Pitchfork

Nomo's eponymous debut was one of last year's more pleasant surprises. The Michigan group's Afrobeat-inspired big-band jazz offered plenty of thrills, though its unique identity was still emerging. On New Tones, they've taken that basic blueprint and transformed it into a sound that's more their own, incorporating home-made instruments, a harder, funkier rhythmic attack, and a healthy Congotronics influence. His Name Is Alive's Warn Defever is back in the producer's chair, and the groove this time around is several fathoms deeper than it was the first time.

As he began writing and arranging these tracks last year, Nomo leader Elliot Bergman obviously absorbed the ragged electro-trance music of Konono No. 1 and the other Kinshasa groups brought to light by Crammed Discs, and his latest tracks incorporate things like "electric sawblade gamelan" and "nu-tone symbals." The album kicks off with a spluttering electric thumb piano riff, quickly joined by staccato blasts from the horn section. As the pieces fall into place, the song gets more crazily awesome by leaps and bounds. When the processed bass and drum kit drop in together under the horns, the whole thing just blasts off, and every note being played by the dozen-plus lineup feels like it's serving the greater good.

Skipping around the album, it's almost impossible not to find a killer rhythm track butting heads with thundering brass. "One to One" rides a nasty polyrhythm, laying a swaying 6/8 rhythm against a 4/4 stomp to create an unstoppable groove. You could stick with that charged sway for half an album and not get tired of it, but Nomo moves on after five minutes into the Fela-inspired "If You Want", balancing crunching horns with peaceful passages dominated by Rhodes piano and flute. The relative brevity of these pieces-- they range from eight minutes to just three-- is a strength in that it gives you exactly what you need from each composition. Hard-hitting heads, controlled breakdowns, tight solos and sharp attention to detail keep these songs fresh, and they're not allowed to overstay their welcome.

So in just three minutes, "Fourth Ward" takes you on a crazed exotica odyssey, brittle horns floating in the spacious production over Afro-Cuban rhythms in a texture that shoots Duke Ellington's Cotton Club-era jungle music into the 21st century. Sax and ring-modulated synth tangle in the open rhythms of "We Do We Go", with the sax frequently sounding more otherwordly than the synth, while the bassline of "Hand and Mouth" threatens to swallow the rest of the song. Their cover of Joanna Newsom's "Book of Right On", meanwhile, echoes the early-70s free funk of Donald Byrd and Luther Thomas.

As the album simmers to a close with the majestic horns and clanking metal percussion of the slow-burning "Sarvodaya", the sense of having taken a journey is palpable (heck, that song alone is quite a trip). Bergman has taken Nomo well to the next level on its sophomore effort, forging a clattering, vital sound that bridges styles and decades with ease.