Dr. Who Dat? - Beyond 2morrow

Here's the aforementioned album by Jneiro Jarel, aka Dr. What Dat?, entitled Beyond 2morrow. Jneiro has always thrived on creating leftfield beats with a unique sense of flow and texture, but now his production is starting to sound more and more like Flying Lotus, which can be viewed as both a good a band thing; good because Flylo is awesome, but bad because it's sad to see Jneiro have any reduction to his own weirdness and originality. There are only a few tracks here that have vocals, and Jneiro is an able rapper. This album wasn't everything I wanted it to be, but it's definitely an interesting album and a good placeholder for anybody waiting for another fully realized blend of production and rapping.

Beyond 2morrow [2009] - Download

The Shape of Broad Minds - Craft of the Lost Art

To commemorate a new album by Dr. Who Dat, I'm actually going to post about one of Jneiro Jarel's other projects (on which the good doctor "makes an appearance"), The Shape of Broad Minds. This project is supposedly a hip hop super group, but is really just a combination of all of his different rap personas on one unified album. The beats are ridiculously inventive and off the wall, but it pays off more often than not as in the strange sluggishness of "Electric Blue." Even a flanged and mod wheeled cowbell tone sits well in the mix.

Craft of the Lost Art [2007] - Download - Blurb

Tera Melos - Idioms vol. 1

Tera Melos lost their drummer Vince in 2008 and only recently picked their replacement John Clardy (aka Dolphin Starbeam) from the drummer store. Instead of releasing a new LP, they're "getting tight" by playing a covers album. Instead of rendering all of the songs in the crazy Tera Melos style, they actually keep it pretty simple (relatively speaking) and produce a fast indie / punk album out of songs originally by The Beach Boys, The Clash, The Pixies, Weezer, and Polaris. Surprisingly enjoyable if only a palette cleanser / appetite whetter for whatever new original material these guys put together.

Idioms vol. 1 [2009] - Download


I feel like this is also a good time to mention the lunacy that is Snakeville, a film produced by Nick Reinhardt of Tera Melos and some other friends. The film is a 75-minute ensemble of characters interacting in a small, rural town (transparently based off of their hometown area in Roseville, CA). Its style is pretty similar to Kids in the Hall, with a few actors playing 3/4s of the roles, often in drag or absurd outfits. The sense of humor is even stranger than that found in similar sketch comedies (thanks to the inclusion of lactating male high school athletes and an obese (also male) guardian angel squeezed into a tutu). Snakeville is its own beast rather than a tribute to offbeat sketch comedy and definitely deserves to be checked out. Maybe the best part of it all is that there are a few moments where beautiful cinematography or surprisingly profound dialogue enters into the mix, sort of like Brad Neely's "Babycakes" series. The movie is rough around the edges and is fairly anti-climactic (really the plot is super thin), but there are moments of lucidity and lunacy alike that make this worth checking out. The trailer is embedded below.


Snakeville Trailer

Interview / Show Review With Toby Driver (Kayo Dot, Tartar Lamb, Maudlin of the Well)

Hey I just put up two articles on sputnikmusic. One is a review of / column on a live show Kayo Dot played in San Francisco on October 8, and another is an interview with Toby Driver. The interview is both given as a transcript and as a dialogue woven in with the prose of my review / column. No download links in this article, just words and pictures.

Show Review - here

Interview - here

Efterklang - The LPs

Efterklang, a studio quintet and a live nonet (which includes the newly popular Peter Broderick) from Denmark, have been labeled as post-pop, but in an effort to avoid recently fashioned genre prefixes and suffixes I'm just going to say that they're a post-rock band who have an affinity to messing around with electronic and analog musical devices (such as sampling CD skipping sounds to create the beat for "Predator and Prey"). Both of their full length albums are very nice and apparently they have an album coming out some time in early 2009 (which is now I guess - Happy New Year).

Tripper [2004] - Download


Parades [2007] - Download