OneThirtyEight
London Transmissions
http://www.myspace.com/onethirtyeightmusic
Self-Released
Who could ask for anything more in an album? OneThirtyEight has just put out their fourth release, London Transmissions. Now that they’ve had that special lag time in which to be creative and pen a slew of songs, they’re ready for the big discs (no pun intended).
What one is exposed to on this long-awaited full-length CD is a whole lot of genre-bending. There are some low-key songs, “The Amazing Transparent Man” being one-it is an instrumental, a quiet solo that gives a false sense of security. The next tune, though, “One Night in the Cemetery” is a very jazzy, minimalistic, Tom Waits-esque tune – without Waits’s trademark vocal style; “One Night in the Cemetery” is low-key and mellow but it is just so groovy and samples of their work such as that are where you’ll hear how creative and diverse their sound can be, because, for one thing, right after “…Cemetery”, the disc goes into a totally different mode: the next cut, “A Row of Pigs’ Heads”, which was probably carefully and intricately put together, but, coming right after “…Cemetery” just seems like a mistake on the producer’s part, continuity-wise, but what’re you gonna do, huh? “A Row of Pigs’ Heads” is a crafted work of noise, samples; cacophony that boggles the mind (“…that’s the same band that just played the previous song?! You mean that isn’t a “mix” CD/Tape? Wow, what range they’ve got!” might be one reaction out of a guest if you put this CD on in the background for your relatively small cocktail party – celebrating your new book or HBO special or just because it‘s Tuesday).
Some of the songs that stuck out included “Sensations of the Season”, a smooth move to help keep them earthbound. “Sensations…” is a really groovy number, dominated by a B-3-sounding organ with the de rigueur samples and noise, but it’s mostly a tune that helps keep them grounded and not too lost in space, so to speak. It’s a very good tune, a nice, mellow, swinging cut.
Now, after that mood mover, the next cut is different again: “Davis Baby” is a very quiet, acoustic guitar-and-vocals song that is just a simple little melancholy song. It’s not angry or bitter and it isn’t full of irony or spaceship bleeps and bloops. A couple other things join in toward the end – twisted keyboard effects and whooshes that give it some sort of emphasis, like “DON’T IGNORE ME!”.
In fact, the rest of the album basically goes on in that more humanistic, mellow, acoustic style, that is, except for track number 11, which happens to be the title track. It’s an 11-minute study in euphonies and hybridizing – whatever sticks when thrown against the wall. While it may be a challenge for neophytes to get through all 11 minutes of “A London Transmission”, it nonetheless, does have a certain pull that keep listeners completely mesmerized by the pull of the tune, the tractor beam, so to speak of the electronica comes at you from deep inside those woofers and holds you in a paralyzing grip that keeps you from turning it off because something about it just has you enthralled – the dreamy atmospherics, the droning ambience or maybe the kitchen-sink-experimentality. Then, once “A London Transmission” has sent it’s 11 minute message, that penultimate free-for-all, one is rewarded with the final cut, “Capillary Whore”, which goes back to the thread of jazzy, loose, pickin’, zooming and grinnin’, the theme that was starting to gel in the middle of the record. Hopefully London Transmissions will be a sort of “pick a style & stick with it” kind of album and that next time around there’ll be a little more plotting per the way the music is presented and, which songs go where, which can make a huge difference in the way the CD ends up sounding in its entirety. - Reviewed by Kent Manthie

Sylvain Chauveau
The Black Book of Capitalism
Type Records
http://www.typerecords.com
This CD, which has been globetrotting now, for about 9 years, after initially being released in France in 2000 under the title, Le Livre Noir Du Capitalisme, has finally been picked up by UK label, Type Records, translated into its English equivalent, The Black Book of Capitalism and released to a “broader” audience in 2008, bringing Sylvain into the light of the world beyond his local Frankish milieu.
One way to approach this album is by looking at it in terms of “pictures” and images, evoked by the moody, at times incidental, music on this CD. In other words, it comes across as a soundtrack to a movie that was never made. You can hear the way Chauveau gets really quiet in parts, but is still gently stroking complex notes and signatures that always move along, never staying static or getting repetitive.
On the second track, “JLG”, one is treated to a beautiful piano solo, nothing but a piano playing a melancholy but bouncy, nonetheless, melody. The next song is different, altogether (“Hurlements en Faveur de Serge T.”); it has a Euro-hip/hop flavor to it. There is the voice sample of some guy speaking in French. He sounds like he’s haranguing a small group of people or giving some sort of long, drawn out oration. But this is all ok, because it’s only rock ‘n’ roll – right? But we like it – and, backing it all up are slick drum machine machinations and simple, but low-lying tuneage. Then, the next track is different again (“Le Marin Rejete Par La Mer”), going into a slow, almost dirge-like reflection through a glass darkly.
The whole album goes in this direction, so there’s no need to delineate each cut. Suffice it to say, though, Sylvain does his best to be adventurous, musically. His isn’t that hip, nightclub-remixed stuff by other “nouveau francais” bands such as Air, Daft Punk and Mondrian, but a lighthearted, reflective and introspective style that, although instrumental, seems to have a lot to “say”, musically. Listening to The Black Book of Capitalism is like a slowly burning opium-scented candle that lays on a black coffee table in the middle of a sparsely furnished living room; either one helps you clear your mind and enjoy nothing but the present moment, not one second further or backward. They can both be as comfortable a place as any and the burning scent as well as the flickering flame that lights the room can take help take you to the same place in your mind as listening to this CD, while sipping a glass of 1994 Rhone as you wait to be inspired and you will be – with or without the wine.
But don’t expect that now that Sylvain Chauveau’s released his album with an English title and English song names that he’s suddenly “Gone Hollywood”, that the next CD out will be a hip-hop record produced by P-Diddy. In fact, The Black Book of Capitalism is, except for the English CD and song title translations, still 100% Francophonous, to coin a word. As was already written, the album is instrumental, but throughout, some of the cuts on The Black Book of Capitalism are laden with “street conversation” samples: a man haranguing a crowd, two lovers talking heatedly but discreetly, or whatever the source may be – myriad street voices and noises – they speak in French, of course and the music itself, has none of the new wave of super-cool French pop music, filled with bouncy, moody and sometimes droning, repetitive freak-outs, of course, done from a French perspective, not the DESTROY! Mentality of their Scandinavian-Viking neighbors, or American speed-metal death bands. Anyway, Sylvain is just letting it all hang out – he wears his moodiness on his silk sleeve, but just from listening to the sometimes playful measures here and there, you see he doesn’t take himself too seriously, a very ideal French trait.
Who knows what will follow? I would recommend to Sylvain to not sign any American “major label” record contracts and stick instead with independent outfits, where you may keep your creative control and you don’t get your mind and soul stolen out from under you, forget the myth about “selling your soul” – they just take it and dare you to do something about it. Best advice: stay beautiful! – Reviewed by Kent Manthie