Grimes
Visions
4AD
Visions, the third solo album by the Montreal musician Claire Boucher, who records as Grimes, starts out at full speed: Its opening track, Infinite Love Without Fulfillment, gallops hard, a collision of art-rock and electro-pop, all in service of Boucher’s blithe coos.
Grimes has been releasing music for only two years but has already established a signature approach. It’s insular and unnerving, a blend of the naive and the erotic. At times, though, it’s been almost irredeemably precious, largely because Boucher’s tendency toward vocal experimentation wasn’t leavened by any thoroughgoing embrace of melodic structure.
Visions irons out that kink admirably: It’s easily Boucher’s best work, and one of the most impressive albums of the year so far. Boucher is jubilant here, her multitracked vocals (which can recall Julianna Barwick) both an effective sonic strategy and also an emotional one. She has a lovely coo to her voice, especially on Be a Body. And she flaunts a range of influences, as on Symphonia IX (My Wait Is U), which seemingly owes debts to both Bollywood playback singers and Siouxsie Sioux.
Previously Boucher has been lost in abstractions; on this album she uses many of the same touchstones, but more directly. Circumambient is full of unlikely competing sounds — crackling white noise, tribal drums, airplane roars — that resolve themselves into coherent electro-soul. The bells on Vowels = Space and Time echo the freestyle music of the 1980s. And just maybe there’s a nod to Toni Basil on “Genesis.”
— JON CARAMANICA
Galactic
Carnivale Electricos
Anti-
Every New Orleans band has to reckon with Mardi Gras, which took place Tuesday. Galactic, formed in New Orleans in 1994, takes a wide-angle view on Carnivale Electricos, writing and transforming Carnival songs not only from New Orleans and Cajun country, but also from another Carnival epicenter: Brazil.
Onstage, Galactic is a first-rate funk band. In the studio it has become a perpetually recombinant group of musicians, producers and conceptualizers, hooking up with collaborators from New Orleans and far beyond. The guest list on Carnivale Electricos extends from New Orleans to Rio de Janeiro, in tracks that morph across time, space and cultures. Carnivale Electricos is brimming with ideas; it’s also one raw, rowdy party album.
Galactic doesn’t enforce any trademark sound. While New Orleans funk is laced through the album, it’s freely collaged with all sorts of other things. So Ha Di Ka, featuring Big Chief Juan Pardo and his Mardi Gras Indian tribe, Golden Comanche, isn’t just one more Indian chant backed by a band; it’s got fat-bottomed electronics, a deranged psychedelic guitar and explosive samples grapping with Galactic’s keyboard funk.
Voyage Ton Flag, alluding to an old Creole Carnival song from bayou country, crosscuts between a distorted guitar groove, an electronically stuttered Creole vocal (from Steve Riley) and bits of Clifton Chenier’s zydeco accordion. A remake of the 1960 Mardi Gras standard, Carnival Time — heartily sung by its songwriter and original performer, Al Johnson — throws together brass-band horns, Latin percussion and a determinedly funky clavinet.
Galactic is a more straightforward backup band for the hard-headed, humorous rappers Mystikal and Mannie Fresh in Move Fast, and for Cyril and Ivan Neville in Out in the Street. It meshes some wah-wah guitar with the hefty brass of the KIPP Renaissance High School Marching Band in Karate, and leans toward hard-bop in the instrumental Attack.
The Brazil Carnival connection is forged in O Coco da Galinha, a collaboration by Galactic and Moyseis Marques, a samba singer from Rio de Janeiro, that meshes New Orleans and Rio rhythms. A version of Carlinhos Brown’s Magalenha features a New Orleans Brazilian band, Casa Samba; Galactic zaps the song’s Bahian beat with synthesizer swoops. And the 57-second Guero Bounce places a bluesy harmonica over Brazilian percussion and New Orleans’ hip-hop-tinged bounce beat.
In other words, variety reigns. Galactic doesn’t set out to document Mardi Gras and Carnival traditions, but to extrapolate from them every which way, and the Carnival spirit of wide-open possibility comes through.
— JON PARELES
Tyga
Careless World
Young Money/Cash Money/Universal Republic
The most disposable hip-hop hit in recent months has been Tyga’s Rack City, a slinky, sleazy snake of a strip-club anthem, all vibrating bass tones and filthy come-ons. It’s a grower — empty on first listen, more and more primal over time. The beat, though, is the star; Tyga is merely percussive drizzle atop it.
This Compton, California, rapper has been on the B team of Lil Wayne’s Young Money crew for some time, displaying the occasional flash of charm, as on the hit single BedRock. Last year he was nominated for a Grammy for his collaboration with Chris Brown and Kevin McCall, Deuces.
Careless World is Tyga’s major-label debut, and it sounds like it. Even though he remains a cipher, his surroundings are lush. A collaboration with Nicki Minaj has a gyrating beat built on a sea of digitized giggles, and smooth gospelesque coos drive Do It All. Those songs, and several others on this album, are produced by Jess Jackson, who proves a strong match for Tyga, supplementing his hollowness with density and feeling.
Tyga is a labored rapper at best, though he’s capable of a variety of cadences — he’s bouncy on Potty Mouth and pleasingly nasal on Faded. But his method can’t redeem his sometimes clunky word jumbles: “You fold up under pressure/ I’m good, straighter than stretchers” on I’m Gone; “The world so cold you gonna need a Moncler” on This Is Like.
— JON CARAMANICA
What was the population of Taiwan when the first Negritos arrived? In 500BC? The 1st century? The 18th? These questions are important, because they can contextualize the number of babies born last month, 6,523, to all the people on Taiwan, indigenous and colonial alike. That figure represents a year on year drop of 3,884 babies, prefiguring total births under 90,000 for the year. It also represents the 26th straight month of deaths exceeding births. Why isn’t this a bigger crisis? Because we don’t experience it. Instead, what we experience is a growing and more diverse population. POPULATION What is Taiwan’s actual population?
After Jurassic Park premiered in 1993, people began to ask if scientists could really bring long-lost species back from extinction, just like in the hit movie. The idea has triggered “de-extinction” debates in several countries, including Taiwan, where the focus has been on the Formosan clouded leopard (designated after 1917 as Neofelis nebulosa brachyura). National Taiwan Museum’s (NTM) Web site describes the Formosan clouded leopard as “a subspecies endemic to Taiwan…it reaches a body length of 0.6m to 1.2m and tail length of 0.7m to 0.9m and weighs between 15kg and 30kg. It is entirely covered with beautiful cloud-like spots
For the past five years, Sammy Jou (周祥敏) has climbed Kinmen’s highest peak, Taiwu Mountain (太武山) at 6am before heading to work. In the winter, it’s dark when he sets out but even at this hour, other climbers are already coming down the mountain. All of this is a big change from Jou’s childhood during the Martial Law period, when the military requisitioned the mountain for strategic purposes and most of it was off-limits. Back then, only two mountain trails were open, and they were open only during special occasions, such as for prayers to one’s ancestors during Lunar New Year.
A key feature of Taiwan’s environmental impact assessments (EIA) is that they seldom stop projects, especially once the project has passed its second stage EIA review (the original Suhua Highway proposal, killed after passing the second stage review, seems to be the lone exception). Mingjian Township (名間鄉) in Nantou County has been the site of rising public anger over the proposed construction of a waste incinerator in an important agricultural area. The township is a key producer of tea (over 40 percent of the island’s production), ginger and turmeric. The incinerator project is currently in its second stage EIA. The incinerator
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