Spring is in full swing here at IRIS, which means there's a never-ending supply of new music! Here are a few of our favorites this week!
Label: Chemikal UndergroundAlbum: Human Don't Be Angry
Artist: Human Don't Be Angry
Genre: Alternative
Former Arab Strap guitarist Malcolm Middleton returns with his self-titled debut album as Human Don’t Be Angry. Named in honor of the German version of board game Frustration, the album was recorded alongside producer and drum programmer Paul Savage, with live drum parts from Middleton’s old Arab Strap partner Aidan Moffat. "HDBA is a facade, a front so I can have fun again musically," says Middleton. "I thought I'd go back to what I enjoy, which is playing guitar and writing melodies." The original idea to create an album of gentle guitar instrumentals and drum-free ambient atmospherics was soon paid to when Middleton entered the studio with Savage, as drum tracks were added and lyrics emerged for some of the songs, albeit often as poetic repetitions of phrases rather than structured verse-chorus-verse affairs. The words fit with the laid-back air of the music and help showcase Middleton’s often under-rated skill as a guitarist, leaving the sense that he’s made "more of an album I'd want to listen to than the one I thought I wanted to make." Song titles like "Jaded" and "Getting Better (At Feeling Like Shit)" are a tongue-in-cheek diversion from an album which is musically breezy and upbeat, although the emotional bittersweetness you might expect from the man who wrote "We’re All Going to Die" is never far from the surface. So Human Don’t Be Angry is a refresher before Middleton returns re-energised to his solo career, but it’s also here to stay as a new creative avenue.
Album: Oh Holy Molar
Artist: Felix
Genre: Pop
Oh Holy Molar is the second album from UK trio Felix. The group produces a bewitching, minimal chamber pop that works as the perfect framework for singer/songwriter Lucinda Chua's oblique and emotionally immediate stories of superstition and searching for protection against bad omens. As a follow up to their debut You Are The One I Pick, the band return with a collection of songs with a sound stripped back to its very core. Something is said to have "teeth" when it has the ability to make an impact. This record certainly has "teeth", and sharp ones at that. The album was recorded in a vast, spooky 1940s cinema in Nottingham, England, now converted into a studio. After recording was completed the band discovered that underneath the live room lay an abandoned Dental Laboratory. "Oh Holy Molar" indeed. Since the release of the first Felix album, pianist/vocalist Lucinda Chua, also an accomplished photographer, has been working on a number of projects, most recently with Wallpaper in Detroit. Guitarist Chris Summerlin has been recording and touring with his new band Kogumaza. The group is completed with the recent addition of drummer Neil Turpin who, when not performing with Felix, can also be found touring the world with French composer Yann Tiersen.
Album: The Calling
Artist: Romain Collin
Genre: Jazz
You have to bring something extra-special to the table to attract the attention and involvement of the likes of Herbie Hancock, Terence Blanchard, and Wayne Shorter. French-born jazz pianist Romain Collin does. Armed with a killer instinct for progressive, spatially friendly instrumentals that present themselves in the form of mini-soundtracks, Collin rode a scholarship wave to Boston's Berklee College of Music and then onto the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz. His work in an ensemble at the Institute garnered more than passing praise from famous mentor-artists -- Marcus Miller, Wynton Marsalis, Charlie Haden. It garnered the honor of a ful tour with Hancock and Shorter in 2007 through India and Vietnam, as well as recognition and use of the Institute ensemble as a band of choice for Hancock, Blanchard, and Shorter. Described by NPR host Jon Weber as "a visionary composer, an extraordinary jazz pianist, and a very bright young rising star in the jazz world," Romain Collin continues to develop his vision on The Calling, combing the tradition of improvisation with sound designing and classical music.
