Reviews: Animal Collective and Joseph Kamaru
Vinyl reviews of Feels’ 20th anniversary edition and Heavy Combination, a comprehensive overview of a Kenyan musical legend.
Did you see the Bruce Springsteen movie this weekend? I won’t spoil anything, but who would have guessed that such an important plot point would pivot around vinyl mastering?
Speaking of vinyl, hey, that’s why you’re here. And we’ve got just the thing for you: reviews of two new vinyl releases. First up is Animal Collective’s Feels, the New York experimental pop band’s 2005 album, which just had its 20th birthday and has been released in a new edition with an extra disc of B-sides and demos. And secondly, we look at (and listen to) Heavy Combination, the excellent new two-LP anthology of Joseph Kamaru, the Kenyan musical icon who encompassed a wide band of musical styles in his career but whose lyrics always focused on social issues. The Feels 20th anniversary edition is in stores now, and Heavy Combination comes out this Friday, October 31.
Joseph Kamaru: Heavy Combination 1966–2007
Lots more is coming this week at The Vinyl Cut, including another Record Store Day Black Friday preview, our comprehensive roundup of this week’s new releases, the final installment in our Rhino Rocktober series, and yes, even more album reviews. We won’t spoil what we’re reviewing, but let’s just say one of the artists’ names rhymes with Schmeel Clung.
Animal Collective: Feels (20th anniversary edition) [Domino]
Review by Robert Ham
When the members of Animal Collective set about recording their sixth album, Feels, the wind was in their sails. They signed to a supportive label in FatCat Records and were still glowing from the praise heaped upon them for their previous album, 2004’s Sung Tongs. Most of the members of the quartet were in the honeymoon phases of new romantic relationships, and their collective creative energy wasn’t dimmed in the slightest by that or by co-founder Noah Lennox (aka Panda Bear) leaving the band’s native New York to live in Portugal with his soon-to-be bride. What better time, then, to decamp to Seattle, stay stoned all day, and make a new record?
The momentum, joy, fogginess, and buzzed bliss of that period seeped into every inch of Feels. The album, which is being celebrated this month with a 20th anniversary reissue, is a floating and formless thing, with verses and choruses blending together or folding in on each other, and the music casting a hazy, hypnotic spell through each harsh strum of an autoharp, fluttering guitar pattern, or burbling bit of field recording. The rhythms of Lennox’s minimalist drumming are there to keep you on track during more amped-up tracks like “Did You See the Words” and “The Purple Bottle,” but otherwise the band seems content to let themselves and their listeners hover comfortably midair.
The good news is that the sonic sensations Feels brings about make me a lot more forgiving of how the new vinyl edition of the album sounds. Pressed onto purple biovinyl at GZ in Czech Republic, the music throughout suffers from an inescapable haziness that blunts the impact of the big bass wows that ripple through “Daffy Duck” and a fidgety high end that makes the ringing synth and piano tones on “Loch Raven” pretty unbearable to listen to at a reasonable volume. And there’s a good deal of noise that creeps into many of the tracks throughout both the main album and the third disc of B-sides and album demos.
I’m not sure what to attribute this to. I only know a bit of the work that’s been recorded at Gravel Voice, Scott Colburn’s Seattle studio where Animal Collective stayed and worked during March 2005, but those albums by experimental ensembles Climax Golden Twins and Sun City Girls were never meant to sound great in the first place. A certain amount of fuzziness and sonic desiccation was the order of the day. In that way, it was a fitting place for the Collective to work. Considering the more low-fidelity sound of previous efforts like 2001’s Danse Manatee and 2003’s Campfire Songs, audio perfection may never have been front of mind.
And as much as I applaud the idea of biovinyl being a sustainable alternative to wholly petroleum-based vinyl, I remain suspicious of the claims that, as one source puts it, the “acoustic and optical quality is identical to conventional vinyl records.” Of the handful of biovinyl releases I’ve had a chance to spin, I’ve been less than impressed with what I’ve heard. GZ pressed this new edition from the same plates that Chris Bellman cut for the 2021 reissue of Feels. His signature “CB” is cut into the deadwax of the two discs featuring the album proper. (The third disc has “Strat” in the dead wax, which can only mean Scott Stratton, Bellman’s co-worker at Bernie Grundman Mastering.) Reviews on Discogs of that 2021 pressing were already less than stellar. This anniversary release doesn’t seem to be much of an improvement.
For Feels, these imperfections don’t grate on me as much as they might with other vinyl reissues. I liken it to what Public Image Ltd intended when the group released their second album as three LPs squeezed into a metal tin, with nothing but a piece of vellum between each one. They expected the vinyl to suffer some scuffs and flaws to augment the scrappy dub-rock cut into the grooves. A similar effect is at play with Feels. The surface noise and piercing synth stabs and soupiness only become splashes of color or bits of texture on Animal Collective’s already deliciously abstract audio canvas.
Feels | Domino Music 3-LP • mastered from unknown source by Chris Bellman and Scott Stratton • lacquer cut by Bellman and Stratton • pressed at GZ, Czech • translucent grape biovinyl
Listening equipment
Table: Cambridge Audio Alva ST
Cart: Audio-Technica VAT-VM95E
Amp: Sansui 9090
Speakers: Electro Voice TS8-2
Joseph Kamaru: Heavy Combination 1966–2007 [Disciples]
Review by Ned Lannamann
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the new Joseph Kamaru compilation album, Heavy Combination 1966–2007, perfectly encapsulates the reasons why we started this newsletter. This music is unfamiliar to the majority of western ears (these ears included), and it’s been archived, collated, and presented in a manner that provides an ideal introduction to a significant musical figure. With thorough liner notes, great-sounding mastering, and a distribution plan that makes these works accessible to anyone, the music of Joseph Kamaru—previously located on rare 7-inches, battered cassettes, and dodgy YouTube streams—is presented in the best possible light.
Per the hype sticker on Heavy Combination, Kamaru was the “king of Kikuyu benga”—Kikuyu being the Bantu ethnic group of central Kenya, and benga being the dominant strain of Kenyan popular music, with roots in the Luo folk music originated on the shores of Lake Victoria in the western part of Kenya. In short, Kamaru was a primary force in Kenyan music from the 1960s to the 2000s, the period that ensued after Kenya achieved its independence from Britain in 1963. While the nation blossomed into cultural autonomy, it also experienced the growing pains of the new era, particularly through the inequality that developed under the rule of its first president, Jomo Kenyatta.
Heavy Combination is a thorough overview of Kamaru’s entire career, and his stylistic diversity is on full display. Singing in both Swahili and Gĩkũyũ (the native language of the Kikuyu), Kamaru plays benga, funk, highlife, disco, folk, pop, gospel, music that sounds like mbaqanga to my ears, and a style I’ve never heard of called mwomboko, a traditional music from the early 20th century that combines Kikuyu elements with European ballroom music. Some songs sound gentle and sweet, while others roil with righteous anger; some feature locked-in ensemble performances from immaculately tight bands, while others are far looser, based on clunky drum machines and consumer-brand synthesizers.
True to Heavy Combination being not just a commercial product but also a scholarly work, we’re treated to three sets of liner notes spread across the two inner sleeves of the double-disc set, along with ample photos from different stages in Kamaru’s career. The first set, written by Maina wa Mũtonya, is exclusively concerned with the lyrical content of Kamaru’s songs, offering track-by-track synopses and interpretations (in lieu of actual translations, which would have been a nice addition). Kamaru sang about the social issues of Kenya, often critiquing the sociological, economic, and political problems of the maturing country and occasionally offering a moral perspective, something that augured his eventual late-career pivot to religious and devotional music.
The second set of liners, by Megan Iacobini de Fazio, offers a fine biographical overview of Kamaru’s life, with occasional mentions of the musical components. But between these two essays, a lot of the musical anthropology is still left up to the listener. With the tracklist not presented in chronological order, some sleuthing must be done as far as the growth of Kamaru’s style and the different musical genres he incorporated into his work. Individual musicians are not credited, and I am not altogether certain of Kamaru’s contributions other than his vocals.
The third set of liners is written by Kamaru’s grandson, the musician and sound artist KMRU (whose birth name is also Joseph Kamaru), who compiled the discs and provided much of the source material from his family archive. KMRU writes about archiving the works of his grandfather in his childhood bedroom, transferring all the 7-inches, tapes, and CDs that could be found in the family home—those transfers, and additional discoveries, have all been uploaded by KMRU to Bandcamp, which serves as a comprehensive, ongoing archive of Kamaru’s work.
And Heavy Combination is the crucial starter course on all of that material, with clear, full mastering that—while making evident the sources varied widely, including some from needle drops—never lets a single track sound anything less than great. This is due to KMRU’s careful work and also to mastering engineer Kassian Troyer of the Berlin-based Dubplates & Mastering facility, who mastered the transfers and cut them to vinyl. The discs were pressed at Optimal in Germany, and my copy was flat and noise-free.
It’s the first thorough compilation Kamaru’s career has ever received. With the exposure his music will no doubt garner as a result, we can only hope more is on the way.
Heavy Combination 1966–2007 | Disciples 2-LP 33 RPM • mastered and cut to lacquer from digital by Kassian Troyer • pressed at Optimal Media GmbH • black vinyl
Listening equipment
Table: Technics SL-1200MK2
Cart: Audio-Technica VM540ML
Amp: Luxman L-509X
Speakers: ADS L980
