Califone / Echo Mine
| Album: | Echo Mine | Collection: | General | |
| Artist: | Califone | Added: | Apr 2020 | |
| Label: | Jealous Butcher Records | |||
Recent Airplay
| 1. | Jan 14, 2021: | Stranded at Settembrini's (2020 in Review I)
Snow Angel V1 |
2. | Jun 11, 2020: | Stranded at Settembrini's
Echo Mine |
Album Review
DJ Away
Reviewed 2020-04-01
Reviewed 2020-04-01
Califone's first album in seven years doubles as the score to a dance performance by Robyn Mineko Williams. As usual, it sounds like a compendium of American folk musics compacted in a junkyard with broken electronics and other feral mysteries. Deep, lurching polyrhythmic grooves get paired with fragments of synth sounds, slide guitar, and mirage-like electric guitar textures. Tim Rutili's been making music like this for almost 30 years, and it's unmistakable as anyone else's and consistently powerful. It also always shows him expanding his idiom and finding greater emotional depths within it. I keep hoping he'll eventually get a MacArthur Fellowship or an American Masters profile or something; he deserves it. RIYL: Tom Waits, The War on Drugs, Dr. John, Mark Lanegan, M. Ward, "Exile on Main St." Rolling Stones, driving down dusty streets and looking for ghosts in the rearview. Favorites: 1, 2, 6, 10. Possible FCC on 3.
1. *(4:30)—Mid-tempo, sly grooves and slide guitar. "Kill the algorithms / the algorithms kill." Off-kilter chorus.
2. *(2:55)—Medium-fast drum machine funk. Fairly minimial outside the rhythm.
3. (6:02)—FCC? ("a*****e" maybe, can't tell). Slow blues, hushed but jagged. Melancholy, psychedelic second half. "Somehow I lost you, Chicago / somehow I never had you, LA."
4. (3:37)—Instrumental. Strong samba-esque groove, scraps of guitar and synth.
5. (1:40)—Instrumental. Watery guitar loop paired with a slow, crawling beat.
6. *(6:43)—Slow, hallucinatory, with an extended intro. Organ drone, partially backmasked vocals.
7. (2:47)—Deep pulses, guitar drones, brushed drums. This dance piece was developed alongside dancer Claire Bataille, who died before the work debuted; this track features a recording of her speaking about mortality.
8. (4:15)—Stripped-down version of the song that also appears on track 10. Slow slide guitar, gentle percussion. Spare and pretty.
9. (8:06)—Slow, spooky rhythm. Violin. Duet with some amount of vocal manipulation. A part that sounds like...minimal dubstep, maybe? Or B-movie garage rock? Drone passage with strings.
10. *(3:49)—Slow, lumbering rock & roll number. Full and melodic, bluesy, dense. Group vocals, grand bridge. Nicely timed bell sounds.
1. *(4:30)—Mid-tempo, sly grooves and slide guitar. "Kill the algorithms / the algorithms kill." Off-kilter chorus.
2. *(2:55)—Medium-fast drum machine funk. Fairly minimial outside the rhythm.
3. (6:02)—FCC? ("a*****e" maybe, can't tell). Slow blues, hushed but jagged. Melancholy, psychedelic second half. "Somehow I lost you, Chicago / somehow I never had you, LA."
4. (3:37)—Instrumental. Strong samba-esque groove, scraps of guitar and synth.
5. (1:40)—Instrumental. Watery guitar loop paired with a slow, crawling beat.
6. *(6:43)—Slow, hallucinatory, with an extended intro. Organ drone, partially backmasked vocals.
7. (2:47)—Deep pulses, guitar drones, brushed drums. This dance piece was developed alongside dancer Claire Bataille, who died before the work debuted; this track features a recording of her speaking about mortality.
8. (4:15)—Stripped-down version of the song that also appears on track 10. Slow slide guitar, gentle percussion. Spare and pretty.
9. (8:06)—Slow, spooky rhythm. Violin. Duet with some amount of vocal manipulation. A part that sounds like...minimal dubstep, maybe? Or B-movie garage rock? Drone passage with strings.
10. *(3:49)—Slow, lumbering rock & roll number. Full and melodic, bluesy, dense. Group vocals, grand bridge. Nicely timed bell sounds.
Track Listing