From German electronica to soothing sounds from Swaziland, we review the week’s latest releases.
Pantha du Prince — Black Noise (Just Music) 
German-electronic producer and DJ Hendrick Weber, who releases music under the moniker Pantha du Prince, has been making waves since 2002. Noted for drawing from diverse influences, including late Eighties British shoegaze and Detroit techno, Black Noise is Pantha du Prince’s third full-length album and his first to be released on the Rough Trade label. On first listen the album may strike you as rather unassuming, definitely head music rather than party music, an album for the comedown if you will.
Hints of Four Tet and Aphex Twin can be heard as the minimalist techno beats worm their way under your skin. But you will soon let your guard down and be wallowing in the gorgeous waves of electronic bliss.
Highlights include the mesmerising Splendour featuring Tyler Pope of LCD Soundsystem and !!! fame on bass and Stick to My Side, which Weber co-wrote with Animal Collective’s Noah Lennox. If organic minimalist beats are your thing, then Black Noise and Four Tet’s There Is Love in You will be great companions in 2010. — Lloyd Gedye
Benjy Ferree — Come Back to the Five and Dime, Bobby Dee, Bobby Dee (EMI) 
What initially comes across as a rather friendly pop-swing, rock ‘n roll album becomes somewhat sad when you discover that it’s a tribute to tragedy and a fall from stardom. Washington DC-based Benjy Ferree wrote this album as a long ballad about the life of Fifties child actor Bobby Driscoll.
Driscoll’s Hollywood fame faded as his acne erupted and he was found dead in his apartment at age 31, following a life of heroin abuse, teenage marriage and small, sad TV parts.
Ferree does well to conceptualise this into song, creating an album that could be the soundtrack to a movie about Driscoll, ranging from obvious ballads to air guitar-enducing blues rock. There’s a bit of Queen, a bit of Nick Cave and a dash of Beach Boys. This is an easy album to listen to, with some gems such as Big Business and The Grips, which are great to dance to and unfailingly conducive to foot, tapping. The Driscoll storyline makes it more interesting than it would otherwise have been and you’ll have yourself a decent 50-minute listen. —Ilham Rawoot
Temaswati Project — Voices from Swaziland (Sheer Sound) 
The Temaswati Project was one of the highlights of the recent Bushfire Festival in Swaziland. Featuring some of Swaziland’s most talented female singers, they performed music in both traditional and contemporary styles.
With 10 female singers all brought together with the help of Alliance Francaise to record an album, the results are destined to be varied.
As the liner notes state, the aim was never to create a new female band, but to offer support to this group of talented young Swazi women.
Opener Nguwe Losisandvwa Sam by 22-year-old Zaza is an early highlight. Her gorgeous voice is mesmerising over the gentle guitar plucking and has left this critic trying to track down her debut album, Injabulo, released on Universal South Africa in May this year.
Lodanda offers up the other side of the coin with her track Malume, which is deeply rooted in Swazi culture and features the emafahlawane, or ankle shakers, used in local Swazi ceremonies.
Other highlights include Nancy Ginindza’s Fields of Separation and the soulful hip-hop star Jazz P’s Rush Rush.
It’s not all great, but if you are looking for a taste of fresh new sounds from Swaziland, this is the perfect tonic. — LG
Ghislain Poirier — Running High (Just Music) 
Canadian Ghislain Poirier’s album Running High is a mad medley of dub, kwaito, soca, reggae and dancehall chanting styles laid over an electronica sound.
The double album features artists such as reggae DJ Burro Banton, Chicago’s MC Zulu, Scotland-based Mungo Hi Fi and reggae vocalist Warrior Queen in rather strange settings.
But instead of behaving like orphans, the artists acquit themselves rather well on this electronica album.
When Poirier decides to do his thing he does it in a nonchalant way.
On this album he infuses repetition and speed, funky cadences and a DJ style that is, rather sadly, not in vogue.
I rather prefer the tracks on which Poirier makes use of vocals — the gruff vocals, say, on Trust None of Dem, a track on which Banton plays cleverly with reverb and space.
Sometimes music reviewers use words such as eclectic when they don’t know what to say. If ever there was a CD that could fit that definition, this is it.
This is the kind of CD you want to play on a Friday night. — Percy Zvomuya