Junior Boys/Amon Tobin/Cornelius preview

Junior Boys/Amon Tobin/Cornelius
Chicago

Three separate shows this week featuring the class of electronic music draw from Ontario (Junior Boys, Empty Bottle, May 3rd), Brazil (Amon Tobin, Metro, May 5th), and Japan (Cornelius, Park West, May 7th).

Junior Boys, not to be confused with gay dance pop icons Junior Senior, smacked the music blogosphere upside the head after a friend had posted some songs online. With 2004’s No Exit (KIN) following this stream of singles and EPs, the gushing reviews poured in (this after every label they approached rejected them) and Jeremy Greenspan and Johnny Dark (since replaced by Matt Didemus) became digital superstars. No Exit‘s bubbling electro showed signs of New Order etherealizing Timbaland and British subgenres like two-step.

Refusing to fall prey to this “success,” their second album, So This Is Goodbye (Domino), dumped the jerkiness for the smooth landscaping of an ocean-sculpted stone. Dropping a frigid Sinatra cover in the mix (“When No One Cares”), the pop tones were further secured with nods to ’80s synth pop without the vacant posturing of electroclash. This spring’s cheekily titled The Dead Horse E.P. boasts the all-star remix cachet of Carl Craig and Hot Chip, though Marsen Jules nails their aesthetic with his zero-degrees-Kelvin approach to “FM.”

Electro snobs and jazzbos have equal claim on Amon Tobin, though he surely flirts with many of the competing definitions of “musique concrète” on the new Foley Room (Ninja Tune). Tobin’s specialty has come to be associated with his use of found sound — field recordings — including but not limited to cars, animals, and rock concerts, which he then stretches and splices beyond recognition. Keeping this from being dismissed as mere proficiency with computers is his undeniable skill as a composer and arranger, somehow blending his research with drum and bass, freakish jazz assaults, and, from his Brazilian heritage, samba. Foley is his most extensive sojourn yet — and he includes a documentary DVD to prove it.

Cornelius, of whom tradition dictates he be mentioned as a contemporary of Pizzicato Five, is mysterious due to prolonged periods of not actively promoting new music. Sensuous (Everloving) “follows” 2002’s *Point* (Trattoria) and takes a calmer approach to Cornelius’ tried-n-true sound collages, importing elements that might not seem to make sense (the maddening clinking of chimes over a lush choir bending with the light on “Like A Rolling Stone”). “Beep It” nods to both LCD Soundsystem and !!!,
and his version of Sinatra’s “Sleep Warm” makes him the second such artist in this preview interpreting The Chairman. The album’s calmest arrangements almost find Cornelius resigning his electro post, however, yielding to the song and not incessant meddling.

— Steve Forstneger

Category: Stage Buzz, Weekly