Product Description Nonesuch releases an album with two Steve Reich compositions - 'Double Sextet' and '2x5' - on September 14, 2010. 'Double Sextet' - which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009 - is performed by eighth blackbird, who commissioned the piece. The Philadelphia Inquirer said of a recent performance by the ensemble, 'Double Sextet is... among the finest pieces of our time... more than earlier Reich, it tips from exaltation to menace on a dime.' Bang on a Can perform '2x5,' which premiered last summer at a velodrome in Manchester, England. The work shared a double bill with German electronic music pioneers Kraftwerk and was commissioned by MIF in association with Casa da Música (Porto). 'Double Sextet' comprises two identical sextets of flute, clarinet, vibraphone, piano, violin, and cello. Doubling the instrumentation was done so that, as in so many of Reich's earlier works, two identical instruments could interlock to produce one overall pattern. The composer says, 'For example, in this piece you will hear the pianos and vibes interlocking in a highly rhythmic way to drive the rest of the ensemble.' The piece can be played in two ways: with 12 musicians, or with six playing against a recording of themselves. Reich continues, 'The idea of a single player playing against a recording of themselves goes all the way back to 'Violin Phase' of 1967. The expansion of this idea to an entire chamber ensemble playing against pre-recordings of itself begins with 'Different Trains' (1988). By doubling an entire chamber ensemble, one creates the possibility for multiple simultaneous contrapuntal webs of identical instruments.' In '2x5,' Reich expands his palate with rock instrumentation. Scored for two sets of five instruments (hence '2x5'), this 21-minute piece calls for a total of ten musicians: four electric guitars, two pianos, two bass guitars, and two drum sets. Performers can either play the piece all-live with ten musicians or with five live musicians against a pre-recorded tape, as Bang on a Can did for the premiere on the opening night of the Manchester International Festival. 'Clearly 2x5 is not rock and roll, but uses the same instruments. It's an example of the essential difference between 'classical music' and 'popular music.' And that essential difference is: one is notated, and the other is not notated,' Reich says. 'I had to find musicians who (A), could read, and (B), had a genuine rock feeling, and there Bang on a Can excels.'

Yeah Yeah Yeahs已有相当大的进步——从他们同名EP那附庸风雅却又美妙的垃圾朋克，一直到Machine中直逼人心的紧迫感。《Fever to Tell》是乐队的第一张专辑（也是张标有Parental Advisory的专辑），乐队在专辑中的表现也同样显示他们的不断成长，但也显示这个组合开始不再完全拥有他们过去的一些特点。在时间利用效率上，他们的EP会是很好体现差异的范例，在乐队从前发行的EP中，噪音、旋律、混沌以及歌曲的总体结构所占的份额都在这个15到20分钟里安排得相当平衡。似乎乐队需要一张EP的时间限制来给他们的专辑限制界限——或许37分钟，因为《Fever to Tell》确实在几个不同的时段里听起来有点散漫而单调。这个问题主要是归结于差劲的专辑排序——乐队以他们所能录制出的最粗鲁最狂暴的声音作为专辑开篇，却又一下子转变成没完没了的实验以及优美的民谣作品——嘲讽的是，这种突然的转变就象这张专辑是他们有意把两张EP硬生生的拼起来的一样。乐队无论是崭新的一面还是延续以前的一面，都有非凡卓越——也有令人沮丧的时刻。
《Fever to Tell》的不足之处（象No No No，听起来冗长又罗嗦的一首朋克单曲，还捎加实验元素，不过这种实验音乐听起来有点笨拙。）也许他们应该从以前EP里拿来一些尝试过又获得成功的单曲，但这么做对于象Yeah Yeah Yeahs这种机敏善变的乐队来说无疑会让他们陷入停滞。事实上，他们在如此之短的时间内能够炮制出那么多的歌——尽管这只是他们的处女作——这张专辑听上去好象乐队正处于转型期；Yeah Yeah Yeahs也已经从根本上去重新思考他们音乐的发展。总而言之，《Fever to Tell》可能会让你觉得有些失望，但和EP中的好歌对于乐队成长的影响比起，专辑会显得更有价值，而这张专辑也无不证明就算Yeah Yeah Yeahs的音乐处于摇摆不定的阶段，但他们仍是一支令人激动的乐队。

At the turn of the twenty-first century, the New York City music scene floated in a surfaceless orbit of samplers, shoegazers, and delay pedals. The city's guitars lay choked by a digital fog, or else they lay dustily forgotten. Then, in 2002, an unbridled five-song EP by an unknown band brought noise, sex, passion, and mayhem back to the stage and to the stereo. The band's name evoked the kid who knows that whoever's in charge is full of s**t -- "yeah, yeah, yeah" -- but it also rang with the affirmation of pure rock and roll: F**k yeah! The Yeah Yeah Yeahs' first full-length album, Fever to Tell, was simultaneously filthy, infectious, sloppy, and brilliant. You could dance to it, and you could probably die to it. "Maps" was nominated for a Grammy, and the record went gold in the UK.
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs spawned a new breed of power trio. They work together as a single organism, but each member maintains their own personality and contributes their own strengths. Think of them as a three-piece Earth, Wind, and Fire. On second thought, it's probably better if you didn't do that. Brian Chase's drumming couldn't be tighter or more precise, even as the band descends into the pitch-dark caves of noise he frequents in his free-jazz spare time--and one can hear rigor and experiment behind even his simplest, no-frills (or -fills) rhythms. Nick Zinner's guitar pushes back--hard--against Chase's formalism, grounding the group in rock and roll at its ballsiest, dirtiest, and most shredly. His soaring, sometimes grinding lines are wires connecting Chase's drums to the psychologically kaleidoscopic vocals of Karen O, who, as the New Yorker has noted, would have been a success "had she appeared with nothing more than a microphone and a pair of maracas."
The band developed an itchy and unshakeable aversion to repeating itself. It would have been easy enough to record another spastic, live-sounding garage album after the success of Fever, but their next full-length, 2007's Show Your Bones, added acoustic guitar and more serious compositions that picked up on the direction suggested by a song like "Maps." Rolling Stone called the record a "textural triumph," and the group honed their legendary stage performance -- one cannot understand the Yeah Yeah Yeahs without seeing Karen O writhing and thriving onstage. A handful of great songs that didn't make it onto Bones became tour staples (and fan favorites), and the band sat down with the celebrated PiL/Slits/Gang of Four producer Nick Launay to record 2007's EP Is Is.
Last year, the Yeahs shook their Etch A Sketch® clean to start work on a new record with producers Dave Sitek and Nick Launay. "We usually go into these things totally blind," Karen O said. "We have no idea what's going to happen when we sit down." This empty page feeling was helped by geography: they began writing the record in the middle of a snowstorm, in a hundred-year-old barn in rural Massachusetts. "You looked out the window and it was just pastures and pastures of snow-covered fields," she said. Zinner had brought along a synthesizer to work with during the writing session, not expecting it to end up on the album. "That was an old keyboard I bought on eBay," he said. "Literally, it was the first day we were setting up, plugging things in. Ten minutes later, we'd written that song 'Skeletons.'" The song--and the whole record--have a new feeling of space and atmosphere that's unusual for the band. "Obviously, synths have been in rock music forever," Zinner says. "But to us it feels new, which is all we really care about--that excitement."
It's Blitz! signals both a glance backward and a step forward for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Zinner's vintage Arp--the same model used on records by The Cars, Joy Division, and Kraftwerk--contributes atmospheric washes ("Skeletons"), disco wiggles ("Dance till you're dead!" Karen sings on "Heads Will Roll"), and New Wave melodrama ("Soft Shock"). The first single, "Zero," combines all these elements to create a dance-floor anthem that sings directly to the listener. "We've got a death grip on the adolescent way of feeling things," O said. That's something I'll never be able to shake in the music I write. It's almost feels like a John Hughes 80s movie." But acknowledging the past in this way doesn't sound make for a nostalgic-sounding album. "I think there's a cool stability reflected in this record," Brian Chase says. "It reflects our transformation, and how we've developed as people."

千嬉年之后，美国纽约的地下音乐由The Strokes、White Stripes等乐队的迅速崛起迎来了垃圾音乐的复苏。而这支同样来自美国纽约的3人小乐团也是在这样的背景下诞生的。自3年前那张《Fever To Tell》发行后，他们就成了美国地下音乐的名角了，这不只在于他们在音乐上的杰出表现，更在于他们音乐所表述的那些关于性爱、同性恋等话题。
整支乐队给人映象最深的当然是女主唱Karen O了，你可以用一切诸如歇斯底里，放荡不羁等词语去形容她，对于这个需要偶像的年代，Karen O自然因此也赢得了不少Fans。在舞台上，她总是表现出那充满力量的情绪，用着那些“陈词滥调”去真诚的打动你，或者用她那特有的张力去唤醒你体内的荷尔蒙……
3年之后，Yeah Yeah Yeahs带着这张依然前卫的《Show your Bones》再度出现在我们的视线中。
首支单曲Gold Lion随着木吉他的欢快节奏为我们款款道来，而随之而来的Way Out他们再度讲述着自己对性爱的理解，It's Just A Way Out...不知道这张专辑的下一首单曲会是哪首，但是如果是我，一定会选择这首Way Out，虽然只有短短的的不到3分钟，但是绝对可以体现他们这几年对音乐上的理解和专辑的概念。那首Phenomena的反复歌词不知道我有没有听错，They had sth.like banana...一滴汗。整体上，专辑依然是围绕着主唱时而欢愉时而忧伤的嗓音进行，乐队的另外两位成员Nick Zinner和Brian Chase也随着Karen O富有张力的表现力变换吉它的旋律与鼓声的节奏。一张近乎完美的狂放之作，推荐给大家

'We would love for this music to make our fans feeeeel something, for it to stir some sh*t up inside of them, whatever that may be,' says singer Karen O. 'SO much feeling went into this record, it was the rope ladder thrown down into the ditch for us to climb up and dust ourselves off. I hope others can climb up it too; we're excited to share the good vibes.'
The band, whose members were once lovingly labeled by Rolling Stone as the 'goth, the nerd and the slut' have recorded three studio albums: All 3 albums were nominated for a GRAMMY award for Best Alternative Music Album. The first, 'Fever to Tell', was named as the best album of the year by The New York Times. The Patrick Daughters-directed video 'Maps' was nominated for four MTV Video Music Awards. The certified-Gold album was named by Rolling Stone, Pitchfork Media, and NME as one of the best albums of the decade. The second, 'Show Your Bones', was named the second best album of the year by NME. Rolling Stone magazine named it the one of the best album of the year, while Spin Magazine ranked it in their 40 best albums of 2006. Their third studio album, 'It's Blitz!', was named the second best album of the year by NME magazine, It's Blitz! was named as the second best album of 2009 by Spin Magazine and third best of 2009 by NME along with the single 'Zero' from the album listed as the best track of the year by both. And onto 'Mosquito!'

Ever since the November 2007 digital release of the hilarious, zeitgeist-capturing single "Ur So Gay," Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter Katy Perry has been wowing critics and fans alike (including the Queen of Pop herself, Madonna) with her big voice, sassy attitude, and feisty, confessional songs. Katy's debut album, One of the Boys, is a sharp, witty pop-rock gem filled with candid tales of neurotic ex-boyfriends ("Hot N Cold," "Ur So Gay"), crazy road trips with friends ("Waking Up in Vegas"), and figuring out who you are along the way (first single "I Kissed A Girl," "Fingerprints"). While the album displays Katy's feisty, girl-power swagger, it also reveals her more vulnerable side on such regretful ballads as "Lost," "I'm Still Breathing," and "Thinking of You." Although just 23, the Santa Barbara, CA-born native has been writing songs and playing guitar for several years, and possesses the flair and confidence of a veteran storyteller. Catch her in all her glory this summer when she joins the Vans Warped Tour for its entire coast-to-coast run.

The long waited fourth studio album from the moody and intense Texas instrumental band Explosions In The Sky. Known for bringing an emotional heft and sense of hope to a usually placid genre, Explosions In The Sky have experienced the kind of meteoric rise in popularity that flies in the face of music industry convention. Their songs run well past a length suitable for radio play or commercial music videos; they avoid performing in LiveNation/Clear Channel venues; they didn't jump to a major label; and they don't sing. They're also the very rare band that fans of Sigur Ros, Sufjan Stevens and My Chemical Romance can all agree on. EITS are not just an anomaly, they're a gateway. Recorded by John Congleton (The Roots, The Mountain Goats) at Pachyderm Studios in rural Minnesota, the album is a massive leap forward, showcasing a broader instrumental range and their most focused, efficient songwriting. Bella Union. 2007.

This is Explosion In The Sky's 2nd album, and one of the most critically acclaimed records of 2004 and a massive word-of-mouth success story, going on to sell 20,000 copies in the UK alone. Features 5 tracks. Bella Union. 2005.

Tyranny is the first studio album by American band Julian Casablancas + The Voidz, which is set to be released on September 23, 2014.