Alright, KPSU'ers. Time for The World Music Review!

Actually, there was a little spike in the number of CD's out there to review and for some reason, a lot of them feature Portuguese artists. KPSU, your Lusophone music station ;) I'll start with the three CD's that really stood out:

1) Shapes 12:01- This is a compilation double CD, with CD 1 focusing on slower electronic tracks and CD 2 focusing on more electronic dance music. All songs have vocals, most are in English.

Top Tracks CD 1- 2,5,6,11,16,17
Top Tracks CD 2- 1, 4, 6, 8, 11

2) Bassekou Kouyate and Ngoni ba- Jama Ko

Traditional Malian music updated for the 21st century. All the wonderful Malian guitar work the country is famous for with great vocals by Ngoni ba.

Top Tracks- 1, 8, 10, 12

3) Freshly Ground- Take Me To The Dance

Pan-African Group based out of South Africa. Much more of an MOR album with some South African influences. Good for rainy days. Also, the CD was mixed right here in Portland, OR.

Top Tracks- 1, 2, 4, 8, 12, 14

Next are the middle 3. OK, but nothing spectacular:

Matuto- The Devil and The Diamond

I like Zydeco, I like Light Funk. I am surprised that putting them together didn't really do anything for me. Sorry, Matuto.

Top Tracks- 1, 3, 9. 12

Vieux Farka Touré- Mon Pays

Traditional Malian Guitar. No vocals. Great artistry, but no real hook.

Top Tracks- 1, 4, 7

The Raw Sample Project- Kem é Kem

Slowjammy. Some songs in Portuguese, some in English. Somewhat modern.

Top Tracks- 2, 14

The Rest

Ölga- La Résistance

Occasional Beulah-like orchestrations give way to uninspired instrumentals later on. Vocals dull.

Top Tracks- 1, 6

Kumpania- Algazzara

A low rent Portuguese version of the Gypsy Kings. If you like accordion and various stringed instruments, you'll love them.

Top Tracks- 1, 2, 7

Oswaldo Santos

Listed as guitarist from São Tome and Principe, a former Portuguese colony. I will say that I enjoyed track 2, Bom Despacho, but I don't know why.

Vasco Hernández- 7 Flamenco Works

Straightforward Flamenco Guitar work. Track 5 has a Portuguese Vocal

Telmo Pires- Fado Promessa

Easily the most puzzling of the lot. Fado is generally sung by old Portuguese ladies and focuses on how fate has kicked them in the teeth. I have never heard a man sing Fado before. I now know why. Maybe it makes more sense if you are in Lisbon.

CD's should be available after TPS tomorrow. I still need to tag the CD's themselves.

Talib Kweli is the Tracy McGrady of hip hop. The analogy is apt as there are few others in their respective fields of endeavor who started out with so much potential, promise, fans, and awe inspiring skills only to somehow fumble it all away. While T-Mac has recently been spotted hooping in China of all places Kweli has just recently dropped Prisoner Of Conscious, an ironic title indeed for his 7th album(5 if you’re not counting the two Reflection Eternal joints with DJ Hi Tek).

Talib Kweli bursts onto the underground scene like the Kool Aide man as one half of the group Black Star with his cohort Mos Def on their eponymous classic album. Kwe not only established himself as an emcee to check for, for many underground heads he was realistically evaluated as an artist who one day could be mentioned up there with the greats. What made him so compelling to the Jansport and Timbs crowd? As he put it in a DJ Tony Touch freestyle “I just combine battle skills and conscious and I still flow the tightest” , and that ability to seamlessly come off as an artist of substance with the sort of pen game that had heads chronically pressing rewind on his verses is why he became one of the standard bearers, along with Pharoahe Monch and Mos Def, of the Rawkus Records-led indieground renaissance.

Kweli followed up Black Star with the critically acclaimed and dope in its own right Reflection Eternal album Train Of Thought and the sky seemed to be the limit. Quality was his first endeavor truly for dolo and his profile was raised by the Kanye West-produced banger “Get By”, on which Jay-Z hopped on the remix. Kwe had his T-Mac-2002 All Star Game-off-the- backboard-dunk moment when Hov later namedropped him on The Black Album’s “Moment of Clarity”; “If skills sold/truth be told/lyrically/I’d probably be Talib Kweli”. But just like McGrady’s failure to close the deal in ‘03 after leading a Pistons team 3-1 in a playoff series after proclaiming “it’s good to make it to the second round”, a downhill trend began.

Early in his career Kweli got a lot of criticism from some circles over his style of rapping. From the outset it seemed as if he had so much to say that he felt the need to get the most out of every bar by cramming in more words than the average emcee. It worked though! This was part of the appeal surrounding him in the first place, he had so much on his mind both in terms of social commentary and ridiculous punchlines yet miraculously managed to make it all fit. A small minority saw his flow as awkward , but for everybody else it was tighter than the lid of an unopened pickle jar. Unfortunately Kweli let the taste of mainstream success and his detractors’ criticisms dictate how he did his thing, and he gradually changed his style into something more palatable to the masses.

The result? Consecutive wack releases of Kweli trying his damndest to sound like everybody else until a semi-return to form with 2008’s Eardrum, which was really buoyed by excellent production more than anything . Prisoner Of Conscious is Kweli’s first album since, and while his Rawkus litter mates Mos Def and Pharoahe Monch continue to make good music, Kweli ultimately continues the trend of alienating those who rode so hard for him in his career’s formative days.

Prisoner Of Conscious starts out auspiciously enough with Talib spitting with the intensity of a man possessed by a previous incarnation of himself on “Human Mic”. Over a heatrock provided by Oh No, Kweli hops in a Delorean resurrecting his flow from years past and the final product is scintillating. THIS is a man on a mission and it serves as a warning to emcees, this cat is coming to lyrically beat.that.ASS. THIS is the Talib Kweli that fans know and love. The very next track “Turnt Up”, produced by Trend, is when listeners get their hopes up for the rest of the LP in earnest. Trend swipes the drums from Rakim’s classic “Paid In Full” but what he does over those drums is fucking beautiful. Kweli pays homage to the 17th Letter with his opening lines while Trend laces the beat with haunting vocal samples and adds some extra kick with booming 808s. It CRANKS.

Unfortunately, those tracks so early on end up being one of the most heinous bait and switches in recent memory. The album is full of guest shots and on two tracks “Push Thru” and “Rocket Ships” featuring featuring Currensy and Kendrick Lamar and Busta Rhymes, respectively, Kweli gets bodied on his own shit. Not a good look, b. Prisoner Of Conscious production-wise is a snoozer and it’s weighed down by an overabundance of saccharine R&B(rap-n-bullshit). Satirically, Kweli styles to break his “conscious” shackles spitting over a beat on “Upper Echelon” that’s consistent with some shit you hear on the radio. Failing miserably, it’s cheesy enough that you may want to have a fondue pot at the ready.

Whatever happened to the guy who blessed us with “2000 Seasons” or defiantly took a stand with lines like “Kurt Loder asked me what I’d say to a dead cop’s wife/cops kill my people every day, that’s life”? If Prisoner Of Conscious is any indication, he’s been buried under the prison.

KPSU is now accepting applications to work for the 2013-2014 KPSU staff. The coming year will be one of epic expectations because of our chance to put KPSU on the FM dial. We have so much potential and opportunity, but it is up to us to put in the time and energy to turn our hopes into reality.

To be hired, you must be a Portland State University student – at the time of your hiring and during your graduate tenure if you’re hired – be registered for at least six credit hours (five for students) for at least 3 of the possible 4 quarters and have a cumulative GPA of 2.5 or higher (3.0 for graduate students). The deadline for submitting applications is Thursday, June 13th.

For job descriptions and applications, contact keegan@kpsu.org

New stuff for your ears - Bison Bison (local PDX band), Pete Thorn, Bootsy Collins, and more!

A commissioning editor at The Guardian, a prestigious London newspaper, asked me to put together a playlist for a 'twitter trip', a road trip that will be liveblogged online by a Guardian reporter but led by locals via social media. The trip will take place later this May from Seattle-Portland-San Francisco. I decided to help this reporter's future journey and provided them a 10 track playlist that I believe best represents the pacific northwest. Here it is:

LISTEN/DOWNLOAD THIS WEEK's MANTER BANTER: d*_*b HERE d*_*b


PLAYLIST:
1. Grouper – Wind and Snow
2. Thrones – Obolus
3. Radiation City – Heart of Mine
4. Shad – Rose Garden
5. Unknown Mortal Orchestra – Little Blu House
6. Menomena – Dirty Cartoons
7. Band of Horses – The First Song
8. STRFKR – German Love
9. The Hive Dwellers – Sitting Alone At the Movies
10. Akron/Family – So It Goes


FOLLOW MANTER BANTER FACEBOOK & TWITTER

Howdy folks! Here's what's charting at KPSU this week:

KPSU Radio 200

1 KURT VILE Wakin On A Pretty Daze Matador
2 IO ECHO Ministry Of Love Iamsound
3 MAJOR LAZER Free The Universe Secretly Canadian
4 DEERHUNTER Monomania 4AD
5 JAMES BLAKE Overgrown Republic
6 AKRON/FAMILY Sub Verses Dead Oceans
7 IRON AND WINE Ghost On Ghost Nonesuch
8 BONOBO The North Borders Ninja Tune
9 HAR MAR SUPERSTAR Bye Bye 17 Cult
10 SHOUTING MATCHES Grown Ass Man Middle West
11 DEVENDRA BANHART Mala Nonesuch
12 WHITE FENCE Cyclops Reap Castle Face
13 WAVVES Afraid Of Heights Warner Brothers
14 VAMPIRE WEEKEND Modern Vampires Of The City XL
15 SAVAGES Silence Yourself Matador
16 CHILD OF LOV The Child Of Lov Domino-Double Six
17 SMALL BLACK Limits Of Desire Jagjaguwar
18 ALPINE A Is For Alpine Votive
19 NEIGHBOURHOOD I Love You Columbia
20 YEAH YEAH YEAHS Mosquito Interscope
21 DAFT PUNK "Get Lucky" [Single] Columbia-Daft Life
22 FLAMING LIPS The Terror Warner Brothers
23 THEE OH SEES Floating Coffin Castle Face
24 NO JOY Wait To Pleasure Mexican Summer
25 !!! Thr!!!er Warp
26 BESNARD LAKES Until In Excess, Imperceptible UFO Jagjaguwar
27 ICEAGE You're Nothing Matador
28 POSTELLES And It Shook Me Plus 1
29 ALICE RUSSELL To Dust Tru Thoughts
30 WOLF PEOPLE Fain Jagjaguwar

Hey all! It's your loud rock genre director, back from another month getting down in the muck and mire to find you the best in new loud rock. I've got some good stuff for you this month, for sure, and left out the shit (Did you know there was a new Mindless Self Indulgence album?)


Restorations - LP2 (8/10)
Restorations have just started to appear on the radar, so it took me some searching to find their new album, LP2, in the KPSU stacks. After a couple listens, I grew to love this thing. If you want to know what Gaslight Anthem would sound like if they weren't phoning it in, listen to LP2. It is a fantastic "adult-punk" record, if fantastic could describe anything adult-punk. Restorations take 40 minutes and pack in enough melody to totally offset the boring Springsteen worship everybody has going on these days. Listen to this.



Dead Confederate - In the Marrow (7/10)
Dead Confederate's third album, In the Marrow, is much better than I thought it would be. The album holds some of the most ferocious and raw of any tracks I've heard this year. Unfortunately, it slows down a bit in the second half. Still good, just not as fast. Check out "Vacations" or "In the Marrow"





The Thermals - Desperate Ground(6/10)
"Desperate Ground" is not "The Body, The Blood, The Machine," and The Thermals will likely never put out another record as good as that one in their career. However, "Desperate Ground" is a good record, full of fun tracks and more poetic social commentary than their earlier records. Check out "The Sunset" or the song below, "Born to Kill," if you haven't.