Azure Carter & Alan Sondheim
Avatar Woman
USA PUBLIC EYESORE 123 CD (2014)
Intermittent at best, the trail left behind Alan Sondheim could confound the sharpest tack in the box. This senior figure in American avant gardery has added even more fresh air between his musical endeavours in the last decade by becoming an expert voice in the virtual world of cyberspace theory. In fact, his surfacing/re-surfacing with releases on ESP, Qbico, Porter etc … can span years, if you choose to do the arithmetic. But…nevertheless his name should still strike a chord as an entry in the “Stapleton/Fothergill Scrolls” (a.k.a. the ‘Nurse with Wound List’), with the Songs l.p. (Riverboat Records, 1967).
So, with that in mind, the Avatar Woman c.d. can almost be regarded as another one in a series of comeback albums. The first thing that really beckons is the at-times portentous sprechsang of his vocal half: Ms. Carter. A presence that evinces heavily beaded curtains and secretive assignments in crowded bazaars. Listening to tracks like the loosely-wired “Dark Robe” and the rather excellent desert-blues of “Marriage to Language” makes me think of a Lady June or indeed a Dawn Muir of Brainticket for the twenty-first century.
Alan meanwhile, provides a tastefully measured and sympatico support. His exotic array of stringed contraptions such as the electric saz, cura cumbus, suroz, sarangi and the dan moi out Embryo (mid-period) Embryo and are rich enough in tone and timbre to make the green-eyed monster rise up in messrs Lindley and Feldthouse of the U.S. Kaleidoscope, circa Side Trips. The only problem that Avatar throws up is that there’s more than a good deal of the material that has its controls deliberately set at medium speed, so as to allow for Azure’s unhurried, ultra crystal clear enunciation. If you can handle that, for just over an hour, then it’s all plain sailing really.