Bagatellen

Giuffre/Bley/Swallow - Emphasis & Flight 1961

Hatology 2-595

When Jimmy Giuffre’s Free Fall came out on the heels of his trio’s European tour of 1961, it continued to be to the complete and utter astonishment of his fans and his critics alike. A reunion with Jack Sheldon, Russ Freeman, Shelly Manne and the likes seemed less and less likely. Immediately preceding the European shows, there was Fusion and Thesis. Giuffre’s music of this period was as bold as it was groundbreaking; with all of the ado surrounding Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz and Coltrane’s 1961 dates at the Village Vangaurd, Giuffre was busy executing his own ideas about how to create music free of traditional form and devoid of any (then) recognizable formula. To my knowledge, the folks at Hat Hut are the only to have ever held the rights to the recordings of the 1961 shows, now reissued a third time in its own double set as Emphasis & Flight 1961 (recorded in Stuttgart and Bremen, respectively). The beauty of these recordings are the simple, focused meanderings of Giuffre, Paul Bley and Steve Swallow, simultaneously building upon Giuffre’s written frameworks while pulling unintentional harmonies out of the air. In removing the drums as a rhythmic foundation, the trio was left with the responsibility of filling a structural void, and Swallow’s bass would take on a new function. Giuffre had been working without percussion for a few years at this point, but his earlier music was also more linear in form, and the music for the “3” was not quite ready for the sweeping steps Giuffre was yet to take. By this time Giuffre was also creating music exclusively for clarinet, adding to further implausibility for an already unconventional trio format.

Emphasis & Flight 1961 has the distinction of being the only live documentation – at least commercially available – of this historically significant trio. For a group that would seem crippled by its mere dimensions and in the unlikely instrumentation, it is difficult to call up instances in other recordings where three instruments are so immediately omnipresent. The multitasking achieved by the individual musicians is nothing short of remarkable. Giuffre’s occasional drones in “Stretching Out (Suite for Germany)”, for instance, are provocative in that they are related to pedal points to support Bley’s inside and outside improvising. Like Fusion and Thesis, these recordings remain influential as keystones of structure and in the applicability of the clarinet in improvisation, especially. Echoes of Giuffre’s delicate playing of the melody of Carla Bley’s dreamy “Jesus Maria” can be heard in many of today’s players of that instrument, from Ben Goldberg to Michael Moore. The clarity of these recordings offers a number of focal points for the listener as well. The timbral properties to all three instruments are in full color, allowing another angle to peer in from, in examining the trio’s communication. Many of the pieces, particularly from the Bremen recording, clearly show the interchangeability of the roles each instrument was to take in performance. Counterpoint to this group was neither ornamental nor elementary. It was critical.

The Hatology label so continues its dedication to keeping the cream of its discography available, and glory be that these monumental recordings find themselves in print yet again. These, in particular, are essential.

~Alan Jones

Hans Koch - London Duos and Trios

Hans Koch
London Duos and Trios
Intakt
081

I first heard Koch on his initial release for ECM, “Acceleration”, around the time of its release in 1988. It was a pretty attention grabbing effort, combining some motoric, surging themes sporting an almost punk edge with spirited free improvising. Aside from his appearance in Barry Guy’s New Orchestra a couple of years ago, he’d fallen off my radar however so I was a bit intrigued to hear this collection, to discover where he’d explored since then.

Well, he’s certainly moved on a bit. This is a series of nine improvisations recorded in late 2000 with members of the London improvising community, about equally divided between those who fall slightly on the jazzier side of things (just slightly) and several with feet planted more in eai territory. Koch wields soprano sax, bass clarinet and contrabass clarinet, going up against the likes of Pat Thomas, Phil Minton, Steve Noble, John Edwards and Roger Turner of the former allegiance and Phil Durrant, Mark Wastell and Rhodri Davies of the latter. To the extent that trouble brews here, it usually derives from Koch himself. He often seems reluctant to sink himself into the proceedings, either noodling about to no great effect with his partners (in the case of the duos with Thomas and Turner) or overriding their quieter, more group-oriented ideas (Wastell). In the latter, Koch appears to begin with the best of intentions, though even here he falls back on the breath tones that are generally the first refuge of reed players confronted with the difficult situation of “depersonalizing” their sound. As though feeling the need to progress to other sound areas, he migrates to the sort of squawks and bleats that one has heard hundreds of times (while Wastell and Davies, true to form, continue to play marvelously and imaginatively beside him, creating a wonderful, if brief, continuo right near the end of their track). It’s not that he falls back on free jazz clichés; he rarely does. Rather, he seems to have a limited palette of sounds to use in lieu of a “traditional” attack and doesn’t even get so much out of those (unlike, say, the ability shown by Stephane Rives of his recent solo disc on Potlatch, “Fibres”, where a given mode of attack was investigated with a merciless obsession). Happily, there are exceptions. The trio with Noble and Edwards has much of the clattery abandon one might expect, Koch’s claustrophobic, high-end wheezing playing off rather nicely against his companions’ more expansive, lower rumblings. And the penultimate track, a lovely exchange with harpist Davies comes as close as anything to the potential one might have anticipated coming into the project, causing one to rue many of the earlier pieces. Davies, as is almost always the case, manages to tightrope between tonal and abstract with delicious perversity while Koch at long last reins himself in a notch and glides along with his partner, finally creating a performance where the music itself is perceived before the individual musicians.

Overall, I get the perception that, as valiant as the effort was, Koch might be better served by more structured surroundings, something like Guy’s tentet where the robust framework allows for (encourages, even) more extravagant, extroverted playing. Some good playing here, perhaps more often by the supporting characters than the lead, but too much that’s simply unmemorable and not very finely observed or considered.

~ Brian Olewnick

OgreOgress

that mad season

Festival season's fast approaching and so is the balancing act that comes with planning. Normally it's a question of who's playing where, but sometimes the whole package, or that combination of different musicians therein, drives the decision. Getting overseas would be really cool, but time off from work and the distance involved are an issue. I'm tentatively planning for Europe and it's a toss up between Amplify 2004 and the Freedom of the City shows.

Kicking off the season is this enticing Acme in Athens, GA thing, March 31-April 4. Guests include Joe McPhee, Mats Gustafsson, Peter Brötzmann, Vandermark, Atomic, Joe Morris, and Joe Maneri.

Freedom of the City's scheduled for London, May 1-3 with the usual suspects and others on hand: Evan Parker, Rhodri Davies, AMM, Gail Brand, Paul Rutherford, Simon H Fell, Parker/Guy/Lytton, Sten Sandell, and Richard Teitelbaum.

This year's Amplify is scheduled on two consecutive weekends, May 6-8 and May 14-16, in Cologne and Berlin, respectively. Musicians include Fennesz, Keith Rowe, Otomo Yoshihide, Sachiko M, Toshimaru Nakamura, John Butcher, Oren Ambarchi, Marcus Schmickler and more.

Victoriaville runs from May 20 to the 24th, including Derek Bailey, Acid Mother’s Temple, André Duchesne, Ellery Eskelin, Tim Berne, Keith Rowe, Kaffe Matthews, Louis Sclavis and John Zorn.

New York's Vision Fest then runs on a shortened itinerary (thank gah), from the 26th to the 31st of May. Rumor has it these folks will be gracing the stage: The Revolutionary Ensemble, Joe McPhee Quartet with Harold E. Smith, James Blood Ulmer, Kidd Jordan, Khan Jamal Quintet, Gunter Baby Sömmer w/ Connie Bauer and Barre Phillips.

Finally, Vancouver is running its annual activities June 25 thru July 4th. So far only Oscar Peterson is confirmed, asking his usual $85 and up for a seat. Yawn. But the international lineups are unfailingly stellar at this festival. Looking forward to hearing more.

Be All You Can Be

Anyone seen Buffalo Soldiers? Just caught it the other night & it struck me as a sort of post-9/11 Stripes with humor blacker than the sole of a jackboot. Joaquin Phoenix plays Ray Elwood, a petty car thief given the choice of six months in the slammer or three years in the service. He picks the latter option and as chief supply clerk of an Army base in Stuttgart, Germany builds a black market empire from the ground up dealing in everything from contraband floor cleaner to custom-cooked smack. Boredom-laden days are spent driving his Mercedes on the Autobahn at speeds of 200+ mph and managing his various criminal cookie jars. Ed Harris plays his bumbling commanding officer- a Col. Hall to Phoenix’s Sgt. Bilko- who is oblivious to the skullduggery going on. Scott Glenn and Dean Stockwell also make supporting appearances as a sadistic sergeant and dilettante general respectively and Anna Paquin plays the love interest.

There’s repeated fixation on Army slogans & credos, on walls, stairs, posters, etc. juxtaposing a bit heavy-handedly the Armed Forces ideal with the corrupt reality that’s the film’s guiding plot premise. The first half is pretty entertaining. Various vignettes demonstrate the soldiers’ segregation into what Elwood eloquently calls “the motherfuckers” and “the motherfucked.” One scene in particular, where a tank crew, having just collectively shot up, pilots their tank through an Oktoberfest celebration, steamrolls a Volkswagen beetle and ends up demolishing a gas station with pyrotechnically fatal results before returning to their unit, had me cracking a guilty smile. Plot holes are prevalent and the whole thing falls apart into a nihilistic mess with the final act, but overall I thought it not bad. From what I gather it took a serious hit at the box office being released in the wake of Operation Iraqi Freedom. No one likes to have a hypothesized underbelly exposed when the body itself is embroiled in a very real conflict.

Come Down My Selector

I'm not one for online video games. This isn't a game, exactly, but it will suck away hours of productivity if you're not careful.

Dub Selector

I recommend starting with the basic one I linked to, then going for #4 at the bottom.

One love.

The Striped Tomato

Mark your calendars. The complete Season One dvd of Starsky & Hutch hits store shelves Tuesday, March 2nd. As the gold standard for buddy cop shows it deserves a prestigious place on the shelf right next to the first season sets of Baretta and S.W.A.T. The character archetypes- contemplative, laidback armchair philosopher Ken Hutchison and impetuous streetwise hothead Dave Starsky- have been replicated countless times since. Same too for the influence of their ride- the tricked out candy stripe 1974 Ford Gran Torino. These initial 22 episodes plus pilot were the best of the lot.

Not nearly as jazzed about the new movie starring Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson in the titular roles. Snoop Dogg assumes the Huggy Bear handle (word is Antonio Fargas auditioned to reprise the part & was turned away) & they seem to be going for a strictly comedic vibe in line with the show's quality-sliding last season. But who knows, it might surprise. Also on the immediate horizon for unrepentant 70s cathode ray-junkies, season one of Kung Fu. David Caradine's got juice, but I still say Bruce was robbed.

NAM - Song of Time

Clean Feed 18

There is a certain associative thrill that comes with hearing the commercial releases of concerts one attends. I haven't been listening to music, and more specifically its creative improvised ilk, for all that long in the larger scheme of things. Thirteen years really are just a drop in the temporal bucket. This means that the number of such albums I can count registers easily on a pair of hands. So when one crops up it makes me look twice. NAM's new release is really several years old. Truthfully, I don't remember much about the show. Ensconced in the larger senses-numbing context of the Vision Festival 2001 at the Knitting Factory it flew by quickly. Fortunately a friend of mine taped it on a portable mini-disc set-up (the musicians' blessing received) and sent me a CD-R. But the rough verité audio made it a memento that soon got lost in the stacks.

The sound on this professional release is far superior and reveals aspects my faulty memory had long forgotten. NAM has been around for a few years. Trumpet player Ahmed Abdullah acts as nominal leader. His creds in the bands of Sun Ra, Sam Rivers, Hamiet Bluiett and others are respected. Baritone saxophonist Alex Harding is younger, but still old enough to have held tenure in the Arkestra as well as stints with Bluiett, Muhal Richard Abrams and Lester Bowie. His muscular and resourceful approach to his horn quickly catapulted him to the vanguard of current artisans on the instrument. He embraces all the volume and subterranean power that the elephantine reed puts at his disposal. Bassist Jimmy Weinstein and drummer Masa Kamaguchi are lesser known, but still well suited to stand in the company of their peers. Actual Proof, the band's debut on CIMP, planted a seed in my ears that bore blossoms of recognition when this concert came round. Hearing it all again makes me wish that they had found the means to return to the studio. Harding has since partnered up with pianist Lucian Ban, but who knows, maybe something's in the works?

On the surface the music here is fairly standard energetic, spiritually infused free jazz. Where the surprises arise is in the on-the-fly give and take between the horns and their playful volleys with their compadres. A rousing rendition of Ornette Coleman's "Chippie" opens things up. Abdullah bounces along with mute inserted as Harding's shouts urge him on. The latter's own solo scuffles and wrestles in the guttural register, flinging off clots of snorted notes as Kamaguchi and Weinstein feed an increasing rhythmic density around him. Things bog down a bit in the bassist's well articulated, but slightly rote statement, but the drummer works things back up into fine froth with his own spotlight feature at the close. Two originals follow: the moody title ballad by Abdullah and a booting blues march by Weinstein voiced staunchly in the spirit of Bluiett's Baritone BBQ Band. There's also room for a spoken reminiscence by Abdullah of his friend Frank Wright, along with renderings of Gunter Hampel's "Serenade to Marion Brown" and a traditional Brazilian folk tune "Canto 2 Canto II." Playing time holds to a welcome vinyl span of forty-five minutes. In some ways it's just like being there.

Also edifying is the painting by Jeff Schlanger that serves as wrap-around cover art. The Music Witness' style of abstract action art was once something of a staple on NYC free jazz releases and its good to have him back in such a capacity. Clean Feed appears to be branching out its scope as a label. Upcoming and current releases include projects by Paul Dunmall, Charles Gayle and Ken Vandermark. With ears open to a plurality of free jazz currents and a production aesthetic that ranks at the forefront as well, these Lisbon-based newcomers are situated to take center stage amongst their peers.

the beleaguerment of peddling

There is a problem with Cadence. Actually, I've had great luck with their sales service and Vladimir at North Country Audio has been extremely helpful for my vinyl affliction. He's selling a NAD phono preamp I've been looking for well under the competition. My issue is with the editorial staff for the magazine.

About a year ago, I submitted to them an interview with British saxophonist/pipist Paul Dunmall, on the condition that the text would print by May of last year. Not that they would be interested, but I do not regularly write for Cadence, and never have, largely a decision influenced by the complaints I have heard from members of their masthead past and present. They agreed to print the interview and here Paul and I sit, a year later, with many thousands of words yet to be read by anyone but ourselves. I would have published the interview here but Cadence is bound to get much wider circulation than anything published here (I could be wrong?) and as such it would be nice for Paul's story to reach a wider audience. Today, I'm at the end of my rope. I contacted the magazine, they are looking into it, and you may well be reading the interview here within the week.

I'm still getting that NAD preamp, tho. And I'm due for a music order. Sue me, I'm shifty.

Sonny Clark - Leapin' And Lopin' (Blue Note)

This is one of those recordings with which I am so intimate that I am swiftly thwarted in attempts to make anything original of it in my writing. One of the reasons I have always loved this record, though, is that Clark, for much of his recording career something of a nondescript, "professional" accompanist, managed to make a quintessential Blue Note album that nonetheless breaks -- rather, elides -- many of that specific "sound's" formulas. Without question, it is one of the coolest -- in terms of overall emotional temperature -- yet brightest of all the classic sessions made for that label during the early 1960's. The Sonny Clark / Butch Warren / Billy Higgins rhythm section, entirely a studio creation (almost like a tromp l'oeil soundstage setting or matte painting), was one of the finest there ever was, and there is both an effortlessness and lyrical bounce to their work -- a feel which is quite different from the insistent, backbeat-heavy swing you feel on those sessions with Art Blakey and Art Taylor on the drum riser. I'm tempted to say their swing was understated, but I know that's not the word I want. Placid? Unemphatic? Relaxed, definitely. But also joyous, and joy implies at least the letting loose of some tension, an event explosive... Leapin' and Lopin' also features one of the more uncharacteristic front-lines to be given the OK by Lion and Wolff: the Ben Webster-cum-Dexter Gordon stylings of Charlie Rouse on tenor sax, and the quirkily surging, silvery soloing of Tommy Turrentine (older brother of Stanley) on trumpet. The tunes Clark wrote for this date are uniformly delightful, even infectious. Clark's spacious modal structures -- "Melody For C", "Something Special", "Voodoo" -- are not callow or expedient hard bop "heads". On this album, more so even than the impeccable Cool Struttin', Clark has outgrown overtly macho poses of virtuosity, and he has found idiosyncratic partners that do not require him to make his blues nothing but funky and his ballads all about the longing. Clark sounds completely at one with his instrument here, in the flow -- in the zone -- as if, as I think it is possible to do, he has seduced himself into true discipline.

Sure, if you introduce biography into the assessment, Leapin' And Lopin' is surrounded by squalor, infamy, and madness. Charlie Rouse returned to his regular gig with Monk's quartet and much of his subsequent work for Blue Note was filed away as "not for release", Tommy Turrentine struggled for the remainder of his career with mental illness, and Clark himself was dead from an overdose not too long after this recording was completed in November 1961 (he was also mourned quite memorably by Bill Evans, "N.Y.C.'s No Lark" [Conversations With Myself]). Narcotics were a critical variable in the Blue Note formula, too, after all. One could pshaw that Leapin' And Lopin' is just a junk-streaked mirror held up to Miles' Kind Of Blue. But I'll take my cue from the invariably tasteful pianist / composer himself and assume a sublime impassivity with regard to such matters.

I'll Be Dog Damned

In pop music, for its proportional simplicity and an adoring, overspread media that tracks its every new layer as if it were all soap opera, it is relatively easy to keep up with musical developments. I’m sure many of us don’t even want to know that Norah Jones released her second studio date last week – unless that disc is to be a birthday gift for a loved one – or that Janet Jackson showed her bullied nipple and that she’ll likely sell another couple million as a result. But we can’t avoid it. That is not to argue that all social, cultural, and artistic interests should be so omnipresent. More to the point, for the extreme antipoles to popular culture, there is simply no way to stay positively informed.

Trying to remain abreast of the goings-on in the rapidly multiplying corners of my musical interests is a practice that grows further and further in vain. Luckily we have friends who know our areas of interest to some detail, and who are always good for a solid recommendation or two. Then there are those chance encounters that, if shaken off, might result in the loss of an opportunity for revitalization. In this hobby that I share with many other music lovers, music is opportunity foremost for better getting to know oneself.

When the Sweden-based multi-instrumentalist Alberto Pinton contacted me last month, suggesting that I listen to a new disc from his Dog Out project, I was naturally willing – if a little apprehensive for peripheral reasons – to commit to a review. Learning that Dog Out is a small ensemble built from the Swedish ground up with a taste of the free improv aesthetic increased my interest; I’ve been wild about certain Swedish musicians and their scene in general for some time now, and hearing new voices from that community is something I particularly enjoy. This disc came as no exception, so what follows is the quick and dirty.

Pinton is actually Italian-born, Berklee-educated, and now lives in Stockholm with the rest of the Swedish group. He shares Dog Out’s front line (and writing duties) with reed player Fredrik Nordström, and they are backed by bassist Mattias Welin and drummer Jon Fält. While the quartet’s instrumentation (reeds, reeds, bass, drums) has been done to death in every jazz tributary in history, Dog Out demonstrates that even though there may be a shortage in tools to make acoustic music, the well of sounds and combinations therein is bottomless.

Their self-titled release (Moserobie, 2003) is, quite simply, phenomenal. Unlike many freshman or sophomore recordings from newly recorded groups, Dog Out does not try to cover too much stylistic range in these 11 tracks. Rather than get up and blow for the disc’s entirety – a tactic of which all too many ensembles are guilty – the quartet pieces together a mosaic of non-thematic material, however connected by two crucial elements: sinusoidal energy with melody running perpendicular. That is to say, there is no resolute tempo from track to track and each tune is driven by the writing. These are attractive heads, choruses and codas, rather than ones which simply work as bookends and transition points for showmanship. The sleepy progression of “Cold Talk” opens the disc and without delay impresses the group’s ability to craft a melody. The way Nordström and Pinton harmonize with their horns calls to mind Ornette Coleman’s early writing, and each hypnotic note seems bent on erasing the ones immediately preceding. But visions of Ornette evaporate quickly enough and “Cold Talk” almost completely runs its mournful course before Fält enters to accentuate and purify this already lovely piece. Nordström’s “Piece of Change” and Pinton’s “Four Us Three” are the remaining slow-tempo numbers on the disc, the latter perhaps the ultimate two-minute tease.

The remaining nine tracks are propulsive, higher-energy compositions that are both thoughtful and punchy. It is in tracks like “The Group” and “Wonderland Ballroom” that I felt I best “got to know” these musicians. Nordström’s phrasing is consistently imaginative and he has a serious knack for punctuating the series of strategically placed hooks that frequent the disc. Rather than permeate the music, supposed influences occasionally surface (the “Machine Gun”-like intro from Pinton’s baritone on “The Group”) and discharge (Nordström’s Ayler-tinged tone during his tenor solo in “The Freezer”), but without coming off anecdotal or kitschy. The rhythm section maintains itself in the pocket over Dog Out's course, and Welin proves himself to be an unshakable anchor to this music. His bass goes beyond merely dominating the lower frequencies, and his patterns are equally integral to the progressions here.

In another demonstration of economy, the musicians apparently felt no need in marathon solo lines, recognizing the profit in understatement; “Dog’s Right” clocks in the longest at 7:30 to no expense: Fält’s drumming in “Dog’s Right” is the first delicious indication that Sweden has secret weapons of its own. But what of the conservation in instrumentation? Nordström and Pinton wield six horns between them, and any inclinations to show off their many embouchures are safeguarded in the compositions themselves. Pinton’s contrabass clarinet appears once over the disc, where it parallels Welin’s bass to carve more depth into a powerful sequence.

In all, the Dog Out disc is one of the strongest jazz releases since, well, Exploding Customer’s (another Swede ensemble) Live at the Glenn Miller Café (Ayler, 2001). Each number is its own dog and the disc maintains its downright catchiness throughout.

In a follow-up email I shared with Pinton after he contacted me, he expressed to me the importance in a musician being himself in the music he makes, without pretending to be something external to his or his group’s interests. Listening to the music, I get the sense that this group has nothing but respect for what it is they are trying to do, and in doing so the musicians avoid overkill. The result is an archetypal “working band” sound, and the improv world could use more of those.

I doubt I’d have otherwise had the opportunity to hear Dog Out. Sadly, I’m more likely to hear that there’s a new Tim McGraw video about, rather than the music that could possibly matter to me. I’m not buying much new jazz these days, and most of my magazine subscriptions have lapsed. This group has, for the time being, reinvigorated those interests and has maybe even produced answers to some aesthetic questions. I’ll answer one. Where is all of the good jazz writing in today’s music? I point you to “Numerology”.

~Alan Jones

Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?

For me, a big part of being a writer is hating other writers. I don’t mean envy of other writers. I have as much work as I want. I mean that I have a much harder time reading others’ work for pleasure, because I unconsciously edit as I read, and I'm a merciless critic.

Every clumsy sentence leaps off the page. Every poorly chosen adjective, or incomprehensible metaphor, draws my eye back again and again no matter how many times I try to simply proceed to the next page. If a paragraph could have lost two sentences, those are the only sentences that register with me. It’s an affliction I’m certain is shared by others who make their living with language, but that certainty doesn’t make it any easier on me.

Be assured this problem transfers all too easily to music. I love songs in languages I don’t speak (Spanish, French, Arabic, Japanese, and Yoruban all appear in my record collection), or songs where the lyrics are incomprehensible. When I can understand what the singer is on about, more than half the time the song is ruined for me, because once again I find myself editing. I imagine myself tapping the songwriter on the shoulder and saying, “Not that metaphor. Try this. End this line with this other rhyme instead.” Etc., etc.

This is one of the primary virtues of death metal. Its vocalists strive for incomprehensibility. One of my favorites is Will Rahmer, of the band Mortician. His voice is hardly recognizable as the product of a human throat; it’s a phlegmatic rumble that’s been described as sounding like a backhoe biting into mud and gravel. To me, it sounds like bass-amp feedback. It’s only barely possible to follow their songs with lyric booklet in hand, and I’ve only tried that once, because they mostly sing about gore movies they’ve watched, and that gets old just about as fast as you think it would, maybe faster. Ignore the lyrics, though, as Mortician virtually invite you to do, and they’re great. Their songs are fast, intense, rhythmic beatings that never last long enough to wear out their welcome.

The same thing is true of prog rock. I think one of its great virtues is that the instrumental interplay so thoroughly distracts from the silliness of what they sing about. When I first started listening to Yes, I was told by many friends that their lyrics were among the most laughable in all of rock. I’m sure that’s true—a few glances through the booklets to Relayer and Tales From Topographic Oceans have been wince-inducing. I’ve found Jon Anderson’s vocals surprisingly ignorable, though. I’d worried that the high pitch of his voice would make him impossible to block out, but in fact there’s so much going on from every other corner of the mix that he recedes into the background almost immediately.

I wish jazz would stay away from the employment of vocalists even more than it does. Jazz singing is bad enough, but really, there are few punishments worse than hearing a free jazz blowout dragged into the depths of tedium by somebody’s “poetry,” especially when that somebody is one of the musicians. Saxophonists, generally speaking, are not philosophers, and it’s unfortunate that they feel the need to prove it so often, and so publicly. And scat singing needs to be done away with, too, as long as I’m ranting here. So does whatever Thomas Buckner calls his hiccuping ululations. If I ran the world, jazz and improv would be purely instrumental musics (except maybe for Ami Yoshida).

I’ll shut up now.

Various Artists - From:/To: (A Bruit Secret)

This collection of enigmatic improvisations is something of a summit produced with the cooperation of labels Hibari, Pricilia, Vert Pituite, and Fragment. This electroacoustic compilation – forgive me if I don’t press my 7” inch single comparison from some months ago, tempting as it is – features pieces created through the exchange of source materials through the mail. Most of these improvisations document meetings between young improvisers from Japan and France (though guitarist Sharif Shanaoui is apparently Lebanese). Many of the names are unknown to me and the opportunity to check out new players is one of this disc’s pleasures. So: on to the play-by-play.

It opens with a meeting between electronicians Jean-Philippe Grosse and synthesizer player Utah Kawasaki. The kettle lets off steam as a backdrop to grinding stones and rustled sandpaper; it’s extremely busy stuff for Kawasaki, who I’m more accustomed to hearing in a spare environment (though this may be a function of the fact that he’s so often recorded in the noise-constrained Off Site venue). The following piece (they’re all untitled) features Olivier Brisson (amplified percussion) and Yoichiro Shin (cymbal, laptop) in a hugely sonorous exploration of amplified percussion, cymbals, and laptops. This piece reminded me a bit of Such or Sakada, opening with the slow tolling of gong and cymbal and slowly folding in aqueous sounds like trickles and burbles. Eventually it opens up completely to a landscape of scraped metal and waterfall.

The third track pairs trumpeter Masafumi Ezaki with Hugo Roussel, who plays self-input mixing board. Ezaki’s subtle squeaks, whinnies, and scrapings fit well with the effervescent whirr and sizzle. Next up is an elliptical and mysterious (even for this music) sound exploration from guitarist Quentin Dubost and Yasuo Totsuka’s mixing board, largely exploring the juxtaposition of an extremely high sine tone, an insistent buzz not unlike a mini fan, and floating spectral sounds from the guitar. Excellent stuff. Bass clarinetist/bass tubist Masahiko Okura’s meeting with guitarist Sharif Shanaoui is the most traditional of the performances, largely because of Okura’s Dolphy-cum-Vandermark squawkings (not necessarily bad, but they don’t really fit with the prepared guitar). Yet any sense of disappointment is compensated by the thrill of hearing Ami Yoshida’s astounding voice squeaks its way through the tapestry of wheezes, hisses, and crackles from Alfredo Costa Monteiro’s accordion. Yoshida is at her most unsettling here, singing with an energy and intensity quite different (filled with harsh, guttural noises and compressed breaths and squeals) than that heard with Cosmos or Astro Twin. The seventh track constitutes an odd twist on the guitar duet, featuring Taku Unami’s banjo and Norman D. Mayer’s guitar. The extreme spaciousness – with only an occasional plunk or worried string – contrasts nicely with the density of many other tracks. And the final track closes out this rich compilation with a subtle drone from Kazuhige Kinoshita’s violin and Fabrice Eglin’s amplified guitar.

Between the relative sparseness favored by the Tokyo musicians and the garrulously crackling soundscape constructed by many of the French players, the performances here document a unique synthesis.

D'Agaro/Glerum/Bennink - Strandjutters

Hatology 590

Dutch improvised music hasn’t gotten as much play in recent years as it did in the mid-1990s, but the pleasures of its inside-out cavorting remain strong. This pleasant slice could almost be a lost Clusone 3 session, with Daniele D’Agaro’s sweet sax and clarinet taking wing – and who can forget the bird titles and analogies Clusone so loved? – like Michael Moore above a pliable but still rambunctious rhythmic base. It’s not a copycat recording by any means; it simply has the same playfulness, a similar instrumentation, and a sweet combination of accessibility and experimentalism. To hear this, just listen to the raunchy tenor into to “Old Folks” (shades of Ab Baars!), which otherwise possesses a semi-sweet disposition.

For what it’s worth, I’ve always enjoyed hearing musicians whose primary mode of expression is free improvisation wrestle with canonical or traditional sources. Historians know well that any human tradition – religious, political, musical, whatever – is really constituted as an extended argument across time. So when you hear Ernst Glerum thrumming away in “Old Folks,” Ritalin-deprived Han Bennink barely containing himself with a soft pattering swing, or D’Agaro judiciously using multiphonics on Mercer Ellington’s “The Girl in My Dreams Tries to Look Like You,” what you’re really hearing is the continuation of some kind of musical argument. For some, these particular deliberative moves no longer hold any interest. But while I’ve heard these moves, or ones damn close to them, many times before I still find them artfully done and I take a great deal of joy in their construction and deconstruction. Hell, you might enjoy it too, whether your taste runs to the nimble snap of “Divi-Divi,” the chastened lyricism of “Old Folks,” or the tone poetry of “En Plein Air.” In some ways, the more arch moments on this disc recall not so much the pastiche of New Dutch Swing as the more austere efforts of, say, Francois Raulin and Louis Sclavis. And on “The Prisoner,” D’Agaro proves to skillful at incorporating multiphonics and extended techniques into somewhat conventionally constructed lines; in this, he achieves effects similar to those heard in Ellery Eskelin’s playing, which in my book is really high praise.

So ultimately the playfulness here isn’t as canned as Bennink often was with Clusone or as the Willem Breuker Kollektief is in their lengendary shows. It’s the playfulness of toying with form or romping with technique. Through this, the trio achieves a more sober but still challenging integration of styles. This isn’t a knock-you-out disc, but its pleasures remain nonetheless.

Tape - Milieu (Hapna)

The Stockholm-based trio of multi-instrumentalists – Andreas Berthling, Hapna boss Johan Berthling, and Tomas Hallonsten, all of whom blend their acoustic instruments with tape recordings and computer improvisations – are clearly quite comfortable with genre-crossing. But unlike a lot of contemporary “experimental music,” the genres involved aren’t necessarily free improvisation and new music composition. Instead, this gentle, open-ended music bears the sonic imprint of folk and psychedelic music. The electronics here buzz with the tonal friendliness of some of Jim O’Rourke’s more recent recordings (e.g. a fusion between the acoustic, quasi-Americana of Bad Timing and the burbling glitch-pop of I’m Happy . . . ), but one can certainly also detect the influence of Fennesz and Gastr del Sol. Open acoustic guitar strumming mixes with brass cadences and clawing, scratching electronic eruptions. The brief, almost gnomic tracks are complex despite their relative accessibility; they are much more songlike and a good deal more accessible than the pieces on Tape’s previous disc, Opera. They allude, they gesture, and they intrigue but are marked by a reserve, almost a musical shyness. For example, the sweetly melancholic piano and guitar on “Crippled tree” grow close to wearing their emotions on their sleeves, as it were, but are soon shrouded by a hurdy-gurdy drone or the crackle of feedback. In this tentativeness, I was reminded of a similar effect achieved by Thom Yorke’s voice on Radiohead’s Kid A: desperately shielding or muffling its most enchanting, sensitive qualities. There’s a fragility to Tape, almost as if they’re not sure they actually want to be saying anything, content instead simply to luxuriate in the bed of sounds. At only a half hour, this disc might seem too brief. But this dark-hued lullaby of a record is elliptical and effervescent enough to satisfy.

The Ground Fault Label - Four New Releases

Joel Stern/Michael Northam
wormwood
Ground Fault
GF027

Nels Cline/Devin Sarno
buried on bunker hill
Ground Fault
GF028

Murmer
they were dreaming they were stones
Ground Fault
GF029

Prurient
shipwrecker’s diary
Ground Fault
GF 030

These four discs showed up one day a few weeks back. My only prior experience with the Ground Fault label had been Lionel Marchetti’s fine “portrait d’un glacier” and I’d been following Joel Stern’s work with interest for a couple of years, so I was intrigued. I get the impression that, to a limited extent, these releases are reasonably representative of the label (which sorts its discs into one of three series, distinguished by the relative loudness of sounds contained—the first three listed above are placed in the quietest section while Prurient, with extreme appropriateness, occupies the third and most ear-piercing one), though I’m sure Ground Fault devotees might be able to offer finer distinctions.

“wormwood” is easily my favorite of this bunch. Both Stern and Northam work with lo-tech phonics: field recordings, found objects, contact mics, tape loops, etc. As with much music in this area, it comes down to the creators’ choices in what’s included, what’s not, how much stress is placed on this or that element and, perhaps crucially, how to balance an economy of means with an abundance of outcome. When successful, the individual elements become invisible and the listener is confronted with a soundscape that’s immediately accepted as “real”, as something that bubbles along with its own life and pace, revealing as much or as little as the listener chooses to hear. The five tracks of “wormwood” accomplish this with deceptive ease, each offering a slightly different angle, each transparent as to its means, each unforced in its direction. Sometimes, as on the third piece, the balance tilts toward more a “musical” concoction (in this case, high-pitched, organ-like drones over a rustling underbelly) but more often the sounds are entirely a-musical, deriving from manipulated found elements. Among other things, this introduces an impressive airy quality, even as that air is tinged with ozone and gasoline. Throughout, it’s never less than absorbing, thoughtful and ear-tickling.

I’d heard Nels Cline’s music off and on for many years, as far back as his earliest recordings with his brother Alex. I can’t say I’ve ever been a big fan, hearing little in his work that couldn’t be heard to better effect in others, elsewhere. At first, I thought Devin Sarno was a new name to me. But then I checked his discography and discovered his presence (in what aspect, I’m still unsure) on the enjoyably quirky Cruel Frederick disc on SST, “The Birth of the Cruel”. Even armed with that knowledge, “buried on bunker hill” is something other than I’d expected: an electric guitar/bass, ambient billow-fest. There’s a disconcerting vagueness, however, a lack of ideation that causes most of the music herein to smack of inconsequentiality. The duo tends generate a drone of sorts, often propelled by an amorphously throbbing bass (that, on “a knot in the wind”, reminded me a lot of Pink Floyd’s “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun”) over which Cline rips piercing lines that, even as they merge with the general ambience, sometimes betray a whiff of fusion pyrotechnics. The pieces are pleasant without having much to chew on or think about. There’s a certain debt to Branca but a lack of his ferocity or abandon. The closing track, “only peace” (I suspect the lack of capitals are a label imperative), broods attractively with an in and out respiratory feeling, but offers nothing one hasn’t heard before, and with less bite than one would like to hear at this moment.

Murmer is Patrick McGinley. The list of (altered) sound sources used as base material is intriguing: car seat massager, gas meter, elevator shaft, ringtone, airplane cabin, Turkish football celebrations, etc. Not that many of these are at all recognizable, because they generally aren’t, but the most successful portions of his disc occur when the environmental and/or industrial elements creep in relatively unadapted. McGinley claims inspiration from devices such as rhythms generated by the old gas meter in his basement and, indeed, “Part One” fairly chugs along with a rough and insistent beat augmented by a whistling drone (the massager?) and several other layers of ephemera. The final, longest track, clocking in at 43 minutes, achieves a very nice blend of open, spatial sounds with tense, discomforting needles of noise. Strident telephone tones, stuttering static glitches and metallic whines interact in a manner that will either fascinate or entirely off-put, depending on the listener’s taste and tolerances. While I have no problem with its shriller aspects, I did find myself resenting the occasional burbles of tonal notes, sounding a bit like someone noodling on an old Casio. Gradually, the piece coalesces into a drone that indeed has some of the characteristics of an airline interior, an airy, tubal hum. It’s embroidered with choir-like wafts and faraway urban rumbles but oddly flits in and out of interest, sometimes compelling, other times just…there. “they were dreaming they were stones” certainly has its dreamy facets and about half of its hour plus is quite stimulating. I’m curious to hear where McGinley goes from here.

Although they’re hardly “quiet” in any normal sense, the three prior discs all occupy that section in Ground Fault’s catalog. Prurient doesn’t. Not by a long shot. Dominick Fernow (Prurient) places the first thirteen of the fifteen tracks here in the extreme, pure ‘n’ load noise sector of new music. In some ways, it’s not dissimilar to parts of a show I heard by Julien Ottavi last year except…again, my sense is that there’s too much surface glitz, too little depth; I’m reminded a little bit of the brief, intense pieces by Zorn’s Naked City though, at this point in time, Fernow’s don’t even have that small frisson of excitement going for him. Ottavi’s massive, deafening slabs of noise had a structural/psychological intent, not simply something cool he could do because his equipment and programming enabled him to. There’s a little bit of a “bad boy showing off” thing going on here, something that, its good qualities aside, leaves one shrugging after all’s said and done. The pieces differ from each other only in the tiniest of ways; all are uniformly high volume with at least one layer of sound concentrated in the ultra-high pitched realm, a liquidized scalpel perfect for slicing through innocent eardrums. There’s an affiliated rumble that, in tandem with the knife-piercings, might make for a reasonably efficient nausea producer in some listeners. The 33-minute disc closes, however, with two brief tracks that consist only of a young girl’s voice, speaking quietly, pleadingly, as though relaying a hushed message over voice mail. It’s an effective, oblique way to end. I can’t say it’s a bad recording—as a sonic emetic it might certainly serve to clear out one’s ears a bit. But, like many a free jazz screamfest after 1970 or a guitar rave-up (forever), you get a momentary thrill followed by…not much. But, of course, this is an old fart’s perspective. For an 18-year old just weaning herself from White Stripes, I imagine “shipwrecker’s diary” could be a (positively) life-altering experience. Which may be as it should be.

Masada String Trio - 50th Birthday Celebration

Tzadik 5001

Hard to believe John Zorn has hit the half-century mark. With disheveled locks and a penchant for camouflage britches he still clings fast to a punk pedagogy- one that points directly to the implausibility of “over-the-hill” as possible pigeonhole. Then there’s his pesky personality tic that propels a production quota in no danger of ebbing as the years advance. The big 5-0 was as good a reason as any for Zorn to tilt the looking glass at once backward and then forward on his work of the past decade, and thanks to Tzadik, those who weren’t present at New York's Tonic last summer for the month’s worth of celebratory gigs can still bask in sounds of what went down.

The Masada String Trio performance from September 4, 2003 is first in what will be a year’s worth of monthly releases. Future discs will include sets from the Zorn/Milford Graves duo, Painkiller, and Cobra, among others. Here Zorn conducts while Mark Feldman, Erik Friedlander and Greg Cohen respond and improvise over ten numbers, an hour-plus recital all told. A somber air saturates some of pieces, like the loping “Moshav,” shot through with Feldman’s whorl-shaped violin arcs, but the results are rarely dour. The wry humor underscoring Zorn’s conduction style accentuates the players’ own piebald emotional leanings. It’s a gamut that also informs the Shepardic mold from which the compositions are cast. That the continuum translates so well through Zorn’s pieces reflects both his compositional skills and the emblematic acumen of the players he picks to interpret them.

The music is beautifully recorded and – true to the marketing blurb on the disc’s obi strip -- done so in such a way that it feels like the stage is only feet away. Zorn draws mostly on The Circle Maker songbook, and some from Bar Kohkba. Though there is not much in the way of new material, there’s still plenty of dive-bombing, criss-crossing arco runs mixed with pitter-patter pizzicato to go around. “Tahah” appears perfect in execution, as the strings dance and cavort through its dark theme, while “Lachish” crams a prickly thicket of string cacti into a mere three minutes, leaving the temporal seams punctured with shivering harmonic spines. Cohen is the marathon runner on his bass, setting a febrile pace with his fingers that no doubt left his calluses chaffed and split by set’s conclusion. And Friedlander’s cello sits as fulcrum between his colleagues’ opposing registers, siring populous string plucks in some places, slicing with rosin-chalked bow in others.

The melodies will be familiar to Masada aficionados, but the renderings are still fresh and invigorating. Applause and tune-ups between pieces are included and add to the overall impression of being there. While not an essential entry in isolation, it’s still an auspicious debut for a series that will likely shape up to be a seminal chapter in the Book of Zorn.

MC5 - Ice Pick Slim (Alive)

Far better MC5 albums exist. But this forty-or-so minute slab of propagandistic sonic insurgency still holds a special slot in the band’s discography. The title spins a more aggressive slant on the moniker of ghetto screed orator Iceberg Slim. Under that aegis, grass roots guerilla warfare and hedonistic libertarianism combine in a volatile amalgam. “Motor City is Burning,” pulled from fellow Detroit mainstay John Lee Hooker’s songbook, sparks tinder as the opening anthem. Hook’s original version carried a ballast of fear and the desire to get the hell out of Dodge. The Five’s reading is just the opposite, full of such brio and swagger that it seems they’d just assume stick around to see everything fall apart. Squares and Suits- the mouthpieces of The Man- are the enemies burned in aural effigy. Fidelity on the next two free jam tracks is for shit, though each sprawls over nearly twenty minutes apiece. The tape source for these sounds as if it was recorded covertly from inside some fan’s rusty, reverberating lunchbox. Firing round after round of guitar noise, Brother Wayne Kramer erects a wall of sound alongside fellow fret-splinterer Fred “Sonic” Smith. One that’s eventually toppled by the hollow thrashing drums of Dennis Thompson. “Mad Like Eldridge Cleaver” is even more ragged, with vocalist Rob Tyner turning to twittering flute & John Sinclair (the band’s erstwhile manager & dubious Minister of Information for the White Panther Party) doing a sorry caricature of Coltrane on sax. The improvisation’s core is ultimately nothing more than a wobbly reworking of another Hooker staple, “I’m Bad Like Jesse James.” Even with all the contretemps the Five’s livewire energy spills through and makes this both an entertaining and enlightening artifact.

Trapist - Ballroom

Trapist
Ballroom
Thrill Jockey
141

I suppose there are two ways you can come at this recording. Way #1 is considering it afresh, as though one has never heard of Trapist (or percussionist Martin Brandlmayr, guitarist Martin Siewert or bassist Joe Williamson and their prior work), which is doubtless how it will be for those newly exposed by the greater distribution afforded the band by Thrill Jockey. Way #2, unfortunately for many of us, is hearing “Ballroom” after having thoroughly enjoyed their hatology release, “Highway, My Friend”, not to mention related projects like “Too Beautiful To Burn”.

Certainly the first approach offers its share of rewards. The basic combination of Siewert’s serene and clear strummings and Brandlmayr’s extraordinarily precise and imaginative drum and brushwork creates a unique and seductive sound field. Working within an almost ambient space filled with soft, tingling drones, Siewert plucks out folk-tinged figures that unfurl languidly, often evaporating into a haze of electronics, reemerging later on, like a hiker’s lonesome figure crossing a series of hills. Williamson is entirely unobtrusive. Only when you listen for his slow, cavernous notes do you recognize how much he’s contributing, how he’s holding things together. Brandlmayr, on the other hand, is impossible to ignore and all but impossible not to be awed by. His sound is utterly distinctive, either on his toms-heavy drum set peeling off incredibly clean, always lightly struck rhythms or on his brushes in which area he’s developing entirely new and beautiful attacks. The pieces tend to float outward, expanding like a released gas, contracting into momentarily tight balls. Infectious beats erupt from a cloud and just when you think they’ve overstayed their welcome, evanesce back into smoke. The soundscape is lush and verdant, sometimes to the point of being overly cloying but they seem cognizant of the danger and will wisely retreat into rough abstraction when needed (only to subsequently blossom out into a different catchy area). It’s not difficult at all to imagine a set of innocent ears being opened up to a whole new corner of the musical spectrum and, should those ears pursue further investigations, a valuable service will have been performed.

On the other side, though. Well, as attractive as it is, “Ballroom” ultimately comes across as somewhat shallow. With “Highway, My Friend”, Trapist successfully skated the thin line between adventurousness and accessibility, proposing a fascinating new pathway. This disc is something of a retrenchment, reining in the risk-taking and elaborating (well) on aspects of the music that they might be able to do while sleepwalking. Structurally, it’s a bit soft, almost like long jams that migrate rather haphazardly from one section to the next, sacrificing tension for languor. As alluded to above, some of the sounds, particularly those generated from computers, can get a little bit too sickly sweet, sometimes Siewert’s guitar takes on an uncomfortably Frissellian character. One is tempted to ascribe all this to indie label pressure, to the desire to craft a recording that will be somewhat more amenable to the tastes of youngsters looking beyond Radiohead. All well and good, I suppose, and one obviously wishes musicians as talented as these three much luck, but….

We old avant diehard farts who wanted to hear them pushing forward, taking no prisoners will have to either be satisfied with their various side projects or simply take “Ballroom” at face value: a reasonably enjoyable, pleasant enough experience.

Yes, He Really Did Like Boat Trip

Many have read his words. Nearly as many have shaken their heads in abject despair/horror (especially those who've actually taken his advice). He is Earl Dittman.

Dittman is a critic for Wireless Magazine, and he's often blurbed on movie ads and posters. The problem is, every movie he's quoted praising is a total piece of crap. It's so bad that spotting his name virtually guarantees an evening of agony at the multiplex.

Some have wondered whether Dittman actually exists, or whether he's a made-up critic, with opinions generated by the studio publicity department. Well, it turns out he's real, and the website efilmcritic.com actually tracked him down, and interviewed him.

Enjoy.

Opinion: What Is EAI?

Recent discussions on this site and elsewhere have often seen the term "eai" or "e-ai" bandied around with relatively few attempts on the part of participants to define exactly what it means. As much of the music reviewed here recently seems to fall into what I understand the category to be, I think it might be appropriate to examine the term in some detail, with a view to clarifying the issues and stimulating subsequent discussion.

The three letters of course stand for "Electroacoustic Improvisation", but it seems to me that many albums of recently released improvised music that incorporate electroacoustic elements would not be deemed "eai" by many members of this particular online community. "Improvisation" is already fantastically broad as terms go, but so is "electroacoustic". Perhaps one should distinguish between the use of electronic instruments and the use of real-time electronic transformations of acoustic instruments. Clearly, the presence of a synthesizer in the band does not automatically confer the status of "eai" upon the music: Alan Silva has used the synth in performance for over twenty years, but I imagine we would all agree that his music still falls under the general heading "free jazz", a genre which "eai" evidently aspires to distance itself from. But what of a musician like Gerry Hemingway, who is equally adept at playing "jazz" as he is at free improvisation? Do his two albums with Tom Lehn (on Erstwhile and Umbrella) count as "eai"? (I leave the question open – personally I'm not sure that they do according the definition I'd like to propose, but it's something for us to discuss.) What of Steve Beresford's use of home-made lo-fi electronics (I'm thinking of his duo with John Butcher on the Emanem "Freedom Of The City 2001 Small Groups" album)? Clearly the simple presence of an electronic instrument – analogue or digital – is insufficient reason in my mind to term the resulting music "eai".

Terminology has long been a major preoccupation of mine (and you are cordially invited to read an old essay on the subject with relation to minimal music that I intend to post as the lead article in next month's Paris Transatlantic), for the simple reason that an inadequately formalised vocabulary leads to misunderstandings, bland generalisations and ultimately incoherent analysis and personal feuding. (I should know.) For the record – and I'm content here to ask as many questions as I attempt to answer – here's what I understand by "eai" and, first of all, other related terms.

The recent move in improvised music – electronic and acoustic – towards a greater use of silence and space has been variously described as "reductionist", "onkyo", "minimal" and "lowercase". None of these epithets is particularly satisfactory: "reductionist" was Phil Durrant's preferred term for a while (I don't know if it still is), but Bhob Rainey, in a letter to Signal To Noise, eloquently dissed the use of the term in Pete Gershon's introductory paragraph to an article I wrote for that magazine on Jack Wright a while back (a letter some of you are familiar with).

"Onkyo" seems rather old hat now (though my friend Patrick Boeuf persisted in bringing it up in his brief contribution to the AMPLIFY box set), considering the diverging paths of many Japanese improvising musicians over the past few years – one has only to compare the recent output of Taku Sugimoto and Tetuzi Akiyama. I'm not sure that the term has any value anymore.

"Minimal" is I think misleading as it invites comparison with minimal music of the composed variety (which itself represents a ridiculously broad church: what does the recent music of Philip Glass have in common with that of Phill Niblock?) and with the movement in the visual arts (Donald Judd, Richard Serra, Carl André).

"Lowercase", for which we have Steve Roden to thank, is perhaps my preferred term, though it too is problematic in that it invariably refers to music of very low dynamic level. You can't be noisy and lowercase at the same time. The term is also applied to non-improvised music (bernhard günter being a case in point), which is problematic.

So what about "eai"? First of all, one supposes that purely acoustic improvisation cannot qualify as such, for the simple reason that's there's no "e".. Following this logic, Mark Wastell's work with Sealed Knot would not qualify as "eai" whereas his Foldings (with Akiyama, Nakamura and Sugimoto) would, by dint of the presence of Toshi and his mixing board. Similarly, Wastell's work with Broken Consort would not be "eai" whereas his duos with Mattin ("Vault"), Matt Davis and Graham Halliwell (the latter two both on Absurd) would. But musically, in terms of the kind of sounds created and their nature and disposition in the structure of the music itself, these supposedly "eai" and "non-eai" outings are extremely close. To take another example, Nikos Veliotis' work in Texturizer is presumably "eai" because there's Coti K on electronics, but his solo cello album on Confront presumably isn't – yet, again, the same musical logic is at work in both.

It's also clear to me that using an electronic instrument doesn't automatically mean you're producing "eai" – look at Hans Tammen's Endangered Guitar on NurNichtNur: electrified to the hilt, but fast-moving, noisy and chattery. Tammen's music clearly reveals its origins in the metal and Sonny Sharrock he grew up with. Too close to free jazz (though for my money it's already far enough away to be considered as something else – I seriously doubt bona fide free jazz labels like Eremite, AUM, Cadence, Boxholder and Drimala would agree to release Endangered Guitar). And yet its musical surface is not that dissimilar to Lehn and Schmickler's Bart on Erstwhile – surely "eai" in most people's understanding of the term!

A lot of what is termed "eai" seems to originate from the AMM aesthetic (I discussed this in the rambling introduction to my AMPLIFY piece and am not going to go back to it here), in its predelection for what Phil Durrant (again) calls the "laminal". By which I understand a music consisting of generally slowmoving strata of activity, and one that deliberately blurs the distinction between foreground and background – there ain't no "solos" in "eai"! There's evidently much common ground between this and so-called "lowercase" improv, but whereas the latter tends to work in a restricted and discreet dynamic range, "eai" can in principle be extremely loud and still retain its laminality (if that word exists.. if it doesn't it does now). The recent duo outing by Pop – Peter Rehberg and Zbigniew Karkowski – is louder'n hell but it certainly satisfies the conditions outlined above.

Another question worth examining is whether "eai" can incorporate some kind of regular pulse element (thanks to Wayne Spencer for reminding me of Eddie Prévost's phrase "the imperialist backbeat"). Günter Müller and Otomo flirt with this in their AMPLIFY set, and as we all know Toshi Nakamura's solo NIMB albums – especially the earlier ones – frequently play with rhythmic regularity. Percussionist Martin Brandlmayr's quartet outing with Siewert, Dafeldecker and Nemeth on Grob is presumably "eai", but his excellent duo with Nicholas Bussmann, Kapital Band 1, which is funky as hell, probably won't pass as such.

Here are some other albums to discuss: John Butcher's solo on Fringes; his two duo albums with Phil Durrant on Wobbly Rail and Erstwhile; the Lehn / Durrant / Malfatti trios on Fringes ("Beinhaltung") and Erstwhile ("dach"); the Fenn O'Berg trio, Quintet Avant and Kevin Drumm releases on Mego? "Eai" or "ea-nay?" What do you think?

The above observations are, as I say, intended more to stimulate discussion than to set in stone a rigid terminology. One of the wonderful things about the music we all love on this site is precisely that fact that it's ever moving forward, defining its own genres and sub-genres, making and breaking its rules. I'm told that more and more musicians are checking out the discussion here – let them also participate and make their voice heard. I await everyone's comments on the above with great interest.

~Dan Warburton

Is That All There Is?

Al’s already touched a bit on ‘unreleased’ recordings in recent threads (Ethics and Creative Archiving), but I’ve been pondering them from a slightly different angle. Sure it’s convenient and over-worked imagery, but the old ‘tip of the iceberg’ analogy still seems apropos. It’s also handy given the current sub-artic temperatures in this Twin Cities icebox I call home.

The impressive discography of William Parker compiled by Rick Lopez is a great example. I stopped by The Whole Shebang the other day & found that the bassist’s section of the site has been expanded into a gig-ography. Saved as a Word web page document with images and annotations intact the damn thing takes up 335-odd pages in ten point Times font. The vast majority of this material will never see commercial release (and perhaps rightfully so). Most of it will only be heard by a comparative handful of avid tape traders and those who orbit closely in Parker’s circles. What I’m wondering how this reality might compromise representative statements about his music. Granted there’s a certain consistency to his playing from gig to gig, but the sheer number of ‘unheard’ contexts seems to short circuit the validity of any sort of blanket statement regarding his output (even so it’s something people are doing all the time- either positively or negatively). Is there enough William Parker in the bins? Certain listeners familiar with the man’s work would probably answer with a resounding ‘yes.’

Bill Dixon is probably a better example. Ben Young’s Dixonia logs a library of sessions that currently sit on storage shelves. Dixon’s discography is pretty modest and more than a few critics have used it to dismiss or diminish his talents. There’s a similar situation with Sam Rivers. Lopez’s site documents a cache of private tapes numbering well into the triple digits. Stack this against his commercially released output as a leader which hovers somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 titles. Are these the definitive cream of Rivers’ crop? Does anyone else find this troubling?

I suppose it’s nothing new. Coltrane’s live performances from 1960-61 were supposedly a different bag than his work on albums of the same time frame (I’m thinking of Bill Cole’s analysis and the evidence on such sets as Live at the Village Vanguard 1961 and Pablo’s Live Trane). The same discrepancy might not hold for someone like Parker whose ratio of released recordings to private ones is about 1:2. It seems more likely for someone like Dixon or Rivers. Could the same be said for ‘eai’ folks like Keith Rowe and Gunter Müller? Is there similar bootleg network afoot for their work? Anyway, just a slowly melting sno-cone for thought.

Reuben Pizza, Country Gentlemen, and else

An experienced, knowledgeable Reuben sammich eater, I'm thinking these perfect meals framed by rye need some sort of variation. If you end up baking one of these babies I require royalties:

• Preheat oven to 375°


• Unwrap and slightly warm (1) Boboli® (large)


• Coat with Thousand Island (or Russian, or your base of choice) dressing


• Lay down some lean, thinly-sliced corned beef (or pastrami, jeez don't be so picky)


• Grab a baseball-sized wad of sauerkraut and squeeze out most of the juice, lay atop meat


• Top with SLICED (grating is for the compulsive) swiss cheese


• Bake for 10 minutes


• Voila.

Who cares? A hierarchy of great guitarists -- one can't help to immerse himself in the greats when he finds hisself with the Country Gentleman he's always wanted -- is subjective, but what the hell:

-Wes Montgomery
-Tal Farlow
-Richard Lloyd
-Kenny Burrell
-Dave Gilmour
-Ted Dunbar
-Joe Morris

An upcoming feature addressing the genius of Wes Montgomery is in the infant works. And while we're on the topic, here's some others, some in the can, some gestating:

Warburton on EAI
Moné (who's he?) on the Oscars
Milazzo and the Once Festival
Taylor on Britn American Free Jazz
Nirav on some film thing

and so it goes.

Charlotte Hug/Chantale Laplante - Brilliant Days

Charlotte Hug/Chantale Laplante
Brilliant Days
For 4 Ears
1446

I first heard violist Hug on her solo effort for Emanem last year, "Neuland", a disc I found largely uninspired. There was, for my taste, far too much trying (especially insofar as insistence on rather showoff-y extended technique) and far too little actual meat. I’d never heard Laplante before so I don’t know if she regularly works this kind of magical transformation or if Hug has simply sidled into a more conducive territory but, whatever the case, “Brilliant Days” is a very successful, very rich offering. Consisting of five pieces recorded on two occasions in 2002 and 2003, the duo creates a spacious, somewhat wild and goofy world that’s almost always convincing. Much of the goofiness is supplied by Laplante’s laptop on which she tends toward sounds that are reminiscent of the early analog age of computer music, with loopy, ringing tones, sonar-like blips and all manner of thwangs and swizzles. There’s an expansiveness in her work, a willingness to toss out the most unlikely, outré sounds that nonetheless cradle and accent Hug’s more acerbic and severe stylings. Hug, for her part, appears to be a fine collaborator, always tying in even her most exotic explorations to the existing soundscape. She has a nice penchant for working the lower registers of her viola, often entering cello vicinity. In fact, some of her playing (especially on the third, longest track, “Ciel”) reminded me a bit of Penderecki’s writing in his “Cello Concerto”, a similar combination of avant-garde wrangling and strong romantic spirit. Of the five improvisations, only “Zone of Zest” fails to connect. The remainder are all equally bracing, each unfurling from a slightly different point of attack. Not a groundbreaking recording by any means, but “Brilliant Days” is solid, in your face and, more often than not, just plain fun which is more than you get with many a release these days. Check it out.

Denman Maroney - Fluxations

Denman Maroney
FLUXATIONS
New World 80607-2

Denman Maroney is perhaps best known to readers as a virtuoso improvisor (on "hyperpiano" – that's prepared piano to all intents and purposes), but Fluxations reveals his considerable skills as a composer. It's a six-part suite based on what Earl Howard calls "pulse fields", i.e. complex cycles of overlapping polyrhythms, and perhaps the most rigorous instance to date of improvised music turning its attention to compositional techniques that have existed in more academic circles since the middle of last century (Bill Shoemaker is right to cite Ives and Nancarrow in his extensive and informative liners, but the list of precursors should also include Elliot Carter and György Ligeti). Recruiting a first-class band including bassist Mark Dresser, percussionist Kevin Norton (who both have in-depth experience of notational intricacy through their work with Anthony Braxton), clarinettist / saxophonist Ned Rothenberg and trumpeter Dave Ballou, Maroney certainly has the men for the job, and his scores, though obviously detailed and notated to a high degree of precision, leave room for the occasional juicy solo (Ballou's the guy to watch here). One slight reservation I have about such a line-up is that it inevitably – perhaps deliberately?– resembles the traditional jazz quintet, meaning that Dresser and Norton are often heard more as a rhythm section (i.e. accompaniment) than as rhythmic elements of equal importance. The other quibble is more strictly compositional; in concentrating his attention on the pulse field, Maroney intentionally focuses the listener's attention on the horizontal rather than the vertical, the melodic rather than the harmonic. The lack of strong harmonic identity in most of the music reinforces the rather dry nature of the polyphony. Braxton, whose own GTM music is not too far removed from Maroney's in its concept of pulse, gets round this problem by building spaces into his compositions that allow for abrupt changes of direction, unfettered free playing, and even the incorporation of other Braxton pieces. One wishes that some of these fine players would just let rip once in a while – it'd make the return to the pulse field even more riveting.

~Dan Warburton

I.S.O. - I.S.O.

Sound Tectonics
ST 1038

The very first sound one hears on this recording is the ambient air in the garden where it was recorded, the breeze through the single microphone used to capture this event. There’s a large dog barking at some remove (its distance, in fact, lending a wonderful spatiality to the recording). Sounds produced by the members of I.S.O. (Otomo Yoshihide apparently sticking largely to guitar, Sachiko M. with her sine waves and contact mic crinklings, and Yoshimitzu Icharaku on, it appears, stroked and bowed percussion) leech into the air, nestling themselves comfortably into their surroundings. Throughout the 40-minute performance, the human-produced sounds flutter in and out of prominence, ceding the Sesshu-tei garden and the occasional motor engine outside it (as well as the dog) equal presence. So much lip service is given to ambient sound, to the importance of the “room” (indoor or outdoor) and indeed one can often experience the interaction at a live performance. Yet almost always, that aspect is erased in recordings where pristine sound is the rule. It’s something of a rare pleasure to hear a trio such as this immersed in one part of the real world, one where a passing duck is free to make its presence known. The music produced is of a softer and more contemplative nature than their very fine previous recording (both, as near as one can tell, are simply titled “I.S.O.”), consisting of many muffled gong-like sounds, unstrident sine tones and Otomo’s delicately plucked guitar. During the last several minutes, Otomo plays a slow, two note figure, gently seesawing back and forth, not precise at all, something like a gate blown in the wind. It’s a lovely and surprising melodic reference, though not very far removed from the kind of atmosphere he’s created in soundtrack recordings like “Blue”.

I found this to be a mesmerizing performance, very similar in general effect to a handful of other “environmental” concerts I’ve seen over the last several years, notably Greg Kelley, Sean Meehan and Zack Wallace playing underneath the FDR Drive, where vehicles passing overhead all but masked their sounds. Would I prefer that every free improv recording be as embedded in the ambience as this? My immediate answer is, no, of course not. But, then again, I’m not sure why not.

The Complete Blind Willie Johnson (Columbia Legacy)

While the rapture lasts, these 2 CDs and more than 90 minutes comprising just about everything this great itinerant, indigent Black Moses of the American South ever recorded can seem pretty paltry, stone tablets reduced to a fine dust in which preternatural mineral fires have been banked for all time. If I ride through the new night lights of Deep Ellum, and if I can dodge the men in fluorescent yellow and orange slickers, the majority of them recent African immigrants, who step out into traffic and try to wave in your car-parking dollars, the emo-core kids stumbling out of body art emporiums, the greasy coke and Ecstasy pushers, it blows my mind to think that, a short 80 years ago, Blind Willie was prophesying with his bull-roaring but oddly plangent voice and slide guitar (according to Samuel Charters, probably a pocket knife... a telling detail) against the dumb walls and segregated streets of the city I call home.

It's easy, perhaps even comforting, to listen to Johnson's recordings today and hear the nothing but the "blues" in their harsh syncopations and distortions of pitch and harmonic rudiments, but it is important to remember that these songs, recorded right on the cusp of the Reckoning that was the Great Depression, set those old microphones as to vibrating with holy, if not liturgical, currents. For every down-low, introspective ("Dark Was The Ground -- Cold Was The Night") and confessional ("It's Nobody's Fault But Mine") piece, there are three performances that construct an at-times forbiddingly private eschatology: the chilling reflection on plague, "Jesus Is Coming Soon"; "If I Had My Way I'd Tear The Building Down", a re-telling of the story of Samson and Delilah; "God Moves On The Water". As his faith told him it would, the world Johnson traversed has perished, and the paths he followed have faded utterly, even if his footsteps continue to echo. I'm confident he and his peers would be shocked and awed at the transformations their art has wrought upon both the musical and social infrastructure of today's America. "Trouble soon be over, sorrow will have an end..." Dallas has laid down new "green belts", lined by monumental bronze heifers and ropers smoking thin brown cigarettes, to commemorate where cattle trains may have passed through downtown's banking districts; meanwhile, scholars fear they will never be able to determine exactly in which Dallas building Robert Johnson recorded his great mid-1930's testaments. You can now pay the State a $40 dollar fee for a license plate celebrating Texas music and bearing the likeness, the only known likeness, of Blind Lemon Jefferson. My great Aunt Grace, one of the most soulful singers I've ever heard -- we never had to switch the radio on in her old Impala on those June days when she brought my brothers and sister and I from Omaha to Mt. Pleasant and back again -- has been gone for 10 years, taking with her a way of life my family can never reclaim, no matter how badly a connection to its customs and rhythms are needed (and, these days, they are). Contemporary Christian music has become multi-billion dollar a year entertainment enterprises, messages of love and salvation wrapped in every conceivable stylistic variation -- rare rhythm and blues, well-done country and western, tartare alternative rock -- so as to be palatable to all of God's hungry children. But I fear the world is too much with them all, Lord. The triumph of Johnson's gospel blues is not in their earth-bound poignancy, in how they seem to offer commiseration and strange kindnesses irrespective of what particular failings stain our own souls. Rather, these recordings endure insomuch as they portray a humble man who nonetheless did earn a glimpse of the Great Reward, and not the little bit of broken heaven that floats at the bottom of a bottle, clings to the curves of the female form, tumbles forth in the wake of a roll of dice, or gushes out of wounds inflicted in a thrust of retribution, however righteous. There is moral rectitude, in Johnson's music, but, thank God, there is no abundance of simple goodness.

Absinth's Berlin Series

The love that goes into producing music should always be so apparent. Putting aside all that comes from assembly line production techniques, Absinth Records has emerged as a label with a different kind of ideal. Like so many big city communities, Berlin has its own burgeoning, distinctively voiced music community with a fair share of support in its resident lovers of sound. Marcus Liebig saw Absinth as an opportunity to document cross-sections of his city’s scene, and is doing so in a deceptively simple, perhaps even cost-effective way. Packaged in unique, hand-crafted booklets, each of Absinth’s volumes consist of four 3” CD-r’s, a brief amount of supplemental discographic information, and various photos of the featured artists.

Berlin Reeds, is the first in a series of recordings that serve as snapshots of selected artists and their current trajectories on new lines of improv. Pulled from studio tapes, DATs, and sound boards from live performances, Reeds shows a significant amount of range in the four musicians featured. The four discs, all close to twenty minutes in duration, exhibit excellent production for music that isn’t necessarily easy to translate.

Perhaps by design, Reeds and Berlin Strings both begin with challenging sets of music. Alessandro Bossetti’s “Unplayed Saxophone” is a wild walk through feedbacks and playbacks: soprano saxophone prior recorded and manipulated real-time in a second run through the use of separate recorders and the apparent use of pitch attenuators. Bossetti’s disc is one of the more boisterous sets offered, where the four pieces offered by Andrea Neumann on inside piano and mixing desk, while more subdued, are demanding of attention for all of their static crackles and jarring transitions. The sounds are foreign enough, but Neumann characteristically leaves the sense that her gear has been around forever and you’ve just been away a little too long.

Further lifting the Reeds set, Kai Fagaschinski’s solo clarinet takes are two tracks that focus on extended techniques within composition and Fagaschinski’s talent for some seriously surreal soundscaping. “I’m Afraid of Americans Too” hits early on with what might be called aural illusions: brief sets of multiphonics you’d swear were overdubs, given the extreme dynamic range. Gregor Hotz’s “Friendly Fire” is the least approachable of the bunch, though by no means throw-away. The Hotz disc consists of twenty minutes of techniques for bass saxophone, yet it is hardly comprehensive. Using circular breathing and only one or two modes of attack, the piece is far more meditative than it is actively engaging, but there is a treat in hearing how different speeds of blown air affect the super-deep register of the bass sax. And one of the most interesting and truly identifiable instrumentalists at present, Rudi Mahall closes the set with some tame bass clarinet work that seems to be searching for its place in the whole affair, but polishes up nicely and significantly raises the bar for the Reeds series by disc’s end.

If Berlin Reeds is cohesive for the range it presents, then Berlin Strings is held together by its serene atmosphere, save for a few rowdy moments on Neumann’s disc. Michael Renkel is one of the younger improvisers here, yet his guitar is beyond its years if “Trans Oronez” is acceptably representative of his work. Also playing zither, Renkel’s disc is incredibly charming, if not with a little subtle neurosis. Olaf Rupp follows on guitar, channeling Latin progressions without actually nailing a one, arpeggio or otherwise. Finally, the guitarist Serge Baghadassarians’ disc has those minimalist tendencies that feel like an aural negative of sound. Using tones from his mixing desk and a guitar of the table type, the Baghadassarians track seems the most improvisational of all that is offered, even in austerity. He’s certainly someone to listen for.

Reeds and Strings are a sharp beginning for one of the latest tiny labels hosting electro-acoustic music and the new improv. Each little disc sits cutely, cozily within its unique artwork, and I admittedly feel like I have to have the whole package nearby when I sit down with the music. It’s completism of another sort. But there’s only so much energy one can put into hand-stamping, painting and threading each set, so these are limited editions of 200 copies. Rumor has it that a third helping of “Berlin” music will be released in Spring, Berlin Drums, and then a series from another European hub, London Strings, all four-3” sets. Even by then, the resonance from Berlin’s first couple of salvos should still be hanging in the air.

~Alan Jones

breaking the wallet

My inbox today had some information on some sick sales going right now. Saving money for that new amplifier just seems pointless, long as this type of stuff keeps coming my way.

The first comes from Absinth Records, where the label is offering a nice deal on its first release, Berlin Reeds. Available through February. Click here, and then on "Special Offers" for more info.

Second, Verge Music is offering all mid-priced Hat (Art, Noir, Ology, Now) cd's at $13.00 Canadian (!). Read further to view the list.

Hat Hut Mid-Price List, available through Verge Music

These are available now at mid-price. While they remain in print they can be backordered at this price.

ART101 Haubenstock-Ramati, Roman Graphic Music ($13.00 CD)
ART102 Feldman, Morton Neither ($13.00 CD)
ART104 Schleiermacher, Steffen Soviet Avant-Garde 1 ($13.00 CD)
ART105 Harrison, Lou & Maelstrom Percussion Ensemble Labrynth ($13.00 CD)
ART106 Blum, Eberhard Japan Flute 1997 ($13.00 CD)
ART107 Xasax Ars Subtilior: Saxophone ($13.00 CD)
ART108 Braxton, Anthony Compositions No. 10 & No. 16 (+101) ($13.00 CD)
ART109 Stiebler, Ernstalbrecht ...Im Klang... ($13.00 CD)
ART110 Jo Kondo Chamber Music ($13.00 CD)
ART111 Tenney, James The Solo Works for Percussion ($13.00 CD)
ART112 Polwechsel Polwechsel ($13.00 CD)
ART113 Kasemets, Udo Pythagoras Tree: Works For Piano ($13.00 CD)
ART114 Haubenstock-Ramati, Roman Concert A Tre ($13.00 CD)
ART115 Schleiermacher, Steffen Soviet Avant-Garde 2 ($13.00 CD)
ART116 Feldman, Morton Atlantis ($13.00 CD)
ART117 Scelsi, Giacinto Kya ($13.00 CD)
ART118 Haubenstock-Ramati, Roman Mobile For Shakespeare ($13.00 CD)
ART119 Polwechsel Polwechsel 2 ($13.00 CD)
ART120 Tenney, James Music for Violin and Piano ($13.00 CD)
ART121 Schleiermacher, Steffen Enfants Terribles ($13.00 CD)
ART122 Cardew, Cornelius Treatise ($23.00 2CD)
ART123 Clementi, Aldo Madrigale ($13.00 CD)
ART124 Feldman, Morton For John Cage ($13.00 CD)
ART125 Schoenberg, Arnold Works For Piano and Two Hands ($13.00 CD)
ART126 Barlow, Clarence Musica Derivata ($13.00 CD)
ART127 Tenney, James Forms 1-4 (1993) for Ensemble ($23.00 2CD)
ART128 Feldman, Morton & Ives Ensemble Piano and String Quartet ($13.00 CD)
ART129 Hauser, Fritz Solo Drumming ($13.00 CD)
ART130 Kaul, Matthias Solo Percussion ($13.00 CD)
ART131 Anzellotti, Teodoro Accordion: Push Pull ($13.00 CD)
ART132 Ablinger, Peter Grisailles (1-100) ($13.00 CD)
ART133 Cage, John & David Tudor Music of Changes ($13.00 CD)
ART134 Gregorio, Guillermo Degrees of Iconicity ($13.00 CD)
ART135 Kondo, Jo Works for Piano ($13.00 CD)
ART136 Ensemble Accanto & Xasax Counterpoise ($13.00 CD)
NOIR802 Sugimoto, Taku Opposite ($13.00 CD)
NOIR803 MazzaCane Connors, Loren & Jim O’Rourke In Bern ($13.00 CD)
OGY506 Shipp Duo, Matthew Thesis ($13.00 CD)
OGY507 Melford, Myra & Han Bennink Eleven Ghosts ($13.00 CD)
OGY508 Giuffre, Jimmy & Andre Jaume Momentum, Willisau 1988 ($13.00 CD)
OGY510 Beins, Burkhard, Martin Pfleiderer & Peter Niklas Wilson Yarbles
($13.00 CD)
OGY513 Zingaro, Carlos & Peggy Lee Western Front, Vancouver 1996 ($13.00 CD)
OGY515 Grossman Trio, Richard Even Your Ears ($13.00 CD)
OGY516 Shipp Trio, Matthew The Multiplication Table ($13.00 CD)
OGY517 Bang, Billy Bangception: Willisau 1982 ($13.00 CD)
OGY518 Konitz, Lee & Martial Solal Star Eyes, Hamburg 1983 ($13.00 CD)
OGY519 Newton, Lauren Filigree ($13.00 CD)
OGY520 Konrad, Bernd & Hans Koller Unit Phonolith ($13.00 CD)
OGY522 Shipp Horn Quartet, Matthew Strata ($13.00 CD)
OGY524 Mehta, Rajeesh & Paul Lovens Orka: Solos & Duos ($13.00 CD)
OGY525 Maneri Quartet, Joe Tenderly ($13.00 CD)
OGY526 Gregorio, Gustafsson & Nordeson Background Music ($13.00 CD)
OGY527 Blake, Ran Something to Live For ($13.00 CD)
OGY529 Maneri Trio, Mat So What? ($13.00 CD)
OGY530 Shipp Duo, Matthew Gravitational Systems ($13.00 CD)
OGY531 Gregorio Trio, Guillermo Red Cube(d) ($13.00 CD)
OGY534 Eskelin, Ellery & Han Bennink Dissonant Characters ($13.00 CD)
OGY535 Mengelberg, Misha Two Days in Chicago ($23.00 2CD)
OGY536 Lacy Seven, Steve Cliches ($13.00 CD)
OGY537 Lloyd, Jon Four and Five ($13.00 CD)
OGY538 Johansson, Sven-Ake Six Little Pieces For Quintet ($13.00 CD)
OGY539 Jorgensmann Quartet, Theo Snijbloemen ($13.00 CD)
OGY540 Tapscott, Horace The Dark Tree 1 & 2 ($23.00 2CD)
OGY541 Grossman Trio, Richard Where the Sky Ended ($13.00 CD)
OGY542 Douglas Tiny Bell Trio, Dave Constellations ($13.00 CD)
OGY543 Koglmann, Franz & Lee Konitz We Thought About Duke ($13.00 CD)
OGY544 McPhee, Joe Tenor & Fallen Angels ($13.00 CD)
OGY545 Braxton, Anthony Quintet (Basel) 1977 ($13.00 CD)
OGY546 Lacy, Steve Clinkers ($13.00 CD)
OGY547 Konitz, Lee, Don Friedman & Attilla Zoller Thingin ($13.00 CD)
OGY548 Nabatov Trio, Simon Sneak Preview ($13.00 CD)
OGY549 Shipp Trio, Matthew Prism ($13.00 CD)
OGY550 Blake, Ran Horace is Blue —A Silver Noir ($13.00 CD)
OGY551 Eskelin, Ellery Ramifications ($13.00 CD)
OGY552 Eskelin, Ellery The Secret Museum ($13.00 CD)
OGY554 Clusone 3 An Hour With... ($13.00 CD)
OGY555 Ortega, Anthony Scattered Clouds ($13.00 CD)
OGY556 Lacy Four, Steve Morning Joy ($13.00 CD)
OGY557 Braxton, Anthony Quartet (Dortmund) 1976 ($13.00 CD)
OGY558 Shipp, Matthew Expansion Power Releases ($13.00 CD)
OGY559 Johansson, Sven-Ake, Axel Dorner & Andrea Neumann Barcelona
Series ($13.00 CD)
OGY560 Vienna Art Orchestra The Minimalism of Erik Satie ($13.00 CD)
OGY561 Maneri, Joe, Mat Maneri & Joe Morris Out Right Now ($13.00 CD)
OGY562 Taylor Unit, Cecil It is in The Brewing Luminous ($13.00 CD)
OGY563 Wallin, Per Henrik Proklamation I & Farewell to Sweden ($13.00 CD)
OGY564 Bley, Paul, Franz Koglmann & Gary Peacock Annette ($13.00 CD)

Burkhard Beins/Dirk Marwedel/Michael Vorfeld - Misiiki

Burkhard Beins/Dirk Marwedel/Michael Vorfeld
Misiiki
Rossbin RS013

Though more or less known as percussionists, both Burkhard Beins and Michael Vorfeld generally append “string instruments” to their credits and tend to use string-like technique on instruments normally tapped and hit. So when they include a saxophonist as part of the mix, it’s not surprising to hear all three involved in tones of long duration, ranging from drones to screeches though when “traditionally” percussive sounds emerge, I’m guessing that it’s more often Vorfeld who’s responsible. Dirk Marwedel is listed as playing “extended saxophone”, although whether that has any bearing on the actual physical make-up of his instrument or simply describes his own approach is tough for me to say. Perhaps it’s his presence, especially when engaging in spittle-driven or game call-sounding techniques, but much of this music sounds oddly retrograde, as though from an especially perceptive Zorn-choreographed session in the early 80s. Certainly, there’s a good bit less sublimation of the individual than one normally hears in this type of project, much more of a live free (if fairly quiet) jam.

There are eight pieces presented, often somewhat short by normal improv standards and, while the approaches vary a scintilla here and there, nothing really stands out as sharply conceived or carefully considered. Beins, who has been a participant in several beautiful recordings over the last several years, indeed generates some sounds that are remarkable and fascinating in and of themselves and, on occasion, especially when Marwedel trawls the lower ranges of his ax, things suddenly gel, briefly achieving a stirringly realized focus before moving on. But that thrown-together quality lingers, a 21st century version of a late night jam where, just as everyone could be counted on knowing “Perdido”, each musician knows “what to do” in a free improv setting. As with many of those sessions, I’m not sure this is the recipe for inspired playing. Given this, the trio manage to generate a certain kind of energy, one found more often in a free jazz context than an purely free improv one, on pieces like “Schist”, where the rumbling percussion seizes the guttural sax playing and hurls it skyward. Maybe if one listens to the disc from that mindset, imagining it as a lost Parker/Lovens/Lytton experiment, the rewards would be more forthcoming. But expecting something roughly along similar, wonderful lines as explored by Beins on “Grain” (with Keith Rowe) or “Lidingo” (with Andrea Neumann), one remains a wee bit unsatisfied.

Denying The Existence Of "Now"

Since the late 1950s, pop and rock producers have embraced technological advances virtually the minute they were available—indeed, some of them invented new recording methods along their way to the ideal sound. Overdubbing and editing became routine tools of the trade early on, and have never been abandoned. During the subsequent decades, though, the increased profile of rock criticism fueled a new self-consciousness among rock bands, which in turn spawned an ever-increasing dependence on technology—for awhile.

The pop music industry was unused to being the subject of serious pseudo-academic scrutiny as occurred in the pages of Rolling Stone, Creem, Crawdaddy and other journals. Flattered, many of the artists began to take themselves as seriously as the critics took them. This isn’t to suggest that bands in the late 1960s and early 1970s were in thrall to rock critics, or took their career guidance from them. (That wouldn’t happen until a few years later, when Jon Landau and Dave Marsh began the process of constructing Bruce Springsteen.) But as rock music expanded its sonic palette, critics embraced their efforts, placing albums like Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Pet Sounds into the pantheon they were assembling.

The honeymoon didn’t last long. In the 1970s, with the rise of the progressive rock movement and wildly popular arena-rock acts like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, not to mention chart-topping bands like Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles, many critics began to turn against the very aesthetic concepts they’d espoused only a few years earlier. The prevailing line became that rock had grown soulless and bloated, that the music had lost touch with its populist roots. This conclusion was based more in critical solipsism than in accurate observation of the rock scene, since the very bands decried as elitist were the most popular. Still, it dovetailed with the rise of a small but highly publicized technological backlash, in the form of punk rock.

Punk bands took pride in sonic, lyrical and sartorial rawness, and began traveling backward, abandoning gadgetry as they went, in search of some romanticized, mythical “realness” supposedly missing from the more polished records being made by bigger acts. Most punk records were still made using overdubs and editing, of course (the guitars on Never Mind The Bollocks are practically Spectorian), but they didn’t use them as much as, say, the Eagles or Electric Light Orchestra.

The idea that a record should accurately document a musical performance seems rooted in a psychological need for honesty, and a corresponding suspicion of trickery on the part of pop performers. Of course, there was the common belief among jazz musicians that pop was a lesser form, something beneath them, but that was combined with a disdain for the “impure” method of recording with overdubs.

The jazz attitude is that performances laid live to tape are evidence that the musicians in question can play a song beautifully every time, and make it new and interesting every time, too. This is, of course, a myth; many jazz boxed sets are littered with flubbed takes and false starts. (Charlie Parker has an entire mini-discography of nothing but this sort of stuff.)

The flip side of this belief is the idea that jazz musicians who assemble their tracks from the best fragments after multiple incomplete takes, or—worse yet—the recording of individual instruments separately of one another, are somehow cheating. As if the process of making albums has an ethical dimension.

This idea holds no real sway in pop. Pop music is about the eternal Now. A record is not perceived as having any existence outside of itself. There is no larger context, only the gleaming moment. This is why pop’s ideal medium of transmission is the single. Even with singles making up a smaller and smaller chunk of overall record sales, they are, because of radio and MTV, still the way people hear pop music. Albums by pop artists are rarely, if ever, solid, coherent efforts from beginning to end. In the majority of cases, they feature three or four singles (or single-quality tracks), and six or eight clearly substandard, place holder songs padding out the CD to a releasable length.

Compilations are a far safer bet. The K-Tel company famously realized this in the 1970s, and the British have seemingly always known it. A series of pop compilations called Now That’s What I Call Music has, within the last few years, made a sizable impression on the US pop charts. Each volume collates the biggest pop singles of the months leading up to its release. To date, less than 20 American volumes have been released. In the UK, by contrast, the series is near 60 volumes deep.

In both US and UK, the series’ cover art reflects the pop worldview described above. The word “Now” is printed four or five times larger than the rest of the title put together, equaled in size only by the volume number. Thus the series asserts itself as a sequence of moments, a parade of nows: Now 1, Now 2, Now 50, etc. But even as it’s superceded by the next volume, each Now lingers, preserved in digital amber, an “eternal Now.” And if one had the whole series, and an MP3 player, simply pressing “shuffle” would amount to the creation of a time machine, rocketing the listener back and forth from the “now” that was five, or ten, years ago forward to the “now” of now, the compilation perhaps purchased that very week.

(Of course, the singles compiled on the Now discs are several months old by the time the CD hits stores—so even when the cover explicitly states it’s the sound of “now,” the listener is still playing catch-up. Or archiving. In pop, we are all librarians, whether we’re preserving yesterday or 1965.)

For even as pop is apparently about moments, each replacing the one before into the vastness of time, the pop audience reacts in a seemingly oppositional way. People buy singles and, years after their initial release, haul them out and play them, in fits of nostalgia for the time in their life when that song was new. Sometimes the point isn’t to conjure up a particular memory (a first kiss, a wedding, senior year of college), but to attempt the reclamation of the mindset—usually an imagined innocence—of a younger self.

Jazz does not hold the same sway over our memories. Something in it distances itself from the emotional territory pop stakes out in the mind. This is partly because of the relationship jazz has built up with its audience over the decades, in the post-rock ‘n’ roll era. With the rise of rock ‘n’ roll as the most popular music in America, jazz’s audience diminished. At the same time, jazz changed; it became less danceable, less a physical pleasure than an intellectual one. In this way, jazz separated itself from the pressures of existing in the Now. And yet, the tradition of one-take, real-time recording lingers.

Miles Davis’s albums from the late 1960s through the mid-1970s seemed to explicitly deny the existence of any “now,” at least as far as the recording process was concerned. He argued, through his work, that studio albums had no obligation to replicate real events—that they could be elaborate constructs, faithful only to their own internal logic. It was like the difference between landscape painting, or portraiture, and Abstract Expressionism. Miles felt no need to offer raw, or even slightly polished, reality. Why, when better, more vivid options were available?

This makes some of Miles’s reissue box sets, The Complete In A Silent Way Sessions and The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions in particular, problematic. Jazz boxes are traditionally organized in chronological fashion, with takes of a tune following one another—the master take usually comes first, followed by various alternate versions and, in some cases, fragments and false starts. Thus, it’s possible to assemble slightly different versions of albums, if the listener prefers, say, Take 11 of a piece to the Take 10 that might have been initially released.

Because of Miles and Teo’s working methods, though, this is impossible. There are no complete takes of “Pharaoh’s Dance” or “Bitches Brew.” Instead, there are tapes containing hours of loose, unstructured jams. From these, Macero culled illuminating fragments and spliced them together into suites of sound. Thus, the released version of Bitches Brew is simultaneously the only version and a false one. Davis and Macero have created a fictional Now, and declared it to be the only one.

Miles and Teo utterly abandoned the idea of “honesty” in recorded music. They chose to assert that the record was the record, a work unto itself, and if a listener felt like hearing interactive performances by a group of musicians, well, that’s what concerts were for.

It seems obvious that Miles’s studio albums between 1969 and 1972 were experiments. Some tracks were much more heavily edited than others, as the assembled musicians found their way into this new soundworld. The studio recordings on Live-Evil, for example, were released virtually without post-production fiddling. On the other hand, A Tribute To Jack Johnson was almost as heavily edited as the first disc of Bitches Brew.

At the same time, Miles was recording live albums, some of which were nearly as chopped-up as the studio records. Miles Davis At Fillmore was recorded over the course of four days in June 1970. Davis and Macero decided to devote one side of the double album to each of the four nights. In so doing, the producer made the choice to take highlights from the night’s sets, rather than whole tunes. So while some pieces were allowed to run nearly their full course, and one or two came close to the 10-minute mark, others were reduced to 90 second introductory phrases or vamps. And no effort was made to make the transitions smooth, subtle, or even particularly pleasing to the ear. Some seem to switch with simple tape-slice.

The live tracks on Live-Evil were also manipulated after the fact. A melodic fragment from the studio recording “Honky Tonk” is incorporated into the album’s opening medley, “Sivad,” and the double disc’s final track, “Inamorata,” is drowned out at the end by a wash of strings from some long-lost soundtrack album Teo pulled from the Columbia vaults, and a poem by Conrad Roberts. Neither added element has much of a place in the piece—the effect is much more disorienting than it is evocative.

But again, the aim seems to have been the subversion of reality. Macero’s goal was to disturb the listener. “Inamorata” is nearly 30 minutes long. By the time the strings and poetry come in, the music has grown quite involving. Thus, when the piece is rudely disrupted, the effect is rendered much more jarring because of the time-investment the listener has already put into the piece. It’s like having someone shake you awake in the middle of a particularly seductive and fascinating dream.

The same is true, on a smaller scale, of the tracks on At Fillmore. Just as you’re settling into the flow of the performance, it’s disrupted, quite suddenly. Even if each piece were brilliant and enjoyable on its own merits (and not all of them are), the transitions still come as a series of shocks. Listening to the record is like walking down a hallway and having unseen hands yank the carpet from beneath your feet at random intervals. It doesn’t even seem like enjoyment was the point—the disruption of that enjoyment was the point. At Fillmore was one of the trumpeter’s openly hostile albums, part of a set that included Black Beauty, Live-Evil and On The Corner, and to a substantially lesser degree In Concert: Live At Philharmonic Hall.

It’s worth noting that the work Teo Macero did in the studio with Miles Davis was not mirrored in his work with other Columbia artists. He was a house producer for the label, working with artists from Dave Brubeck and Thelonious Monk to Tony Bennett. But none of those artists’ albums sound like Bitches Brew or On The Corner. They’re straightforward jazz (or jazz-pop) records.

This indicates that, while Miles granted Teo a shocking degree of autonomy in the editing room (Macero claims that the In A Silent Way session was one of the only times Davis worked alongside him on the post production), the artistic impulses were decidedly the trumpeter’s own. Davis gave the raw material to Macero, and approved the final edits. But it was the creation of that raw material that was crucial.

To Davis, the electric sessions were an extension of the improvisatory process that created Kind Of Blue. On that record, though, he’d still been pursuing complete takes, in traditional jazz fashion. In the late 1960s, there was no attempt made to play a piece all the way through, for the simple reason that there was no piece until its components were assembled, after the fact, in the editing room.

Over time, the creative process, into which Miles and Teo had wandered more or less blind, evolved. They grew to understand the capabilities of technology (Macero, in fact, ordered machines custom-built to create effects he heard in his head and wanted to apply to the music), and the abilities of the assembled musicians, and the way those two factors could work together. They also felt their feet more and more as the years progressed. The 1969 sessions are raw, and more tentative than recordings from only a few months later, and music produced during Miles’s last studio dates before vanishing, are even more complex, but also more subtle and refined. By the time of “He Loved Him Madly,” in 1974, the illusions had become nearly seamless.

Mauricio Kagel - Transicion II; Phonophonie

Mode 127

Mauricio Kagel has been called the prankster of the avant-garde. His own description of the essence of his very eclectic compositional technique is that he combines "strict composition with elements which are not themselves pure." Kagel’s works range from the neo-classical, through the aleatoric, to the Ligeti-static, the electronic, the stagy-farcical, and beyond. And there has been no obvious chronological progression at work here. A serial work for orchestra might be followed first by a goofball theater thing, then a piece for tape, then a neoclassical string quartet. His compositions in all these areas are well crafted and idiomatic, and many of his pieces are very enjoyable. I particularly like his Match For Three Players, a work for two sparring cellists and a percussionist/referee, which was reportedly based on several of Kagel’s most vivid dreams. What has never been entirely apparent, however, is a genuine commitment by the composer to any particular vision of the beautiful. I think this Kagel's overall output has suffered from his flightiness, and while this aspect of his personality has helped to produce a clever collagist and master of pastiche, I don’t believe there are any legitimate masterworks in his oeuvre. Transicion II (1958-59), a piece for pianist (on this recording, Aldo Orvieto), percussionist (Dimitri Fiorin) and tape/live electronics manipulator (Alvise Vidolin) is in the style of Stockhausen’s Mantra, but unlike the Stockhausen, it never really takes off. Its little Boulezian explosions are crisp and well executed (both by the composer and the performers), but the piece as a whole is nothing much more than the sum of these flourishes.

It’s a little unfair not to give tape creator Stefano Bassanese co-compositional credit for Phonophonie (1963-64). The general directions for those not opting to use the tapes provided with the score, allow considerable latitude with respect to the content of the recorded material, and while I’ve never heard any earlier version of the work, it’s quite certain that Bassanese’s tape (which consists largely of vocalise) ensures that this instantiation of Phonophonie is significantly different from any that preceded it. These "four melodramas for two voices and other sound sources" are intended as a half-serious eulogy over the death of grand opera. There’s more Stockhausen here (think Momente), as well as Ligeti (of the Aventures), but Kagel is no mere imitator. In fact, for all I know, there was as much "borrowing" going on in the other directions. Kagel has always been a legitimate innovator and important experimenter with new forms and technologies. What defects the piece has (and it isn’t a bad work—just slightly unsatisfying) are, again, the results of what I take to be his lack of firm commitment to any particular style. With Kagel, the moans, howls, and chattering always seem half-serious and half-satirical. This makes the work "safer" I suppose: it’s OK for the listener to swoon, but it’s OK for him to laugh, too. I think this compositional ambivalence has, to a certain extent, always limited the depth of aesthetic responses to Kagel’s work. We never get much more than half-ecstatic and/or half tickled, and, as is well known, that’s a bit like being half-pregnant. This assessment sounds more critical than I intend it to be, however. Composers, like the rest of us, must make do with what's within them: they do what they can. Kagel is a careful craftsman as well as a seminal innovator with a fertile imagination and a hearty sense of humor. He may not be Elliott Carter or Pierre Boulez, but he has written a copious number of entertaining, well-constructed--even elegant--pieces and has influenced many younger composers and performers in the process. That’s a pretty damn good record of achievement for any artist.

A Picture = a thousand words

Any self-respecting creative music fan worth his or her salt needs to bookmark Peter Gannushkin’s massive folio of photographs compiled at Downtownmusic.net posthaste. I know next to nothing about the man, other than we may have strolled obliviously past each other at a number of shows. He’s certainly been busy assembling a visual record of the eponymous scene. I’ve been a regular visitor to the site for months & count some 570+ separate musician entries in his archive. At the very least, a great place to put faces to names. The tantalizing link to Ivan Shokin’s ‘diary’ makes me wish that I’d stuck with my Russian language class in high school, though. The curse of being a linguistically challenged American!

Steve Roden / in be tween noise

Downtown Music

Reynols Rap

Time to discuss a musical collective -- the term band hardly seems apposite -- perhaps more heard-of than heard. Yet the notion can't be too shocking. After all, Reynols' 1995 debut, Gordura Vegetal Hidrogenada, was a "dematerialized CD": an empty jewel box (having never seen a copy, it would good to know if the case still featured artwork, tracks listings, liner notes, acknowledgments [shout-outs]... you know, all the necessary appendages of contemporary record releases). Their reasoning: "That CD is everything, everywhere... You see, everybody has that record, even people who haven't been born yet. Napoleon has that record, Plato has the record, Jim Morrison has the record." [Interview with Dan Warburton / March, 2003].

Reynols has played street guerilla gigs with their guitars plugged not into amps but (non-smashing) pumpkins and given performances for an "audience" consisting of (presumably sublimating) dry ice. Their drummer and "spiritual leader" is Miguel Tomasin, a differently abled individual (Down's Syndrome) who is also a former pupil of Reynols founders / special educators Alan Courtis and Roberto Conlazo. They've collaborated with Pauline Oliveros as well as the residents of a pollo ranch. They've "written" a piece for "baritone, tenor, contralto and soprano whistling kettles" that does in fact have some relationship to String Quartet literature. They've made field recordings of places imaginary -- a Márquez-esque outpost in Tomasin's imagination over which the banner of "Minecxio" flies (shades of Christian Vander's prog-sludge Magma...) -- microcosmic -- the forces of attraction binding magnetized particles to spooled strips of plastic polymers (Blank Tapes on Trente Oiseaux) -- and vastly banal -- the installation of a hole in a street in Buenos Aires (Rampotanza Ronil Rempelente).

More than anything, though, artists like Reynols cause me to sort out a nice long list of questions related both to conceptualism in music and pranksterism in art. Can one appreciate the intentions behind some of these Reynolian endeavors while, at the same time, being of the opinion that the instantiation of said notions is only utterly unlistenable racket? Talk about your cognitive dissonance -- or maybe even divided loyalties. Try to close the distance between what Reynols describes when they talk about their music and the actual sounds that they produce. What is really being represented when Reynols "records" NASA -- not at NASA, mind you, but the essence of actual agency itself? Is all the teleological talk generated by Reynols more in the vein of P.T. Barnum than Marcel Duchamp?

We can talk about art as a kind of container for ideas, but, to me, that leaves the relationship between form and content too ambiguous and too enervated. Isn't it fair to cry "bullshit" when you perceive that the ostensible significance of a given piece of music is not bound within the work itself, but tacked on outside. Like some lame excuse, a, "What I MEANT to say was..." Then again, where does the experience of art begin, and where does it end? Demarcations are permanently established neither by the will of the artist nor by decisions made by the auditor / reader / viewer, etc. So-called environmental art from Walter De Maria's "Lightning Field" to a piece of music such as Weather Sky requires a certain revision of how we understand the interface of natural materials, fundamental principles and human intent in aesthetic experience. But I would also say that when we talk about some works of art as being "haunting", we are still making reference to this issue.

Meanwhile, cultural pranks -- examples of Zizek-ian kynicism -- usually have a leveling effect, and effects perhaps more powerful and lasting than anything the old-fashioned avant-garde has ever produced. It was not long before the Impressionists were running the Academy. Of course, the belief that jokes, as well as the various butts of those jokes, can be considered works of art may be avant-garde in and of itself. Ponder this too (or not): the members of Reynols inhabit an environment shaped by the forces of globalization: rapid exchange of commodities, permeable borders, information overload. Psychedelic rock bands that have turned nearly 40 years of jamming into lofty profit margins made a sham of shamanism long before these Argentines did. Stunts, put-ons, antics, leg-pullings, raspberries: these are acts of inclusion and exclusion. What if everyone is in on the joke? The only music, maybe, is to be heard in massed laughter.

Malachi Favors - Natural & the Spiritual (AECO)

Pressed and circulated on the Art Ensemble of Chicago’s tiny eponymous imprint, Favor’s sole solo album from 1977 is a mixed medicine bag of aural liniments and nostrums. What it lacks in cohesion and polish, it more than compensates for in the amount of personal intimacy conveyed. Favors rarely had the room to exposit in isolation within the context of the AEC so the chance to hear him away from his colleagues carries even more worth. Like William Parker after him, Favor’s essays on peripheral instruments (hand drums, marimba, zither, whistles, what sounds like a ney) are of lesser appeal than his longhand manipulations on stout-stringed bass. The opening deep pizzicato of “The Procession,” dedicated to deceased drummer Phillip Wilson, wastes no time zeroing in on the kinship shared by Favor’s calloused fingers and their principal agent of expression. “Peace Be Unto You” is even better, an athletic ten plus minute workout speckled with the clink and rattle of bells and chimes hung from the bassist’s limbs. Superb arco work arrives in the album’s final pieces. Favors also employs vocals on occasion. In combination with lambent marimba on the first of two title tracks has voice creates a tone poem saturated with space and tonal color. Lyrics sung on “Womans Takeover” marry mildly misogyny to equal parts anger and humor. All of the pieces appear to have been taped in front of an audience as appreciative applause trail various tracks. What was it Lester Bowie used to say: Great Black Music- Ancient to the Future? The credo certainly holds here.

Cult of Luna, December

Earache Records

Think of Scandinavian metal and what comes to mind? Either presto-chango juggernauts Meshuggah or the Norwegian Black Metal scene, most likely. But recall that Sweden, particularly the far north, has spawned a whole host of interesting hard/heavy bands like Refused and Teddy Bears as well. Coming out of the Swedish hardcore scene (two of these fellows were in Eclipse), Cult of Luna is a band which – after several transformations – has clearly become inspired by and enamored of mood metal in the style of Isis and Neurosis. Like both of those bands, CoL boasts an absolutely huge sound which is not at all interested in pyrotechnics, displays of chops, or the like; rather, they’re committed to density, subtle layering (even at ear-splitting volumes), and movement. And CoL also has a keen interest in sampling technology, the integration of electronics, and so forth (their lineup includes vocalist Klas Rydberg – whose bark sounds not unlike Aaron Turner’s – , guitarists Erik Olofsson and Johannes Persson, bassist Andreas Johansson, drummer Thomas Hedlund, as well as Magnus Lindberg on sound engineering, percussion, and guitar, and Anders Teglund on sampler and synthesizer). But CoL’s sound has a sharpness, rawness, and sheer relentlessness that are all their own – for all the detail that is there in their hypnotic music, it’s embedded in a solid wall of sound.

This most recent release is not a follow-up to Cult of Luna’s justly acclaimed release The Beyond (also from 2003), but is actually a reissue of their 2001 self-titled debut (on the tiny Rage of Achilles label). Based on the evidence here, CoL has had a clear sonic vision from the outset. Aside from two brief instrumental tracks, the majority of this hour of music creeps slowly towards you in monolithic slabs. The focus of the playing and the arrangements, combined with the band’s attention to density and repetition, give the songs a real sense of urgency (seemingly underscored by their occasional incorporation of samples from political oratory). They hit hard, even when – as on “Dark Side of the Sun” – they employ strings and what sound like cathedral bells. This is fine, fine stuff from a band which will likely keep making waves.

I have long had a special fondness for that quirky, quizzical sub-genre known as mathcore. Sure, I like the bands that bring the rock and lay it down heavy; but if they can do it in shifting time signatures like some fuzzed-out Mahavishnu weaned on hardcore, more’s the better. I’m not sure if that last description really fits the bill for December, a Nevada (!) foursome whose debut record is now being re-released by Earache after the success of The Lament Configuration, but it at least hints at the band’s combination of sonic frenzy with awe-inspiring technical precision (not least from monster drummer Jason Thomas). Vocalist Mark Moots has an uncanny ability to terrify in two completely separate idioms: guttural menace and piercing shriek. Quicksilver riffery and tempo change fly past your earholes at warp speed. No melodies, no hooks, just unrelenting furor poised midway between Botch at their finest and the crazed howl of Napalm Death or vintage grindcore. Like a lot of similarly inclined bands – think Coalesce or Dillinger Escape Plan in addition to those already named – the hardcore edge really comes through the prog metal stylings as well, and that gives the music a directness that this genre often needs. They can bring the hardcore on the dizzying “Proximity” or thrash in a kind of Crimson-meets-Corrosion of Conformity way on “Heaven Below.” After withstanding the fury of the first 10 tracks, the band cool things down a bit with a handful of covers at the very end, from Skunk Anansie, Death Angel, and the mighty Motorhead (“Ace of Spades,” even!). Another fine reissue from Earache, whose help in bringing great bands out of obscurity is mighty appreciated.