CD reviews and news: KMFDM, Colourmusic, Brian Eno, Todd Rundgren and the royal wedding

SHARE CD reviews and news: KMFDM, Colourmusic, Brian Eno, Todd Rundgren and the royal wedding

KMFDM, “WTF?!” () — Fresh off the success of last weekend’s Wax Trax! Retrospectacle concerts, at which some members of KMFDM performed some of the band’s “hits,” the brand continues in the hands of Sascha Konietzko — and the dark dance music sounds … largely the same. The industrial crunch and distorted beats thump on, and Konietzko’s demonic croak inform us (nice timing) that now there are “Rebels in Kontrol.”

Amid the status quo, there’s “Take It Like a Man” — a wonderfully aberrant, four-minute disco-pop song lead by KMFDM‘s underutilized singer Lucia Cifarelli (there’s a solo career ripe for a reboot). It’s as if someone accidentally dropped a Berlin song in the middle of the playlist when they burned this otherwise scowl-by-numbers CD, and it’s worth a single download. Hear it at 4:05 in this album preview stream …

Colourmusic, “My _____ Is Pink” () — The Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne is a fan of these fellow Okies, and one listen will tell you why. Thundering, threatening, funny and funky, Colourmusic flies a tattered freak flag and was a welcome sight with its 2008 debut, “f, monday, orange, february, venus, lunatic, 1 or 13.” On the follow-up, however, Colourmusic chucked that album’s infectious tunes and opted solely for atmosphere, which means a lot of hammering racket and fleshy funk grooves. As they proved at SXSW last month, their live show is monstrous, but on record Colourmusic here is much tamer — and less interesting — pulling its punches and showing off its Marc Bolan-to-MGMT plumb line but without any of their melodies. Likewise in this video for “You for Leaving Me,” directed by Funny or Die directors Matt & Oz, all they accomplish is the bloody murder of a lot of teddy bears …

Brian Eno & Rick Holland — Sought-after sound craftsman Brian Eno, who just last year released his own “Small Craft on a Milk Sea,” loves to collaborate, coloring others’ ideas with his own inventive soundscapes. His latest is with British poet Rick Holland — the two have been toying with the project since 2003 — and their dual efforts will be released as “Drums Between the Bells” on July 5. Here’s the first cut leaked from the album, a track appropriately called “Glitch” …

Brian Eno – glitch (taken from Drums Between The Bells) by Warp Records

The Band of the Welsh Guards, “A Royal Tribute” — A CD of very rigid, stately British martial and choral music is out this week on the occasion of Friday’s royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. The only really interesting bit comes when Michael Sheen recites some Dylan Thomas poetry ahead of “All Through the Night.” Learn all about the music here …

Todd Rundgren, “Todd Rundgren’s Johnson” — This is definitely the devil’s work. The last time we saw classic rocker Todd Rundgren (“Hello, It’s Me”), he’d replaced Ric Ocasek in a short-lived but momentarily vibrant reboot of the Cars (Ocasek is correcting that blemish by rejoining the band and touring this summer — May 18 at the Riviera Theatre). Now he’s inhabited someone else’s catalog: blues icon Robert Johnson’s. With a band that includes Prairie Prince and Kasim Sulton (who were both on the New Cars haul), Rundgren stomps out a set of Johnson songs, including “Sweet Home Chicago” and “Crossroads.”

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