Cibo Matto

Very few bands have had such an incredible debut album like Cibo Matto’s Viva L.A. Woman. Like an inexpensive sushi bar, Viva L.A. Woman was a Smorgasbord of contradictions.  Light, but heavy, simple yet complicated, joyful with a hint of homesickness in an electronic mix that never sounds the same way twice.

Yuka Honda and Miho Hatori, expatriates from Japan have fused Trip-Hop, rap, rock, jazz, Asian and Brazilian music into a sound of their own that has been described by music journalists as fun, precious, teasing, joyful, cheerful, good-natured, quirky, silly, carefree, ironic and wry.  Multi-instrumentalist Honda is a longtime member of the Manhattan art scene and was once in the Brooklyn Funk Essentials.  Hatori, a former member of the Tokyo rap unit Kimidori and a former club DJ, came to the States in 1993. After meeting in 1994, they started the short-lived band, Leitoh Lychee.  Honda and Hatori formed Cibo Matto, (Italian for “food madness”) shortly afterwards.

Cibo Matto take their time in the studio, their latest release Stereo Type A appeared in the stores in 1999.  Although less edgy than Viva L.A. Woman, Stereo Type A shows signs of maturity and the affects of love and all the good and bad things that go with it.  I had a chance to interview Miho Hatori.

The Residents

The Residents have kept their identity secret for twenty-eight years.  They have no faces, no gender, no race and no personality.  This decision was reached because they wanted a separation between their personal and professional lives.  Anonymity was and is their only rule.  These faceless anti-stars have stood on the fringes of the music world happily releasing their often-disturbing music to critical acclaim.  They are supposedly originally from Shreveport, Louisiana, and one is the father of Siamese Twins.  Maybe one is a former Protestant Minister and another has one of the largest model railroad collections in the world. 

Regarded by many to be the original pioneers of the music video, The Residents produced their first video in 1972 (Vileness Fats), but really came into their own when they released Third Reich ‘n Roll in 1977.  In this video, the band is dressed entirely in newspapers, as well as the instruments and set.  There is crude stop action animation filmed in black and white color that makes the hair on your neck stand up.

Les Percussions De Guinee

A heavenly outpouring of throbbing jubilation, forceful uplifting beats and pounding enthusiasm, Les Percussions de Guinee’s djembe drumming is vibrant and hypnotic, a tumbling tapestry of blustery resonance and driving rhythms. International cultural ambassadors, this government sponsored ensemble takes the most talented players from their Les Ballet Africains and competing regional companies to showcase this rhythm nation’s complete complement of percussion instruments, including log drums, water drums, five headed drums and a xylophone predecessor called a balafon.  Playing with celebrities as diverse as Harry Belafonte, Elvin Jones, and the Police, this dancing, drumming storytelling troupe represented their country in the worldwide touring company of Africa Oye as well as Imax’s new production of global rhythms hosted by British performance artists Stomp.

Thunderous and uproarious, the fifteen-member troupe presents thousands of years of tradition with decades of experience. Their groundbreaking use of female drummers reinforces Mickey Hart’s belief that before man took over the drum for their military communications, the women were the principal performers, linked to various fertility rituals. Historical speculation aside, the current version of the Ensemble is one of the best. With three new members, bringing one of Guinee’s chief folklorist out of retirement, the addition of flute and the twenty-two stringed kora, Les Percussions de Guinee 2001 blends youth, wisdom and perspective, moving the group from a remarkable drum circle to a phenomenal panorama of a rich musical culture.

The Dirty Three

The fluid ease with which Dirty Three create the romance of tidal pulls and the despair of lonesome oceans in their new CD, Ocean Songs, is both tranquilizing and electric. Drums, guitar and violin serve a common purpose, swirling with deliberate ingenuity that lulls and soothes while cutting against the grain. Billowing sails and creaking timbers have room to stretch out. Gurgling mysteries lay simmering beneath the trio’s simple nuances and subtle twists.

Formed in a bar on the rough side of Melbourne, Australia, Dirty Three sound both weathered and full of life, deliberate, yet lazy. Warren Ellis’ winding gypsy fiddle skims and plummets while the cavernous drums of Jim White sound like sharp splashes and plodding depth charges. Their spacious longing can turn romantic and does so several times, stunningly in, “Sea Above, Sky Below,” while the sullen, barren slogging of “Authentic Celestial Music” forms a musical mechanical contraption that starts out of breath then steps up the pace. The ambling ambiance is both hypnotic and ambient, gracefully stumbling in slow motion then turning dangerously monomaniacal. No better example of this appears than Mick Turner’s breezy guitar playing on the whispery “Distant Shores,” a three-hundred-and-sixty degree turn from his crashing, savage churning in “Deep Waters.”

Lorenzo Music

Despite grumblings about the supposedly long lost Madison music scene, new and talented bands keep rising up as if nothing had ever burned or closed down. The better ones, like anywhere else, are those that seem to defy easy categorization. You hear a hint of this and a reference to that, but you can’t pin the group down. Such is the case with Lorenzo Music.

At the core are two musicians who have experienced the changing musical tides here between the lakes. Tod Schwenn spent a good amount of time in Rapscallion during the late-80s and early-90s, around the same time Tom Ray was in Fallacy. After those bands broke up, the two decided to start jamming and writing together. The songs came together so well that they decided to form a permanent band and, after finding the right musicians, did their first gig in March of 1996.

Lorenzo Music explores many areas of sound, going from keyboard- driven, Doors-like jams to lounge swings to power guitars in a single song. The key is that they do it gracefully, at times almost unnoticeably. Most of the keyboards are done on a vintage Rhodes electric piano that Ray bought for $150 when such instruments were out of style. Schwenn supplies the guitar and the two share the vocal work. Every musician in this band has experience: second guitarist Brandon Krueger was in Peep Show, bassist Mark Whitcomb played in Insanity A.D., Carl and Swiggo, and drummer Scott Beardsley also gigged with Swiggo as well as Mindox (which also featured Buddo of Magic 7 & Last Crack).