More Modern Noir: Max Payne 3

By Paul Casey

Noir has been having a good time in video games, over the last few years. Quantic Dream’s high profile Heavy Rain, and last year’s L.A. Noire (which we reviewed here) both used noir as their foundation. Max Payne 3 arrives as the third in a trio of story-driven, highly stylized games indebted to the classics—Raymond Chandler, John Huston, anything starring Humphrey Bogart—as well as modern creators who have ensured that noir and hardboiled fiction stay vital—James Ellroy, Frank Miller, Michael Mann.
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Charlie Parker; Dizzy Gillespie; Bud Powell; Max Roach; Charles Mingus; The Quintet: Jazz at Massey Hall

By Jemiah Jefferson

This new remaster of The Quintet: Jazz At Massey Hall—a truly historic convergence of five of the most celebrated musicians in jazz—is so classic, so iconic, that at first it’s hard to understand what’s so special about it. It really does take some schooling, and some careful and studied listening, before the true magic trick is revealed. For anyone with an interest in jazz, however, this album is essential listening, and can be enjoyed without knowledge of its importance.
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Thelonious Monk, Misterioso

By Jemiah Jefferson

It must have been a thrill for audiences in 1958 to imagine that the performances they witnessed in smoky nightclubs could be recorded and released as brilliant record albums to be savored and studied at home by those less lucky than they. I doubt that many of them could have imagined that more than fifty years later, those same performances would be captured on a shiny silver disk, played back by a laser beam, and savored and studied just as avidly. It’s also possible that the audience listening to what would be titled Misteriso, the live performance by the Thelonious Monk Quartet at the Five Spot Café in New York had no idea of future audiences or listening technologies at all, being entirely too occupied in experiencing the delights of a genius at the peak of his abilities.
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The Bill Evans Trio, Moon Beams

By Emily Carney

By 1962, jazz pianist Bill Evans was emotionally bereft by the car crash death of his bassist, Scott LaFaro. Indeed he was so devastated, he wouldn’t perform for months. He was already in the grips of a powerful addiction to heroin, which he wouldn’t overcome until the end of the 1960s; however, this addiction would be replaced by another: cocaine. No one was shocked by Evans’s death in September 1980, characterized by one of his peers as “the longest suicide in history.”

After LaFaro’s death, Evans had reformed his trio, adding new bassist Chuck Israels. While Evans and his distinctive style of piano playing—hunched directly over the keys—may be a ghost in the machine, this reissue of 1962′s Moon Beams takes the listener back to his melancholy brilliance.
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Tyburn Saints, You And I In Heaven EP

By Less Lee Moore

Can we just go ahead and define ’80s music as a genre? I think enough great music was made during that decade and enough time has passed that it qualifies. Especially when so many bands continue to profess their love for the ’80s through amazing music (School of Seven Bells, The Chain Gang of 1974, Weep, White Lies, etc.). With their latest EP, You and I in Heaven, Tyburn Saints carry the torch with a firm grip and full hearts.
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Little Richard, Here’s Little Richard

By Hanna

For the 55th anniversary of the original release of Here’s Little Richard, Concord Music Group has reissued a remaster of his debut on Specialty Records. This reissue also features a bunch of extras to put the album into context and provide some information on its meaning and background (and make total nerds like me wig out, of course). I wish I could just shout my review, but here it is in written form.
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Turing Machine, What Is The Meaning Of What

By Less Lee Moore

In fact, Turing machines are not intended to model computers, but rather they are intended to model computation itself . . .
—Wikipedia, “Turing Machine”

Perhaps there are those who, unfamiliar with minimalist, drone, or ambient music, may lobby the complaint that it doesn’t go anywhere. Nothing could be further from the truth. These styles of music can certainly take you places, but to paraphrase Dr. Crane in The Dark Knight, they might not be places you wanted to go. This is certainly true of Demdike Stare, who reside at the disturbing end of that particular spectrum. As Turing Machine’s new album What Is The Meaning Of What reveals however, these places may simply be the ones to which you didn’t expect to go. And the ride there is invigorating.
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Dave Martin, Natural Selection

By Chelsea Spear

In the ’80s and ’90s, Dave Martin cut his teeth as a member of the beloved Boston rock band O Positive. His role as a sort of band factotum—in which he played numerous instruments and worked on the band’s onstage sound—filled out the quintet’s angular, shimmering, new wave arrangements. Since O Pos disbanded in 1995, Martin has put forth a prolific solo career, recording a trio of solid, folk rock-influenced solo records. His most recent album, Natural Selection, mines the contemplative vein of his previous albums, and also finds him introducing some new sounds and arrangements.
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The Lake Effect, Expect Delays EP

By Kai Shuart

The four tracks on The Lake Effect‘s debut EP, Expect Delays, tell of a band that seems too chilled out for its own good. While this does make for some lovely, atmospheric music, such as the always-wonderful combination of warm keyboards and acoustic guitars found throughout Expect Delays, the muted atmosphere made it difficult for me to attach myself to the emotions being conveyed in the lyrics.
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Portland Cello Project, Homage

By Jemiah Jefferson

While the sparkly and joyous “Hey Ya!” has long been a part of Portland Cello Project‘s live repertoire, Homage is their first full-length release of cover versions of hip-hop songs (they have done hip-hop covers before, but never a full album). In every case, PCP’s arrangement and performance of the melodies and rhythms found in these chart-smashing hits brings new delight to the listener, both in the chuckle-inducing recognition of the original and in admiration for how smoothly these tracks have been adapted.
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