Music

Mulatu Astatke - New York-Addis-London Thanks be to the music industry gods for allowing Strut Records to resurface, as no one can flex nearly as much heavy reissue muscle as they can. To whit: now they're offering the definitive career retrospective of recordings by Ethiopian jazz legend Mulatu Astatke, titled "New York-Addis-London," which showcases Astatke's pioneering work for the first time. Astatke gained a whole new international audience when his snakewinding "Yegelle Tezeta" appeared on the soundtrack to Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers, and it's high time that this audience get exposed to the compelling fusion of Western jazz rhythms and Ethiopian melodies that Astatke has been expertly crafting since the mid-sixties.

Matias Aguayo - Ay Ay Ay As one-half of Kompakt's influential Closer Musik outfit, the Chilean-born, German-raised Aguayo developed a deep-seated reputation as a lively savant of electronic dance music. Unlike most of his anonymous, withdrawn contemporaries, Aguayo comes across as goofy and fun-loving. After the careful restraint of his previous outing, "Are You Really Lost," "Ay Ay Ay" shows Aguayo running amok on tunes that brim with tropicalic flourish, favela-booty bounce and an irrepressibly off-kilter pop-melody sensibility. Highly recommended for fans of El Guincho, Diplo, Animal Collective, and playful outsider dance music in general.