franklin, Roberta Flack, Cat Stevens, The Animals, Muse, Cat Power, Feist, Marilyn Manson, David Bowie and John Lennon.

Nina Simone’s music is unclassifiable, running the gamut from jazz, soul, & classical, gospel and pop. She herself disliked the term “jazz” and preferred to describe her sound as “black classical”. Frequently though, the arrangements would be sparse, allowing her voice to be the centerpiece. And what a voice. Her range was from alto to tenor, causing many a first-time listener to mistakenly think they were hearing a man’s voice coming from the hi-fi.

Listening to her music today, in the year 2010 it is astonishing how fresh it sounds, how unmolested by the passage of time. Think of your favorite Musician Who Defined A Generation – Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan, Kurt Cobain – listen to their music and you instantly get a sense of context. Nightclubs of the 1950’s. Shirtless hippies. Seattle. Now listen to a Nina Simone record, any record. With the exception of perhaps the transcendent “Why? (The King of Love is Dead)”, her tribute to the slain Dr. Martin Luther King, Simone’s music sounds as timeless and alien today as it ever has. Her arresting voice effortlessly transversing the decades, forcing you to stop whatever you’re doing and listen.

Here are a few of her songs that I feel are essential.

“Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood”
Delicate piano and restrained strings anchor this mournful ballad about “a soul whose intentions are good.” The whole song is basically an apology, a plaintive plea for forgiveness which, though brief – it clocks in at just under three minutes – says all that could ever need to be said about regret.

“Strange Fruit”
Originally recorded by Billie Holiday, Nina takes what by all rights should be an untouchable classic and somehow manages to reinvent it entirely, resulting in a cover that’s not “better” but just so staggeringly alien. This is one of those songs that features such minimal piano that she could have sung it acapella and it would have lost none of its impact. The song is about the lynching of blacks in the south, and the fact that something so breathtakingly beautiful could have been born from a reaction to something so shameful and ugly is one of the things that gives me faith in humanity.

“Mississippi Goddam”
Frustrated by the racism and inequality she witnessed in the US, Nina Simone would eventually relocate permanently to France. Her protest song “Mississippi Goddam” distills her feelings on the subject of institutionalized hatred and was in fact banned in several southern states – ostensibly because of the swear word in the title. This is the live version from the 1963 record Nina Simone in Concert.

“Sinnerman”
Although originally a traditional American spiritual (author unknown) this is considered the definitive version. “Sinnerman” has also been covered by Peter Tosh, Gregory Isaacs, Sinead O’Connor, Three Dog Night and Goldfinger, and sampled by Talib Kweli, Kanye West, Timbaland and Felix da Housecat. With all due respect to these talented artists – and Kanye West – their versions are crap. “Sinnerman” by Nina Simone is, simply put, ten minutes of absolute musical perfection. “Sinnerman” is not a slow build to ecstasy, it is a volcanic eruption. “Sinnerman” is a frenzy of handclaps and cymbals and all 88 piano keys. “Sinnerman” is a desperate cry to God, to the Devil, to Humankind itself. “Sinnerman” is one woman’s voice, amplified to engulf the whole world. “Sinnerman” deserves to be ranked as one of our species greatest achievements.

Ennio Morricone is one of only a very few examples of a true living legend. But while everyone knows him for his Sergio Leone film scores, few Americans realize that those were just part of a massive catalog of musical output. In fact, the prolific Italian composer is proficient in multiple genres including classical, jazz and pop.

Ennio Morricone’s arrangements are stirring, powerful things, splendidly evocative. It is no accident that Quentin Tarantino keeps pinching such gems as “Titoli Di Testa” and “L’Arena” for some of the most epic moments in his films. But anyone unfamiliar with Morricone’s other work is missing out on such wonders as the superhero psychedelia conjured up for Danger: Diabolik the clangy claustrophobia found in Un Uomo Da Rispettare and the acid jazz weirdness of Gli Occhi Freddi Della Paura.

Of course it is for good reason that his scores for the 1960’s Spaghetti Westerns are Morricone’s best-known work. It is easy, today to forget how unique, how bizarre those early compositions were. Before A Fistful of Dollars in 1964, Western film scores simply didn’t have any Jew’s harp or whistle solos, not to mention the virtuoso guitar of Alessandro Alessandroni. Now, of course, it is nearly impossible to think of a Western without such things.

Take “L’Estasi Dell’Oro” for example, the infamous piece from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. What is going on there? A soft but nervous piano skitters past, followed by a solemn string section that is soon overrun by the rest of the orchestra and an operatic solo female vocal. The whole thing culminates in a grand crescendo that employs cascading trumpets and pounding timpani, all the while somehow managing not to sound overdone. It is baroque, divine madness of the rarest kind.

Ennio Morricone – L’Estasi Dell’Oro
Download audio file (?f=L Estasi Dell Oro)

Examining “Il Triello” we find a pastoral symphony beset upon by a wailing chorus of vocals and brass. And when the ominous guitar begins to strum, we understand the storm can be held off, but not forever. The calm is refreshing, if only because we know that the torrent of horns and voices are bound to return, crushing us with their insistence. Brushed cymbals and funerial piano give way to marching-band drums and ecstatic orchestral stabs as the chorus welcomes the fallen into its arms.

Ennio Morricone – Il Triello
Download audio file (?f=Il Triello)

Finally, “Titoli Di Testa” from Navaho Joe. From its initial hair-raising scream to its ultimate reverberating echo, it is an exercise in exuberant excess. Even after repeated listens I cannot help but be unnerved by its sheer majesty. The shouting warriors give way to the cleanest, most crisp guitar ever plucked by man, and the drums call down the fury of a power I cannot begin to comprehend. Trade a thousand souls to a thousand devils, and you still would not have the supernatural power of Ennio Morricone.

Ennio Morricone – Titoli Di Testa
Download audio file (?f=Titoli Di Testa)

Special thanks to Brakhage at The Dinosaur Gardens, who has put together a marvelous mixtape of Morricone music available for download. http://www.dinosaurgardens.com/archives/401

If you’ve never heard of Antarctia, there’s probably a very good reason. Formed in New York, the band were together just long enough to release an EP in 1998 and their only full-length in 1999. They would break up less than a year later.

Each release was named after its length; 21:03 and 81:03 respectively. The music contained within those cheekily-titled discs has been decribed as dream pop, atmospheric pop, shoegaze, and while all of those categories might be said to apply, none of them does so completely.

Do you remember arriving at a party, and being outside the house and hearing the music playing from within? You know it’s loud, because you can hear it out on the street, but heard from without it is muffled, tamped down, flattened out. Mono. And even if it’s punk rock or hip hop, when heard from outside the house, it sounds warm and gentle. Because all the layers of drywall or wood or brick have transformed it into something else, something new. Something special, only for those out on the perimeter.

That’s what Antartica sounds like. That strange music at the edge of a party. It’s what I imagine one would hear at the event horizon of a black hole, if only sound could travel in space.

81:03 opens with a track entitled “Absence” which brings to mind cheery 1980’s snyth pop for about 40 seconds, until Eric Richter’s voice pushes through the mix and one is forcibly reminded of Kevin Shield’s similar struggle against the wailing of his own guitar. As with My Bloody Valentine, one needn’t try too hard to make out exactly the words being sung. The human voice is not the intended focal point, but another color in the band’s vast palette.

The nine minute epic “Hallucinus” weds brooding keyboards with crisp guitar and spastic handclaps, while frozen seas shimmer and ghosts bemoan their condition. The band’s name is fitting. Indeed, their sound was being described as “glacial” and “otherworldly” before anyone outside of Iceland had heard of Sigur Rós. And while I won’t pile on the hyperbole of “God crying tears of gold in Heaven” perhaps it wouldn’t be too much to imagine Jesus getting just a little misty-eyed.

Obvious references and forebearers include Pink Floyd, New Order, Joy Division. But unlike any of those bands – well except maybe Joy Division – Antartica lived such a brief life, an eyeblink in the music world, that they were lost before they were ever really found. Their tracks covered by the unforgiving snowfall of an inhospitable world.

Bands like Antarctica are the reason I write about music. To brush away some of that snow and uncover something magnificent and worth sharing.

(81:03 is still in print and can be found online at the usual outlets.)

Antarctica – Absence
Download audio file (?f=Antarctica - Absence)

Antarctica – Hallucinus
Download audio file (?f=Antarctica - Hallucinus)

Black Mass Lucifer (released in 1971) was one of the first albums to be made entirely using synthesizers. Despite this distinction, its origin is abiguous at best; it has no wikipedia entry and of the handful of rare vinyl sites that do mention it, none are certain whether the band is Black Mass and the title Lucifer, or the other way round.
What is known is that the record was written and composed by Mort Garson, graduate of the Juilliard School of Music and prolific writer/arranger/conductor of the 1960’s. Looking at the huge pentagram on the album cover, one could be forgiven for assuming Black Mass Lucifer to be merely some cheesy, forgotten black metal abomination, but no.

The truth is much, much weirder.

In fact, Black Mass Lucifer is equal parts Brian Eno-esque trippy melodic meanderings, inspired Moog psychedelia, movie soundtrack bombast and neo-tribal polyrhythms that would have no parallel until Juno Reactor came along over twenty years later. Add that to the fact that the names of most of the tracks are vague “Satanic” references – “The Evil Eye”, “Exorcism”, “Witch Trial” – it is no exaggeration to say that Mr. Garson had the mysterious electronic musician market cornered when Aphex Twin was just a twinkle in some windowlicker’s eye.

For being over 25 years old, Black Mass Lucifer holds up remarkably well, betraying almost no clues to its age, mostly because there is so little to compare it to. The tracks are masterfully composed, and while occasionally a certain pad or snare drum may catch the astute listener’s attention due to its familiarity, the vast majority of the sounds on the album persist in their utterly alien quality, even after repeated listens. Imagine playing four Erik Satie records simultaneously, through a stereo with a blown out subwoofer while watching Fantasia with the sound turned off. That would sound nothing at all like Black Mass Lucifer, but it sure would be cool to try.

That is the sort of thing you find yourself thinking of when listening to this album.

The point is that Black Mass Lucifer is a weird fucking record and I can’t recommend it highly enough. Love it or hate it, it cannot be denied that it exists in a category all its own, its mere existence a mystery, like an artifact from another universe, or those weird crystal skulls George Lucas made that shitty movie about. But Black Mass Lucifer is the opposite of a reprehensible desecration of a time-honored franchise. Black Mass Lucifer is the real deal: an unsolvable mystery that all the 0s and 1s of the Information Age can’t crack. It’s the Temple of Doom if the Temple of Doom had been directed by Fellini, shot on black and white and then lost for thirty years, only to resurface as a dusty 16mm reel sold for $0.75 at a yard sale.

No one knows how many copies of the original LP still survive. This music is the reason mp3 blogs were invented.

The Ride Of Aida (Voodoo)
Download audio file (?f=02 - The Ride Of Aida (Voodoo))

The Philosopher’s Stone
Download audio file (?f=07 - The Philosopher's Stone)

Brand New were always a guilty pleasure of mine. Yes, they were a shitty pop-punk band, but they wrote shitty pop-punk songs about Morrissey, dammit. Their hearts were in the right place. All that guilt dissapated in 2006 with the release of The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me, a veritable quantum leap beyond anything the band had even hinted at being capable of. Confident and competent, Brand New grew up and broke from the shackles of their genre.

That is not what this review is about.

Prior to the release of that breakthrough record, nine other Brand New tracks were leaked online. All of them untitled, they turned out to be rough demos from Fight Off Your Demons, the original title of The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me. Ranging from unpolished gems to embryos of now-familiar album tracks, those nine songs proved fascinating as a glimpse into the band’s songwriting process.

The opening song is a sparse affair, consisting merely of Jesse Lacey’s vocals and a lone acoustic guitar that nevertheless shows off his newfound maturity as a songwriter. The second track is the one that surprised me though. It actually sounds like a Morrissey song, especially the lyrics – “if there’s any justice in heaven, then god won’t let me in”, for example – and even boasts a guitar solo that, though not quite comparable to Johnny Marr at his best, is awesome in its own right.

Brand New – untitled 02

Download audio file (02-brand_new-untitled_02)

Elsewhere, on tracks four and five, the listener is treated to some lovely uncompressed drums, a true rarity these days and something that could never happen on an official release. Number five is especially notable for the terrific interplay between the drums and electric guitar in a thundering instrumental bridge that brings to mind Explosions in the Sky or Mogwai in their brasher moments.

Track six is notable in that it is an early version of what would become Luca. The pace is slower, and the lyrics rougher and more awkward, although the chorus remained unchanged in the final version. Additionally, it features a dark instrumental coda similar in mood to Welcome to Bangkok that, while interesting in and of itself, doesn’t really fit the song. Good as it is, the band made the right choice in cutting it from the final version.

Brand New – untitled 06

Download audio file (06-brand_new-untitled_06)

Another song that ended up being heavily reworked for The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me is track number eight, an unfortunately poorly recorded acoustic demo of Sowing Season. Listening to it, one can easily imagine it being fleshed out with more instruments and studio magic, which incidentally is exactly what happened.

As simply a look into the creative process, these songs are of course valuable. [In fact, the only one I actually dislike is number three, which just sounded too weepy and Bright Eyes-esque for my taste.] Although imperfect by definition, these demos are more than capable of standing on their own as proof that good songs shine through no matter what form they take. There is something magical about experiencing music in its most raw – and honest – form.

www.fightoffyourdemons.com

www.myspace.com\brandnew