Bambara - Love on My Mind - 12-INCH SINGLE [12 inch Vinyl Single]

Not Mine is a dynamic sampling of Carlos Truly's musical sensibilities. A genre-bending journey, it's the missing puzzle piece that ties together his long list of contradictory production credits (Princess Nokia, Frankie Cosmos, Mister Twin Sister, etc etc). He channels old-soul singers while vocalizing over wailing sirens or dreamy saxophone solos. Real-life brother and co-producer Tony Seltzer delivers a taste of NYC's underground hip-hop scene via off-kilter beats and wild percussive moments. Carlos sings about the limitations of traditional masculinity, growing up in Brooklyn, entitlement, true love, and the inherent difficulty in choosing a life dedicated to artistic pursuit. Intermittent interludes deliver us seamlessly from one track into the next-occasionally blurring the lines between tracks, or offering a place to rest after a particularly intense song. At eleven tracks and just under 23 minutes, it's a tidy introduction that begs to be listened to in order, from start to finish.

The first thing that strikes you about Stray, Bambara's fourth - and greatest - album to date, will be it's pulverizing soundscape. By turns, vast, atmospheric, cool, broiling and, at times - on stand out tracks like InchSing Me To The StreetInch and InchSerafinaInch - simply overwhelming. But Stray is not merely another, better entry in a catalog full of darkly thrilling, blistering experimental rock-via-punk. Rather, early on in it's conception the band made the decision to experiment with new compositions and song structures. The resulting addition of backing vocals from Drew Citron (Public Practice) and Anina Ivory-Block (Palberta) create a hauntingly beautiful contrast to Bateh's drunken baritone on tracks like InchSing Me to the StreetInch, InchDeath CroonsInch and InchStay Cruel,Inch while the Dick Dale-inspired guitar riffs on InchSerafinaInch and InchHeat LightningInch and the call-and-response choruses throughout the album showcase Bambara's ability to write songs that immediately demand repeat listens. These are just a few of the changes that reveal this album to be the monumental step forward that it is. Here Bambara finally sound like they've locked into what they were always destined to achieve, and the effect is nothing short of electrifying.

There is a very particular charm about klezmer music that cannot be found in other styles of music. It's a kind of melancholic exuberance; at once happy and sad, klezmer sounds simultaneously like laughing and weeping. Klezmer is a musical genre in a constant state of evolution. Perhaps it's history lends itself to this- the original klezmorim were itinerant musicians who would travel around the shtetls of Eastern Europe performing at weddings and other occasions, until displacement of the Jewish population in the late 19th and early 20th centuries saw klezmer make it's way to America where it met with jazz and other western music. These qualities make it difficult to pinpoint exactly what klezmer is today. To quote Gustavo Bulgach, whose band Klezmer Juice is featured on this collection, Inchklezmer is like a soapy pig. Everybody's trying to catch it, but every time someone gets ahold of it, it slips away from them.Inch