Category: Music Reviews

Posted on: June 3, 2010 Posted by: AAA NeuFutur.com Comments: 0

Jarboe – Thirteen Masks / Jarboe and Lary Seven – Beautiful People Ltd (CD)

Pretty much what I thought, Jarboe’s style of pseudo-goth/electronic sound sounds a little dated in the fourteen years since this album first came out. However, when compared to some of the other goth-esque music from the period, Jarboe seems a fresh as a newly-created corpse. Some of the reversed instrumentation on “Red” provides a perfect backdrop for the heavenly tones of Jarboe’s voice. The sultry vocals of Jarboe’s present on…

Posted on: May 31, 2010 Posted by: AAA NeuFutur.com Comments: 0

Jarboe – Mystery of Faith (CD)

Boy, has Jarboe been on a cleaning spree the last year, clearing our eir closet of practically all the demos and music that have been left to the wayside in the last fifteen years? Starting out the CD with “Song For Dead Time”, Jarboe’s pop-mentality allows this gothic-tinged track to soar above the fray, using ethereal vocals and continual piano lines to make for a delectable track. Following the delightful…

Posted on: May 31, 2010 Posted by: AAA NeuFutur.com Comments: 0

The January Taxi – Keep Quiet, They Might Hear Us (CD)

The cover of “Keep Quiet, They Might Hear Us” is fairly low-key. This low-key look really is perfect for hiding a brand of emo meets rock (think Samiam more than Coheed here), and really allows The January Taxi to hit the gates running. “Star Light The Sun” drops the vocal focus of the previous track for a more compelling brand of arrangements that, even in its guitar-heavy state is able…

Posted on: May 31, 2010 Posted by: AAA NeuFutur.com Comments: 0

Janez Detd – Like Cold Rain Kills a Summer Day (CD)

The instrumental interlude that starts off “Like Cold Rain Kills a Summer Day” is something that I would never recommend a band to do. The minute of instrumental opening feels like eons whenever an act does it. Start from a 0 level, but don’t let a few minutes go by before kicking into the disc. Still, even with this early black mark against the band, Janez Detd is able to…

Posted on: May 30, 2010 Posted by: AAA NeuFutur.com Comments: 0

Janeska – The Objective (CD)

Janeska sings in a style that has manifested itself through much of dance culture, outwardly sounding like Jennifer Lopez and Gwen Stefani. To couch tracks like “On Your Knees” as anything besides feel-good music would be mis-contextualize Janeska. While “Moonlight” uses a much slower tempo for its backing beat, the same pop-pandering style is put forth by Janeska. Here might be a hint of techno present in the track, but…

Posted on: May 30, 2010 Posted by: AAA NeuFutur.com Comments: 0

Jane’s Addiction – Up From The Catacombs (CD)

Individuals who have any access to outside musical sources (whether they be popular radio or music video stations) have at least some idea who Jane’s Addiction were. Practically any discussion about the nineties will have a section about the band (or their biggest hit, “Been Caught Stealing”) due to the effect that the band has had on individuals and bands both contemporary and current. The fact that there had not…

Posted on: May 30, 2010 Posted by: AAA NeuFutur.com Comments: 0

Jane – Seedling Jane (CD)

Transcendent of any musical genre, Jane’s sophomore release begins with “Never Thought It Was Love”, a country meets Sheryl Crow-type of romp, which moves into the much more electronically-infused “Place To Find You”. Instead of overdoing it with the synthesizer lines in the aforementioned track, Jane is able to chart eirself as a more sedate alternative to Madonna. “Place To Find You” is a more sedate, nineties-themed dance track. The…

Posted on: May 29, 2010 Posted by: AAA NeuFutur.com Comments: 0

Jane – Close Up and Real (CD)

Coming off as a less Christian Crystal Lewis, Jane performs a very innocuous type of pop music that owes more to The Carpenters and Shania Twain than Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. While Jane does play acoustic guitar, another ten people join into the mix, but each individual (at least those who play instruments) sounds more like a program function of Cakewalk than an actual human being. Take the five-minute…

Posted on: May 29, 2010 Posted by: AAA NeuFutur.com Comments: 0

Jaks – Here Lies The Body Of Jaks (CD)

To be honest, it took me a few minutes to truly get into the type of music that Jaks played. By the time that the track “Damn Bloodsucker” started up, I knew that I would be a fan of their dance-noise style. The ever-present bass lines (which provide a groove all their own) and the Primus-like arrangement of “Dumbwaiter” show a band that liked to experiment with the boundaries of…

Posted on: May 29, 2010 Posted by: AAA NeuFutur.com Comments: 0

The Jai-Alai Savant – Thunderstatement (CD)

The Jai-Alai Savant’s “Thunderstatement” gives listeners the same general feeling as if they happened on a seventies rock band’s album that has been lost for the last thirty or so years. During tracks like “Scarlett Johansson, Why Don’t You Love Me”, the band’s music really comes forth as if it was born directly from the arena rock era. The band moves up a few years to the Police-sounding title-track. Where…

Posted on: May 28, 2010 Posted by: AAA NeuFutur.com Comments: 0

Jade – Banned In America (CD)

I thought when “Banned In America” started that Jade would be creating something that was an Avril clone. Don’t get me wrong, the vocal style of Jade is still something that is pop-based, but the backing instrumentation is something that is much more heavy and rock-based. This puts Jade in the position of being another Amy lee. The vocal style gives me more of a Celine Dion feel, so the…

Posted on: May 28, 2010 Posted by: AAA NeuFutur.com Comments: 0

Del Rey & The Sun Kings – I Am The Light (CD)

“I Am The Light” starts off in a much different vein than the following tracks would indicate. This is because “Jaxbac” is a purely vocal track that rivals (but does not emulate) throat-singing, while both “Blood Doesn’t Lie” and “Nowhere To Land” approach the industrial, early-nineties goth sound without abandon. The music on tracks like “I Am The Light” seem to be drawn from the Middle Eastern tradition of music,…

Posted on: May 28, 2010 Posted by: AAA NeuFutur.com Comments: 0

Ivy’s Butterfly – façade (CD)

Aside from the wonderful new-plastic smell of the CD booklet, Ivy’s Butterfly strikes me at the beginning of their CD for another reason : the rich layering of vocals and the guitars unafraid to be both explorative and to rock out. Ivy’s Butterfly also provides me with a slight problem, as with Go Rimbaud, the sheer work they do on each track renders it virtually impossible to assign a generally-acceptable…

Posted on: May 27, 2010 Posted by: AAA NeuFutur.com Comments: 0

Ivy – In The Clear (CD)

The dreamy pop of Ivy is cultured, having been refined for the last decade over four albums. The music that starts off the disc, especially “Nothing But The Sky”, does not cut as deep as it could. Everything seems to traverse the same narrow swath during the 5:12 of the track, ultimately leaving a certain hollowness and lack of depth that plagues the band throughout the disc. “Thinking About You”…

Posted on: May 27, 2010 Posted by: AAA NeuFutur.com Comments: 0

It Dies Today – Sirens (CD)

Okay, so I went into It Dies Today’s “Sirens” pretty negatively. The first verse of the first song had me making my “Eww, all yelling metal crap.” But, you guys won me back over. The growls and yelling were used tastefully, backed by vocals I actually quite enjoy. And the yelling is pretty unique; I can still make out all the lyrics. “A Port in Any Storm” actually had some…

Posted on: May 27, 2010 Posted by: AAA NeuFutur.com Comments: 0

Ism – Monkey Underneath (CD)

Ism – Monkey Underneath I had started writing my review of “Monkey Underneath”, but after writing about half of it I realized that the music that was playing from my speakers was in reality not Ism but Him or Avenged Sevenfold, coming out of one of my friends’ Myspace. Oh well, Ism sounds quite different from either band, so I can’t salvage much besides “and” and “the”. The style of…

Posted on: May 26, 2010 Posted by: AAA NeuFutur.com Comments: 0

Islands – Return to the Sea (CD)

I loved The Unicorns a great deal when I heard their “Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone”, and to hear that some of the members of that band are in the Islands, I began to get excited about “Return to the Sea”. The album breaks away from the traditional pop act sound by incorporating a number of vocalists as the focal point of the band. In this sense,…

Posted on: May 26, 2010 Posted by: AAA NeuFutur.com Comments: 0

Isis – Oceanic: Remixes/Reinterpretations (CD)

It is true that Oceanic fits well with the sound that Isis puts on this disc. For “Weight”, done by Fennesz gives listeners a sense of being by a sea. This sea sound, created by white noise, is one of the better emulations of nature. This compilation of “reinterpretations” is interesting to say the least. While Fennesz has a very solemn and sedate sound dominating their track, Ayal Naor creates…

Posted on: May 26, 2010 Posted by: AAA NeuFutur.com Comments: 0

GiTAR offers a complete and scathing pop culture commentary on “STUFFED.”

Scheduled for release on June 8th, 2010 by Seeland Records, the label owned by legendary culture-jammers, Negativland, GiTAr’s “STUFFED” has the potential to make you more than you are without it. GiTAr members Ellipse Elkshow and I Cut People were raised in Evansville, Indiana, home to major polluters, factories, cancer statistics, pharmaceutical manufacturing and a test town for new products cooked up by various fast food giants. In that cold…

Posted on: May 26, 2010 Posted by: AAA NeuFutur.com Comments: 0

J. Isaac – Welcome to the Planet (CD)

I’m not sure exactly if having two non-song tracks to start out your album is necessarily something a rapper attempting to reach that next level of fame really should be doing. When J. Isaac starts the song section of eir disc with “Baby Ez Up”, a lot of this doubt disappears. “Baby Ez Up” starts out in a Sisqo vein, but the backing beat seems to be a little anemic…