AMIRI BARAKA / R.I.P. to R.I.P.?

I had this idea that I wasn't going to do the R.I.P. thing anymore. The internet is taking care of it already -- do I have to chime in? Of course I too want all these great artists who are leaving their body week after week to rest in peace, and/or in power, and/or attain a new plane of transcendent existence, but I don't want my twitter and/or my blog to be 80 percent RIP notices. I mean, let's face it, as far as the 1960s counterculture is concerned, we are entering the kind of period that scientists coldly call an "extinction event or biotic crisis." Sometimes I feel like the job is to share the work of these great artists, both alive and deceased, every day except on the day they pass on.

I have to say something about the passing of Amiri Baraka, because as a poet he was simply one of the boldest and most uncompromising artists of the 20th Century. He was also a brilliant essayist/thinker/historian, even when polemical, and his books Blues People and Black Music were completely foundational for understanding how deeply the music I love was forged by the transatlantic African diaspora. His work was fundamental to the free jazz & fire music movements of the 1960s, through journalistic coverage (as collected in Black Music) and also through performance. He said that "Poetry is music and nothing but music. Words with musical emphasis," and when he read his fire music poems, with or without additional musical accompaniment, who knows what unknown tongues were unlocked in his listening contemporaries.

Here's two posts where his name shows up if you do a search on this here blog, including some writing about one of his most powerful recordings ever, "Black Art" with Sunny Murray and Albert Ayler. By the way, I humbly think these are two really good posts of music writing, not just for the Baraka content ... I know people are always saying "Blastitude doesn't review records anymore, blah blah blah," but I do occasionally if you pay attention, and why would I write twenty-seven lukewarm reviews of all the latest underground flash-in-the-pan oversaturation bands when I could be writing shit like this instead? Sorry, end of mini-rant.

I'm sure a lot of you and even most of you have already delved into the works of Baraka for yourself, but if you haven't, read some poems right now on this web page. Listen to "Black Art" and "Black Dada Nihilismus." Dig deep into all the other fascinating related YouTubes down the right side of your screen. While you're at it, check out the crazy "mad stressful" LP he released in 1972 on Motown Records spoken word subsidiary label Black Forum. Also Digging: The Afro-American Soul of American Classical Music is a fantastic sprawling anthology of his jazz writing that was published just recently in 2010 -- I got it at my local library. And, if you can find a VHS copy, Amiri Baraka: In Motion is a great documentary covering some days in the life of Baraka and his family during the 1980s.

PLAYLIST: 66.6 FM WBLSTD (CHICAGO)
8/26/08 - DJ Larry Dolman
"JAZZ SPECIAL (sort of)"

Max Roach "Mendacity" (Impulse!)*
Warmer Milks "Colburn II" (Every Label Ever)
John Fahey "Ghosts" (Little Brother)*
Albert Ayler "Ghosts" (Revenant)
Sonny Sharrock "Hit Single" (Cartoon Network)*
Sonny Sharrock "Promises Kept" (Axiom)*
Jimmy Giuffre "Time Will Tell" (Columbia)
Prince & the Revolution "Around the World In A Day" (Paisley Park)
Spectrum "How You Satisfy Me" (Silvertone)*
Evie Sands "I Can't Let Go" (Rhino)*
Amiri Baraka "Bang, Bang Outishly" (Rhino/WEA)*
Thelonious Monk "Misterioso" (Blue Note)*
Miles Davis "Saturday Miles" (Columbia)*
Sunny Murray "Black Art" (DIW)*
Joakim Skogsberg "Offer-Rota" (Tiliqua)*
Warmer Milks "Here At Home" (Paranormal Overtime)*
Grateful Dead "What's Become Of The Baby?" (Warner Bros.)*
Grateful Dead "Mountains of the Moon" (Warner Bros.)*
Led Zeppelin "Stairway to Heaven" (Atlantic)*
Mahavishnu Orchestra "The Dance of Maya"
Black Sabbath "Supernaut" (Warner Bros.)*
Joakim Skogsberg "Fridens Liljor" (Tiliqua)*
Neu! "Lila Engel (Lilac Angel)" (Astralwerks)*

NOTES:
1. I'm not really one for politics, but as I stand by and watch plutocratic pigs both lipstick-wearing and otherwise drag another election into sheer post-American Idol incoherence, it sure feels good to play "Mendacity" by Max Roach. From his Percussion Bitter Sweet album, this is one blistering anti-political tune. Roach's wife-to-be Abbey Lincoln starts the song by stating the theme bluntly: "The campaign trail winds on and on in towns from coast to coast/The winner ain't the one who's straight, but he who lies the most." Then comes the solo by Eric Dolphy on alto sax, and it is supreme artistry, also blunt but still incredibly lyrical, both outside and inside, ranting at the mendacity, mocking its cloying bluster, and at the same time crying in pain at the real lives being thrown away behind all the maddening mendacious diversions. Then the band drops out and Roach plays an unaccompanied drum solo that really sets things straight, a heraldic call for clarity amid this despair and confusion. Extremely serious, disciplined, and clear as a bell, with huge pauses for emphasis, it seems to represent the antidote: straight talk with fists ready. Then the band comes back in with the theme, and Abbey sings one more verse that really ups the ante: "Now voting rights in this fair land we know are not denied/But if I tried in certain states, from tree tops I'd be tied!" For much more on Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach, go to this page. Scroll ALL the way down on that page for some comments and a poem by Amiri Baraka. More Amiri Baraka later in this show.

2. John Fahey's "Ghosts" is from the double 7-inch called The Mill Pond, one of his greatest late-period releases. It's certainly one of the harshest, with four devastating noise/folk tracks, including one terrifying howl called "You Can't Cool Off In The Mill Pond, You Can Only Die" (Side C). That one came up on my iPod shuffle one day at work, and after a couple minutes I walked over to see who was playing the terrifying music. I wasn't surprised to see it was Fahey, but I was impressed. The song title was too long to fit, so I watched it slowly scrolling across the iPod screen, "You Can't Cool Off In The Mill Pond," and here I am, already unsettled by the sound, as the rest of the title comes across: "You Can Only Die." Damn, thanks a lot John. Heavy dude. "Ghosts" is Side A, the quietest and most song-based of the four, not an Ayler cover, but a calm fingerpicked number over which Fahey does some wordless singing. It's eerie as hell but also melodic and surprisingly gentle.

3, 4. "Hit Single" is the cheeky title for the theme Sonny Sharrock came up with for the Cartoon Network TV show Space Ghost Coast to Coast. He recorded it with powerhouse drummer Lance Carter back in 1994, six months before his unexpected death from a heart attack at age 54. (Turns out Carter also passed away young, at age 51, in 2006.) Not sure how Sharrock ended up being asked to do the theme - did Bill Laswell hook it up? Speaking of Laswell, I was never a fan, but I could never quite ignore him either, and my favorite shit he ever did, hands down, is his work with Sharrock. The solo album Guitar is dreamy and gorgeous and the jazz quartet album Ask the Ages is fantastic. Sharrock writes all the tunes, co-produces with Laswell, and plays guitar with the serious lineup of Pharoah Sanders on sax, Charnett Moffett on bass, and Elvin Jones himself on drums. First track "Promises Kept" is 9 minutes long... Sanders takes the first solo and there's a moment about halfway through it, as he is just ramping up the free-blowing steadily higher, when Sharrock suddenly leaps in with explosive electricity... add the thunderous rhythm section and you might have one of the 10 or 20 single most group-explosive moments in fire music history, I'm not kidding.

5, 6. This Evie Sands song, as heard on the Rhino box set One Kiss Can Lead To Another: Girl Group Sounds Lost And Found, sounds incredibly familiar to me... maybe someone covered it, or maybe it's just that the band Spectrum ripped it off for the first song on their awesome 1992 album Soul Kiss (Glide Divine). I swear in some places it's almost note for note (new lyrics though). I could see Sonic Boom being into this tune. I could also see it being a complete coincidence. Whatever. Wait, this just in: The Hollies covered it in 1966. I really don't think I've ever heard that version, but maybe.... oh shit, even more breaking news, our (high on) crack research staff has just turned up this blog post, in which it is revealed that Linda Ronstadt also cut a version in the late 1970s! Hmm, that was when her Living in the USA album (1978) was getting tons of plays at my house, thanks mom and dad... could it be... um, nope. It's actually on her next album, 1980's Mad Love, the one where she went New Wave. Maybe that's where Sonic Boom heard it! I guess I might've heard it then too, but I don't think so. It doesn't matter anymore, I'll just listen to the Evie Sands version. By the way, I think I actually love Linda Ronstadt, especially 1974-1978 era. She could belt out some country soul, for serious, and she picked classic songs. I keep thinking of her version of "Heatwave" by Martha & the Vandellas. Her studio bands were just organic enough that it didn't get drecky, aka "the Wachtel zone." I could be wrong about all of this, it's kind of a fuzzy memory. Hello? Anybody still here?? As for that Rhino box, despite it's hugeness (120 tracks on 4 CDs!) it's just not satisfying my love of 1960s girl group soul. This shit has to be listened on the original 45s, I'm convinced. CD allows for too much of it at once and it kind of just gives you a sugar headache. Especially when the music is mastered so brightly and cleanly. When you hear this stuff on a 45, or through the crackle of AM radio, it sounds murky and mysterious, and the imagination fills in the rest as grandiose and glamorous. On CD it's just another golden oldie where everything is adorable but the lights are on so bright that you can see the scotch tape holding up the decorations.

7-18. Okay, we had a couple warmups earlier in the show, now for the full-on jazz portion (not really). It starts with a recording from another Rhino/WEA box set, In Their Own Voices: A Century Of Recorded Poetry, in which Amiri Baraka reads "Bang Bang, Outishly." For the intro and refrain of the poem he sings the theme from Monk's "Misterioso" and it's just blown-out and mic-clipping enough to make me think of some kind of Black Sabbath riff, which reminds me that the main riff from "Bitches Brew" by Miles Davis has always sounded to me like some sort of funkified Black Sabbath, and is in fact now starting to seem like some kind of actual Monk/Sabbath midpoint. To further investigate I spin Thelonious Monk's sublime 1948 recording of "Misterioso" on Blue Note Records and then follow it with "Saturday Miles," the mega-turbulent 20-minute-plus medley on Side D of the Miles Davis At Fillmore double in which "Bitches Brew" at its most Sabbathian features heavily, recorded live in June 1970. As the track ends results are inconclusive due to slack-jawed soul-drool at the altar of heavy, so instead of doing the obvious and playing Black Sabbath (that doesn't come until a little later) I keep flying headlong into post-jazz turbulence by bringing back Baraka (here calling himself Leroi Jones because it's 1965) reading his incendiary poem "Black Art" backed by drummer Sunny Murray and no less than Ayler, Cherry, Grimes, and Worrell. At first I was gonna play it safe and put on "Black Dada Nihilismus" (in which Jones reads with the New York Art Quartet on their self-titled 1964 LP for ESP-Disk) but the imp of the perverse in me put "Black Art" on instead, simply because it pisses so many people off, or let's just say "starts a dialog." I'll stay away from some of Jones's more infamous bitch-slaps right now, but I will quote this choice nugget: "We want 'poems that kill.' Assassin poems, poems that shoot guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys and take their weapons leaving them dead with tongues pulled out and sent to Ireland." Man, why didn't Charlton Heston and His Moral Outrage drum up publicity for this record instead of "Cop Killer"? He missed the boat by 27 years! The record label was even called Jihad! America could have whined "Why does Mr. Jones hate so much?" and maybe, just maybe, a few noble folks would have dug just a little deeper and noticed that he had already given a fairly serious answer to that question just a few lines later: "Clean out the world for virtue and love, let there be no love poems written until love can exist freely and cleanly." Maybe the record would've actually gotten repressed a couple times. Alright, alright, let's cool things down a little, I think we could all use a change of pace, and boy do I have one. It does relate to the previous though, as it is another raw exploration of the human voice... in fact, it is just a guy, all by himself, humming a basic melody over and over for almost 6 minutes... and, even though the guy is from Sweden, I'll be damned if the melody doesn't sound a whole lot like that Sabbathian/Monkian riff from "Bitches Brew." In fact, it's no change of pace - this track is crazy too. The vocalist is Joakim Skogsberg, from his strange and dark 1971 psych/folk album called Jola Rota. He probably did know "Bitches Brew," right? It had come out just a year earlier, on an album that sold very well worldwide.... but then again the style of singing is 'jolor,' which is apparently an ancient Swedish folk style, a lot older than Miles Davis (although the only info a google search for keywords like swedish+jolor+folk+singing et al seems to bring up is this Skogsberg album). This is where we lose the jazz transmission, as the vocal atmosphere of this track is so weird I feel like I can only follow it up with two more deeply strange voice-based cuts, the first one brand new by Warmer Milks from the POT series of numbered CDRs ("POT" stands for the name of the in-house label Paranormal Overtime, in case you were wondering, and this particular track is from the disc called "POT 7"), and then the absurd "What's Become Of The Baby?" by The Grateful Dead. In A Long Strange Trip, Dennis McNally writes: "In 'Baby,' Garcia wanted the sound of the entire band to come out of his voice, which required voltage-controlled amplifiers, filters, and pitch followers, which had not yet been invented. Once again, their ambitions had overshot their skill. And the descent into total lunacy initiated by mixing while inhaling nitrous oxide majestically confused everything." In Living With The Dead, Rock Scully writes "I'm not even counting the muezzin's-call-to-prayer and Gregorian chant on the utterly weird 'What's Become of the Baby' (which I attribute to too many hours spent under tungsten lighting)." In his consumer guide, Robert Christgau's entire review of Aoxomoxoa, the 1969 album this song is from, was this: "One experimental cut which hasn't made it for me yet, otherwise fantastic. (A)" I think I know which cut he was referring to. I don't even like this song myself, but I feel like I have to play it on the radio at least once just to see if anything happens. It might start more dialog than "Black Art." And next, we atone with "Mountains of the Moon," a much lovelier song from the same album, and as long as we're working out 60s/70s power baroque, which one gets you higher, mountains of the moon or a "Stairway to Heaven"? About a week ago I listened to "Stairway to Heaven" for the first time in many years because it came up on the iPod shuffle. I had been avoiding it because I just didn't feel like it could ever sound new again, but there it was last week, taking me by surprise in a brand new context (my very own radio station with a 16,000-song library, thank you Apple Corp!), and my god, get past the guitar student cliche the intro has become and what a riveting long-form ballad it is, especially the instrumental refrain after each sung verse. Bravo to Maestro Page for writing that one, holy shit, those raw electric guitar sounds playing beautiful folk chords, chiming and gnawing into each other, building crazy tension, no drums, etc. I'm hearing more of the subtle and complex bass playing by John Paul Jones than ever too (I'm no audiophile but I know my mp3s of this album are encoded at 320kps and I honestly think that has something to do with this whole epiphany - how about that for a completely different opinion about digital sound than the one gathered from the Rhino/WEA Girl Group Sounds box above). Man, when this show is done I think I'm gonna pull that Erik Davis book off the shelf, put this album on repeat, and hit the couch... but first we've got time for a few more, and it's time to give Sabbath and Skogsberg their due by playing a couple of their more motorheaded numbers, to make up for skipping the former and then playing a not-completely-indicative cut by the latter. And to close the show: one of my favorite pieces of German motorheaded nonsense ever, "Lila Engel" by Neu! Whew! (Doesn't rhyme with Neu.)


Ladies and gentlemen: Evie Sands.

NEIL CAMPBELL & ROBERT HORTON Trojandropper LP (ZUM) #HEAVYMUSICINALLSTYLESANDVOLUMES

From a date already quickly receding into the mists of time, waaaay back in mid-2012, here's a rather overlooked collabo LP picked up cheap from the ever-lovin' Reckless experimental bin. Long-time regular readers of Blastitude probably know the music of Neil Campbell pretty well, and let's just say he seems to be more in ASC* mode than VCO** mode here, although it's hard to say when his collaborator is Robert Horton, a long-running under-the-radar Bay Area sound artist, instrument inventor, percussionist, electronicist, polymath, iconoclast, et al. In 1981 (which really is waaaay back) he was in a "punk funk" group called the Appliances that put out a 12-inch EP with a "Paranoia Rap," and we're talking live-band-in-studio rap like Sugarhill was contemporaneously releasing, and the rapper Dominique was none other than the daughter of Amiri Baraka and Diane DiPrima (born during her parents' Floating Bear years). That track is on YouTube; the only other thing I've heard by 'em is an unreleased mutant-funk instrumental that is cool as hell. After the Appliances, Horton was completely under-the-radar for many years, until the experimental/noise underground finally caught up to what he was doing during the early/mid-00's CDR/internet boom. Suddenly, he was a recording and releasing all kinds of records, solo releases under various guises like Egghatcher, and lots of collaboration and ad hoc group work, duos, trios, and larger, with people like Charalambides guitarist Tom Carter, and Loren Chasse of the Jewelled Antler Collective. You can learn a lot more about the music he makes and all of his other interests (as well as hear that sick unreleased Appliances track) by listening to this excellent 2012 podcast in which he is interviewed by George Chen, the guy who released Trojandropper on his label Zum. As for the music on the LP itself, both Campbell and Horton play multiple instruments, program mad beats both on-and-off-kilter, and have very full sounds all by themselves, and therefore, when working together, run the risk of overdoing it. Well, risk be damned, they both seem to put everything into the stew, and to their credit the blend is seamless as it slow-boils (and often gleefully boils over). All kinds of crazy rhythms, dare I say danceable for all their weirdness, everything and several kitchen sinks layered atop, often overwhelming in its sheer noisiness, this is yet another record I enter in the 'what I wish My Life in the Bush of Ghosts actually sounded like' sweepstakes.

  * Astral Social Club
** Vibracathedral Orchestra

Checked out Chicago Jazz Fest today... it was nice to see William Parker jamming a 2PM side-stage duet with Hamid Drake. (He was playing again at 7PM on the main stage, presenting "the inside songs of Curtis Mayfield" with an octet featuring, oh, Amiri Baraka and Dave Burrell, but for some lame reason I couldn't stay.) This 2PM deal was billed as an "Art of the Solo" presentation, with Parker presumably giving a lecture, demonstration, Q&A, that kind of thing, but when I got there he had the one and only Drake setting up with him, and began the show with some casual and funny remarks about how it was actually going to be an "Art of the Duet" presentation, going on to say that (I'm paraphrasing) "it's significant to be talking about the art of the solo here in Chicago, because the AACM always stressed the importance of developing a solo repertoire, no matter what your instrument. That way, if the piano player doesn't show up, or the trumpet player doesn't make the gig, so what? You're still cool." He talked about how we always expect the bandleaders to be the horn players or the piano players, but "what if all the bassists and drummers went on strike... what would they do then?" He summed it all up by saying, "So, bassists and drummers are extremely important. How do we know? Because trees don't grow from the top down. They grow from the GROUND UP." (This guy would get along with Joe Carducci.) And then he said that they were going to play, and they might stop and talk some more, but that they would probably just keep playing instead, and that maybe when they were actually done they would take questions from the audience, but that he couldn't understand why music would make anyone want to ask any questions, except for one: "Why questions?" And with that, they launched right into the funky, hypnotic, feisty, drony, completely freestyle duo music that they do (check out the Piercing the Veil album for an example), and they did it for a long time. Parker plays his bass like a massive four-piece drumkit, a constant one-chord/universal-chord style, and Drake either pushes it along massively or lights it up with streaks of fire.



Playing simultaneously on the next side-stage over, requiring a little bit of back-and-forth, was Nicole Mitchell's Black Earth Strings. Ever since I saw her lead a large group through an unreal hour-long tribute to Alice Coltrane at Millenium Park's Pritzker Pavilion two years ago, I've been a big fan. This Black Earth Strings group was smaller, more airy, feathery, and etheral, with Mitchell's flute, Renee Baker's violin, and Tomeka Reid's cello fluttering and dancing all around each other, playing intricate bustling melodies and breaking off for careening solos, held down and moved along by the excellent rhythm section of Josh Abrams (bass) and Shirazette Tinnin (drums). I was a little frustrated by the sound, like the band was playing great but having trouble punching through that trademark wind gusting off the lake, but I still think this is what cosmic jazz sounds like today and I really want to hear them play again, as well as check out their new CD Renegades on Delmark Records.


Fred Anderson Trio, Chicago Jazz Fest 2009, photo by mediageek

After that we sat on a blanket and ate up all our snacks while the inevitable Afro-Cuban salsa/jazz fusion band took the stage, absolutely bothering no one, not even myself. I was just lounging, killing time until 5PM, when the main stage at the Petrillo Music Shell was kicking off its evening schedule with a performance by the always-killer Fred Anderson Trio, this time with Drake (again) on drums and Abrams (again) on bass. They came out and basically played for 40 minutes non-stop, starting with an unaccompanied solo by Anderson that cut right through the picnic-blanket crowd chatter, not with honking and screaming, but with forceful punctuation, sharp tone, and deep extended thoughtful melodic lines. You know, Fred Anderson style. Then the rhythm section came in and you know they were good, Abrams with his pulsing guimbri-influenced lines and Drake just being Drake. I've seen him play a lot but he took a drum solo about 10 minutes in that was next-level even for him and basically got a standing ovation. And like I said, they just didn't stop. I'll admit that the momentum came and went, and the transitions between solos, duos, and trios weren't always sharp, but in a way that made it better, because whether he's at the Velvet Lounge or here on this big summer-fest stage in front of a few thousand people, Fred Anderson just shows up, gets into it, and doesn't look back. And the shorter second piece they played was really sublime, Drake coming out front to sit with a big tar drum and sing African style, Abrams driving it with another guimbri-style line, and Anderson sagely hanging back and playing sweet melodic color low in the mix. All in all, it was a beautiful day in Grant Park and the music was perfect... the Chicago Jazz Fest continues to be a sweet end-of-summer ritual in this town.

BLASTITUDE YEAR IN REVIEW: 2014

NOTE: I have this habit of writing year-end roundups and then never posting them because I get overwhelmed by the flood of everyone else's year-end roundups and end up losing interest in them, including my own. But I just looked over this one, which was entirely written before January 1st, 2015, and damn, I put a lot of work into it, so why don't you just take a look at it now, when the pressure is off? Sure, some of it is a little outdated (talk of "upcoming" records that were by now released several months ago, for example), but most of it will never be outdated (because great music is timeless and all that).

VASHTI BUNYAN Heartleap LP (DICRISTINA)
STEVE GUNN Way Out Weather LP (PARADISE OF BACHELORS)
IGNATZ & DE STERVENDE HONDEN Teenage Boys LP (ULTRA ECZEMA)
SAPAT A Posthuman Guide to the Advent Calendar Origins of the Peep Show LP (SOPHOMORE LOUNGE)
MA TURNER 'ZOZ' LP (SOPHOMORE LOUNGE)
JO JOHNSON Weaving LP (FURTHER)
EXILES FROM CLOWNTOWN Tape Scissors Rock LP (SOFT ABUSE)
VARIOUS ARTISTS Cool Bands 2 CS (NO LABEL)
LEWIS L'Amour LP; Romantic Times LP (LIGHT IN THE ATTIC)

As usual, an overwhelming amount of significant music was released this year (see this post by our friend at FRR for just one glimpse at the plurality), but there were three 2014 albums in particular that got the most turntable time at Blastitude HQ, and all three have something in common: they're on the softer side of things. Is it because at age 44 I'm almost to where I can legitimately start to say "I'm getting old"? Is it because a head-in-sand retreat from various increasingly brutal social realities is becoming more difficult to turn down? Could it be that the whole entire electric/psych/rock/garage/punk/noise big bang sonic boom of the 1960s, after reverberating strong right up into the 2000s, is finally slowly decaying back into theoretical silence? Is it because I live in a tiny 3-room apartment with three other people, two of whom are 11 years old or younger, none of whom like to listen to my hard and heavy weird records, especially not loudly? Either way, I wasn't the only one going soft; Jeff Conklin of the superb weekly WFMU radio show The Avant Ghetto has been talking about the "soft underground" on air (and the #softunderground on twitter), playing all kinds of music that doesn't have to be hard to be heavy, or loud to ring in your ear. Even silence can be heavy, and think of all the gradations and cross-gradations along the way... Xenakis, Paradieswärts Düül, and Grouper for three really quick and disparate examples. As well as these examples right here:

My #1 record of 2014, which might be the softest damn thing I've ever heard, is Heartleap by Vashti Bunyan (DiCristina), absolutely gorgeous, ethereal, fragile, twilit, gemlike, all of the above. After listening to it five times or so I still didn't really know the hell what instruments I was even hearing. It didn't quite sound like guitar, or keyboards, or anything really, except soft bells, or magic. Add her sweet voice on top of it, singing "Every day is every day/Can't tell one from the other/Wait to fall at the end of it all/As stones skip across the water," and you've got a beautiful heavy record. I also love the fact that it's her third album in a 44-year career, with her legendary debut Just Another Diamond Day coming in 1970, her followup Lookaftering coming 35 years later in 2005, and now Heartleap, which she insists is her last album, coming 8 years later in 2014. There's something to be said for the opposite of prolificacy; thanks Vashti, you've given us plenty!

My #2 record of 2014 is Way Out Weather by Steve Gunn (Paradise of Bachelors), another beautiful modern-day folk-rock singer-songwriter record, soft enough to earn the de rigueur comparisons to The Grateful Dead (of course), John Fahey (at least the generic misconception thereof), "world music" (i.e. Africa) and most likely even some stray "Dad-rock" and "NPR-core" action. All of which may be true, and none of which matters when the singing, writing, and playing is this goddamn good. His 2013 record Time Off worked its way into this Americana-meets-Africana style with a nice guitar/bass/drums trio format, but everything absolutely blossoms on Way Out Weather. The songs are richer, the singing more assured, and the Time Off trio of Gunn, Justin Tripp (bass), and John Truscinski (drums) has grown to include expansive cosmic string-band musical commentary from Jason Meagher (No-Neck Blues Band, Black Dirt Studio, et al), Nathan Bowles (Pelt, Black Twig Pickers, et al), Mary Lattimore (Thurston Moore, Kurt Vile, et al), James Elkington (Freakwater, Jeff Tweedy, et al), and Jimmy SeiTang (Rhyton, et al). Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to listen to the glorious song-end rideout of "Wildwood" for the 200th time.... "you know it ruuuuunnnnnnssssss....." 

My #3 record of 2014 was like an odd relative to the Steve Gunn record. similar in its deep African-inflected guitar/bass/drum groove and avant blue-eyed soul singing, but like a shyer, more furtive skate-rat cousin, sitting in a corner slumped inside a hoodie. And, where Gunn's music feels like being outside on a warm day next to water, this one is more like being inside on a cold night next to the fire. I'm talking about Teenage Boys by Ignatz & De Stervende Honden (Ultra Eczema), and if I may decode the band name a bit, Ignatz is the nom de plume for one Bram Devens of Belgium, and he plays guitar and sings, presumably writing the songs as well. He's put out quite a few solo and collabo records as Ignatz, affiliated with the Kraak label and in the context of the 2000s CDR underground. De Stervende Honden is the backing band, good ole drum kit and bass guitar, and they are as superb as their name, which is Dutch for The Dying Dogs. A description of the live debut of this band and the effect they have can be found on the Kraak website: "On the way back from the 2009 UK tour together with Silvester Anfang, Ignatz debuted with a backing band at Carlo Levi in Liege. The people present are still talking about it. It was one of those spontaneous magical moments. Suddenly Ignatz was free to rock out, not having to think about his samples or backing tracks." 

Also in keeping with the softgeist, I did love both of the rediscovered/reissued Lewis records, L'Amour and Romantic Times. There was quite a buzz when these were coming out, but I haven't seen ole Lew on too many year-end lists. Maybe everyone actually dislikes the music because of its obvious roots in 'lite' and 'bland' and 'yacht' and 'dentist office vibes' and all that, but I think everyone's just trying to play it cool on the internet. They're suspicious of the Light in the Attic label and think the artist might be a hoax (I don't think he is whatsoever, but it seems to be something people actually believe). Personally, I'm a little annoyed by all of LitA's extraneous gatefolds and liner notes and obi strips on the reissues, because I'm an exact repro kinda guy, but hey, either way, people no longer seem capable of simply sitting down and listening to the music on these two records, which I think is superb deep murmured melancholy softness, with the follow-up Romantic Times taking the first album aesthetic into more daring synth-haze heartbreak territory.

 


After that, there were three not-so-soft records released this year that I really dug. Two of them were released by the Louisville, Kentucky-based Sophomore Lounge label, one not until December: A Posthuman Guide to the Advent Calendar Origins of the Peep Show by Sapat. The previous Sapat album Mortise and Tenon came out 8 years ago (let's hear it once more for whatever the opposite of prolificacy is), and in that time Sapat has undergone significant lineup changes. This has not limited them, but allowed them to go in many new directions. They always had plenty of post-krautrock and free-roots moves at their disposal, but now they're also getting into what sounds like Eastern European prog, a spiky Rock in Opposition approach, and however you describe the vocalist's accent on the album opener "Arson Lieder I" when he sings "But the feeling.... is mutual." Or, however you describe the places new vocalist Dane Waters takes them with her opera-trained multi-octave psychedelic pressure. Also on Sophomore Lounge was the "ZOZ" LP by Ma Turner, which was a heavy edit/distillation of a 6-hour 12-cassette box set that he released in 2013. It has 4 or 5 great songs that are vintage Mr. Turner free-folk, with the rest being varied heady instrumental psych-noise-jam 2000s worship. I've been a fan of this guy since early 2005, and I've always liked hearing him try lots of things, but it's great when he bottles the running water, so to speak, and edits things down to the length of a long-playing record. And, the third not-so-soft record I listened to a bunch this year was Scissors Paper Rock, the debut full-length by Exiles From Clowntown, on the Soft Abuse label. These Australian 'older dudes' started out by self-releasing 7-inches in an enigmatic '1990s free rock' style, and showed a lot of promise (I even interviewed 'em), if not a whole lot of rehearsal or song-allegiance, but on Tape Scissors Rock, given two full-length sides to roam around on, they really knocked it out of the park with a fine coalescence of their disparate improv/jam/song ideas. A really entrancing record that grows as it goes.

That's about it for the 2014 stuff I listened to actual physical copies of. Of course, we all listen to lots of music via the internet now, and I am no exception. Though I'm glad I didn't have to, I probably could've gotten by this year just listening to music on Bandcamp, Soundcloud, and Tumblr alone. For example, when Weaving by Jo Johnson (Further Records) came out last summer, I listened to it on Soundcloud over and over for a few days straight. Still haven't seen the vinyl, but it exists and is already valued like a collector's item. She was the guitarist for Huggy Bear, now doing something completely different and that's cosmic synth instrumentals. This fashionable 70s-reverent retro-genre is not usually a favorite of mine, but somehow the patiently scrolling compositions on Weaving hit the spot just right. I'm not the first to compare her to Laurie Spiegel, one of the greatest cosmic (in academic guise) synth composers of all time, and Johnson's album really does aspire to that level......... Another internet-only phenomenon for me this year was a huge surge in killer punk. I too was enamored with the upstart NWI punk scene (NWI being an abbreviation for Northwest Indiana, which I think of, with admiration, as the boiler room of Chicago, with said scene seemingly centered around the burg of Hammond), particularly the more Devo/Urinals end of it as exemplified by The Coneheads and the elusive CCTV. The louder/harder BadBrainsVoid-isms of NWI bands Big Zit and Ooze were also impressive, and you can find all of them and more on a cassette-only compilation called Cool Bands 2 (no label). Actually you may not be able to find it, unless you're actually in Northwest Indiana and talking to the right punk, but in the meantime you can download it by going to the right blog, and then put it on your iTunes and listen to it a bunch of times like I have. Again, the only place I listened to punk demos and 7-inches this year at all was on the internet, and it's been particularly great to hear so much damn good female-fronted & -played punk and post-punk this year, from bands like Good Throb, Nandas, Sheer Mag, Nots, In School, Pang, Frau, Cold Beat, Vexx, Crimson Wave, Toupee, and a whole lot more (Erase Errata even came out with a killer new album, although that may have technically been in 2015)... the aforementioned Mr. Fuckin' Record Reviews led me to this huge 8tracks mix that covers lots of this action and lots more.............

    

And now for a special honorable mention section that is also a major shout-out to the aforementioned Avant Ghetto radio program on WFMU. I'd like to think I would have heard a lot of these records anyway, but it sure was convenient having them spun and archived on a radio show week after week; thanks so much to WFMU and their mind-boggling archival efforts (listener supported! donate now! every week is pledge week!). I've already mentioned one album I first heard on the Avant Ghetto (Teenage Boys by Ignatz & De Stervende Honden, #3 above); another was a fantastic cassette release by an elusive British solo project with the slightly unwieldy name of Tuluum Shimmering. This year's 3LP reissue of John Oswald's legendary Grayfolded megamix of over 100 Grateful Dead performances of "Dark Star" may have gotten more attention, and the allegiance of all the noise underground Deadheads, but for me one "Dark Star" has always done just fine by itself, and I always found Grayfolded too busy (too many Phils, too many Jerrys, one of each is plenty) and you could find me listening to Mr. Shimmering's marathon loop-driven reimagining of "Dark Star" instead. It was physically released on a C100 cassette by the Tranquility Tapes label, but that sold out in about a week, so once again it was Bandcamp to the rescue. A third 2014 album I first heard on The Avant Ghetto is a new one by Richard Youngs. It seems that most years there are a few new ones by Richard Youngs, and every single one of them is usually goddamn great, but there was something extra-magical about Red Alphabet In The Snow, which he did an edition of 250 for a Polish label called Preserved Sound. I just finally ordered a copy for myself, but it's not here yet; in the meantime I sure have listened to it a lot on Bandcamp, gorgeous hovering long-form flamenco/dreamtone maximalist miniatures built up by all sorts of delicate instruments, most of them stringed ("acoustic guitar, banjo, cifteli, classical guitars, electric bass guitar, electric lead guitars, electric violin, epinette des vosges, shakers, sitar, swanee whistle, tambourine, triangle, 12 string guitar, ukulele, voice"). And finally, the new Astral Social Club Fountain Transmitter Medications LP + CD (on the VHF label) has at least one side that is absolutely killing. That's the track called "Diamonds in the Dreich," which I heard on, you guessed it, the Avant Ghetto, sounding like Walter Wegmuller jamming with Throbbing Gristle in some dystopian near future. I plan to hear the rest of the album soon by purchasing it.

OTHER GOOD THINGS IN 2014
(For this section, I'm basically just recapping the current bands/artists I mentioned on my twitter feed this year. I feel like 90 percent of what I mention on there is from the 1960s-1980s, but then I do believe that any music made with electricity is new music, and that everything after the bomb is sci-fi.)

SPIRES THAT IN THE SUNSET RISE from downstate Illinois, who I used to listen to quite a bit when they first came on the Chicago scene circa 2002-2004, pretty much a poster band for free folk, but also damn good at it with a sound that was tough as nails. I've barely heard them since, besides seeing them play a really good show as a duo in 2007, until recently bumping into this YouTube of their set at the 2014 Tusk Festival (Newcastle upon Tyne, England). Still a duo, they pull an impressive amount of music out of their heavily processed bravura vocals and Canterbury-style reeds and woodwinds.....

STARE CASE played a 2013 gig in Toronto and I tweeted about how you can watch it on YouTube; Stare Case is 2/3rds of Wolf Eyes, John Olson and Nate Young, playing in a notably different deep-listening silence-aware style, with Nate's methodical psychedelic bass playing reminding me of the aforementioned Paradieswärts Düül. They are currently active, though often in hibernation...

The aforementioned SAPAT...

The aforementioned CONEHEADS...

The aforementioned RICHARD YOUNGS showed up again when I tweeted that "My nominee for the greatest song of 2010 is RICHARD YOUNGS "Love In The Great Outdoors." The tweet was meant to not only link to a great song, but also to goof a bit on the idea of year-end lists, and how sometimes you don't know what the best song of the year was until 4 years later because time is elastic....

Long-time Blastifave SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE have a record coming out in early 2015 on Drag City called Hexadelic, and I retweeted some frankly scorching preview tracks you can listen to on Soundcloud....

The aforementioned TULUUM SHIMMERING...

Another excellent global ritual/documentary/music/immersion film by HISHAM MAYET, released on DVD by Sublime Frequencies, called Vodoun Gods on the Slave Coast (filmed in Benin and featuring the jaw-dropping Night Watchman ceremony)...

I don't think JIM MAGAS actually released anything this year (although releases are in the works), but he did contribute to the score for Asia Argento's new film Misunderstood, which premiered at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, and I retweeted a great interview with him about that and other things...

Long-time fave KEVIN DRUMM apparently put out plenty of new stuff this year, including a full-length called Wrong Intersection, which sounded typically excellent streamed over at Fact Mag....

A topical rager by Canadian punk band VALLEY BOYS called "Drone Attack"...

81-year-old jazz saxophonist SONNY SIMMONS put out a daunting jazz/industrial/Fourth World/concrete 8-CD box set on a French label and the tracks from it on Bandcamp are superb....

SIR RICHARD BISHOP is always doing great stuff and you can jump in anywhere....

I only remember going to one single live show the entire year, but it was a doozy: a day spent at the Chicago Jazz Fest at which I caught afternoon sets by the TOMEKA REID QUARTET (featuring MARY HALVORSON) and Jason Adasiewicz's blazing SUN ROOMS, followed up exquisitely with evening sets by great young vocalist CECILE McLORIN SALVANT (her pianist Aaron Diehl and drummer Lawrence Leathers were killing it) and none other than the SUN RA ARKESTRA, who are very much active under the leadership of 90-year-old Marshall Allen and played a set of such swirling stately cosmic beauty that was nearly moved to tears of joy (I mean the show was also free and it was even my birthday, how much more karmically and cosmically correct can it get?!).

Oh yeah, earlier that week I saw MATTHEW SHIPP play a jaw-dropper of a solo set in a high-end piano store, also free, also part of the Jazz Festival. He played music I'm not comfortable calling jazz. This was something beyond that -- contemporary classical, maybe, or several unquantifiable things at once. He also did an impromptu Q&A after the set (included in previously linked YouTube) in which he mentioned none other than Houston, TX noise-rock lifers Rusted Shut...

A stunning grinding ritualistic and dare-I-say ethno-fucking-ambient 2014 cassette release by Japan-based TOLCHOK called After Fog Open, which I first heard on (you guessed it) the aforementioned Avant Ghetto program, and then a few times on the Sky Lantern Records & Tapes Bandcamp...

BHOB RAINEY laying down the (supremely quiet saxophone) sickness (in 2013)...

The thankfully still-prolific ASHTRAY NAVIGATIONS...

The great 2013 LP Handbook for Mortals by LETHA RODMAN MELCHIOR, which I kept spinning in 2014, and is still spinning in elegy as she lost a hard-fought battle with cancer this year in July. She is survived by her loving husband DAN MELCHIOR, who makes some of the best underground music of today in his own right; I'm kicking myself for not ordering their collaborative (or split release?) cassette Rodman Melchior/Melchior Rodman from danmelchior.bigcartel.com when it was still available there, especially if it contains even half of the ephemeral beauty that Letha's solo LP does, and Dan's own 'non-songwriter' 'experimental' work is great too. But the real question is, has Dan put out an LP featuring the guitar-overdrive motorik power trio (plus keyboardist) material he's been playing live in 2014? I'm talking about the gigs at the Philly Record Exchange and the WFMU Record Fair, for starters... actually, I know there's a cassette release of the former gig called Live at the Philly Record Exchange for sale at that BigCartel, I should go buy it right now... UPDATE: Soon after writing the previous I did also buy Rodman Melchior/Melchior Rodman off of Discogs, and it is indeed some damned fine experimental sounds-and-music dreamtone collage... I don't know if this blog post will make anyone else buy anything from 2014, but it sure is getting me to buy a few things... ANOTHER UPDATE: The "guitar-overdrive motorik power trio (plus keyboardist)" stuff I reference above can be heard on the new album by Dan Melchior's Broke Revue, Lords of the Manor. For more on that, see my Best of 2015 list! (Coming soon in early 2017!)

HAMISH KILGOUR, drummer and oft-vocalist for The Clean, released All Of It And Nothing on the Ba Da Bing label, what I believe to be his first solo LP, a nice set of moody low-key psych-tinged songs...

There was the big Bandcamp overhaul done by ARBITRARY SIGNS, which is the label run by Pete Nolan of the Magik Markers... this got me listening to a bunch of their new & old stuff again for a week or two... great band... I believe they toured some this year, and vocalist/guitarist Elisa Ambrogio toured even more (and is touring right now!) behind her solo debut LP The Immoralist, on Drag City...

How about that rad greater New York City area duo called 75 DOLLAR BILL, made up of Rick Brown (who played in Run On in the 1990s for Matador Records) on "percussion and homemade horns" and a guitarist named Che Chen? "They met via MySpace and started playing together as 75 Dollar Bill approximately eight years later," cranking out extended tranced-out Africa-fueled Mississippi-fueled dirty-amplifier extendo grunge-groove, and it's definitely something I want to hear a band play in 2014, and 2015 will work too (check out their January 2015 release Wooden Bag on Other Music Recording Co.)....

ED SCHRADER'S MUSIC BEAT followed up their excellent debut Jazz Mind (released by Load Records in 2012) with another bracing LP called Party Jail (on the Infinity Cat label). It was also cool to hear a song from Jazz Mind used in that disturbing Adult Swim fake Claridryl commercial...

Chicago footwork pioneer DJ RASHAD passed away this year at the age of 34 so I spent some time listening to his music when that sad news was announced...

DEVIN GARY & ROSS played blasted psych covers in art museums in 2012, and in 2014 they released an acclaimed double LP called Honeycomb Of Chakras (label: Feeding Tube) which I have yet to grip....

CIRCUIT DES YEUX, who released breakthrough album Overdue in 2013, spent 2014 doing a lot of international touring, playing for bigger crowds, opening for well-known bands, premiering videos, and she even made this very nice mix. She's going to do good things in 2015 too, starting with a collaboration with Mind Over Mirrors (aka Jaime Fennelly, former member of PeeEssEye)...

I tweeted about long-running #noaudienceunderground stalwart OMIT when I came across a stunning video of a show he played in 2012...

I tweeted about Chicago's ONO because they released a new album in 2014 (Diegesis, Moniker Records), only their fourth full-length since 1983, but their second in two years (frankly I'm finding their 2012 LP Albino, also on Moniker, somewhat difficult to process, but I will always love that '83 debut Machines That Kill People and they continue to play amazing live shows several times a year in Chicago)...

Way back in the beginning of the year I tweeted about SACRED PRODUCT because I spent a whole day listening to like four of his terrific extended nervous-punk trance-out youtubes over and over; apparently this is a solo project by a guy from that band Satanic Rockers, who put out the winner of last year's Album I Have Not Yet Listened To Because Of The Penis On Its Cover Award.

And waaaaay back in the beginning of year I was of course tweeting & retweeting stuff about WOLF EYES and their recent rebirth (because 2014 is #TheYearTripMetalBroke).

REISSUES/ARCHIVAL:
Peter Gutteridge Pure (540 Records), the Mike Cooper stuff on Paradise of Bachelors, Owen Maercks Teenage Sex Therapist (Feeding Tube), Craig Leon Nommos (Superior Viaduct), Flesh Eaters A Minute To Pray, A Second to Die (Superior Viaduct). The Velvet Underground The Velvet Underground - 45th Anniversary Super Deluxe (Universal/Polydor); Bob Dylan & The Band The Bootleg Series Vol. 11: The Basement Tapes Complete (Columbia); Various Artists 1970s Algerian Folk and Pop (Sublime Frequencies). Happily, I know there's many more.

PASSAGES:
James Wheeler, Rock Scully, Clive Palmer, Charlie Haden, Tommy Ramone, Chris Grier, Bobby Womack, Bob Abrahamian, Patrick Lundborg, DJ Rashad, Frankie Knuckles, Scott Asheton, Robert Ashley, Ricky Luanda, Amiri Baraka. Sadly, I know there's many more.

In other news, I read two great music bios this year; George Clinton's memoir Brothers Be, Yo Like George, Ain't That Funkin' Kinda Hard On You?, which is lucid, funny, and informative, highly recommended for any and all P-Funk freaks, to say the least; and Steve Lowenthal's Dance of Death: The Life of John Fahey, American Guitarist. Upon first picking it up, I was surprised how slim it felt, but after finishing it, I was surprised by how much information and insight had been succinctly packed into it. The book makes a hell of a case for the man not as a mere folk guitarist, but as a goddamn 20th century classical composer. It also pulled no punches as to what a difficult and unlikable person he was, tied him into the 90s noise underground much better than a more traditional folk-scene biographer might have done, and contained this beautiful sentiment from the emotional eulogy Leo Kottke gave at Fahey's funeral: "In a country full of crap, John created living, generative culture. With his guitar and his spellbound witness, he synthesized all the strains in American music and found a new happiness for all of us. With John, we have a voice only he could have given us; without him, no one will sound the same." I realize that all of the music I was able to listen to this year, as mentioned above, just might have been "generated" by Fahey's example; it's mind-boggling to think about all the doors of perception that were opened not only by his composing, but by the iconoclastic roster and DIY approach of his label Takoma Records.


BONUS! BONUS! BONUS! BONUS! BONUS!

I made a year-end list last year too, and gave it a snarky title due to the overwhelming preponderance of year-end lists all around me, none of which made me want to listen to any music at all. I was so tired of 'em that I didn't even have the heart to publish mine, but what they hey, I'll publish it now. These records are all still pretty new:

BEST OF 2013 "THE YEAR YEAR-END LISTS BROKE (AS IN STOPPED WORKING)"
CHRISTINA CARTER Texas Modern Exorcism CDR (MANY BREATHS)
LETHA RODMAN MELCHIOR Handbook For Mortals LP (SILTBREEZE)
WOLF EYES No Answer: Lower Floors CD (DE STIJL)
MONTIBUS COMMUNITAS Hacia Aquellos Bosques de Inmensidad LP (TROUBLE IN MIND)
CIRCUIT DES YEUX Overdue LP (LUV)
THE NECKS Open CD (NORTHERN SPY)
TIGER HATCHERY Sun Worship CD (ESP DISK)
DARKSIDE Psychic 2EP (MATADOR)
BODY/HEAD Coming Apart 2LP (MATADOR)
KANYE WEST Yeezus CD (ROC-A-FELLA/DEF JAM)
RAKE KASH Untitled EP CS (ANIMAL DISGUISE)
SALAD INFLUENCE "S.T.T." CS (BRAVE CAPTAIN/POT COFFIN)
CIAN NUGENT & THE COSMOS Born With A Caul LP (NO QUARTER)
NOCHT THE ONLY GHOUL Little Buffalo, Dead Horse CS (VWYRD WURD)
DAN MELCHIOR The Backwards Path CD (NORTHERN SPY)

MAD NANNA live at the Burlington, Chicago

SKY NEEDLE video tour diary