Saturday, August 15, 2015
Saturday, February 14, 2015
Friday, August 01, 2014
HEAVY ROTATION
LETHA RODMAN MELCHIOR Handbook For Mortals LP (SILTBREEZE) Days in a life... a kitchen with a cutting board on the counter . . . a living room with a well-worn couch . . . clothes folded on top of a dryer... TV or the stereo on in the background . . . a blanket sprawled on the couch slowly starts moving, a head becomes visible at the top... the dream continues... a very Kye Records ambience, in fact, and Letha's husband Dan Melchior has also made a record for Kye this last year, so it's certainly in the air, but out of that particularly Kyean sound of silence, Mrs. Melchior draws up a music of pure melancholy dream-tone, growing around distant keyboard parts that already sound like a memory when you're actually listening to them. Sometimes the music is even more ambient than that, wisps of electronic experimentation and other intangibles, and sometimes the music is unmistakably a song, with singing, but still from a faraway shore. I feel there are depths and layers that my two listens haven't even come close to finding yet (and I can wholly confirm this with listens three through five, my goodness, this is certainly one of the most beautiful albums of 2013), and I love that it's on Siltbreeze, because I have so many fond memories of hazed dream-tone experimentation much like this coming from their grooves back in the mid/late 1990s. This might in fact be the Siltbreeze Round 2 album (released 2005 to the present day) that sounds the most like a Siltbreeze Round 1 album (released 1990-2001). (For more on Letha see "My Favorite Artist: Letha Rodman Melchior" by Michael Galinksy.)
MA TURNER "ZOZ" LP (SOPHOMORE LOUNGE) I've been listening to Ma Turner's music for 10 years now, ever since coming across Warmer Milks, the restless, roaming, and usually quite weird noise/psychedelic/folk collective he was the founder and leader of in Lexington, Kentucky. He still lives there, and his creativity has really never slowed down . . . it seems like every few months he's written and recorded another solo-type album and put it on Bandcamp . . . tons of cassette-only releases . . . broken up and reformed the Milks at least a couple times . . . plays in other fine bands like Salad Influence and Cross . . . just a couple months ago he even had what may the first art gallery opening I've ever heard of for a cassette box set, a 12-cassette box called the "ZOZ COLLECTION" no less, 83 compositions making for 6 hours of sound, a co-release between Turner's Brave Captain imprint and Louisville-based Sophomore Lounge Records. Of course I'd like to have one, but since I already have more than 12 releases by Warmer Milks alone, not to mention more by other Turner guises, and I'm still very far from completely processing those, I'm really glad Sophomore Lounge has also released this edition-of-200 LP which compiles music from the 12 cassettes into a handy 13-track sampler. Turner's solo music has always ranged from the sublime to the sometimes ridiculous, and true to form, this LP veers wildly to both extremes and any/all points in between, with songs only occasionally passing by like small lush islands in a rushing river of pure free-form experimental freedom. It opens with such an island, a hauntingly green psych-folk song called "Christ in a Garden," but then the river takes over and we plunge into the absurdist/formless "Rash Harvest," involving a sped-up-beyond-helium voice chattering away unintelligibly while dismal electronic noise bops along underneath it. Is it a power electronics parody on the wrong speed? Is it too long and meandering to be the second track on the album? Is it pretty annoying? Do I like it? Actually, yes to all four, and there's more where that came from: various completely murky electronic meanderings, indescribable short pieces that sound like tiny hovering orchestras recorded at the wrong speed, some post-Chadbourne avant bluegrass whimsy, extended rhythmic rock improvisations like "Family in the Shade," and even more. There's really only four clear songs: the aforementioned "Christ in a Garden," my fave track on the album "I Love To See You Brother," my second-favorite-with-a-bullet track "Rotary," and the lovely "Living" which has a video you can watch below. There are a couple more tracks that are near-song, or ur-song, two intense long minimalist voice/banjo solo chants, less like islands and more like rocky outcroppings in that river of noise: "On Clock Sniper," which has singing but no words, and "For Every Night," which has lots of words and uses an incessant dark melody line to build them into a denouement driven by an overdubbed background choir of singing voices. But hey, whether improvised or composed or solo or overdubbed, the whole LP certainly flows as a series of excerpts from Turner's non-stop ability to dream directly onto tape, and I'll be keeping it on the shelf right next to the very best Warmer Milks records.
MA TURNER "ZOZ" LP (SOPHOMORE LOUNGE) I've been listening to Ma Turner's music for 10 years now, ever since coming across Warmer Milks, the restless, roaming, and usually quite weird noise/psychedelic/folk collective he was the founder and leader of in Lexington, Kentucky. He still lives there, and his creativity has really never slowed down . . . it seems like every few months he's written and recorded another solo-type album and put it on Bandcamp . . . tons of cassette-only releases . . . broken up and reformed the Milks at least a couple times . . . plays in other fine bands like Salad Influence and Cross . . . just a couple months ago he even had what may the first art gallery opening I've ever heard of for a cassette box set, a 12-cassette box called the "ZOZ COLLECTION" no less, 83 compositions making for 6 hours of sound, a co-release between Turner's Brave Captain imprint and Louisville-based Sophomore Lounge Records. Of course I'd like to have one, but since I already have more than 12 releases by Warmer Milks alone, not to mention more by other Turner guises, and I'm still very far from completely processing those, I'm really glad Sophomore Lounge has also released this edition-of-200 LP which compiles music from the 12 cassettes into a handy 13-track sampler. Turner's solo music has always ranged from the sublime to the sometimes ridiculous, and true to form, this LP veers wildly to both extremes and any/all points in between, with songs only occasionally passing by like small lush islands in a rushing river of pure free-form experimental freedom. It opens with such an island, a hauntingly green psych-folk song called "Christ in a Garden," but then the river takes over and we plunge into the absurdist/formless "Rash Harvest," involving a sped-up-beyond-helium voice chattering away unintelligibly while dismal electronic noise bops along underneath it. Is it a power electronics parody on the wrong speed? Is it too long and meandering to be the second track on the album? Is it pretty annoying? Do I like it? Actually, yes to all four, and there's more where that came from: various completely murky electronic meanderings, indescribable short pieces that sound like tiny hovering orchestras recorded at the wrong speed, some post-Chadbourne avant bluegrass whimsy, extended rhythmic rock improvisations like "Family in the Shade," and even more. There's really only four clear songs: the aforementioned "Christ in a Garden," my fave track on the album "I Love To See You Brother," my second-favorite-with-a-bullet track "Rotary," and the lovely "Living" which has a video you can watch below. There are a couple more tracks that are near-song, or ur-song, two intense long minimalist voice/banjo solo chants, less like islands and more like rocky outcroppings in that river of noise: "On Clock Sniper," which has singing but no words, and "For Every Night," which has lots of words and uses an incessant dark melody line to build them into a denouement driven by an overdubbed background choir of singing voices. But hey, whether improvised or composed or solo or overdubbed, the whole LP certainly flows as a series of excerpts from Turner's non-stop ability to dream directly onto tape, and I'll be keeping it on the shelf right next to the very best Warmer Milks records.
MEG BAIRD Seasons on Earth LP (DRAG CITY) From 2011, the second (I think) and still most recent (I think) solo LP by Meg Baird. I hadn't listened to this beautiful record for three years, not since right after it came out. Back then I listened to it non-stop for a few days, and kept it out for a few weeks after that, really liking it, trying and failing to compose a simple record review that not only praised Ms. Baird's songwriting and performance, but also compared Marc Orleans's dancing lyrical accompaniment on pedal steel guitar and dobro to the way Martin Stone plays guitar on Mighty Baby's Jug of Love album. Which I guess I just finally did. Either way, tonight on the hi-fi, Marc's playing and of course Meg's songwriting and singing are sounding even lovelier than I remembered, on tunes like "Stars Climb Up The Vine," on which they are joined on electric guitars by Chris Forsyth and Willie Lane, and track five "Friends," which is a goddamn cover from a dollar-bin Mark/Almond LP, followed by another great cover I've never heard of called "Beatles and the Stones," which is from a goddamn 1990 album you can probably also find in the dollar bin, some sort of synth-pop band I didn't really know about called House of Love. Talk about transcending your material, but I need to stop talking about the cover songs, because those are the only two on here, which reverses her previous (also beautiful) album Dear Companion, on which she only wrote two of the songs, and I gotta say that if it has taken her three years and counting to release another album because she's been working hard on the great songwriting, then I'll gladly keep waiting, and I'll keep Seasons on Earth close by the stereo the whole time . . .
DAUGHN GIBSON All Hell (WHITE DENIM); Me Moan (SUB POP) There's a whole lot of everything going on these days, and somewhere between trip-hop-damaged producers laying down all manner of fresh downtempo beats on cloudy club nights and would-be countrypolitan crooners on the subway at 2AM gathered around an iPhone karaoking along with a YouTube of a VHS tape of a 1984 episode of Star Search hosted by Ed McMahon where a ten-gallon-hatted contestant is performing a Johnny Cash song . . . somewhere right in the middle sits Daughn Gibson, creating a very distinct country/pop/dance/electronic hybrid. He writes good, punchy songs, with memorable hooks, and sings them in what sounds like a classic deep hard country croon . . . but something's a little off. There's something very modern, like from the last 20 years, in his inflection, that sends out sly winks, and from time to time, there are quivers in his voice that jump centuries, going from Tuvan throat singing to WWI avant-garde sound poetry. (He actually sounds a bit like Billy C himself, and if that doesn't mean anything to you, well, that's why God invented YouTube.) The music destabilizes things further still, by being quite stable, a cross between smooth 1980s FM radio pop and present-day post-Portishead trip-hop melancholia that I imagine could slide right onto any mainstream down-home American radio broadcast and not even be noticed (until he's sung a couple lines, at which point the game might quickly be up). Check "Tiffany Lou" on All Hell; I swear the way he chops a slowed-down backing vocal and turns it into a beautiful stuttering wordless hook is right up there with some of Burial's finest work . . . I also read someone (I think the AV Club) compare him to the Psychedelic Furs, and I haven't been able to shake that reference either . . . but even though I was never any kind of a Furs fan, somehow it doesn't matter. Of the two records, I think All Hell is nearly perfect. Me Moan is also excellent, and contains two of his very best songs in "The Sound Of Law" and especially "All My Days Off." I'd totally recommend either one as a starter.
BOTTLENECK BLUES GUITAR CLASSICS 1926-1937 LP (YAZOO) Bought this at a library sale for 25 cents well over 20 years ago. Vinyl is suprisingly pristine for an old library record and it sounds fantastic. Whenever I've got Robert Palmer's Deep Blues back off the shelf for some thumbings-through, which is right now, records like this are gonna start coming back off the shelves too. First song "Whoopee Blues" by King Solomon Hill is a real killer. (YouTube user "martinguitar22": "I lock the doors and turn on all the lights before I listen to this song.")
JUNIOR KIMBROUGH & THE SOUL BLUES BOYS All Night Long LP (FAT POSSUM) This isn't quite as scary, but it's still some real high lonesome dark night of the soul music. It grooves too, especially when the bass and drums kick in (first couple songs don't have any), so sometimes you forget how desolate the tone is. (And who should be the liner notes writer, and in fact album producer, than ole Bob "Deep Blues" Palmer, showing up for the second record in a row.)
SINEAD O'CONNOR I Do Not Want Want I Have Not Got CD (ELEKTRA/ASYLUM) You know how people in your building leave stacks of like 20 CDs in the common areas because they want to get rid of them, and they're all terrible? Just a couple weeks ago this happened, and there was one good one in there, this one, which is in fact one of the best albums of the 1990s. Sinead rules, fuck the haters, and this album is inarguably her finest hour. I don't think I ever actually owned it before, but it was everywhere when I was in college, and I did once tape it off someone's copy in my college dorm, and listened to that tape a lot. Even if I disliked her 'strong' and 'controversial' persona (I don't), I would have listened to it a lot anyway, simply because it has several gorgeous ethereal folk pop moments, taking Kate Bush and Prince textures and operatics and lending them to good modern Irish folk/soul/blues/rock, dealing with Dylan a lot like Van Morrison and Phil Lynott did before her, by being herself. One of my favorites is "Black Boys On Mopeds", which forgoes the aforementioned production textures for just acoustic guitar and beautiful overdubbed vocals. (I've also been thinking that this album might be what made Lorde possible, and her music is by far the deepest stuff on pop radio today, if what my daughter likes is any indication . . . ain't sayin' much but still . . .)
MAGIK MARKERS Searchin' Searchin' For That New Sound DIGITAL ALBUM (ARBITRARY SIGNS) In their early 2000s heyday the Magik Markers were one of my favorite working bands . . . saw 'em twice, once in the original trio with Leah Quimby, and again in a quartet that featured the Pete Nolan/Elisa Ambrogio core with Steve Gunn and Joshua Burkett on guitars. How about that? Also probably heard a good 10 of their albums, mostly CDRs, from that explosive early period. My favorite might still be their first 'post-noise' album, Boss; the rest of their post-noise career has consisted of two more albums, both of them for the higher-profile Drag City label, that for some reason I haven't paid as much attention to. But I still love this band, and was most recently reminded when Pete Nolan totally updated the Arbitrary Sings bandcamp page. Arbitrary Signs was more or less the in-house Magik Markers label for that early run of CDR experimentation, and has gone on to be the home of other Nolan outlets like Spectre Folk as well. A bunch of various label stuff from over the years is now up at the bandcamp page, including 6 releases by the Markers. This has been a chance to revisit early favorites like Road Pussy, and also to discover a new favorite album, Searchin' Searchin' For That New Sound, which documents some of their free-form duo material that was recorded post-Ecstatic Peace and pre-Drag City. This is where Elisa really deals out the PSF/Haino guitar styles that have always been there under the surface, and also reveals some of that Caspar Brotzmann connection that Ben Chasny pointed out on twitter about a year ago. Plus lots of other styles, experiments, and "duo exchanges," like the pensive cosmic shimmer ballad "Free Ride To The Universe", a rather haunting true-free-folk number called "Ithaca Is Gorges," and a certainly haunting 12-minute dirge called "Leah." A lot of this album is instrumental extendo, but Elisa does sing on a lot of it, including those last two haunters, possibly revealing time spent contemplating Christina Carter's gauntlet. It's $10 to buy this digital album release on bandcamp, although you can listen to it for free, which is a weird feature from a site where you're selling your work . . . to me the purpose of buying on bandcamp is not to have mp3s on your computer, but to be able to flow cash to people who make music that means something to you, and that you want to support accordingly.
MATTHEW YOUNG Recurring Dreams LP (DRAG CITY/YOGA) I'm going to do something I haven't done for a long time: recommend a synth record. It helps that it wasn't made in the last few years by some post-noise youngsters, but in 1981 by Matthew Young, a thoughtful New Jersey multi-instrumentalist who in 1986 made the superb Traveler's Advisory LP, also reissued by Drag City/Yoga, which combined hammer dulcimer and electronics to mesmerizing effect. This time Young gets just as deep and dreamy with the synth, not using it to make grand heavy-handed 'cosmic' statements, but gentle internal ripples of thought and closed-eye vision. The bottom line is, Young uses the synth as a way to play music, instead of using music as a way to play synth.
POSTSCRIPT
D: Man, I still can't believe Jim O'Rourke quit music so he could move to Japan and work on films.
D: He didn't quit music.
D: Well yeah, The Visitor was recorded in Japan. There is that.
D: Yeah, The Visitor, and the trio he's in with Keiji Haino and Oren Ambarchi has put out at least 2 or 3 albums, and he also plays with Akira Sakata, a saxophonist, and they have a record with Chris Corsano, and I guess you don't know about his bandcamp but it has like 17 amazing noise/ambient solo albums that were all recorded after the move. Oh yeah, and he just played a killer live show in Tokyo, with a band, and the whole set is on YouTube in two parts.
D: Oh, okay. I'll have to check that stuff out. It's just so crazy, though!
D: What's that?
D: Just, you know, one minute you're in Sonic Youth and then all of a sudden it's like, see ya! Gonna move to a completely different country to go make films!
D: [glaring; seething]
POLKSCRIPT
Bought some 45s today at Logan Hardware. Fine store, and even better, it has a fully functioning and totally free video arcade in the back room. To go in and play, you've gotta buy something first, and then they'll stamp your reciept with the entry code. I usually go there with my son, and he doesn't want to wait very long before he starts playing Super Mario Brothers, so, for quick arcade entry, right when we go in I've been grabbing a couple fairly beat but great 99 cent singles from the boxes that are up front, or maybe even a $1.99 single if its a killer tune like "Polk Salad Annie" by Tony Joe White, which it was tonight, along with one of my all-time favorite songs, "Choice of Colors" (b/w "Mighty Mighty Spade & Whitey") by The Impressions, and "Fool To Cry" b/w "Hot Stuff" by The Rolling Stones, which are the only two tunes I remember from Black 'n' Blue (nope, not even "Memory Motel") so I thought that was a pretty succinct purchase. Anyway, I've listened to those three singles about 6 times each tonight, and I'm finally getting why people collect 45s. Of course it's a blast to play a really good song over and over, so that's a big reason, but technically speaking, it's because pressing plants can cut them louder. It's why I was freaking out about hearing "Paperback Writer" on WNUR in this blog post of three years ago. As long as the record isn't totally thrashed, a good 45 will sound amazing.
Sunday, July 20, 2014
TWO MORE FOR CHARLIE
First, some of you might've recently watched this monumental solo performance of "Lonely Woman" by Charlie Haden... if not, you gotta:
Did any of you catch the massive quote he drops starting at 2:27?
If not, see if you can place the song. The answer is here but no cheating! Hint: It's not a jazz quote.
Second, there's such a great duo by Keith Jarrett and Haden at around the 48:10 mark of this excellent Haden documentary Rambling Boy:
Charlie Haden - Rambling Boy from PiXiU FILMS on Vimeo.
I've always admired Keith Jarrett but I don't think I've ever really understood, or enjoyed, his music as much as I do in this very off-the-cuff performance on what sounds like a standard that I don't know the name of. The reason is the accompaniment; Charlie lays down the harmonic structure of the song so heavy and plain, Jarrett is able to absolutely tap-dance his way through the whole tune, and he does put on a show. Then just watch Charlie, who you thought was the straight man, power his way through a superb solo, never looking at his fingers once. It's so good that it ends with a genuine hug and one of Haden's all-time best utterances of "yeah, man."
Did any of you catch the massive quote he drops starting at 2:27?
If not, see if you can place the song. The answer is here but no cheating! Hint: It's not a jazz quote.
Second, there's such a great duo by Keith Jarrett and Haden at around the 48:10 mark of this excellent Haden documentary Rambling Boy:
Charlie Haden - Rambling Boy from PiXiU FILMS on Vimeo.
I've always admired Keith Jarrett but I don't think I've ever really understood, or enjoyed, his music as much as I do in this very off-the-cuff performance on what sounds like a standard that I don't know the name of. The reason is the accompaniment; Charlie lays down the harmonic structure of the song so heavy and plain, Jarrett is able to absolutely tap-dance his way through the whole tune, and he does put on a show. Then just watch Charlie, who you thought was the straight man, power his way through a superb solo, never looking at his fingers once. It's so good that it ends with a genuine hug and one of Haden's all-time best utterances of "yeah, man."
Saturday, July 12, 2014
CHARLIE HADEN
I say I'm done making RIP blog posts, and then in one day, Charlie Haden, Tommy Ramone, and Chris Grier all pass away. Maybe I should start a blog or a magazine called Passages and just write about great and important musicians when they leave us. Regardless, each one of these three deserves pages and pages of tribute, and you can type any of their names in twitter and see why. For example, this is a great tweet about Tommy Ramone (as an experienced engineer and producer, he was the mostly unheralded sonic conceptualist for the Ramones), and I'll link to my own tweet about Chris Grier (seriously, NOISE AGAINST FASCISM FOREVER).
But Charlie Haden is simply one of my favorite musicians who has ever played a note. I honestly don't think he ever wasted a note. He played the bass, but more accurately he played MUSIC. As it says on his wikipedia page, "He believed that all music originates from the same place, and because of this, he resisted the tendency to divide music into categories."
He also had this stunning insight about improvisation in a 2008 NPR interview: "I learned at a very young age that music teaches you about life. When you're in the midst of improvisation, there is no yesterday and no tomorrow — there is just the moment that you are in. In that beautiful moment, you experience your true insignificance to the rest of the universe. It is then, and only then, that you can experience your true significance."
He also always looked cool as hell, especially on the This Is Our Music cover photo. Personally, I've always felt a special connection to him because he grew up in a small Iowa town 20 miles from the small Iowa town I grew up in . . . in fact, his town was a little bigger than mine and it's where I bought my first records, which were actually not The Shape Of Jazz To Come but Kiss Rock and Roll Over and Queen News of the World . . . but enough about me. Here's some tweets about Charlie:
But Charlie Haden is simply one of my favorite musicians who has ever played a note. I honestly don't think he ever wasted a note. He played the bass, but more accurately he played MUSIC. As it says on his wikipedia page, "He believed that all music originates from the same place, and because of this, he resisted the tendency to divide music into categories."
He also had this stunning insight about improvisation in a 2008 NPR interview: "I learned at a very young age that music teaches you about life. When you're in the midst of improvisation, there is no yesterday and no tomorrow — there is just the moment that you are in. In that beautiful moment, you experience your true insignificance to the rest of the universe. It is then, and only then, that you can experience your true significance."
He also always looked cool as hell, especially on the This Is Our Music cover photo. Personally, I've always felt a special connection to him because he grew up in a small Iowa town 20 miles from the small Iowa town I grew up in . . . in fact, his town was a little bigger than mine and it's where I bought my first records, which were actually not The Shape Of Jazz To Come but Kiss Rock and Roll Over and Queen News of the World . . . but enough about me. Here's some tweets about Charlie:
Charlie Haden might be the deepest bass player who ever lived. RIP.
— Bethlehem Shoals (@freedarko) July 11, 2014
The world could always use more Charlie Haden. Just uploaded this beautiful solo of Ornette's "Lonely Woman" live... http://t.co/fDAVSyuD7d
— David Reaboi (@davereaboi) July 10, 2014
RIP CHARLIE HADEN: COMPLETE GENIUS: NUFF RESPECT FULL STYLE
http://t.co/FsEobwbjgJ pic.twitter.com/ipCVwyUCdf
— John Olson (@olsonpower) July 11, 2014
Old & New Dreams - w/ Don Cherry, Ed Blackwell, Dewey Redman and Charlie Haden http://t.co/YapxPK9Hnv
— Tyler Wilcox (@tywilc) July 11, 2014
At 4.30 Charlie Haden's bass solo: folk song transmitted through improvisation & on to Ian Dury... https://t.co/gbupHxHijC thanks CH.
— Fife Psychogeography (@Fifepsy) July 12, 2014
I love charlie haden, biggest lover ever http://t.co/O1m6EY3O7C
— mike watt (@wattfrompedro) July 12, 2014
"Charlie Haden jams w/Minutemen..." pic.twitter.com/h17AzKWdjl" @AndOtherness the man w/us m-men wailing on "little man w/a gun in his hand"
— mike watt (@wattfrompedro) July 12, 2014
Goodbye and thank you, Charlie Haden. Remembering the man at his toughest: https://t.co/Zfxlkj6D2K
— Hank Shteamer (@DarkForcesSwing) July 11, 2014
RTing this Charlie Haden intvw w Amy Goodman/@democracynow because it's everything: http://t.co/WQfY77Otw5 [via @cordeliers]
— Destination: OUT (@destinationOUT) July 12, 2014
Sunday, January 12, 2014
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.
Saturday, January 04, 2014
TOP 7 SONGS I LOVE RIGHT NOW
1. First of all, RIP Phil Everly.
(John Lennon did a beautiful dream-fragment piano-demo version of this once too, you should listen to it.)
2. Circuit Des Yeux "Lithonia" This is probably my favorite new song I heard in 2013. It's completely incredible. I'm gonna be 'that guy' and say I prefer this more raw version, recorded at Magnetic South in Bloomington, IN and released on 10", to the re-recorded version with strings that leads off her great newest album Overdue. Both are superb though.
3. Velvet Underground "Sweet Sister Ray" Recently purchased the newish re-boot of the Sweet Sister Ray 2LP. The first record is a single performance of "Sweet Sister Ray" split over two sides, and I haven't even made it to the second record yet. Just been flipping "Sweet Sister Ray" over and over again. It's almost all the music I need in the world, and when I'm not simply blissed out, I'm fascinated by the difference between Lou Reed and Sterling Morrison's guitar styles.
4. Anonymous "Sweet Lilac" Completely haunted by this one. How could I not be with these melting heavy folk-rock song structures, stunning electric/acoustic guitar work, and a love-song hook that goes "You teach me/You're a school"?
5. Rake Kash "Foreign Lands" This swooning red-wine-infused piece of home-recorded deep romantic psych isn't on YouTube. To hear it you have to buy this record. In the meantime here's another Rake Kash number that is on YouTube.
EDIT: "Foreign Lands" now on YouTube!
6. Charalambides "Namaste" Market Square was the first Charalambides album I ever bought, back in 1996, and even though I haven't listened to it in a good 10 years I just put it on and realized it's still my favorite of theirs.
7. Syd Barrett "Swan Lee" Psychedelicious indeed.
(John Lennon did a beautiful dream-fragment piano-demo version of this once too, you should listen to it.)
2. Circuit Des Yeux "Lithonia" This is probably my favorite new song I heard in 2013. It's completely incredible. I'm gonna be 'that guy' and say I prefer this more raw version, recorded at Magnetic South in Bloomington, IN and released on 10", to the re-recorded version with strings that leads off her great newest album Overdue. Both are superb though.
3. Velvet Underground "Sweet Sister Ray" Recently purchased the newish re-boot of the Sweet Sister Ray 2LP. The first record is a single performance of "Sweet Sister Ray" split over two sides, and I haven't even made it to the second record yet. Just been flipping "Sweet Sister Ray" over and over again. It's almost all the music I need in the world, and when I'm not simply blissed out, I'm fascinated by the difference between Lou Reed and Sterling Morrison's guitar styles.
4. Anonymous "Sweet Lilac" Completely haunted by this one. How could I not be with these melting heavy folk-rock song structures, stunning electric/acoustic guitar work, and a love-song hook that goes "You teach me/You're a school"?
5. Rake Kash "Foreign Lands" This swooning red-wine-infused piece of home-recorded deep romantic psych isn't on YouTube. To hear it you have to buy this record. In the meantime here's another Rake Kash number that is on YouTube.
EDIT: "Foreign Lands" now on YouTube!
6. Charalambides "Namaste" Market Square was the first Charalambides album I ever bought, back in 1996, and even though I haven't listened to it in a good 10 years I just put it on and realized it's still my favorite of theirs.
7. Syd Barrett "Swan Lee" Psychedelicious indeed.
Thursday, November 28, 2013
YOUTUBE COMPANION TO ROBERT BEATTY'S PORTAL FOR THE WIRE
If you just read Robert Beatty's piece for The Wire website that listed his favorite experimental films with electronic soundtracks, and wished there was YouTube links, here ya go. If you didn't read it, go here first: http://thewire.co.uk/in-writing/the-portal/robert-beatty_s-portal and then watch 'em here. (UPDATE: You can watch 'em on the Wire site... you just have to be a little web-savvier than I am.)
Les Jeux Des Anges by Walerian Borowczyk
Et Cetera by Jan Svankmajer
I couldn't find Pixillations by Lillian Schwartz but here's 1976 doc Lillian Schwartz: The Artist and the Computer
The Midnight Parasites by Yoji Kuri
Bedsitters by Frans Zwartjes
Atman by Toshio Matsumoto
Feherlofia by Marcell Jankovic
SPECIAL BONUS MUST-SEE SOVIET SCI-FI MADNESS NOT ON BEATTY'S LIST, The Contract by Vladimir Tarassov:
Les Jeux Des Anges by Walerian Borowczyk
Et Cetera by Jan Svankmajer
I couldn't find Pixillations by Lillian Schwartz but here's 1976 doc Lillian Schwartz: The Artist and the Computer
The Midnight Parasites by Yoji Kuri
Bedsitters by Frans Zwartjes
Atman by Toshio Matsumoto
Feherlofia by Marcell Jankovic
SPECIAL BONUS MUST-SEE SOVIET SCI-FI MADNESS NOT ON BEATTY'S LIST, The Contract by Vladimir Tarassov:
Saturday, October 05, 2013
SPIN ME ENDLESS IN THE UNIVERSE
That's the name of a big 12-minute centerpiece song on the new Richard Youngs album Summer Through My Mind (Ba Da Bing Records), one of my favorite new songs of the year. Here are some great live versions of it from his just-finished U.S. tour.
First up, already the big cosmic grandaddy of them all, Richard solo on WFMU's Airborne Event, accompanying himself on a vintage Lowrey Organ. WFMU had just acquired one of these colorful instruments, and it was conveniently there in the studio when Richard arrived for his session. Host Dan Bodah pointed it out to his guest, who asked if he could try it out, and then after getting acquainted for a few minutes, famously left his acoustic guitar in the case and busted out an incredible version of his whole set on the organ, right then and there. (Garth Hudson's "Chest Fever" intro was also played on a Lowrey, so there is a cosmic music precedent.) The first song was an absolutely zoned take on "Spin Me Endless In The Universe" that incorporates the organ's canned "drum roll" sound effect to jarring/mesmerizing effect. This was around three weeks ago, September 16th, the last performance of Richard's tour, check it out:
And, to bring it down a little, here's a live haunting acoustic guitar version with Ben Chasny on slide, at Feeding Tube Records in Northampton, MA, the first performance of the tour, September 2:
And here's one from right in the middle of the tour, September 10th, completely solo with acoustic guitar at the Black Cat Backstage in Washington D.C. At around the halfway point I'm wondering if this is even better than the WFMU version....
First up, already the big cosmic grandaddy of them all, Richard solo on WFMU's Airborne Event, accompanying himself on a vintage Lowrey Organ. WFMU had just acquired one of these colorful instruments, and it was conveniently there in the studio when Richard arrived for his session. Host Dan Bodah pointed it out to his guest, who asked if he could try it out, and then after getting acquainted for a few minutes, famously left his acoustic guitar in the case and busted out an incredible version of his whole set on the organ, right then and there. (Garth Hudson's "Chest Fever" intro was also played on a Lowrey, so there is a cosmic music precedent.) The first song was an absolutely zoned take on "Spin Me Endless In The Universe" that incorporates the organ's canned "drum roll" sound effect to jarring/mesmerizing effect. This was around three weeks ago, September 16th, the last performance of Richard's tour, check it out:
And, to bring it down a little, here's a live haunting acoustic guitar version with Ben Chasny on slide, at Feeding Tube Records in Northampton, MA, the first performance of the tour, September 2:
And here's one from right in the middle of the tour, September 10th, completely solo with acoustic guitar at the Black Cat Backstage in Washington D.C. At around the halfway point I'm wondering if this is even better than the WFMU version....
Thursday, August 08, 2013
(NOT NECESSARILY) AMERICAN TOP 41
"The hits from coast to coast to coast to coast to coast to coast to coast....."
41. Miles Davis "You're Under Arrest"
40. The Fuckin' Flying A-Heads "Watching TV"
39. Howard Nishioka "Odyseas Over Seas"
38. Forest "Hawk the Hawker"
37. Aaron Rosenblum "Live At Zebulon"
36. New Order "Leave Me Alone"
35. Friction "Cycle Dance"
34. Friction "Crazy Dream"
33. Crazy Dreams Band "Feels So Good"
32. King Sporty "Choice of Music"
31. Horace Andy "Money Money"
30. Ed Kuepper "Ill Wind"
29. Maan "Damocles"
28. Matthew Young "Caitlin's Reile"
27. Forest "Fading Light"
26. Sand "Helicopter"
25. Demdike Stare "Matilda's Dream"
24. Demdike Stare "The Stars Are Moving"
23. Dr. Strangely Strange "Sign On My Mind"
22. Tapiman "Love Country"
21. Balaclavas "Snake People"
20. Monostat 3 "Beyond the Rim"
19. Led Zeppelin "Achilles Last Stand (Live at Knebworth 1979)" (this is actually #1)
18. Bob Dylan & the Band "Sign of the Cross"
17. Gene Clark "Some Misunderstanding"
16. The Byrds "Universal Mind Decoder"
15. The Byrds "Goin' Back"
14. Rolling Stones "Back Street Girl"
13. Les Vampyrettes (aka Conny Plank & Holger Czukay) "Biomutanten"
12. Red Krayola "Duke of Newcastle"
11. Tough Troubles "Paraplegic" aka "Help Me" (pick to click / buzz bin favorite / #11 with a bullet)
10. Gil Scott-Heron "Pieces of a Man"
09. Cedric Im Brooks & the Light of Saba "Words of Wisdom"
08. Matthew Young "Traveler's Advisory"
07. Valley of Ashes "Yellow Fog"
06. Siloah "Feast of the Pickpockets"
05. Siloah "Aluminum Wind"
04. Mighty Baby "Virgin Spring"
03. Dieuf-Dieul de Thies "Na Binta" (super special heat seeker debut at #3 with a bullet)
02. Pierrot Lunaire "Narciso"
01. Claudio Rocchi "Volo Magico N. 1"
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
(NOT NECESSARILY) AMERICAN TOP 57
01. Neil Young & Crazy Horse "Driftin' Back"
02. The Wicked Lady "Out Of The Dark"
03. Lee "Scratch" Perry "Womans Dub"
04. Wolf Eyes "Choking Flies"
05. Sonny & Linda Sharrock "Peaceful"
06. Brightblack Morning Light "Everybody Daylight"
07. Ted Berrigan & Anne Waldman "Memorial Day (Poetry Project at St. Mark's Place, May 5, 1971)"
08. Ma Turner & Weepjoy "I Will Not Bow"
09. Tear Jerks "Splash 1"
10. Stone Coal White "You Know"
11. Burning Spear "Creation Rebel"
12. DJ Dawn & Ranking Queens "Peace Truce Thing"
13. Jimi Hendrix "Peace In Mississippi"
14. The Magik Markers "I Trust My Guitar, Etc."
15. Prince "All The Critics Love U In New York"
16. Black Devil "Timing, Forget The Timing"
17. Cop City/Chill Pillars "Jennifer"
18. Lloyd Young & Augustus Pablo "Our Man Flint"
19. Neil Young & Crazy Horse "Ramada Inn"
20. Roy Richards & Brentford Disco Set "Natrual Dub"
21. The Upsetters "Shining Dub"
22. Alton & Soundemension "Mad Version"
23. Alton Ellis "African Descendants"
24. Andy Stott "Hatch The Plan"
25. Bedemon "Touch The Sky"
26. The Wicked Lady "Run The Night"
27. Arthur Russell "Soon-To-Be Innocent Fun/Let's See"
28. Fabulous Diamonds "Wandering Eye"
29. Axe "A House Is Not A Motel"
30. Barry & Soundemension "Give Love Version"
31. A Beautiful Machine "Dream It Back"
32. Pentagram "Be Forewarned"
33. Black Sabbath "Instrumental jam (edit)"
34. Abigail "The Bonehunter"
35. Blues Control "Good Morning"
36. Bob Dylan "Wigwam"
37. The Trypes "Eternal Ice"
38. Eugene Chadbourne "Hippies And Cops/Luxury Liner"
39. Milk Music "Fertile Ground"
40. Bob Marley "Soul Rebel"
41. Michael Chapman "Slow Coach (live at WFMU)"
42. Jaap Spek "Impulses (1959-1960)"
43. The Heptones "Young Generation"
44. Freddie McGregor "How Can You Mend A Broken Heart"
45. Cheveu "Unemployment Blues"
46. Jah Shaka "Zion Chant"
47. David Crosby "The Wall Song"
48. MV & EE "Turbine"
49. A Certain Ratio "Do The Du"
50. Zoltan Pongracz "Mariphonia (1972)"
51. Weed "Sweet Morning Light"
52. Buffalo "Dead Forever"
53. Plush "More You Becomes You"
54. Neil Young "Harvest Moon (Irving, TX, 14-Mar-1992)"
55. Gunter Schickert "Kriegmaschinen, Fahrt Zur Holle"
56. Sound Dimension "Down Presser Version"
57. Joni Mitchell "This Flight Tonight"
02. The Wicked Lady "Out Of The Dark"
03. Lee "Scratch" Perry "Womans Dub"
04. Wolf Eyes "Choking Flies"
05. Sonny & Linda Sharrock "Peaceful"
06. Brightblack Morning Light "Everybody Daylight"
07. Ted Berrigan & Anne Waldman "Memorial Day (Poetry Project at St. Mark's Place, May 5, 1971)"
08. Ma Turner & Weepjoy "I Will Not Bow"
09. Tear Jerks "Splash 1"
10. Stone Coal White "You Know"
11. Burning Spear "Creation Rebel"
12. DJ Dawn & Ranking Queens "Peace Truce Thing"
13. Jimi Hendrix "Peace In Mississippi"
14. The Magik Markers "I Trust My Guitar, Etc."
15. Prince "All The Critics Love U In New York"
16. Black Devil "Timing, Forget The Timing"
17. Cop City/Chill Pillars "Jennifer"
18. Lloyd Young & Augustus Pablo "Our Man Flint"
19. Neil Young & Crazy Horse "Ramada Inn"
20. Roy Richards & Brentford Disco Set "Natrual Dub"
21. The Upsetters "Shining Dub"
22. Alton & Soundemension "Mad Version"
23. Alton Ellis "African Descendants"
24. Andy Stott "Hatch The Plan"
25. Bedemon "Touch The Sky"
26. The Wicked Lady "Run The Night"
27. Arthur Russell "Soon-To-Be Innocent Fun/Let's See"
28. Fabulous Diamonds "Wandering Eye"
29. Axe "A House Is Not A Motel"
30. Barry & Soundemension "Give Love Version"
31. A Beautiful Machine "Dream It Back"
32. Pentagram "Be Forewarned"
33. Black Sabbath "Instrumental jam (edit)"
34. Abigail "The Bonehunter"
35. Blues Control "Good Morning"
36. Bob Dylan "Wigwam"
37. The Trypes "Eternal Ice"
38. Eugene Chadbourne "Hippies And Cops/Luxury Liner"
39. Milk Music "Fertile Ground"
40. Bob Marley "Soul Rebel"
41. Michael Chapman "Slow Coach (live at WFMU)"
42. Jaap Spek "Impulses (1959-1960)"
43. The Heptones "Young Generation"
44. Freddie McGregor "How Can You Mend A Broken Heart"
45. Cheveu "Unemployment Blues"
46. Jah Shaka "Zion Chant"
47. David Crosby "The Wall Song"
48. MV & EE "Turbine"
49. A Certain Ratio "Do The Du"
50. Zoltan Pongracz "Mariphonia (1972)"
51. Weed "Sweet Morning Light"
52. Buffalo "Dead Forever"
53. Plush "More You Becomes You"
54. Neil Young "Harvest Moon (Irving, TX, 14-Mar-1992)"
55. Gunter Schickert "Kriegmaschinen, Fahrt Zur Holle"
56. Sound Dimension "Down Presser Version"
57. Joni Mitchell "This Flight Tonight"
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
SOUNDCLOUDS, YOUTUBES, CDRs, MP3s, STREAMS, SPOTIFIES (?), RECORDS, TAPES, NEW ARRIVALS, NEW ARRIVALS FROM 5 YEARS AGO, ETC.
JAMES BALJO "Leaving USA Blues" soundcloud; WOLF EYES No Answer: Lower Floors CD (DESTIJL) Live solo guitar/etc piece by the newest member of Wolf Eyes, and no wonder their new album sounds so lean and sharp if this is what he's bringing to the mix. Tons of space, tons of shiver, but still propulsive throughout. And by the way I can't say enough how much I like the new Wolf Eyes album No Answer: Lower Floors. I liked it so much on Pitchfork Advance and I got so tired of waiting for the vinyl that I bought the damn thing on CD. And ya know, I'd forgotten how playable a CD is. I played this damn thing 5 times the day I got it. It helps that it's a very intriguing album that rewards repeat listens. I've always liked them best when they're sparse, and especially when they're sparse but with a backbeat (for an early reference, check out my personal all-time favorite Wolf Eyes track, "Desert of Glue/Wretched Hog"), and this new album is a masterpiece of sparse rhythm, especially the 'video single' "Choking Flies" and the 12-minute "Confession of the Informer."
VEILED soundcloud, "Previews of our most recent recording. January 2013 - Barcelona, Catalunya. This set contains 2 sounds, total time: 8.06."
ROBERT A.A. LOWE aka LICHENS, intense YouTube from 2007
GEOFF TATE EPK (Electronic Press Kit??) as posted by @Holy_Mountain, my goodness
mp3s of LEE PERRY Revolution Dub (CREOLE) One of the top... three heaviest Lee Perry albums? Too heavy for YouTube?
98.7 WFMT Chicago is turning me on to some Saint-Saëns right now...
The 1970s-British-folk-supergroup-doing-American-rock'n'roll-covers LP Rock On by The Bunch didn't sound that great to me at first, not even much better than The Band's covers album Moondog Matinee, which is not very great indeed. I do really like the version of "When Will I Be Loved" sung by Sandy Denny and Linda Peters (later Linda Thompson), and now Richard Thompson singing a choogling "Jambalaya" is growing on me (youtube not available). The song, and really most of the album, is pretty corny though. Basically, I prefer British folk-rock musicians to be playing British music.
TERRACID Out Dual Head Vibration CD-R (MUSIC YOUR MIND WILL LOVE YOU) I remember hearing about this Music Your Mind Will Love You collective, aka MYMWLY, back in the mid-2000s psychedelic CD-R underground heyday, but I don't think I ever heard anything from 'em until the other day, when I finally tackled a tall, precarious, and deeply buried pile of as-of-yet-unlistened-to CDs and CD-Rs, all sent in for review over the years. There I went, steeling myself for deep dives into untold neglected sounds, some appropriately neglected, some inappropriately, and from what turned out to be the latter category, I pulled out a 2008 CDR release by a group called Terracid. I remember their name... they may have even been the, dare I say it, MYMWLY flagship group. From Australia, I believe, arriving just a year or two before the recent flood of underground/punk/etc bands from there. I put it in the player, and was instantly taken by a sweet & sour rambling extrapolative jam approach, improvised music but with a good amount of musicianship behind it, inflected with big knowing whiffs of good old folk, jazz, and blues... sometimes it ends up sounding like goddamn wildly recombinant Canterbury prog. For seconds at a time! The key to the whole thing is that they have a light touch, which opens up all kinds of space for movement and extrapolation. The collective is from Australia and according to their blog are currently "shut down for unknown time." I'm hoping to dig some more of their stuff out of this pile... (aaand actually I did, another CDR called The Palace Carries The Eggtooth As Its Crown, this one from 2006. So far I don't like it as much, but that may be due solely to the long and annoyingly blown-out noise-rock opening track, which obliterates that light touch I enjoyed on Out Dual Head Vibration. I haven't really been able to get past it, and therefore have barely heard the rest of the album.)
mp3s of RSO Awl 7" & Bonus Tracks (SELF-RELEASED)
mp3s of THROBBING GRISTLE Beyond Jazz Funk CS (ROUGH TAPES)
HOLDERLIN Holderlin's Traum (OHR via SPOTIFY) I was introduced to this album (and many other favorites) by that epochal global underground folk primer in issue #5 of Badaboom Gramophone. Haven't listened to this in many years, and it's holding up nicely. I've been reading Electric Eden, an excellent history of British folk and folk-rock by one Rob Young, and it's getting me to pull out some of the best German folk jammers too (even though it doesn't mention them). Also notable: Witthuser & Westrupp Trips und Traume, and of course Broselmaschine s/t. Next up: Emtidi Saat! P.S. I still enjoy referring to really good records as "jammers."
DONOVAN A Gift From A Flower To A Garden (SONY MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT via SPOTIFY) Of course I like plenty of his tunes, but I have never before sat down with any one album by Donovan. Maybe he's more of a singles artist... but this album, which I'm also listening to because of Electric Eden, is sounding quite good at work today. "Isle of Islay" is a really great song.
JOHN ALLEN's WFMU show from Wednesday (January 30th), streaming from WFMU Recent Archives page (http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/49233) For me, John Allen's show is "the best show on WFMU." Standouts from this week include Fennesz Daniell Buck, Michael Chapman (don't miss Allen's on-mic analysis afterwards), Kathleen Yearwood, Scott Walker, Jeff Greinke, and Elklink. Always a great show but I've really enjoyed the last two (here's the one from the Wednesday before last). (ED. NOTE: This was written in January because time flies.)
XHOL CARAVAN "Electric Fun Fair" on car radio tuned to WNUR. Now that's a good tune to hear on the radio when you're driving the car home from work on a Friday night! And I only drive on rare occasions, like once a month. Thanks, unknown WNUR drivetime DJ.
BEACH BOYS Pet Sounds LP (CAPITOL) Jammed side one super loud tonight and danced exuberantly around the living room with my daughter the entire time. Did not post pictures of it on Facebook.com. (But it's cool if you and your young daughter do it and post pictures of it on Facebook.com.) (P.S. The reason I got this album back off the shelf, and the reason it's sounding better than ever, is the Behind the Sounds series of YouTubes. Big thanks!)
HUSKER DU Zen Arcade (CESSTONE MUSIC via SPOTIFY) Just finished the Bob Mould autobio, a good read. I admire and respect the guy, but to this day I'm not a huge fan of his music. A fan? Yes. A huge fan? No. Not even of Husker Du. I do love Zen Arcade, and gotta say it sounds pretty beautiful and perfect tonight. The most beautiful song is Mould's "Chartered Trips." Also standing out more than ever are the "Hare Krsna" jam, Hart's "Masochism World," and the way Mould's "Newest Industry" is like a Side 3 mirror to Side 1's "Chartered Trips," the mirror then crack'd by the psychedelic room-spinning dream-world outro that is Side 4's "Reoccurring Dreams." The thing is, I don't really have a 2nd favorite Bob Mould album. Hell, it might even be Copper Blue. Even though I often like loud and blurry music, Land Speed Record is actually too loud and blurred for me to get into. I've never even particularly enjoyed New Day Rising or Flip Your Wig, even though they're probably the 3rd and 4th best albums that Bob Mould has been a part of. I did give his solo debut Workbook several CD/cassette spins back in the day (and a couple tentative Spotify spins just this week), and it's not great, but I might still put it at fifth. Bob erred a little too far on the beige side with that one, but "See A Little Light" is great, and there's a lot of other nice touches, like opening with an instrumental (it's like an actual workbook!) and having an interesting assemblage sculpture on the cover (by Mould's then boyfriend Mike Covington -- in the book Mould writes that he still owns the original and looks at it every day). Quick story: Workbook came out in 1989, and I was in college, listening to all of that college rock, and the video for the super-catchy "See A Little Light" was all over dorm-room MTV. A couple fellow students bought the CD, and I even made a Maxell dub of it from somebody. Listening, I decided that Bob's solo move from Husker Du was a lot like Pete Townshend's from The Who; out of a rather chaotic and loud rock band comes a more folky, gentle introspective solo sound. "See A Little Light" was like Bob's version of Pete's "Let My Love Open The Door," a gentle and melodic lead-off single by a former rock wildman. I thought this theory was airtight enough to run by a cool and jaded employee at one of Lincoln, Nebraska's most independent and "import" focused record stores. We'd been having a nice enough chat until he heard my theory, which he dismissed with a conversation-ending "I don't know about THAT." I didn't yet realize that comparing a 1980s underground darling to a 1970s stadium-rock dinosaur was a major faux pas. But here I am 25 years later, reading Bob's memoir, which is called See A Little Light, and what should he say about Workbook, starting right there on page 162: "I sensed there was a part of the punk audience that would feel betrayed, but it was important to move beyond the sound of the past eight years. In the generation prior, Pete Townshend's Empty Glass would have been the model -- the Who were a bombastic group, but Pete tackled difficult emotional matter with a more mature view." That's why I'm now a popular web-based music writer, and that record store employee is . . . probably a lawyer or something.
MILK MUSIC Cruise Your Illusion (FAT POSSUM via PITCHFORK ADVANCE) I tend to ignore rather than write about records I don't like, but this one has really gotten me wound up, maybe because I was really looking forward to it. Their 2010 debut 12" Beyond Living ruled, introducing an Olympia, WA guitar/bass/drums trio with a killer power-grunge guitar sound, playing driving/yearning heavy/melodic songs about being high and free and independent. Things seemed like they might be getting even better on a 2011 live session on WFMU, the band blisteringly road-sharp and the set list containing a superb new song called "I've Got A Wild Feeling." Unfortunately, that seems like it may have been the peak. Soon after, the band went from being a trio to a quartet and I don't think it helped. I understand why singer/guitarist Alex Coxen would want a second guitar in the band, because it's pretty damn hard to handle lead vocals, lead guitar, and rhythm guitar all by yourself all the time, but that responsibility pushed the trio into a razor-sharp focus. Now that they're able to relax that vise-grip on the songs, it sounds to me like they're relaxing a little too much. The vocals have become more mumbled than melodic, the songs feel truncated and underwritten, and now there's suddenly lead guitar sprouting all over the place, the same two or three pentatonic guitar licks constantly ambling through the songs. I haven't been keeping statistics or anything, but it feels like every time a song is begging for a third verse and chorus, it instead meanders into another sub-Allmans guitar solo and then winds down to a premature close. When I saw 'em live in Chicago last summer, I have to admit Coxen didn't always seem that interested in playing his own songs, acting like he was going to kick over a monitor speaker here, leaning on one of those same two or three pentatonic guitar licks there. On Cruise Your Illusion, he definitely doesn't seem interested in the lame version of "I've Got A Wild Feeling" they ended up using. Maybe it's one of those songs that got written too soon after a debut and too long before the follow-up; either way, instead of being proud of having written a great song, they've allowed themselves to get bored with it and spend almost all of this version making fun of it instead. Coxen only actually sings the chorus once, the first time through, refusing to sing the hook the way he used to, mumbling something about "I can't even a hit a fucking note that high" the second time, and then adding a sarcastic "baby" at the end of the song, after a third mumbled chorus. Jeez guys, sorry we liked your song! The 8-minute closer "The Final Scene" has a really nice wistful feel, but they mumble the lyrics, make fun of their own intermittently great doo-wop backing vocals, noodle a bunch more unfocused guitar solos... oh well, it's not my band, so I'll stop complaining. I'll also stop listening to this album. Good thing they've already recorded Beyond Living, which already sounded great, and sounds especially great when played right after Cruise Your Illusion.
Sunday, April 14, 2013
Label: SUPERIOR VIADUCT
The new Wolf Eyes album No Answer: Lower Floors has been streaming on Pitchfork Advance, a nice call by the editorial staff of Pitchfork (which is something I don't say very often, The Out Door excepted of course). The leadoff track "Choking Flies" sounds so good, the sparsest, leanest, meanest and beat-dopest they've been since Dread and Dead Hills, and on the day the stream was announced I saw more than one person, maybe even three, on Facebook compare the track to Factrix. This is a good comparison, though I think it's the first time I've heard someone make it. In fact, I really only recall one other significant mention of Factrix in my entire life of reading-and-talking-about-music, and that was on the WHPK list-serv around 2003 or so, when they were highly recommended by the esteemed DJ War Bride. I think it was on a "synth punk recommendations" thread, so I always figured they sounded like The Screamers. It took almost another 10 years for me to actually hear them, thanks to this 2012 Superior Viaduct reissue of their sole "studio" LP Scheintot from 1981, and find out that "synth punk" is way too limiting to describe them, and that they're much more languid and creepy than the revved-up and synth-overt Screamers sound. They do morose guitar noise like the New York No Wave bands, but with a weird serenity and stillness at the center that even bands like Mars and DNA didn't quite get to. They do harsh antisocial machine music like Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire, but they do it with more humility, in the form of softer and more melodic hooks. They have better bass guitar than any of those groups, what sounds to me like a particularly tasteful deployment of the dub reggae influence, putting them on a level with early Public Image, even if the other half of the "rhythm section" is a sputtering, evil-sounding drum machine. And when all that is combined, they still come off more like a 70s-rooted guitar band than an 80s-reaching synth band. Very compelling, deep, rich music, and I've been listening to this record over and over and over again for months.
Factrix may have only had one "studio" album but they did have two other releases, a "studio" 7-inch single, and a 1982 live album called California Babylon that was billed to Factrix/Cazazza, also now reissued by Superior Viaduct. You might know of Monte Cazazza from the RE/Search Industrial Culture Handbook like I do, or hey, maybe you were there. As a trio, Factrix seemed to share lead vocal duties and didn't really have a front-man; here Cazazza steps into that role, first-billed on the personnel list with "vocals, tapes, amputated bass, monochord." It's a rougher document than Scheintot, less languid and dreamy, more like being wide awake in the dirty and noisy street, with a lot more squealing microphonic feedback and Reverend Jim Jones ranting in your face about how you and he are gods. In the RE/Search book Cazazza offers some more about these performances; regarding Side A, from June 6, 1981, live at Ed Mock Dance Studio, Cazazza writes: "'Night of the Succubus' in collaboration with Factrix. Films, slides, organic robots, dance by Kimberly Rae, dart gun used for first time by Monte, electro-shock, dental surgery on dead animal-machine. Video available." The CD version of Superior Viaduct comes with a DVD of said video, along with more previously unreleased tracks. About Side B, from December 12, 1980, live at Berkeley Square: "Guest appearance with Factrix. All music, more sedate show." It doesn't sound very sedate to me...
But wait, there's a lot more... Superior Viaduct is specializing in deep-underground post-punk San Francisco activity, Bay Area bands in the late 1970s and early 1980s that are still barely written into the increasingly comprehensive punk histories that are coming out nowadays... a surprisingly high percentage of the reissues Superior Viaduct is doing were the only album the band ever recorded. For example, the sole release by Black Humor, Love God, Love One Another from 1982. This was a somewhat notorious record at the time, causing a bit of heat in the letters section of Maximum Rock'n'Roll because there was a swastika (made out of crutches) on the Side B label, and I guess because their subject matter was offensive to some, although perusing the lyric sheet doesn't reveal any of the brain-dead "look ma I think I'm punk" button-pushing one might expect. In fact, a more frequent target is punks and hardcore kids, which is probably the real reason people got pissed in MRR. I imagine the spoken-word/noise/tape collage "KILL THEM!!!" on side two is what really got their pens angrily scribbling, as it dismisses kids who "have a crew cut for the first time in their life and they're telling me they're hardcore," along with some Archie Punker-style equal-opportunity misanthropy buried in its word-stew. Either way, the music itself is what really makes the antisocial statements here. The opening song is a perfect mix of blackly humorous words and grotesque music, reworking "Dancing in the Street" as "Undancing in the Dirt," George Miller hissing and straining out the lyrics over a sly atonal bass-guitar dirge "because death is near/and the time is right/for undancing in the dirt." Funny stuff, but what makes me really like the music is that it also has that languidity that Factrix had... it's just as black-hearted and nihilistic as the bleakest of punk, but it never gets stuck in a rut of raging/slamming/hammering stridency. The vocal timbre is harsh, the musical tonality is dark, but both are squeezed out slowly, calmly, and at a simmer. Even when the rhythm section plays hard, the guitar is often filing away at arcane and substantially quieter upper-register microtonal filigree. "Hometown Vigilante" could almost be described as a mid-tempo ballad, and there are several songs where Miller's vocals also wheeze and hiss against a particularly sparse bass guitar part and nice subtle drum machine programming (a live drummer is only used on the first three tracks, and the difference between him and the drum machine isn't even that noticeable). Really, this is an album that makes nihilism and bleakness endlessly intriguing and listenable, a rare but always welcome combination.
Superior Viaduct has also released an album by Noh Mercy, a female drums and vocals duo with the great slogan "No Boys On Guitars!" You might not think you want to hear a whole album by a band that is just drums and vocals, but they really create a lot of music between the two of them. (Some other instruments do appear on two or three tracks.) Drummer Tony Hotel is phenomenal, coming from a traditional jazz background in Dayton, Ohio; as vocalist Esmerelda says in the large booklet insert, "She played so well I realized we didn't need anyone else in the band." Of Esmerelda's versatile and fearless theatrical punk vocals, Miss Hotel says "Wow, finally I hear another musician, my own age, my own sex, who is as good as me." Esmerelda indeed brings that post-Cockettes San Francisco style of cabaret dress-up psychotic flair, evident in the band pictures that adorn the large booklet insert, and just from her vocals alone. But, together they create music that simply isn't reducible into cabaret, punk, avant-garde, no wave, theater, or anything. It's just their own music, like Interstellar Space by Coltrane & Ali wasn't just jazz, it was their own music. This self-titled record was made in 1979, and wasn't even really intended as a record and went unreleased until this Superior Viaduct edition.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg; in the meantime this great label has gotten even greater, having put out several more records, really an even more impressive crop than the one I just ran down. They've reissued three 7-inches by The Avengers, the German Shepherds Music For Sick Queers LP, the great 1983 debut LP by 100 Flowers (previously known as The Urinals), the great sole LP by The Sleepers (Painless Nights, 1981), the weird and dreamy Martin Rev solo LP from 1980, and what appears to be the only LP by the band Monitor. I haven't even laid a hand on any of these releases yet, and already there's rumblings of some potentially even more exciting reissues from the Viaduct, namely the Hardcore Devo compilations and also some Tuxedomoon albums!
And as a related postscript, I just listened to this great podcast interview where George Chen of Zum interviews Robert Horton, who recently collaborated with Neil Campbell on the excellent Trojandropper LP, released by Zum. In addition to an interesting interview, you get to hear some really cool electronic pattern music Horton is working on, as well as some mutant death disco material (recorded from 1979 to 1982) by Horton's old San Francisco band The Appliances that is possibly going to be released by Superior Viaduct as well... it may be postponed or even cancelled but here's hoping that it isn't...
http://www.superiorviaduct.com
Monday, April 01, 2013
NEW ARRIVALS, OLD ARRIVALS, VINYL, MP3s, STREAMS, ETC:
TIVOL Interstellar Overbike CD (LAST VISIBLE DOG) From 2007, this is this week's deep catalog pull from the Last Visible Dog label. Heavy driving extendo psychedelic Japan-style from Finland. (Maybe a Circle side project? Can't remember.)
INVISIBLE HANDS Insect Dilemma/Disallowed 7" (ABDUCTION) Alan Bishop, formerly of Sun City Girls, has already given us a damn good self-titled full-length by his new rock band from Cairo (Egypt not Illinois), but I might like this 7-inch even better. Sure, I might be saying that just because two of the three numbers are revamped Sun City Girls classics (a rather bold reimagining of "Insect Dilemma" b/w a gorgeous female-sung version of "Cruel and Thin" called "Lili Twil"), but shit, SCG are one of my favorite bands of all time, and its really cool to hear the songs given a new life by the very capable Invisible Hands. Apparently this is a Record Store Day release, so I hope you can get a copy.
SUN CITY GIRLS Halcyon Days of Symmetry VHS (parts 1 through 5 somebody put on YouTube) Opens with the sickest of sick VHS collages by Bonnieban, a buncha psychotronic kung fu and horror imagery flying past . . . see if you can name every film . . . I bet you can't name 10 percent of 'em, and don't worry, I think I could only name Phantom of the Paradise. Worth watching for the collage alone but there's tons more Sun City Girls fun on here.... to name just two examples: an ecstatic early runthrough of "Esoterica of Abysynnia" at some sort of hardcore matinee and the most scorching Charles Gocher version of "Let's Pretend" ever. Overall it's my 2nd-favorite of their VHS releases (behind only their very first VHS, the Cloaven Theater release).
SUN CITY GIRLS Singles Vol. 3: Eye Mohini CD (ABDUCTION) Previously reviewed.
SEATTLE PHONOGRAPHERS UNION s/t CD (MIMEOMEME / SPU / and/OAR) Brought to you by a very hard-to-type array of record labels, this is a pretty huge presentation of long austere otherworldly pieces made from people amplifying records and phonographs and creating pure hand-made off-the-cuff musique concrete. Six long, slow, and quietly oppressive/impressive tracks, too much to take in one sitting if you've got a lot of other stuff you wanna listen to, but I wouldn't mind spending the afternoon cleaning the house to this sometime. Rob Millis of Climax Golden Twins is on track 1 (18:48) and track 5 (10:54); as for the other eleven (!) names, none are familiar, but it would seem they are all part of the Seattle underground and they make some assured sound art here. The disc was released in 2009 (which is what I mean by "Old Arrivals"... its been in the on-deck pile for almost 4 years), made up of pieces recorded between 2004 and 2008, and I can actually see this record as a more tentative but just as deep-digging parallel/precedent to what Demdike Stare is/was doing.
REVOLUTIONARY ENSEMBLE The Psyche LP (RE:RECORDS) For some reason this year I've gotten the urge to buy a bunch of LPs by the Revolutionary Ensemble, the 1970s free jazz trio of Leroy Jenkins on violin, Sirone on bass, and Jerome Cooper on drums. They're pretty much all twenty dollar records, but so are most new releases. I've been a huge fan of Vietnam (1972, ESP Disk) ever since Chris Moon played it on Lincoln, NE community radio back in like 1997, and I've been a huge fan of the self-titled 1976 LP on Inner City ever since I checked out a copy from Chicago's Sulzer Regional Library back in like 2002, but I didn't even know about The Psyche until just a couple weeks ago when Scott McDowell played a good chunk of it on one of his Long Rally radio programs. (Oh hey, another link to The Long Rally... you can tell I've been listening to it quite a bit.) This record came out in 1975, and damn, it's a good 'un. There's just something refreshing about free jazz played without horns, although "refreshing" might not be quite the right word for the chillingly spiky and haunting music on s/t and The Psyche, or for the blasting shrapnel terror of Vietnam. Either way, free jazz violin is something I'm going to start digging deeper into... Jenkins has been a favorite for years (gotta get this LP back out!), but next on the list is the music of Billy Bang, which I've barely heard.
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