4/30 old arrivals

Some fine selections from the 17 Dots staff.

Charles Mingus, Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus: This live album is one of the last documents of what might be Mingus’ greatest small group ever: Eric Dolphy, Ted Curson, Dannie Richmond and of course Mingus himself. The music is so energetic it’s hard to listen to sitting down, especially when Dolphy is wailing over the Mingus/Richmond lockstep rhythm section. I really can’t write anything that will do this album justice, so I’m going to stop trying. Enjoy! — Paul Sanwald

Marz, Wir Sind Heir: This record is gorgeous — a stirring blend of acoustics and electronics that’s warm and stirring without descending into AM easy listening territory. Something about this record reminds me — ridiculous as this may sound — of waking up on a farm. It’s got this weird “mist-settling-on-the-prairie” vibe, with pinpricks of acoustic snagging against a netting of gauzy electronics. The occasional clatter of cowbell only adds to the strange, rural feel. This is a peculiar, haunting record, one that I couldn’t recommend more highly. — Joe Keyes

Saunders / Garcia / Kahn / Vitt, Live at the Keystone, Volumes 1-3: It blows my mind that these albums (three sets from a live show and one compilation of all three) have not seen more attention on eMusic. I think in large part it is because of how the metadata shows up. No one knows any of these artists except for Jerry Garcia and it doesn’t show up if you search for him. It’s fantastic 7’0s noodle rock. In some ways better than the Dead in that it’s all Jerry and the grooves are deeper and more “mature” than the Dead’s ever were. If you like that era of rock, you will love this! — Reid Genauer

The Zincs, Black Pompadour: Great black humor (or is that humour?) from this England-by-way-of-Chicago band. Vocalist James Elkington has a wry, conversational delivery — he talks more than he sings — and the lyrics are full of strange turns and underplayed jokes. Musically, the record hews close to a loose jangle — think the best of 80s American college rock — but it’s the nicotine poetry and steady self-effacement that make Black Pompadour such a charmer. — Joe Keyes

Niobe, Radioersatz: I found this record one excruciatingly hot summer while living in Memphis, TN. There was a record store down the street from me, and as I shopped for something new one lazy weekend afternoon, the store clerk (who reminded me of Dick from High Fidelity) slapped this record on to either 1) weird me out and make me leave or 2) prove how cool and underground he was. Well, turned out, it struck something inside me, and maybe in a partially unconscious move to piss him off, I asked him if I could buy the record that he was playing. It’s a very strange, electronic album, and one that propelled Niobe (aka Yvonne Cornelius) into an eclectic experimental electronic category. I really don’t even know how to describe the sound she has produced here. It’s a weird, trancing, circus sound of half-chopped echoing soundbytes, like a metal sculpture falling through a vacuum. Filtered by aliens. Then there’s Yvonne’s vocals. Haunting, enchanting, eerie and seductive.

I actually like her second album, “Tse Tse,” slightly better, but eMusic unfortunately doesn’t carry that title. But this is the record that kicked the doors wide open on my tastes of electronic music, and crushed my ideas of what electronic music could be. That summer in Memphis, I was living in the attic of an old house in Midtown that had been sectioned off into apartments. A massive freak storm came through and knocked out most of the city’s power for at least a week, my neighborhood for 2 weeks, and other parts of town for several months. That was particularly nice in 105 degree temperature. In the heat of my attic apartment, this album actually warped into unlistenable proportions. I found this quite symbolic considering what this album did for my preconceptions of a particular genre of music. — John LaFoe

Sean Price, Monkey Barz: A lot of people have been talking up Price’s latest, Jesus Price Superstar, but to me it’s nowhere near as good as it’s predecessor. Monkey Barz is a start-to-finish thrill; Price’s flow is wonderfully sleepy — he drags his voice across the words, in no hurry and working on no one’s clock but his own. Even better is the production: grainy, dead-battery soul samples Scotch-taped and looped like bits of an old film. The combination of throwback soul and Price’s big, booming voice is irresistible 𔃉 Monkey Barz is a slept-on masterpiece whose time has come. — Joe Keyes

This Is Menace, No End in Sight: The debut album from the metal supergroup This Is Menace includes performances from members of Pitchshifter, Therapy?, Carcass, Earthzone 9, SikTh and more. I don’t know much about the contribution on each track beyond the vocalists listed on the album page, and the website is somewhat cryptic, but I do know it was founded Jason Bowld from Pitchshifter, and its roster for their next album has grown to include members from 19 bands. The tracks are short, furious and sometimes melodic and even with so many contributing members it is all produced to be fairly cohesive from one track to the next. For the most part, fans of any of the contributing bands would likely want to give this one a spin. — Bryan Robbins

Various Artists, Down Santic Way: Leonard Chin’s Santic label never achieved the stature of Trojan or Studio One, but the music it produced was no less sublime or engrossing. All of the music here was recorded between 1973 and 1975, and all of it has an eerie, moody vibe. It’s like Rasta worship music turned inside out, full of plinking organs and snaking saxophones. I don’t want to be blasphemous, but it’s a fitting coincidence that Santic and ‘Satanic’ are separated by only a few letters. There’s something evil in the heart of these songs, like getting lost deep within Conrad’s jungle. — Joe Keyes