Semipop Life: Fusion cuisine

Felo Le Tee & Mellow & Sleazy, Billy Woods & Kenny Segal, Marina Sena, Skrillex, and more!

Felo Le Tee & Mellow & Sleazy: The III Wise Men

Mellow & Sleazy (guess who’s the introvert and who’s the extrovert) rose to fame during the pandemic merging the amapiano donk with the earlier Pretorian style “bacardi”, adding more aggressive snares to a genre that in its commercial iterations can be lullaby-chill. Up-and-comer Felo Le Tee DJed using cassettes and made house beats as a teen before being converted to amapiano by DJ Maphorisa and the entire incentive structure of the South African music biz. I can’t say if he’s the crucial addition here or whether Mellow and/or Sleazy simply lucked upon a felicitous collection of cool sounds and guests this time; in any case, this satisfies the dueling imperatives of hooks and prettiness as well as any Afrotronica album I’ve heard. “Midnight Prayer” has humming that sounds like a synth or maybe vice versa, “Easy” has violin from the delightfully named Mali B-Flat, and Tshego AMG (“All Mighty Guitarist”) draws connections to African music of ancient times (the Seventies.) The vocalists, something of an afterthought, nevertheless reshape the sonic profiles of the tracks through sheer persistence—the oohs on “Gorgeous” could be bird calls. Unifying things are the bass, the percussion, and the donk, which together, without getting as in-your-face as the avant-gardists, maintain as much complexity as anyone blissed out on a dancefloor wants or needs.

Grade: A (“Midnight Prayer”, “Gedlela”, “Easy”)

Billy Woods & Kenny Segal: Maps

Reunited with his most simpatico producer, Woods plays as nice as befits a newly anointed (anarchist) children’s book author, throwing in a few choruses and kinda sorta singing on “Soft Landing”. His rapping retains its standard “wrote the verse like hangman” form, as he constructs long rhyme strings and stuffs the gaps with evocative or clever literary and rapcult references, with additional diaristic details concerning things he ate or smoked on tour (without writing making the whole LP about a weed strain; consider this a belated low HM for Church.) Segal lays back twiddling the settings on his detailed loops, turning up the aggressiveness only when guests require it; there’s never chill for old Danny Brown. The result is slight compared to Woods’s magnum opuses: it doesn’t claw into the grime like Hiding Places, nor does it embed a fully-formed secret history of colonialism as did Aethiopes. But sometimes you gotta have fun, no matter what you consider fun. I’m sure Billy enjoys sleeping in transit, pretending he’s hosting No Reservations, and coming home to familiar tap water as much as I do, and I’m not going to tell him to smile more about it.

Grade: A MINUS (“FaceTime”, “Year Zero”, “Soft Landing”)

Janel Leppin: Ensemble Volcanic Ash

Cellist and weaver (the weaving appears to be more lucrative) Leppin’s septet hearkens back to the fusion era, with her instrument the main sonic distinction. She has no shortage of agility on the strings, yet she often cedes space by using her bow to counterpoint the horns or by switching to keybs and letting Luke Stewart’s capable bass and Larry Ferguson’s clockwork drums handle bottom end and rhythm. Instead, guitarist Anthony Pirog gets to show off the most with his McLaughlinesque freakouts, particularly on “Woven Forest”, on which he and Leppin weave jagged lines around each other (heterosexuals, man.) Saxophonists Sarah Hughes and Brian Settles lay out heads in conjunction and get enough solo time to stave off mutiny. Harpist Kim Sator comes to the fore on the quiet ones, and if the quiet ones aren’t going to be anybody’s favorites, they allow recovery time in addition to completing Leppin’s melodic worldview: one informed by an all-encompassing conception of beauty that covers composition and improvisation, conservatory and street party, serious spiritual quest for truth and serious secular quest for a racket.

Grade: A MINUS (“She Had Synesthesia”, “Woven Forest”, “Silvia’s Path”)

Marina Sena: Vício Inerente

After the surprise success of “Por Supuesto” and De Primeira drew Sony Brazil’s funding, this is a blatant bid for a more enduring international stardom. Whether that happens depends on the whims of algorithms and, equally incomprehensible to me, distractible teenagers; all I can say is that a wannabe popstar who names their record after a Pynchon novel deserves it. Producer Iuri Rio Branco has crafted an appealing and varied set of harmonic bases, all made transparent within seconds, and he and Sena have no problem autocompleting them into actual songs with sophisticated synth busywork, post-trap drums, and lots of those vocal filters the kids like. If a supermajority of the lyrics are about desire and being desired, what’s new? There’s differentiation in degree; Sena knows that turning a big dial that says “horniness” on it and constantly looking at the audience for approval is a sensible way for a wannabe popstar to acquit herself. As a distractible adult I would’ve set it to eleven the whole time, but what do I know, I’m not an algorithm.

Grade: A MINUS (“Mais de Mil”, “Tudo Seu”, “Meu Paraíso Sou Eu”)

Taj Mahal: Savoy

I don’t know his catalog well enough to play best-since; all I know is this is both pleasurable in itself and an appropriate encomium to the gratification his parents found uptown with Chick and Ella, as summarized on his spoken intro. Well beyond the Dukes and George & Iras, the songs are as knock-’em-dead as Sweet Georgia Brown herself. Most impressive is the sequencing and pacing: after a slow-burning “Baby Won’t You Please Come Home” comes some Louis Jordan. John Simon, the Band’s original producer, gets major credit: the rhythms swing, the horns weave and counterpunch, the backing vocalists’ precision contrasts with Taj’s looseness. Still, there’s no question it's Taj's album, whether he’s squeezing each yelp out of his instrument as if it might be his last, or just being genially lecherous. Exception: “Baby It’s Cold Outside” is Maria Muldaur’s: all you needed to salvage the song was to make it unmistakable that the woman has agency.

Grade: A MINUS (“Stompin’ at the Savoy”, “Baby It’s Cold Outside”, “Caldonia”)

Mahlathini & the Mahotella Queens: Music Inferno: The Indestructible Beat Tour 1988-89

A miracle, if a minor one. On these late Eighties tapes, Mahlathini doesn’t hit tip-top groan form—supposedly a shy guy, he may have been more focused on prancing and carousing for the Brits—and even Hilda Tloubatla’s Queens don’t quite have the authority they stamped on their studio recordings. The Makgona Tsohle Band, on the other hand, enhance their reputation as one of history’s most grooveful ensembles (someday we may have the evidence for a showdown with the J.B.’s.) Marks Mankwane supplies hook after hook, stalwart bassist Joseph Makwela gets his moments to strut, and West Nkosi is used sparingly but, when it’s his turn, blows everyone away. The unprofessional band intros—Hilda gets introduced twice, and accordion/keyb player Mzwandile David is almost forgotten—and the soundchecks (among four worthwhile bonuses on the Bandcamp download) are at least as moving as anything else. Enough to give one hope for the major miracle of a movie.

Grade: A MINUS (“Uyavutha Umlilo”, “Lilizela Mlilizeli”, “Soundcheck Part 1”)

Wadada Leo Smith and Orange Wave Electric: Fire Illuminations

A tribute to Miles-with-Pete-Cosey, and to an era: title shout-outs go to Tony Williams, Ntozake Shange (For Colored Girls), and Ali and Foreman. The ensemble includes multiple guitarists and multiple bassists, which makes for some fun blindfold test moments; some very Nels Cline runs aside, I doubt I’d do much better than random guessing. Smith in a blindfold test, on the other hand, would be easy enough. The high point is the title track, where he allows himself free range to hit long upper register notes that make it hard to believe he’s in his eighties. The similarly short “Muhammad Ali’s Spiritual Horizon” has some novelty, with the rhythm section dominant and the guitar (Lamar Smith I think, do I win) sketching in the margins. The more eventful of the two long tracks is “Tony Williams”, where the ensemble feels out the composition for five minutes before a glorious drop. You can bet that drummer Pharaoh AkLaff earns his keep on that one.

Grade: A MINUS (“Muhammad Ali’s Spiritual Horizon”, “Fire Illuminations Inside the Particles of Light”, “Tony Williams”)

Avalon Emerson & the Charm

Star techno DJ Emerson’s project is pop in the Postal Service sense, with chill medium-fi beats constructed from cute sounds that nevertheless propel, plus the odd live instrument, like the enticing cello on the opening “Sandrail Silhouette”, to support the songs rather than serve as the main attraction. Her tune sense is well-honed; she can contrast a languid phrase with a tossed-off da-da-da that may or may not clarify her sometimes opaque lyrics. I’m not 100% sure what “Astrology Poisoning” means—it’s “about the evolving void that we all feel and try and fill”, if that helps—but one gets the gist. While her friends are posting baby pictures, she’s plotting her next Panorama Bar set or, if it’s a stare into the void day, wondering about her ex’s Halloween costume. Her small voice makes lines like “entombed in ice the center of the inferno” seem like just another millennium in the life of the planet, which is entirely appropriate for her modest aims. If there’s one thing a great DJ can do, it’s get the feel right.

Grade: B PLUS (“Karaoke Song”, “Sandrail Silhouette”, “Astrology Poisoning”)

Andrew Cyrille, William Parker, Enrico Rava: 2 Blues for Cecil

Taylor’s former colleagues on drums, bass, and flugelhorn combine to create something that doesn’t sound a whit like Cecil; “Blues”, however, isn’t a complete stretch. All three players are improvisers as imaginative as anyone in avant-jazz. The long track lengths allow Rava to take all manner of tunelets, flatten them into abstract patterns, and reconstitute them again. Parker plays a complementary game: he’s capable of serious busyness with the bow, yet often restricts himself to sheer vibration when Rava’s cooking. Cyrille has the modesty to hardly do anything on his own “Top, Bottom and What’s in the Middle”, knowing he’ll get to use his whole hardware store of sticks, brushes, and unidentified striking objects in due course. The closing “My Funny Valentine”, recognizable for at least two bars, reminds us there are ways to be funny beyond ha-ha.

Grade: B PLUS (“Improvisation No. 2”, “Blues for Cecil No. 2”, “Improvisation No. 1”)

Tracy Nelson: Life Don’t Miss Nobody

Most of a lifetime after Mother Earth, she’s worked out how to use a voice that’s lost its youthful agility. She weights each line like it’s scripture—I think the one about getting hornysad over the mailman was from Song of Songs. Universal classics like “Brown Eyed Handsome Man” and “Honky Tonkin’” attract old buddies like Irma Thomas, Marcia Ball, and that other Nelson, while the niche classics span genres and themes from Sonny Boy II funeral/trial blues to the protest jazz of “Compared to What”. The session players are excellent: I think that’s Kevin McKendree’s piano going ham on Sister Rosetta’s “Strange Things Happening Every Day”. The new song doesn’t convince me that “underestimate” and “randomness of fate” rhyme and the second “Hard Times” is superfluous; otherwise, the material repays the serious work put into making the history of American pop fun.

Grade: B PLUS (“Strange Things Happening Every Day”, “Brown Eyed Handsome Man”, “Compared to What”)

Wednesday: Rat Saw God

Revitalizing moribund indie rock by injecting nosebleed-fresh plasma from the dynamic genre of, uh, Americana. Often it works! Over clear riffs, the steel guitar and easy Southern groove are welcome color for their judgment-free tales of substance abuse and… there’s a lot of substance abuse. Sometimes they overreach: the long one segues from matadors to Mortal Kombat in the kind of move that MFAs stopped making after we made fun of them for a couple of generations, and Hartzman hasn’t memorized enough button combinations to justify three minutes of “finish him”s. She’s more deadly using her scream as a spot fatality on “Bath County”. Promising band, with no flaws that ten more years listening to the Drive-By Truckers won’t fix, but please be conscientious with the microdosing.

Grade: B PLUS (“Bath County”, “Chosen to Deserve”, “Quarry”)

Skrillex: Quest for Fire

Nine years after Recess, our boy Sonny released his second and third studio albums on consecutive days. Don’t Get Too Close reminds us why everyone used to hate him: nobody else could hit lowest common denominators (here: Bieber, not the good kind of emo rap) with such precision. Quest for Fire shows why everyone loves him now: he hits any denominator he aims for. He reinvigorates “Work It” for Missy, wubs around with old pals Joker and Four Tet, and saves his most obnoxious noises for Dylan “50 Gecs” Brady. The collaboration with Palestinian singer Nai Barghouti is perhaps the sexiest Oxfam fundaraiser I’ve seen. Merely a savant doing his thing, but if you have a parlor, you might as well do tricks.

Grade: B PLUS (“Xena”, “Ratata”, “Tears”)