GRINDERMAN / Grinderman 2 RMX [2012]

The idea of remixing Nick Cave's deceased stoner-rock group Grinderman didn't seem like it would translate very well into dancefloor blips & bleeps.  Fortunately, under Cave's supervision 2012's Grinderman 2 RMX takes a different route and sounds more organic and natural as opposed to your usual run of the mill dance "mixes".  Normally reinterpretations of songs like this usually lose the purpose & soul of the original, however most of the remixers here seem to understand this and take GM's original intentions into heavy consideration.  It won't surpass the genius of the originals, especially with too many recreations of the same song, but GM 2 RMX is an interesting project that nearly works.

3 super hyper retitles out of 5

Songs Of Note: Hyper Worm Tamer [U.N.K.L.E.]; Palaces Of Montezuma [Barry Adamson]

DIRTY THREE - Toward The Low Sun [2012]

2012 saw the release of Warren Ellis' jazz alt-rock trio, Dirty Three's first album in over 7 years, Towards The Low Sun.  Having not played together for an extended amount of time sort of shows and hurts the experience a bit.  Gone are the amazing bone-chilling build-ups heard in Ocean Songs & Horse Stories and now it seems the group find comfort in noodling around without direction.  The textures are still thick with warmth and off-kilter distortion, like a chamber act itching to rock out something fierce but it never quite happens.  Not to say it's a bad album, in fact it's quite nice as background music.  I'm confident this is just the trio testing the waters again and will be back in full force the next time around.

3 wordless stories out of 5

Songs Of Note: Furnace Skies; That Was Was

NICK CAVE & WARREN ELLIS / Lawless (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)[2012]

For director John Hillcoat's violent prohibition piece Lawless, regular collaborators Nick Cave & Warren Ellis pieced together quite an unexpected & interesting musical backdrop.  

While their limited score for the film goes largely ignored on the album it's the songs they've arranged that are put into the spotlight.  Cave & Ellis gather together notable acts such as Ralph Stanley, Mark Lanegan, Emmylou Harris & Willie Nelson to cover songs by Captain Beefheart, Townes Van Zandt & Velvet Undergound and tweak them to sound like genuine period pieces.  They manage to maintain the haunting canvas of their previous works while producing something completely fresh and exciting.

4 changes from meth to moonshine out of 5

Songs Of Note:  Burnin' Hell; Fire In The Blood [feat. Emmylou Harris]

NICK CAVE & WARREN ELLIS / White Lunar [2009]

Covering 5 years of working together as a score composing duo, Nick Cave & Warren Ellis compiled a tight little 2-CD package appropriately titled White Lunar. Mainly showcasing the scores to the John Hillcoat films The Proposition & The Road, the album is inevitably filled with haunting passages of loneliness, dread and sadness. What's great about Cave/Ellis scores is they produce such clearly evocative and solemnly textured compositions for vast yet barren landscapes that the music works just as well without the attached films. Expect sounds closer to Ellis' band The Dirty Three rather than any of Cave's major projects and you get a better picture of the music on these discs.

4 songs behaving badly out of 5

Songs Of Note: Song For Bob; The Proposition