Music Blogs

Magnet is Norway's Even Johansen, whose fourth album, The Simple Life (Filter), quickly rocketed to the top of the Norwegian charts upon its release. Why Magnet? At the dawn of puberty, Even was struck down by a mysterious illness, one that would influence his woozy dream pop for years to come...

Anemic at the age of 13, Even was hustled off to a "Rock ‘N' Roll doctor" by his jazz musician father. "[The doctor] was wearing a white lab coat, but I think he may have been a drug dealer," Even recalls. The doc sent him to a half-Chinese, half-Indian medicine man, who gave him a tattoo of a magnet, colored with "special" ink. After passing out from the pain, Even awoke to find that he was cured: "I was stupid enough to believe it, but believing can work wonders. To this day, I have not suffered [from anemia] once. I am a magnet."

The Simple Life is surely a magnet for music lovers. Recalling a more inventive Rufus Wainwright or a supremely inspired Beck, Magnet produces sweeping pop songs that belie their creation in his island home on a Bergen farm.

An all acoustic recording (unlike his previous electronic-tinted masterwork, 2004's On Your Side), The Simple Life does reggae right (Bob Marley's "She's Gone"), pulls nostalgic Jimmy Webb inspired notes with strings and orchestra ("The Simple Life"), drops a Cole Porter meets Massive Attack jewel "(Slice of Heaven"), and offers big beat joy in "The Gospel Song." In one of the album's finest tracks, "You Got Me," Magnet plies dark acoustic guitar figures and synth brass within a tale of undying love - or is that a love he wants to kill? It's Afro-funky and UK downtempo centric, think The Specials channeling a mad Marvin Gaye in Here, My Dear.

Singing in a subtle, sleepy, non-hurried fashion, with melodic and instrumental variation/exploration as his muse, Magnet is a gifted songwriter who hits all the right notes, song after song. His music won't send a blast cap up your butt, no, it's sweet stuff, music for Saturday afternoon bliss, not Friday night meltdowns.

File under masterful pop, inspired tunesmiths, escape hatch music for weary minds and souls in need of the perpetual weekend.  

Bring out your dead, part 2: Six Degrees records have the market cornered on lifestyle enhancing compilations, and they generally mine their sources with a modicum of respect to the artists. Cinematic: Classic Film Music Remixed reworks 14 classic film score tracks taken from iconic 60s and 70s films like A Few Dollars More, Ben Hur, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, and They Call Me Mister Tibbs. Masters of the soundtrack game like Quincy Jones, Nino Rota, Ennio Morricone, Henry Mancini, and Duke Ellington receive the big digital remix finger from the likes of Tom Middleton, King Britt, Bombay Dub Orchestra, Zeb, The Real Tuesday Weld and Shaun Lee. These are all relative unknowns to a buying public who thinks the guy who spins behind Puffy must be the world's greatest DJ, but they constitute some of the most inventive remix DJs working today.

In all honesty, the Six Degrees freebie offered here, Shaun Lee's "Birdman of Alcatraz," is a pretty lousy remix. If this were an illegal blog, like so many others, I could post really cool stuff from the album like Phillip Charles' "The Taking Of Pelham," or Zeb's reworking of Henry Mancini's track from "Gaily, Gaily" or Bent's playful, largely unrecognizable excursion on Fellini's "Roma." But such is the nature of commerce.

Shaun Lee: "Birdman Of Alcatraz" (MP3, 2:47)