Community Library US Vinyl & CDs

Review: The newest statement from New York's best-kept-secret of experimental guitar 'n' fx music, Christmas Decorations.

Review: Quite possibly Community Library's rudest output to date, long-time junglist DJ C winds up some good and proper bouncement styles, alongside mic man Zulu, on "Bodywork". Side stepping all current trends for anything on a half-step tip, DJ C bubbles one up from the underground with a fiercely danceable, steamroller riddim constructed for excited pelvic grindations and wild gun finger salutes. Drop this in any dancehall from Dakar to Dublin for a spontaneous combustion effect.

Review: Community Library is proud to present the debut release from one of Portland's most unique and wonderful bands, the Evolutionary Jass Band. Formerly the Steele Street Revolutionary Jass Band, the group has slowly but steadily made a name for themselves locally for reliably powerful live performances in a variety of traditional and untraditional venues. Bandleader Jefrey Brown and drummer Michael Henrickson were long-time key members of one of Portland's better-known musical exports, the improvisatory, rotating-membership group Jackie-O Motherfucker. The Evolutionary Jass Band coexisted for some time but truly took flight when these two left Jackie-O Motherfucker; in contrast to Jackie-O Motherfucker's multigenre escapades, the Jass Band is an entity more focused on creating a variant specifically within a Jazz idiom. Relying on a delicate balance between compositional tact and way out improvisation, the band is able to refer to a jazz vocabulary while building on it with confidence. The group has grown into a sextet under Brown's direction, and has brought incredible beauty, force, and rawness to Portland's often overly academic live improvisation scene. "Change Of Scene" reflects the band's combinations of thiopian-influenced, modal looping riffs with elements of American band music and early jazz, as well as the underground soul-jazz of the 1970s, with a lot of influence from more recent music from the DIY, experimental rock spectrum as well. This is some of their first recorded work and captures the band's 2005 lineup, consisting of bandleader Jefrey Leighton Brown (saxophone), Daphna Kohn (violin & sitar), Michael Henrickson (drums), Marisa Anderson (guitar & sitar), Bob Jones (double bass), and Keelin Meyers (saxophone).

Review: Jefrey Leighton Brown, founder of Community Library's own Evolutionary Jass Band, and former key participant in Jackie-o-Motherfucker, steps forth with his fantastic debut, "Change Has Got To Come!". This singular musical statement is as much a manifesto asserting soul-jazz's place in today's underground as it is a document of Brown's individual songwriting vision. "Change Has Got To Come!" might seem an anachronism to some, even more marginal still for being an isolated beam of blues light in a major-key, indie-rock world. All the way down to its revolutionary, hopeful title and austere, homespun presentation, "Change..." is a purposeful, careful reinterpretation of 70s-era, introspective avant-jazz and obtuse, small-town r&b. Free of self-consciousness, Brown brings his unpretentious, careful, abstract songwriting style to an updated soul-jazz idiom and all its moods and phases. And all this is recorded in the privacy of his own basement, with his brother and closest companions in tow, over the course of several years. "Change Has Got To Come!" is a perfect counterpoint to the recent Evolutionary Jass Band release and gives some glimpse into the wealth of music yet to spring from this group and their community.

Review: Project Perfect were the tricksters of Portland's music community during the days of their frequent and strange performances (2002-2004). Appearing live in costume or with exotic dancers on stage, the group's deadpan humour was at odds with their profoundly introspective, abstract music. Following from their membership in Fontanelle, the two long-time collaborators came into their own with a reputation for consistently dextrous live performances, a distinctively insular sonic vocabulary, and a fluid, telepathic improvisatory rapport. Project Perfect's mastery over sounds takes them jump-cutting from squiggles, squonks, and blurts of random (yet eerily on-target) radio broadcasts, to moments of austere, dry guitar and piano interplay. Hopping between tender and bombastic moods, introspection and extroversion, delicacy and jarringness, the band's sense of variety within a narrowly defined sonic palette is unmatched. Their approach comes from some oblique musical reference points (Runegrammofon label, Cabaret Voltaire, Conrad Schnitzler and Cluster come to mind), but this was a group that truly did not sound like any other. "PM+" adds additional tracks to the original recording "PM", a CD that was essentially privately released by conceptual arts group Red76, in 2002. Completely undistributed, and never exposed to local or outside press, "PM" came to us as a crucial piece of lost Portland music, along with additional recordings the band made in 2003. Andy Brown was a founding member of the celebrated early kranky band Jessamine, as well as of its less-understood successor, Fontanelle. He has also been part of the drone group Southerning, and is now of the audio/visual trio Paint & Copter. Charlie Smyth (also ex-Fontanelle) has worked in everything from skronking jazz-rock (with Seattle's Laundry in the 1990's) to free improvisation (in the early 2000's) and most recently, as a folk-rock songwriter in Chicago, Berlin, and Seattle. Please share our enjoyment of this singular, intimate, and cosmic recording.

Review: "The best thing I've heard all year" Philip Sherburne, (Critical Beats, The Wire) The kind of record that will be manna to the ears of all Sahko heads, this eponymous 12" very nearly didn't make it to vinyl with the masters almost destroyed during Hurricane Katrina. It'll just make you treasure it all the more though. Drawing inspiration from the 'Who's Who' of leftfield minimalism, Reanimator tease strands of Pan Sonic, Vainio and Force Field, then weaves them into a heady tapestry that integrates fluctuating rhythms, dubby shadows and test-tone oscillations into the kind of sound you'd kill to pick up on a decaying pirate broadcast. Opening with the mealy rhythms of "Clicks & Drones May...", the shadowy Reanimator duo (it's a secret!) proffer the kind of bare-boned take on machine music that makes you fill in the gaps, creating a creative tension that can't help but pique your undivided attention. By no means restricting themselves to a thin-base approach, the likes of "Special Powers" and "Blown Subidah" offer forth a richer take on the minimal foothills - staking the dub upfront and imposing, then letting the delay pedals and fried samplers make merry around them. Given the name "evil dub" by those responsible, Reanimator's sound is thick yet sparse, recalling the best of Sahko and announcing the appearance of a new cat in the minimal jungle.

Review: "This reanimator record is one of the best things I've heard this year." Philip Sherburne, critical beats, The Wire. "Liking this one an awful lot; haven't heard much this good in a while." Dustedmagazine.com. Airplay: Helen Smith, The New Bit, BBC Radio 1 Chilled out passion, Oxford FM. From the vaults of Portland's underground we bring you Reanimator, one of the city's most unusual electronic music groups ever. The master tapes were nearly destroyed in the Hurricane Katrina disaster last year, so we are incredibly thankful to get the chance to release these now! Directly inspired by leftfield electronic, noise, and techno artists such as Pan Sonic, Force Field, and Mouse On Mars, but most closely resembling the first of these, Reanimator were experts at improvising heavy, synthetic, syncopated, and dubbed-out minimal beat music using the barest machinery. With a handful of mismatched drum machines, test-tone oscillators, budget samplers, and delay pedals, and improvising directly to ¼" tape, they created a huge body of work, ranging from the pacific, chord-backed "Phase Constellation" to the polyrhythmic thump of "Special Powers." This collection demonstrates the band's rugged "pirate" ingenuity and DIY inspiration as they forged into the unknown hinterlands of minimal, handmade electro-techno- or as the band called it then, "evil dub." The recently re-formed Reanimator were based in Portland until 2001. Now, the two members (clandestine identities not to be revealed!) split their time between New Orleans, Asheville, North Carolina, New York City, and points in between as they tour extensively with their other group, IPCP (Load Records). The recordings in hand actually date to the year 2000, year zero for Portland music in so many ways: genres were convolving, electronic instrumentation was being embraced for what felt like the first time, and the plethora of non-traditional venues was expanding rapidly. At this time Reanimator were among the occupants of Delaware House, a North Portland co-op style outcast enclave in which Strategy, Marijke from Eats Tapes, Red Alert Works studio, and many others began musical journeys which continue today. These recordings celebrate this era/context as much as they anthologize the works of Reanimator themselves.

Review: Riding out of the respected Community Library label on cruise control, 'Night Beach' is a slick 12" from one of Portland Oregon's finest producers. Also known as Brokenwindow (last seen mashing up tracks for Kid606's Violent Turd imprint) Solenoid has been releasing tracks for longer than we care to remember, and on too many labels to list yet this 12" is something of an oddity in his catalogue.

Review: Paul Dickow has made some memorable and mesmerising music since emerging as Strategy 21 years ago, initially switching between much-admired experimental and underground labels (Kranky, Idle Hands, 100% Silk, Further Records) before establishing his own imprint (Community Library). Wet Room, his 20th full-length, is another fine collection of cuts in his distinctively deep, dubby and trippy sonic style. It's rooted in ambient, sound collage and experimentalism, but also touches on digi-dub, deep dub techno, trip-hop and the far-sighted, intergalactic electronics (if not the rhythms) of Motor City techno. Most of all, though, it feels like a coherent, immersive sonic journey, making Wet Room one of his most coherent and accessible LPs yet.

Review: A beguiling, classic new release comes to Community Library: "Documentary", the debut album by solo artist Rolan Vega. Synthesizer expert, art-film aficionado and enthusiastic upstart of Chicago's vibrant electro/synth scene, he has compiled years' worth of his favourite synthesizer vignettes into a comprehensive debut album.

Review: Everybody's favourite nu-skool junglist DJ C hooks up with his man Zulu for a killer 7" on Community Library. Taking a bare bones post jungle template something similar to Kode 9's infamous "Backward" riddim with a metronomic hi-hat allowing the lumpen gabber kick/snare pattern to twist itself into a highly developed steppers pattern over invisible subhits and sticky bass. A proper tasty little slice of steppers riddim methodology.