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Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Mexican Institute of Sound to play Pachanga Fest 2009
I’ve been steady banging “Soy Sauce” the latest release from Mexican Institute of Sound ever since it landed on my desk a few days ago. The album is a dizzying mix of cumbia, electro funk, hipstery indie groove and other assorted aural oddities. It jams hard.
M.I.S. has been on my radar ever since we profiled Camilo Lara, the Mexico City DJ behind the outfit a year ago. With a reputation as Mexico’s premier beatmaker, M.I.S.’s two earlier albums are sample-heavy collages of vintage Mexican sounds. On the new joint Lara worked with a full band and incorporated live vocalists. Solid stuff, club bangers layered with whimsical balladry, blended with hints of polka executed with a punk rock attitude.
And you can check it for yourself in late May when Lara brings Mexican Institute of Sound to Austin to perform at Pachanga Fest 2009. Pachanga Fest, you might remember, is a musical celebration of Latino music and culture that launched at Waterloo Park last year on a blisteringly hot Saturday in May. This year Pachanga Fest will move Eastward, relocating on the shadier riverside grounds of Fiesta Gardens. The festival is scheduled to take place on Saturday, May 30. We’ll provide more details as they become available.
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Eli Young Band plays Kimmel show Thursday
Fresh from selling out the Expo Center during the Star of Texas Rodeo, the Eli Young Band makes its national television debut Thursday night (4/2) on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” (ABC 11:05 p.m. CST). Although the high energy country hearthrobs are from Denton, two of the members call Austin home.
The band will perform new single “Always a Love Song,” currently number 16 on the Billboard country singles chart.
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Kat on KOOP
Local jazz singer Kat Edmonson recently appeared on KOOP radio for an hour. Since the show was not taped, there is no way to hear it (we are becoming so spoiled), but Edmonson has put her notes and selections online here.
It’s about as revelatory as anything written about Kat’s musical influences. She knows her black and white movie musicals, in fact, she seems to have grown up in one.
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CD Review: UGK, “UGK 4 Life”
UGK
UGK 4 Life (Jive)
Four stars
The late Pimp C’s is the first voice you hear on “Intro,” the first track (duh) on “UGK 4 Life,” the sixth album by the Houston rap duo UGK. After a few seconds of microphone checking, Pimp mumbles “Back from the dead!”
He isn’t, of course. Chad “Pimp C” Butler died Dec. 4, 2007, of an accidental overdose of Promethazine/Codeine “syrup,” which didn’t exactly help his sleep apnea.
And while rap albums by the deceased usually aren’t very good, UGK 4 Life is surprisingly strong, mostly because Bun B didn’t mess with the formula too much. Good beats and not too many guests means a tasteful tribute rather than an overstuffed wake.
Pimp C’s iconic production - slow, almost bluesy funk guitar, laid back snyth, clicking drum track - is either used when it could be (such as on the first single “Da Game Been Good to Me”) or tastefully paid tribute to by a variety of producers, especially longtime engineer Cory Mo. Topics include sex (“She Luv It”), some politics (“Purse Come First”), the hood and the street and where they came from (“Used to Be”), drugs (ditto) and from what parts girls should and should not remove hair (not a title I can relate here).
The great Mannie Fresh contributes the strongest non-Pimp track “The Pimp and the Bun,” complete with a butter smooth vocal cameo from Ron Isley, but “Purse Come First” might end up in the UGK hall of fame, with a classic Pimp bed of horn stab, funk guitar and hi-hat while Bun takes a swing at, of all things, Cheney, Haliburton and war profiteering.
“They sent us off to war, killed our kids and got paid too/ America open your eyes, for real, these (expletive) played you!” He includes himself in this: “they played me too, (expletive), I pay taxes.”
Not everyone would, but that’s the genius of UGK. Pimp C and Bun B went places others didn’t, blazing trails, broaching topics, uncovering the complexities of Southern rap when they weren’t outright inventing them. R.I.P., man.
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Review: Chris Cornell at Stubb’s
During Monday evening’s sold-out show at Stubb’s, Chris Cornell rocked, despite the fact that “Scream” - the new album he’s touring behind - is a divisively experimental hot mess.
“Scream” was produced and co-written with hip-hop mega-producer Timbaland (Justin Timberlake, Madonna) and finds Cornell singing over Timbaland’s beats and electro bells and whistles. Fortunately for Cornell’s longtime fans, when he played his new hip-hop-meets-pop songs, he turned up the rock quotient and dialed down the hip-hop beats and backing loops, making the experimental portion of his new songs almost unrecognizable. If you were one of the longtime Soundgarden/Audioslave fans that found “Scream” to be heresy to Cornell’s oeuvre, then the live show should have put your mind at ease quickly.
Show highlights included Cornell’s silvery falsetto on the melancholy, Led Zepplin-bitten “Seasons,” the inescapable groove of Audioslave’s “Cochise” and when the audience sang the entire second chorus of the Audioslave radio hit “Like A Stone.”
And although the live versions of the “Scream” tracks were umpteen times better than the Timbaland recorded versions, the overall performance was still maddening in many ways.
Unlike Audioslave (or Soundgarden for that matter), Cornell’s backing band is not a super-group; they were not up to the task of complementing Cornell’s own good taste in dynamics. His bassist and drummer over-played throughout all the songs. As band leader, Cornell should have put the clampdown on all that noodling during the initial tour rehearsals.
During a pretty faithful version of the Soundgarden hit “Burden In My Hand,” bassist Corey McCormick was playing like a music school grad that can’t help but justify his existence by showing off his chops. Likewise drummer Jason Sutter overused his double-beater kick drum pedal during “Cochise” to the point of distraction.
Despite this, the audience was definitely satiated, at least until Austin’s sound curfew left Cornell with no time for an encore shortly after 10:30 p.m.
“Everybody is still here after 15 minutes (waiting for an encore),” longtime Cornell fan Jamie Wang said. “I’m kinda speechless that he didn’t come back out. Usually (an artist) will come back out and at least acknowledge the audience … it was a good show nonetheless.”
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