MUSIC ZONE
ID and Sleeper — Displacement
Saurabh & Gaurav

(Mush Records)

Drawing more from industrial music than jazz, dub or soul, Sleeper churns out crackly, mid-tempo versions of the hazy, Flying Saucer Attack, inspired soundscapes that El-P and Odd Nosdam have popularised. The intimidating stagnant and four-alarm siren loops may very well be the album’s strongest trait; they create a futuristic virtual exterior, asking the listener to ponder an urban backdrop with his gaze concentrated on towering high rises and colossal industrial icons. Sleeper paints the same surrounding as Nas or Public Enemy, but from an entirely different angle. ID struggles to align himself with Sleeper’s point of view. His even-keeled rhyming matches the backing tracks’ serious character, but his lumpy abstractions find themselves at odds with his partner’s spiralling architecture and fragile shadowing. He casts himself as a modernist in Entropy ("There’s no thought in pure melody/Only the fragments are real"), but his wilderness lacks any carefully wrought images or characters; he simply asks us to believe him when he makes unsubstantiated claims that we are Reaching for the infinite/Groping over the days. As far as debut releases go, Displacement isn’t a complete wash. ID and Sleeper definitely have a defined aesthetic and are making strides towards rendering a coherent gallery of imagery.

Best track: Right There

Worst track: Chemical Burn

Rating: *

Unlike a handful of composers and arrangers in the late 1970s who fused jazz and rock with baroque classical sensibilities, Los Angeles’ David Axelrod built a far more unique r`E9sum`E9 by sticking to pop. His orchestrations — heavy on rollicking Ali-shuffle drums and guitar licks that dosed R&B twang years before Psychedelic Shack — were versatile enough to suit Man From U.N.C.L.E. co-star/multi-instrumentalist David McCallum (his two contributions here, House of Mirrors and The Edge, are beaded with dewy jet-age melancholia), South African Apartheid refugee and future Roots soundtrack singer Letta Mbulu (Pula Yetia), and soul legend Lou Rawls (You’ve Made Me So Very Happy). But the bulk of the compilation focuses on tracks from Axelrod’s ambitious solo concept records. Thankfully, Cannonball Adderley is featured here, with Tensity, from the ambitious Cannonball Adderley Quintet & Orchestra. His William Blake — inspired masterpieces Song of Innocence and Songs of Experience are represented well — even considering the inexplicable omission of Holy Thursday, his best composition — and tracks like the superhero funk of The Mental Traveler and the mournful piano elegy The Human Abstract (the latter became the backbone of DJ Shadow’s Midnight in a Perfect World) are there for the taking if anyone’s up to discovering the roots of Jazz.

Best track: A Divine Image

Misfit: Theme From The Fox

Rating: ***

Early man’s debut full-length is a celebration of metal. Closing In has it all: thrashing riffs, Marshall stack enormity, flying-V guitars and lyrics about paranoia and metallic birds of prey. Mike Conte and Adam Bennati have done their history lessons and let influences like Black Sabbath and Metallica run wild over the eleven tracks without breaking an ironic smirk. Four Walls introduces the duo as apprentices who respect their elders. It’s a brisk three minutes of shredded riffs and echoed vocals that is rich in the same dramatic flair that permeates the best metal songs. The momentum of first two tracks takes a nosedive with the third one, Black Sabbath-esque The Answer. Like A Goddamn Rat has a great shout-along chorus and a slightly faster tempo than most songs on the disc. Early Man turns it up to eleven for War Eagle, which is even louder and faster. Feeding Frenzy also benefits from a burst of speed. It seems like Early Man are at their best when they hit an all-out sprint; the mid-tempo numbers tend to be the most derivative. For devote metal heads, Early Man may represent a renaissance of the original, pure metal sound that started it all. For everyone else, Closing In will be received as a retro novelty rather than a serious musical accomplishment.

Best track: Four Walls

Worst track: Brain Sick

Rating: **

Top 10 singles

• Check On It Beyonce feat. Slim Thug (NM)

• You’re Beautiful James Blunt (FD)

• Grillz Nelly (CU)

• Temperature Sean Paul (CU)

• Be Without You Mary J Blige (FD)

• We Belong Together Gavin GeGraw (CU)

• Don’t Forget About Us Mariah Carey (NM)

• Avery Storm Notorious B.I.G. (CU)

• Unwritten Natasha Bedingfield (NE)

• When I’m Gone Eminem (FD)

Legend:

Album of the month
Crazy Frog — Crazy Frog Presents Crazy Hits
(Universal)

Crazy Frog, you either love him or hate him. This helium-voiced frog became a pop culture epidemic in Europe and especially the UK, with ringtones, TV commercials, pop songs, video games and other forms of exposure included in its virus-like spread. Crazy Frog’s popularity peaked last summer, when the full-length single of the Axel F ringtone, based on Harold Faltermeyer’s instrumental theme for Beverly Hills Cop, topped the UK singles charts for several weeks and kept Coldplay’s comeback single, Speed of Sound, from debuting at number one. Of course, novelty pop is one of the few genres where deeply crazy can be taken as a compliment, and Crazy Frog Presents Crazy Hits’ wackiest moments are also the most fun. The album attempts to repeat the success by pairing Crazy Frog with a rogue’s gallery of pop hits that, in their heydays, were just as omnipresent as Axel F.

Crazy Frog Presents Crazy Hits also evokes the 1990s, as most of its songs date from that decade: We Like to Party, Get Ready for This, I Like to Move It, Whoomp! (There It Is). This special edition of Crazy Hits also features Crazy Frog’s covers of Pump Up The Jam, Popcorn, Pink Panther and frogified seasonal versions of Don’t You Want Me and Pinocchio. The Crazy Frog is the phenomena of 2005 — being the only act in history to have started life as a ringtone and then to have sold millions of singles and albums in more than 30 countries.

Best track: Whoomp! (There It Is) Worst track: 1001 Nights