Tagged: jazz

November 23, 2013

People Go into the Stratosphere

The Martin Archer all-you-can-eat buffet is open for business…better bring a big plate and an extra fork…we received the self-titled double CD set by Orchestra of the Upper Atmosphere (DISCUS40CD) on 19 November 2012, and it’s a real grand bouffe ¹. This is another grand scaled project organised by Martin Archer in Sheffield and released on his own Discus label. Archer, highly conversant with saxophone and electronics, has been a past master of small and intimate group situations involving those instruments, but increasingly these days he is thinking big; there’s a large number of gifted people involved in this ambitious project, and while the core Orchestra itself – mostly keyboards, electronics, synths and percussion – comprises just five players, there are also performances from La Garotte String Quartet, The Divine Winds (a saxophone and woodwind group), and Juxtavoices, the unique singing choir whose work is also represented on this label on the record Juxtanother Antichoir From Sheffield released this year. With this small army of musicians, this lengthy album presents a cosmic sprawl of massed organ drones and electronic doodlings, enhanced with jazzy brass blasts and free-style vocal episodes from the choir. Think of Tangerine Dream to the power of ten, joined by an early incarnation of the Mike Westbrook Band and the Scratch Orchestra – an early 1970s music fan’s dream come true!

On ‘Seen From Above Parts 1 and 2’, the Orchestra create a truly enormous and cavernous sound, occupied by detailed passages of free playing; it’s a remarkably sustained effort to keep the space as nebulous as possible, without allowing the work to collapse into a sludgy mess. Philip Glass saxophone arpeggios leak into this open-ended gaseous billow of Gong-esque organ and synth drone. ‘The Opposition Effect’ should appeal to anyone who enjoys the work of the John Aldiss choir on side one of Atom Heart Mother (and I know not many Pink Floyd fans do), with Juxtavoices chanting their clipped syllables in a strident manner to the backing of a lumbering rock beat, solid organ chords and flipped-out sax squawkings. “It’s a 25-voice choir that works on the premise that any 25 note chord is probably going to be OK,” is how Archer described the choir to me in 2011, reflecting on the mixed abilities of the singers in the group. “It’s more about text and performance and maybe experimental poetry.” That side of the choir is also to the fore on ‘An Open Vista Is Revealed’, an excellent short piece on the second CD, with the voices whistling and whispering in mysterious manner against a very restrained and open-ended instrumental backdrop. There’s more of their free-form poetry chants on ‘Star Procession’, which when combined with the dissonant string sections and electronic drones produces a heavy-duty dose of out-there weirdness.

Archer has stressed that he isn’t out to experiment with variety just for the sake of novelty; rather he regards his multiple approaches as different ways of solving the same problem. This double CD set abounds with experiment and innovation, exploring ways to make these group combinations work. On ‘Almost Unrecognisable But For Its Surface Markings’, the string quartet wander an alien landscape in amazement, while percussion clatters around them in tiny explosions. In that case, the keynote is uncertainty and doubt, but not so on ‘Duty Music’, a big-band escapade with the strings and brass creating a very forthright and upbeat mood. ‘The Umbral Length of Shadows’ is an extremely bold attempt to use most if not all of the musicians in one collective blast; a somewhat lumbering beast results, which misfires in places and gives us almost too much to listen to as it tramps along its path propelled by a faux-funky beat; but you’ve rarely heard such remarkable combinations of unusual sounds, timbres and pitches. And at 20 minutes, ‘Nimbus’ is another major showcase for noodling keyboards, heavy drone and errant string solos creating unearthly effects, only slightly let down by the rhythm section providing an unimaginative drum and bass beat which somehow falls short of the best moments of Can. That said, Can never used strings and brass to such powerful effect on their records.

With titles such as ‘Anti-Crepuscular Rays’, ‘Rainforest Tension’, and other titles quoted above you’ll have noticed the meteorological and sky-gazing themes of this release ². It’s a promise that is borne out by the very airy and open sound the Orchestra of the Upper Atmosphere are capable of generating with their competing frequencies and strange juxtapositions, at their best achieving the ethereality of the air itself. As to the music, which incidentally has taken three years to complete, the press notes make explicit aspirations in the direction of Terry Riley, Stockhausen, Alice Coltrane and Krautrock – which should give you sufficient orientation. I think this is an exceptional work, which testifies to Archer’s very sociable and outgoing approach to making music; he simply likes people and likes to gather them around him so he can perform music with them, and I would estimate that a significant percentage of this album is performed live or in real time. Certainly the electronic effects are kept to a minimum, with only a few audible foot-pedals to tweak the organ drone, and acoustic instruments abound, holding their own against the amplified section of the Orchestra. And the sheer length is mightily impressive. In duration alone this would have occupied a four-LP box set in the old days, a generosity that pays off even when the music does sag in places (‘Coherent Backscattering’, a rather formless and laboured piece, is one notable failure) and the work overall might have benefited from a little editing or a more selective production strategy. The major disappoint to me is the utterly unprepossessing cover art, a grainy image of hideous browns and blacks which eventually resolves itself into a murky treated photograph of the band playing a concert in a venue. The cosmic Theta on the back cover is a good notion ³, but this powerful sign has had its energy somehow sapped by digital imaging, and it floats vaguely against a bitty background of artefacts when instead it should pulsate with all the mystical power of the black monolith object on Presence ⁴. The cloud photos printed on the discs are slightly better and fit the concept of the record. But overall I believe the strength of the music is seriously under-communicated by these poor visuals. This plaint aside, Orchestra of the Upper Atmosphere makes good its printed claim to “propose an alternative reality”, and is warmly recommended.

I refer to the film of this title directed by Marco Ferreri and released in 1973. ↩
For perfect conceptual unity, the record really ought to have been pressed at Nimbus, who manufactured most of the releases for Recommended Records. ↩
Theta is used in meteorology to represent potential temperature. ↩
i.e. the Led Zeppelin LP. The puzzling cover art is one of Hipgnosis’s best, in my view. Storm Thorgerson appeared on a recent TV documentary about the making of Wish You Were Here, and neatly summed up Hipgnosis’s cultural achievement; he was simply fed up of rock album covers that were no more than photographs of old geezers. ↩

October 22, 2013

Ectoplasm and Adrenaline

Ken Hyder / Z’EV / Andy Knight
Ghost Time
HINTERZIMMER HINT 16 CD (2012)

As initial reactions go, the question “what is this scary music?” is certainly auspicious, offering assurance that I’m playing something interesting. The group goes by the name of ‘Ghost Time’, and is an ethereal, instrumental trio of overlapping interests, all peripheral to jazz. Most (in)famous of the three performers is Z’EV, known for his molten, multi-kulti-meets-industrial approach to percussion. In these four post-mortem ‘jazz’ pieces he is joined by composer and fellow percussionist, Scotland’s Ken Hyder, whose predilection for prog/jazz fusion puts him on first-name terms with the likes of Tim Hodgkinson, Phil Minton, Keith Tippett and Elton Dean. Finally – and most enigmatically – Andy Knight is, according to the group’s website, simply ‘an English trumpet player’. The group’s moniker offers ample indication of what to expect: ghostly, post-mortem ‘soundscapes’ steamrolled by sub-bass and streaked with spaghettified phantom yowls. The formula may not be rare, but the product permits little more than a passing acquaintance: depersonalising all participants and foregrounding none into the bargain.

The tracks are largely cymbal-led, shimmering with glassy, growling backdrops coloured by a faint pull of pocket trumpet. Though potentially generic to casual listeners, the riches of this dark ambience will be revealed to the patient. The press claim that there is ‘a feeling of something you felt before… A hint of music you might have caught on the wind, off the water, in your sleep, or in someone’s eyes’ is not inaccurate, though by the same token, specific influences such as Canntaireachd (‘a vocalisation of bagpipe playing’), Tuvan Khoomei singing and Tibetan ritual percussion playing will be evident only to ‘those who know’. Not until ‘Faint’ are we treated to any significant tonal variation, where a more menacing air of rolling snares and guttural sub-bass enshrouds the careful listener, while in ‘Glimpse’, a sharper strain of muted trumpeting pierces the atmosphere like it does the ‘Silencio’ scene in Mulholland Drive.

Generally, there’s little to differentiate one track from another, as all possess the same ingredients and ideas, leaving us with a subtle, longform exercise in theme and variation. Not that there’s anything wrong with this of course. The music can be easily enjoyed, especially if one assumes a horizontal position and surrenders to the near-darkness it articulates.

Terrie Ex / Paal Nilssen-Love
Hurgu!
PNL RECORDS PNL012 CD (2011)

On the other side of the jazz divide we find – in this exclamatory effort, ‘Hurgu!’ – Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love and guitarist Terrie Ex (of Dutch troublemakers, The Ex) in singularly confrontational and uncompromising mind-states, both in jazz-flag burning mode. Little need be said about proceedings other than the fact that they are a) loud and b) fast. However, lest the reader experience apprehension at the appearance of yet another jazz-rock wank-fest, I hasten to add that it is c) completely captivating from start to finish.

The recording rocks and rolls with an itch that begs for relief: like two lion cubs tumbling playfully in the savannah, Ex and Nilssen-Love tussle with dental intent. In ‘Harar’, Ex’s guitar is edged and muscular, withstanding every pummelling beat of Nilssen-Love’s relentless percussive rejoinders. The mood becomes more jagged in ‘St. George’ – Ex chipping off chunks of flaming scree, which Nilssen-Love volleys with thundering skin rolls and searing cymbal smashes, the two colliding like masochists in a moshpit. Initially of a more sinister species is ‘Bedele’, which begins with a bassy rumble and a rant of agitated strings, but soon enough becomes another high-pace terminator chase through a collapsing metal works. Not until ‘Meta’ does the blistering meter relent, slowing to an agonizing howl of abrasive growl and angular twang: atonement expressed with the most depraved definition of ‘grace’. This comedown comes across like one of DNA’s primal scream therapy sessions hijacked by an enervating lecture on entropy. Utter perfection.

October 17, 2013

A Petit Pair and a Prolix pfMENTUM

Jean-Luc Petit / Mathias Pontévia
Pha
FRANCE PETIT LABEL FREE 006 CD (2011)

A Google translation of the French press statement for this recording by monsieurs Petit et Pontévia (tenor/baritone sax and drums/percussion respectively) provides a worthy epigram: a saxophone abandoned, lost, wandering between shadows and ghostly and spectral glow, sometimes brutally reincarnated in furious ultra physical flights you take guts. While kinetically vivid in imagery, the mechanical translation’s oblique solecisms – a faint reminder of Burroughs’ poetic cut-ups – are as immediately intriguing as any of the sonic collisions that occur between the musicians. One could pontificate all manner of inventive images to describe the range exhibited over this hour-long recording. Or simply listen. Given the scarcity of this edition (limited to just 100 handmade copies), decisiveness is probably paramount.

Petit and Pontévia’s mutual sensitivity and rapport suggests they are a long-term pairing, one ever the other’s foil. By way of illustration, in ‘Pha’, a softly smoking tenor finds itself sandwiched between a strident, metallic whine from (what sounds like) a bowed cymbal and some abrasive electrical interference. A more aggressive turn of mind defines ‘Le Tube, Le Câble’: thundering rolls (and tinny taps) on all manner of solid objects front up to a sax squeal so sticky it sounds like plasters ripping off skin. While swinging between states of almost-forced and catatonic, once in motion, the piece’s relentlessness is easily relished, and though consistent rhythms seldom cohere, rarely does richness not result from the pursuit of dynamic equilibrium. The silkscreened black and red cover image of a dense, knotted treetop offers a decent idea of the disc’s bi-polar and dynamic disparity.

For improv aficionados, this non-idiomatic pairing will likely yield few surprises, but between the two exponents the manifold mysteries of the likes of AMM are at least mentioned. Ultimately, satisfaction is a more realistic reaction than astonishment.

Lebrat / Boubaker
Quasi Souvenir
FRANCE PETIT LABEL SON 012 CD (2011)

Bowing and scraping before others is behaviour widely regarded as beneath human dignity. In a musical context it can be engaging, but too much of it can suggest a gloomy squat with peeling walls and squeaky doors. It depends, I suppose, where one’s aesthetic threshold is situated. And so is the case with this duo recording for saxophone and cello from Soizic Lebrat and Heddy Boubaker. The title indicates that this recording is more than a mere ‘document’ (one limited to just 100 copies incidentally), but not quite the memento of a special time abroad. Wherever it happens to be that this duo dwell, one assumes that clouds and rain are never far away.

The bow of the cello is, as suggested, pulled so painfully slow throughout these seven cuts that each seems most determined to emit – whether high or low – the most eardrum-rattling frequencies of all. The standard format for each vibratory performance appears to be a slow, exploratory warm-up that establishes a mood somewhere between morose and agitated, which then becomes an interlocutor in an improvised role play. The saxophone is a satisfying counterpart, with its careful curation of slow, low blows, delicate, virtually yogic breathwork and low register chatter. Tensions that arise at any given point are swiftly spent, and developed anew.

Recording quality is of unimpeachable clarity, capturing well the dynamic subtleties and timbres of the instruments, as well as the sense of open space and – indeed – the subtle expressiveness of the musicians. To top things off, the astringent blue card sleeve really does the music justice: the silkscreened medical illustration of an eye operation on one hand recalls the infamous scene from Bunuel and Dali’s phantasmagoric Un Chien Andalou, while on the other indicating that suffering is ever at hand.

Vlatkovich Tryyo
Pershing Woman
USA PFMENTUM CD071 CD (2012)

In ‘intimate’ musical settings, there seems to be little accounting for the power of a performance. Often, the special secrecy of an experience shared by just a handful of cognoscenti leads to legends, while on occasion a tiny turnout sparks just a distant, disaffected performance. On the recorded evidence here, both the audience and the Vlatkovich Tryyo – probably equal in number – are on fine, fiery form; the latter working up a storm ex nihilo as though it were second nature, preserving the triumphant occasion (recorded in Grand Rapids, Michigan) for posterity on this disc.

Doubtless owing in part to the history and pedigree of the three musicians present (Michael Vlatkovich on trombone, Jonathan Golove on cello and Damon Short on drums), the group appears resolved to deny admission to even a moment of silence: in Vlatkovich’s compositions, from the rip-roaring get-go, everything is event: the trombone firing tight, tethered phrases, deftly shadowed by Golove’s plucked cello, and underpinned by Short’s cymbals, which swing with the best – a meter he carries through much of the album. Sometimes soaring, though sometimes sober and even sombre, the group’s vibrant, full-bodied racket engulfs every inch of venue space. At its most upbeat, it bears traces of Henry Threadgill’s melodic exuberance; elsewhere some of Sun Ra’s more oblique, atonal colours enter the palette, especially when ties are loosened and fingers are freed.

Despite the Tarkovskian cover photo depicting a woman’s silhouette striding through a foggy landscape (which might analogise the not-quite-crystalline recording fidelity), the mood of the music – mainly monochrome – is far rougher, more unrelenting than the doom jazz one might anticipate. At times, the darkness is so wintery one imagines doggedly ploughing through piles of metaphorical snow, being housebound by climatic inhospitality, or succumbing to Seasonal Affective Disorder in the more solemn, later tracks. On occasion, the joylessness smacks of intellectualism over emotion, a notion compounded by unwieldy track titles such as ‘Our Costumes Should Tell Us Who We Are And What We Should Think’, and a structural disinclination towards climax, which is usually nice after a long workout. These are minor gripes however, for anyone with a thirst for dynamic, driven performances will drink their fill here.

October 13, 2013

Multi-layered Riddles

Kalle Kalima and K-18
Out To Lynch
FINLAND TUM RECORDS TUMCD 030 (2012)

Inspired by the films of cult US film director, David Lynch, Kalle Kalima and K-18’s second release follows on from their Stanley Kubrick-themed debut.

This is not a score or soundtrack album; rather, Lynch’s films and, more accurately, the characters portrayed simply offer inspiration. The result is a vivid selection of compositions that combine jazz improvisation and soundscapes with hints of modern classical music and avant-garde rock to cover a wide spectrum of sounds and alternating moods. Certainly there’s no mistaking the improvisational element here, but it has been cleverly shaped and combined with composed music to produce twelve tracks; each of which is attributed to a specific character or location from one of Lynch’s films.

Anyone familiar with these films and characters will know that Lynch has created some of the most striking, disturbing and memory-searing images committed to celluloid. You don’t forget seeing Eraserhead or Wild at Heart, or indeed meeting Blue Velvet’s Frank Booth, in a hurry. Even the more linear and ‘conventional’ films, such as The Elephant Man and The Straight Story, have a unique, poetic feel that are unmistakably Lynchian. So how do you go about drawing inspiration from that? The answer is that you produce an album as baffling and incomprehensible as the movies you’re attempting to evoke. Lynch’s films are multi-layered riddles that constantly blur the line between fantasy, reality and nightmare; and to its credit, so is this album.

True Lynch fans will certainly hear how the characters have inspired this album, and each repeat listen highlights how Finnish, Berlin-based composer and guitarist, Kalima, and his musicians have found aural ways to bring them to life. ‘The Elephant Man’ is a collective, soulful improvisation that effectively draws on the character’s solitude and emotional longing; whereas ‘Eraserhead’ uses the quarter-tone accordion and African flute to great effect to portray the surreal horror of America’s industrial wastelands. ‘Frank Booth’ is a dualistic piece that suggests both sides of this pathologically violent yet gentle character; while the 35-second ‘Man From Another Place’ is just, frankly, screaming mad.

Standout track is probably ‘Mulholland Drive’, which is the only one based on a location rather than a character. It is melodic, dreamy and sufficiently psychedelic to have actually featured on the soundtrack to one of Lynch’s most brilliantly incomprehensible films.

While Out to Lynch may not linger in the memory in the same way as the films and characters that inspired it, any piece of work that attempts to interpret and reimagine the unique and often indecipherable world of David Lynch has got to be given credit. For anyone not familiar with the director’s work, this album will also provide an introduction to the seemingly random world of Mr Lynch.

Overall, it has to be said that just as Lynch’s films are not always an easy watch, this album is not always an easy listen. However, just as you suspect there’s a method to the great filmmaker’s madness, so too does this album have a certain way of drawing you into its world and making you want to stick around for a while; if only to see (or hear) what happens next.

October 7, 2013

Shemonmuanay: a unique fusion of Ethiopian folk music / jazz and two generations of Western music technology

Hailu Mergia & His Classical Instrument, Shemonmuanay, New York, Awesome Tapes From Africa, CD ATFA 006 (2013)

First released on cassette in 1985, this album is a quirky one-of-a-kind recording made by Ethiopian accordionist / keyboardist / former Ethio-jazz band leader Hailu Mergia in Washington DC after he settled in the States. The release was intended by Mergia as a nostalgic homage to the accordion music he remembered from his youth. Eleven instrumental tracks draw on Mergia’s native Amharic and Oromo folk music traditions and melodies to combine with Moog synthesiser, electric piano, accordion and rigid machine-generated rhythms: the result is highly atmospheric and evocative sinuous music that touches the ground very lightly but is, at one and the same time, exotic and smoky, futuristic and questing, fleeting and impermanent. I can see why the Buda Musique compilers of that otherwise perfect Ethiopian historic jazz music library series Ethiopiques give this album a wide berth: “Shemonmuanay” isn’t exactly bursting with fire, energy and a robustly positive attitude drinking deeply of the brief liberation Ethiopia experienced in the twilight years of the Emperor Haile Selassie in the mid-1970s – instead the album seems to look wistfully back to an age of glamour in some tracks and on others muses on the impermanence of things as they are, and perhaps of life itself.

The album begins with the title track which is a slightly sinister, sultry piece that might have been lifted from a soundtrack to a spy film set in Algeria or Morocco during World War II or in Vietnam in the 1950s (Michael Curtiz’s famous “Casablanca” film or Phillip Noyce’s “The Quiet American”?), so languid yet so bewitching and hot in atmosphere it feels. “Laloye” is an odd mix of wistful accordion nostalgia, crisp sharp electronic beats and sunny laid-back rhythms. There is something about this track and a few others on this album that may resonate with listeners from east Asian countries like China, Japan and Korea: there is a definite air of quiet “c’est la vie” resignation about things and memories that have receded into the past and which can never come back.

“Wegene” might well have arrived from the early Seventies period from a parallel Earth, in which soul, funk and psychedelia combined to produce a futuristic soundtrack for laid-back citizens of a rich sub-Saharan country, one which in our world is dirt poor and plagued by a series of Third World dictators, a humongous debt and an economy in thrall to distant foreign corporations. “Hari Meru Meru”, one of the few songs to feature vocals (even if they are wordless) is a dreamy instrumental poem of winding accordion melody, lightly boppy synth-drum beats and melancholy electric piano: if I didn’t know that it was the brain-child of an Ethiopian musician, I could have sworn it was an old Chinese folk melody because the tunes have that oddly trilling, throwaway quality.

Some later tracks are a little fussy and the drawback of using quite rigid machine rhythms and beats becomes apparent: the music on some pieces sounds like excerpts of much longer, continuous melody and rhythm pieces that have no beginning and no end. “Hebo Lale”, another track with wordless vocals, has a wonderful wide-eyed and innocent ambience that reminds me of Amon Duul’s “Tanz der Lemminge” album that I haven’t played in a while: cheery accordion melody waltzes about with skippetty electric piano and equally joyful analog synthesiser lines. The album closes with the easy-going “Shilela” which is equal parts dreamboat nostalgia, soulful funk and utopian space lounge music.

This is really very beguiling music, all the more so because it was created during a period when musicians were switching over from live instruments and analog synthesisers to drum machines and other newer studio technology and methods of creating and recording music so there was considerable overlap between two different generations of music and music recording technology. “Shemonmuanay” is a snapshot of that brief crossroad period against a background of Ethiopian pop and folk music that may have been dying out at the time as well. The album, Janus-like, looks forwards to machine-driven music and backwards to a lost time-zone of highly emotional and sultry mood music. I hope that this reissue brings some attention to Hailu Mergia and restores him to his rightful place as a music pioneer in fusion music; according to information on the CD reissue sleeve, he’s working as taxicab driver at Washington DC’s Dulles International airport. Not a great outcome for an artist who single-handedly created a minor classic but worse things have happened to other musicians and artists unfortunate enough to have come within the radar sights of tyrannical governments in their countries.

October 2, 2013

Creamed Coconut

So, with CD player newly repaired and listening once more free from the shadow of equipment failure let us see if this newly de-stressed set-up has had a benevolent effect on my reviews:

Let’s consider Alessandro Bosetti and Chris Abrahams matt varnished digifile opus We Who Had Left (MIKROTON RECORDINGS CD 19).

Instrumentally it’s all about piano and electronics, approached with an appealing sensuousness which touches on such worlds as jazz and sound poetry. Chris plays piano in The Necks, I gather. I haven’t actually heard The Necks, but the internet told me that and I thought I’d save you opening any extra tabs by passing on the information.

The first track, ‘We also dress today’, doesn’t give too much away, a spare but approachable construct consisting of the piano riffing on one note, loose-connection bass pulse coyly flirting with being a kick-drum and a sprinkling of pattering, looped polyrhythm. The second track, ‘We arrange our home’, is more representative of what the duo have to offer: light, silvery runs up and down the keyboard backed with electronics, in this case an electronic wandering bassline shadows the piano while breathy samples which sound to me like down-tuned whistles are mixed into a gauzy background wash, giving a hovering flute-like exotica tinge. In this Exotic Forest you half expect some Martin Denny birdcalls to start up as you pass the next tree. It’s a coolly strange environment, like Ballard’s crystal jungle relocated to Tahiti and populated with silent Gauguin beauties.

‘We cannot Imagine’ introduces vocals, softly spoken and Italian-accented, slowly repeated and unpicked phrases unravel over the course of ten minutes whilst they are tentatively wafted into song by gentle puffs of piano and the quiet electric whistle-flutes, floating softly around the listening space. Quite a lovely effect, very delicately performed. Bellisimo.

Sound-wise this isn’t quite the Doobie Brothers, but there is a certain smoothness, more evident in some tracks than others, a quietly polished finish you might actually expect of an ambient album. However, when Chris Abrahams strikes or rather caresses a chord or note, ably counterpointed by Alessandro Bossetti, it is mighty enjoyable whatever burnishing methods may or may not have been applied.

‘When they are overhead’ starts a little like Charlemagne Palestine writ medium accompanying a clog-dance and Google party thrown by Santa’s elves. It certainly has the potential to achieve elevation and hits a nicely rolling green-ness towards the end. If you’ve ever seen the BBC Krautrock documentary where Iggy Pop drills a coconut (a fine cultural moment) while describing the music of Neu! you will recall he uses the phrase ‘psychedelic pastoralism’ while sunset silhouetted pylons recede field by field as seen through a car window. My pleasantly wandering mind was reminded as this track progressed of a similar sensation to that evoked by this scene.

Our journey finishes with a cover of a Bill Evans tune, Waltz for Debby. Debby is ceremoniously draped in a belligerent sinusoidal lap-top as our romantic Italian croons and serenades the album away over a seductive tinkle of the old ivories. That’s amoré!

Kakawaka
Ein Fröhliches Lied Auf Den Lippen Den Wandersmann Kann Nichts Erschüttern
NO LABEL MC CASSETTE

What have we here? A short but sweet cassette (the mini hi-fi system which includes the aforementioned CD player also has a tape player, conveniently), two 10 minute-ish sides. Seit ein: blind munching of psychotropic worms, bursts of computer overload, pitch shift metallic glissandi, the frog chorus and Michael Caine’s heel hitting the concrete in a deserted East Berlin basement, unt so on. Crude methods yield deceptively crude results. Vignettes change like clicking the button on one of those red slide-viewers with the slides on a carboard disc that you used to get. In the background those worms are munching in the dark, converting rainforest decay into putrid phosphorescence. A lesson we can all surely look to apply in our daily lives.

The insect life returns in the second of our sides wherein a flea-bitten, moth-ridden, valve-driven, ragged organ vamp is nibbled on the toes by beetles. Uneasy reposes occur, always while the mandibular chatter soothes away those aches of the day. A muffled noise like a plucked double bass loops away somewhere under the floor like Poe’s tell-tale heart thumping in a bath of mellow vibes. The beetles (John, Paul, Ringo and Jaws) organise a hunt, paint their concave carapaces carmine and set out in slow motion across a shifting carpet, their horns echoing lugubriously. Enchanting and finger-snapping, needless to say.

All in all, very relaxing and swinging and suitable for your next cocktail evening or canasta party if James Last Non Stop Dancing fails to deliver the goods.

September 28, 2013

Eine Kleine Jazz Musik

Mats Eilertsen Trio
Sails Set
NORWAY HUBRO MUSIC HUBROCD 2524 CD (2013)

The second recording from Mats Eilertsen Trio is a gallery of vignettes neither perfected nor perfunctory, but briefly stated sentiments seemingly abstracted from memorable scenes. This peripatetic piano, drum and bass trio locates their work somewhere in the liminal terrain between improvisation and composition – a claim far from uncommon – but one ratified by a supple, intriguingly intangible sound, which is fortified by a finely-tuned harmonic rapport as the three flow in and out of a shifting array of formations with a sense of equality and equanimity evident in every note.

The eponymous ‘Sails Set’ provides a nonchalant entry: Harmen Fraanje’s piano tumbles like a winding mountain stream, pillowed by vibrations drawn from a slowly bowed double bass. This carefree manner is abruptly more angular in ‘Stellar’, in which a stark solo piano pans through an abandoned house in monochrome. Drummer Thomas Strønen wields a range of sticks throughout the album, mostly catalysts for calmer climates, but in ‘Orbiting’ his off-meter rolls of tinkling percussion stand as the most striking feature, complimented by a newly springy and staggered bass sound. Overall, it is Eilertsen‘s bass-playing that I’m most drawn to, being expressive of the group’s warm, non-committal personality, but laced with a soft, all-adhering resonance.

The moods pass effortlessly from one instrument to another as easily as the leading role. A sparing attitude towards instrumentation resides among the group’s many graces, and the negative space that surrounds and permeates every musical event is often as expressive as the performance. At times it has the air of a good film noir score (with a hint of zen minimalism in the core), albeit one lacking a theme tune. It is not dissimilar to some of the better material from John Zorn’s recent jazz output, though luckily lacking the exhausting pace and vibes.

One might assume that on record the trio further explores themes discovered while improvising, though forsaking motifs and melodies for the sake of a more impressionistic array of atmospheres. Their avoidance of distinct phrases suggests a series of extended segues, not scenes. The credo that ‘less is more’ is articulated perfectly in this short set, where even in its evident freedom there is ever a sense of restraint. The group sets out not to dazzle, but to enchant with careful attention to duration and detail.

September 18, 2013

Two Trios and One Duo

Moskus
Salmesykkel
NORWAY HUBRO CD2518 (2012)

Origin – Norway. Translation of album title – ‘Hymn Bicycle’. Nominal area of operation – Jazz.

A trio (piano, bass, and drums) on the title track that introduces the album sets out their stall fairly well. A pleasant, freewheeling rhythm section, a lightness of touch and the immediately apparent bonus of a sympathetic recording that strikes an intimate and natural note. It also introduces a predilection for rather schmaltzy piano work that becomes more prominent as the album progresses. The bike in the cover photo reminded me of the cover of Etron Fou Le Loublan’s first album – I wouldn’t be surprised in this case, however, if Moskus’s cover Hymn Bicycle had been converted into a ‘fixie’.

There are possibilities pointed to in the playing, but there are also, as noted, hints of the contrived. The drumming is as springy as a grasshopper, bass work is likewise limber and all is recorded pleasingly unadorned, tactile rimshots and piano-pedal creaks giving an unforced and peaceful sonic intimacy that unfortunately is squandered, with over-egged piano parts that appear to derive partial inspiration from American gospel tradition (perhaps that is where the Hymn part of the Hymn Bicycle comes in). These hints, which may arrive at a couple of removes via ECM-style jazz, contribute, rather than emotional, spiritual, or indeed musical depth, a certain complacence which is not the most endearing trait, even (or especially) as here combined with an easy jauntiness. The use of such musical material (the ‘use’ of it rings alarm bells somewhere) can shade into the glib or platitudinous without fervency or fire to back it up. I find this a little frustrating as by all accounts other releases on the label are well worth listening to and enjoyable – I note that Ed has reviewed one that referenced both Eric Dolphy and Morton Feldman, two names that grab my attention immediately – indeed, there is a lot of playing on here that is worth listening to: nuanced, breezy, sprightly, with a sense of space like the air between spokes. When there are nods towards dissonance and more knotty structures in track 5, or when abstract percussion exploration opens track 6, then it is much easier to like, but these are, in the end, just nods and as a whole, whatever subtle touches there might be in the playing, the ultimately saccharine content of the compositions is a little harder to enjoy. The Hymn Bicycle rides – with a measure of playfulness, it’s true – around a superficially pleasant but rather too ‘respectable’ neighbourhood.

Moskus Trio
Hubro

Jérémie Ternoy Trio
Bill
FRANCE ZOONE LIBRE / CIRCUM DISC MICROCIDI004 (2011)
Another piano led trio that fails to fully deliver the goods, or perhaps is too distracted by shifting goods, is the Jérémie Ternoy Trio whose album ‘Bill’ (referring to Evans, presumably) again features deft-ish playing injection-moulded into easy-to-swallow shapes. ‘Bill’ again features a solid rhythmic backbone, chunkier and more foursquare in this case, without the breeziness of Moskus but featuring some marked Latin inflections. These are sometimes carried by the piano as well, with genteel tango curlicues decorating the chord progressions. There seems to be a stab at accessibility which involves various jazz signifiers being bolted on to different chassis. Notably in one track some very Reichian (Steve not Wilhelm, otherwise this would be a very different and more orgone-saturated review) arpeggiations appear. Relaxed and approachable, but rather bland at the same time, there is also a taste, again, for some easy-queasy chord progressions. In both albums there are texturally diverting moments but rather than a basis for jumping off they are flourishes and diversions decorating retrograde impulses. What we end up with is akin to a gentrified jazz, redeveloped and safe, simulacra signifiers inserted more in a spirit of pastiche than due to the promptings of inspiration. Note the almost obligatory track on each album (tellingly entitled ‘Ligeté’ on ‘Bill’) utilising more chromatic playing – ‘we can cover this base, too’. Of the two, Moskus displays far more personality in playing and recording, but both still veer too far towards easy-listening for me.

Circum-Disc
Jérémie Ternoy Trio

Parallel Worlds & Dave Bessell
Morphogenic
DiN41 CD (2012)
Hoping for something with more bite I turn to Parallel Worlds & Dave Bessell’s Morphogenic. I know somehow I am partially hoping that through some twist of sympathetic word association they will turn out to be Morphogenesis. Needless to say, they don’t.

Pretty much all you need to know is that they are on Ian Boddy’s DiN label and that there is a gear list printed on the digipak listing high-end modular synth systems. Serge, Moog and Buchla – potent names radiating arcane magical auras to anyone with an interest in the history of electronic sound, but clearly implying different potentials to different people; worryingly, and symptomatically, modern prestige boutique systems and custom software are also listed. With no apparent distinction between the modern and vintage, computer and hardware. Heresy! Klaus Schulze would be rolling in his studio, if he could move for MIDI gear.

The genesis of this music and its main part is lodged in that peculiar 80s world of UK Synth Music. A world where the sequencers of men like Mark Shreeve and Ian Boddy strode the earth like bouncing colossi. Where the pertinent work of Tangerine Dream was not their visionary early-to-mid seventies output but their early eighties Hollywood work.

To recreate: engage various synths and sequencers, immerse in a big bath of reverb, soak, repeat. It seems a little wasteful to disguise the various (lovingly catalogued) synths’ characteristics with such liberal application of homogenising sheen, not to mention to essentially use them simply to play melodic pads and occasionally some IDMish beats. As far as musics utilising Buchla systems go, I would much rather listen to the wild, atonal, alien drones and dances of Morton Subotnick or Pauline Oliveros, for example. On the terms it sets out for itself, however, the album does exactly what it intended doing and is expected to do, with additional hints of the past two decades impinging such as the aforementioned rhythm programming, and there must be a happy audience for it: the press release speaks approvingly of ‘another fine release to add to the DiN canon’. I could imagine, as well as staunch UK Synth enthusiasts and DiN collectors there being a crossover to fans of more-recent, polite FAX-style ambience, or those to whom the prospect of a cyborg John Carpenter and a band of blue Avatar aliens playing the Future Sound of London’s Lifeforms in a bubblebath with a dash of prog-metal bombast swirled through sounds in any way appealing. Personally, I couldn’t enter into the requisite headspace in which to enjoy that, although I may just be still unsettled by recently having to rewire my listening set-up due to equipment failure.

DiN

September 15, 2013

A Vinyl Varambolage

Another fine Jean-Noël Cognard project – ever since this veteran French drummer got in touch with TSP, he’s been exceptionally generous in supplying us with his vinyl releases, which happen to be on the Bloc Thyristors label and are usually sumptuous objects pressed in coloured vinyl with screenprinted covers, witness their other releases by Tankj, Empan, Tribraque, Ressuage and others. La Vierge De Nuremberg is a six-piece combo featuring the great Jac Berrocal on trumpet, flute and various “jouets sonores”, Cognard on the drums, plus a jazz-rock-type combo on guitars, bass, sax and “clavier vintage”, by which I suppose the French understand old analogue keyboards. They play a solid and energetic set on Le Retour De (BLOC THYRISTORS 0100), reminding us of a forgotten time when albums really were “albums”, by which I mean a collection of related and well-produced tracks edited into a coherent whole, and not simply two 20-minute sprawls of improvised noise plastered onto vinyl. The band here exhibit diverse interests in jazz, free-form improvisation, progressive rock, psychedelic rock songs, and a fair dose of inventive insanity when the occasion calls for it. Fans who are in the know will appreciate the first track on side two, ‘Rock N Roll Station’, where Berrocal stages a remake-revisit of one of his most famous pieces (the original was recorded in 1976 with Vince Taylor on vocals, but I find Berrocal has revisited it at least twice before in 1996 and 2007), and it’s still an eccentric gem, although its avant-mischief is largely untypical of the rest of this album which is more in the area occupied by great French prog music of the 1970s and 1980s, such as Gong or Lard Free, with perhaps the odd touch of Rock In Opposition groups. Recorded in 2011 in the Pierre Schaeffer studio. Mika Pusse did the highly kinky cover artwork with lashings of spanking, lingerie and tit clamps. From July 2012.

The Swifter is a collaboration between the Italian percussionist Andrea Belfi and BJNilsen, plus the pianist Simon James Phillips. Just four enigmatic instrumentals on this eponymous long-player (THE WORMHOLE WHO#02), where the pattern is that each piece starts with uncertain, near-chaos, coagulating gradually out of forlorn percussive scrapes and bangs, as if a house were being put together by renegade builders invading your garden at midnight; and then develops slowly into a glorious melodic crescendo as Phillips executes his assured minimalist arpeggios to soaring effect. What begins as slightly broken music transforms itself into a very stable and pleasing harmonic arrangement. The odd effect of hearing so many drum-rolls and piano introductions that don’t develop anywhere is that the listener is kept in a state of constant anticipation, as though watching a music hall stage where the orchestra are creating the world’s longest build-up for a star singer who never appears. An enigmatic release – the titles refer to capstan bars, wave guidance and neap tides for no apparent reason, and the record purports to be about “space”, but I enjoyed the very crisp and clear sound of the recording, a no-nonsense and unfiltered document of the performances. From 18 October 2012, apparently the second vinyl release from this subsidiary of the cassette-only Tapeworm label.

Guerilla Toss are an American five-piece here with their Jeffrey Johnson (FEEDING TUBE RECORDS FTR 095) LP, just six tracks which make for a shortish LP or a longish mini-album. The band form a basic oddball rock setup with guitars, bass and drums, but much sizzling heat is added by their two secret weapons – the synth of Ian Kovacjr and the vocals of Kassie Carlson. Kassie’s vocals are shrill, high-pitched and harsh and most civilians will reach for their steel helmets after just five minutes in her company, but when she’s in the shrieky mode she reaches new heights of deliberate-obnoxiousness not heard since Japan’s Space Streakings. Mark you, she is also capable of muttering strangely into the mike like she’s just been woken out of a coma in the psycho ward, and is recounting the dreams she just had. Kovacjr’s insane electronics add tasty flavouring too, although I for one would have liked to hear more from his moth-like fingers skittering across the keys and dials. The rest of the band are great though, straining quite hard (perhaps too hard) to play crazy dynamics, with wild stop-starts and frantic explosions of errant rock noise provided as needed. They fit together as a unit like sixteen pairs of odd socks – you never get the same match twice. Their strenuous efforts ensure the music is always extremely surprising (to say the least), even at the expense of structure or song form. Clearly all of these young Bostonians have been digesting their post-punk record collection well. I dig the spontaneous energy of the whole album while it’s spinning, even if it doesn’t leave much of an impression after the fizz has died down. Since we received this item, they’ve got a CD out on Tzadik, so maybe that one’s slightly better “produced”. Jeffrey Johnson gave the album its name and also did the bonkers cover art. (23 November 2012).

Thurston Moore is one of the “executive directors” of Feeding Tube Records and it so happens he’s featured on the album Caught On Tape (FEEDING TUBE RECORDS FTR092 / MANHAND MH131), two sides of recordings taken from a European tour he did in 2012 with the drummer John Moloney covering his back. It’s a tremendous record. As is well known, 2012 was the year that Sonic Youth went on “hiatus”, and not even the press release makes any reference to this seminal band (although there’s a long checklist of Thurston’s other projects). Here, liberated from the song form and the need to hit marks, play on cue, imitate Glenn Branca compositions or do anything other than just play the guitar as he sees fit, Thurston is suddenly unleashed, born again. A meticulous musicologist could probably listen to side one alone and unpick musical quotes referring to anyone from John Fahey to Albert Ayler by way of Tom Verlaine, but everyone else is just enjoying the glorious melodic and psychedelic noise of unfettered amplified axe. Moloney’s drumming finally makes sense to me in this context too. I was usually disappointed by the sluggish Sunburned Hand of the Man records, but here Moloney’s loud and primitive bashes completely fit the bill, and the pair of them genuinely sound like they’re enjoying themselves. How often do we get that sensation these days? Recorded on cassette (like audience recordings) with a rough edge that aids the rawness of the music, the finished product has I suspect been edited in places – one or two splices are detectable on side one at least – but the cumulative effect is a non-stop exhilarating juggernaut of avant-rock madness. Fine art by Raymond Pettibon and Emma Kohlmann completes the package. Since the original “tour pressing” of 113 copies sold out instantly, this edition is a must-have! (23 November 2012)

September 14, 2013

Neo Jazz Licks

Under The Carpet
Under The Carpet
LEBANON RUPTURED RPTD 009 CD (2012)

Experimentalist threesome Under The Carpet appear to be the real deal when it comes to a “hands across the ocean” working concept. Looking at the label’s cribsheet shows us a trio that’s based in Beirut, and was formed a couple of years back by ultra-bassist Paed Conca from Switzerland, french saxist Stephane Rives and guitarist Fadi Tabbal from Lebanon. And with with respective cvs as long as both your arms combined, involving work with heavyhitters like Jack Wright, Lionel Marchetti, Otomo Yoshihide, Bob Osterag, Uncle Tom Cobley and a full supporting cast.

Basically, the group’s modus operandi on their latest self-titled CD is that a clearly defined melodic line is improvised on for a brief time and eventually, that ole original theme is revisited – that’s jazz right? Or mebbe not in these boys’ hands. Perhaps neo jazz electronic improv? All rattling along at a pretty furious lick – with, it seems, some tracks almost colliding with the closing sections of the previous piece. And…all recorded live with not a single overdub in sight. The only breather taken being “Twinkle Twinkle” a charming repetitious, two part exercise in guitar chime. Nice.

On “Sizes, Performance and Capacity”, an unexpected Sweet-like/Arrowsy glam rock backbeat is joined by seasick moog smearings and takes me back (cue dreamy harp swirls…) to a stray “Elephant Table” comp track from yesteryear. RollKommando perchance? While “Get me a Pack” is the only cut where you can actually immediately recognize Rives’ sax squeals – the rest of the time – he’s processed it (via laptop) outta existence. Marry all this to titling which “might” be a set of band in-jokes (?). Check out “There is no one in the Accounting Department”, “New Hope for Medical Treatment” and “There is no Picture of the Band” and you have a pretty enthralling little disc of wonder. I’d really like to see U.T.C. on a bill with 70s U.S. hardrockers Dust, and 90s Camden noiserockers Silverfish…but on reflection…that’s just plain corny…and I apologize.

Ruptured