The ever industrious Damon Albarn is on another side of the globe, again working with new people, sounds and styles. Monkey: Journey to the West is an “Operatic” adaptation of a Chinese folk story dating back to the Ming Dynasty. Albarn collaborated with Chinese director Chen Shi-Zheng and Gorillaz’ Jamie Hewlett on the production, which also includes the talents of numerous Chinese acrobats and musicians.
Samples of the recently released soundtrack (based on the production pieces) can be found on the official site here. Among them are the particularly charming song here:
Previously, Albarn collaborated with numerous Malian musicians on Mali Music. Perhaps unknown to most, he also lent a strange and haunting soundtrack to Ravenous, an odd film about cannibals in the early American West.
Short-lived but successful Swedish hardcore band, Refused, broke up about a decade ago. The band couldn’t reconcile their own success, and major-label status, with their anarchist leanings and lyrics. After the break-up, some members started a project called TEXT, which culminated in a single self-titled album release from Buddyhead records. The album is dense, and difficult, some of the songs best being categorized as math rock.
Daytrotter has an excellent studio version of Sunset Rubdown performing their song “The Mending of the Gown.” It’s much slower and more organic sounding than the (in my opinion) artificially manic version included on the album. However, in this slower version, the listener may be quick to judge the band on a whole, since it’s easier to understand (at least phonetically) the sprawling, obtuse lyrics. I still have no problem with it at all.
It can be found as the encore on their session page here.
…and Slate has a great article about the album, and the mercurial Jeff Mangum. The Salinger of Indie Rock. I wrote about this album earlier; there’s no need to rehash all of that. I always found the title track to be stark, haunting and hopeful.
