Tagged: jazz

Horn Beam Fantasmas


Loopy and intense noisy jazz rock blurt from Cactus Truck, a trio which showcases the saxophone malarkey of John Dikeman as much as the tangled guitar lines of Jasper Stadhouders, while drummer Onno Govaert urges these two rabid loons to propel themselves over the cliff edge. Their album Brand New For China! (PUBLIC EYESORE NO. 119) has a ten-minute opening salvo which will let the listener know instantly if they’ve the stomach to stick around for more of the same. These “spiky” fellows have caused much agitation in and around Amsterdam where they are based (this was recorded in a Netherlands studio), but many improvisers and veteran jazzmen on the international circuits also tip their hats to Cactus Truck. They make sure to put on gardening gloves first, though. I’d like to report a melange of Albert Ayler lines on top of Beefheartian blues rhythms, but their ultra-aggressive music favours surface sound and technique over structure. Not that you’ll notice as you succumb to the joyous free energy on offer here. (09/07/2012)

From the Belgian duo NDE we have Kampfbereit (COLD SPRING RECORDS CSR146CD), their second release which in typography and cover art at least is “disguised” as a Black Metal album, but turns out to be a wild experiment in suffocating, extreme noise – situated in the “Death Industrial” sub-sub-genre, as the press notes would have it. As they hurl around their buckets of distortion, hammering percussion, and excessively filtered screaming vocals, NDE also prove they can do dynamic changes pretty well, and the album is designed almost purely as an extreme listening experience, where we are given few clues or map points and the listener’s imagination must work hard to process the scrambled information. A few quieter tracks paint “bleak and empty” vistas of desolate misery, but most of the content is simply intolerably repellent and over-layered loud noise. A painful and torturous journey to the depths of a Pandemonium-styled Hades. (28/07/2012)

Is it too early to say Northern Spy Records are taking up the slack from ESP-Disk? The latter label used to make a point in the 1960s of signing up eccentric performers from rock’s margins, some of them recruited direct from the street, and gradually made history thereby (even if they sold few records at the time). I’m getting a similar vibe from Diamond Terrifier, although my impression is based largely on the photo inside the gatefold of Kill The Self That Wants To Kill Your Self (NORTHERN SPY RECORDS NSCD026), and I may be misreading it completely. This odd record is a one-man show by Sam Hillmer, who exhibits untrammelled raw passion when playing his saxophone, recorded in strange ways and at strange times, with minimal (or zero) accompaniment. That woodwind instrument has rarely sounded so other-worldly. It’s not just microphone placement, either; Hillmer is reaching down into a very deep personal place to extract these hollow bellows and loosing them into the ether like mind-drenching fog clouds. Diamond Terrifier, who cutely expresses his name as <>T, is a truly original primitive. This is his debut record; will the world allow a second release? P.S. – the fauvist version of the American flag on back cover is a nice touch, clues us in to the “alternative” universe of Mr. Hillmer. (19/07/2012)

Blindshore is James Adkisson, a Texas guitarist who used to play in Seven Percent Solution. Hollow (SELF-RELEASED) is a solo album on which he plays everything, and freely owns up to his influences – some of them rather conventional, such as Adrian Belew or Brian May, along with his first loves Fripp and Sonic Youth. The results are agreeable and competent modern rock music, but given his proclivities for progressive rock and melody (no bad things, I hasten to add), Blindshore is unlikely to be mistaken for a carbon-copy of solemn post-rockers such as Isis or Red Sparowes. Adkisson’s vocals are a tad thin, but he uses the singing voice as another instrument in his very thickened mixes, where no space is left unfilled and there is barely space for the listener to move. (18/07/2012)

Attacca are an improvising trio based in Berlin active since 2010, who declare O’ The Emotions! (SCHRAUM 15). Two German players, the trombonist Mattias Müller and the bassist Axel Haller, are joined by Canadian Dave Bennett, a refugee electro-acoustic student who has made his home in Europe’s financial capital and contributes guitar to the trio’s sound. Attacca seem to be all about the very rich sound they make together, rather than owing much of a debt to jazz or even improvised music, and don’t wish to draw attention to their respective techniques. Instead, we hear a compelling and integrated combination of tones and textures, with repetitions and patterns arrived at by very natural means. The ebbs and flows of this watery gelatin suck us in like so much quicksand. The “emotions” of the title are thus very hard to name or identify, and clearly they can only be processed by the players through their exploratory work. (12/07/2012)

More splendidly sickened and corrupted computer noise from dsic, the New Zealand expat who lives in Bristol and whose LF Records netlabel rarely disappoints. Public Benefits, Private Vices (LF020) is one of his more aggressive concoctions, seething with hateful noise for most of its duration, and feeling entitled to pummel the listener’s head with cruel buffets. When this punch-up with a street drunk subsides, we are left with curious passages of disaffected half-noise, which pulsate and sizzle like an angry insect poised to strike again. The only variations to the above scheme are found with the final track, a soothing potion of pure tones deployed in random fashion; and the curious voice loops which last for 36 seconds on track two. Whole album could erupt into violence at any moment, creating a tense and invigorating spin. When I grow tired of “polite” and well-manicured laptop music, I always turn to dsic, a man who’s never afraid to show his Samsung just who wears the pants in his house! (24/07/2012)

Just heard from Alfredo Costa Monteiro yesterday, and here he is again as part of an ad-hoc trio called 300 Basses, with Jonas Kocher and Luca Venitucci. Sei Ritornelli (POTLATCH P212) was recorded in late 2011 when the three of them were on a residency in Switzerland. Although I personally would welcome the formation of an orchestra of 300 musicians playing only the upright double bass (and hopefully doing so at the Hot Gates), the music of 300 Basses is in fact predicated on the accordion. Continuing to pursue his radical, deconstructionist approach to conventional instruments, Monteiro attempts to refashion the very workings of the accordion according to his own diabolical schemes, rethinking the respective purposes of the bellows, keys and buttons. If applied to to the fields of biology or zoology, I suspect his “what-if” approach would lead to his being banned under various international anti-vivisection agreements. The resultant horrors are laid bare on this extreme record, where to my ears the accordions simply seem to be begging for mercy under this cruel and unusual treatment. Still, that’s clearly the intention. Kocher used to make me a little impatient with his earlier slow-moving minimalist releases like Materials and Solo, but there’s a little more fire to be heard in this collaborative work. (09/07/2012)

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Noize 2005: jazz klezmer fusion that’s born to be wild … or mild

KRUZENSHTERN NOIZE 1
Kruzenshtern i parohod, Noize 2005, Auris Media, CD aum033 (2011)

In spite of its title, this is an album of fusion klezmer / jazz / punk metal and the odd eccentric vocal or two. We’re entertained by sprightly light-hearted runaway chase-caper music dominated by a shrill clarinet with smart crisp percussion and a surprisingly deep, lightly fuzzed bass with an occasional hard edge following in the woodwind instrument’s wake. There’ll be rock or metal rhythms (most notably in the third track “Danglers Song”) but the attitude is not very serious and I get the occasional impression that this Israeli quartet is paying affectionate homage in performing light-hearted send-ups of various past heroes and musical inspirations.

Some tracks stand out more than others: “Shmock on the Water” substitutes Middle Eastern folk melodies for the signature Deep Purple riff; “Danglers Song” pokes fun at rock star posturing; “Young Ones” features creative percussion rhythms; and meaty bass lines and hell-for-tefillin-leather / go-for-broke passages of screaming clarinet and thrashy rhythm abound in the guys’ cover of a John Zorn piece “Meholalot”. Altogether though this is an enjoyable and fun set of spirited music for those born to be wild … or mild.

Contact: Auris Media, Kruzenshtern i parohod

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Hidden Album: a breezy klezmer jazz improv fusion

KRUZENSHTERN HIDDEN 3

Kruzenshtern i Parohod, hidden album, Auris Media, CD aum031 (2011)

Apart from a couple of those suggestive little black silhouettes on the cover artwork – those little scissors with the droplets remind me of that time I saw Lars von Trier’s “Antichrist” at the cinema and a fellow in the audience yelped in fright and ran for his life out into the streets during Charlotte Gainsbourg’s notorious scene with the clippers – I quite like this breezy fusion of klezmer, jazz and punk metal attitude. The musicians who include an accordionist waltz through Keystone Kops chase soundtrack music and (later in the album) sequences of somewhat darker and more ambivalent jazzy improv. Mood highs and lows are traversed at lightning-fast speed in the blink of an eye, often in the same track. Blastbeat drumming is sometimes present and band leader Igor Krutogolov even has a go at rumbly death metal vocals in one hard-edged musical passage.

If heard in one sitting, the music appears to narrate a story that starts quite brightly and innocently enough and then endures several obstacles and tests of character that culminate in a very emotionally intense and upsetting revelation, as though long-buried family secrets are flushed out of rotting closets into the open and everyone’s lives are turned upside-down. Marriages founded on lies, bad faith and the point of a shotgun are rent apart, people hurriedly get new passports and shoot out of town forever, children big and small alike discover parents they never knew they had and relatives spend the rest of their lives regretting the things they’ve said and done or the lost opportunities they had to pass up. All right, Krutogolov and his pals didn’t intend this album to be a musical soap opera but it just feels that way: some of their playing on the last track “Koshka” can be gut-wrenching in its intensity and the clarinet nearly breaks into pieces trying to reach the peaks of keening sorrow. Next thing we know, we’re suddenly back to gay light-heartedness. When all’s over and done with, my head feels as though as it’s been put through an ancient washing-machine wringer.

The music was recorded all in one day with vocal overdubs added later so it has a live though not very raw feel.

Contact: Auris Media, Kruzenshtern i Parohod

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EHNAHRE 023

Old Earth: four-part opus doesn’t quite satisfy as jazz / death metal chamber music piece

EHNAHRE 023
Ehnahre, Old Earth, Crucial Blast, CD CBR99 (2011)

Ehnahre are new to me but this trio from Boston, Massachusetts, has been active since 2008 when they released their debut full-length album. These guys play an unstructured and doom-influenced style of death metal that’s very close to heavy improv jazz. “Old Earth” is the group’s third album and is based on a short essay by 20th century Irish avant-garde writer Samuel Beckett. The album consists of one piece broken up into four tracks or movements and by that structure derives as much of its inspiration from forms of classical and chamber music as it does from jazz, doom, hardcore and death metal. Guest musicians include trumpet players Greg Kelley and Forbes Graham, and the ever-trusty eminence grise studio engineer and sometime musician James Plotkin turns up on mastering duties. The guys sometimes come across as sounding a bit like Japan’s slow-burning doomsters Corrupted mixed in with some of their more extreme jazz / improv / metal brethren like Boredoms, Fushitsusha and Ruins.

After a warm-up introduction which includes something that sounds like a distant radio recording of a singer followed by a forlorn piano melody, the threesome play some very quiet guitar and noodle about for several minutes. At the half-way point, the track finally explodes into some fiery spitfire jazz death metal separated by passages of sulky guitar meditations. A haggard death metal vocal yells out lyrics based on the Beckett text while bass guitar surges forward on long booming drone, drums keep busy on fast rhythms and guitars either follow the bass guitar.

The second movement is a mood piece that privileges a chamber music style with the use of double bass as a solo instrument in parts. The clear production on this track underlines the decision to play the track as an acoustic piece. With the solo double bass followed by solo electric guitar, the track appears disjointed and the momentum built up by the first movement is lost. Late in the track, Kelley and Graham join in on trumpets but their performance is very subsidiary to the lead guitar and listeners could query whether the guest musicians are really needed at all.

Doomy death metal credibility is regained in the third movement but at this point I wonder why Ehnahre risked doing a long second piece that takes away all the energy and aggression of the first movement only to have to claw it all back in the third. By the time we reach Track 3, we are two-thirds of the way through the album. After a short, edgy piece marked by stealthy rhythm, the fourth movement comes as a dive into an existential inferno with the main vocalist screaming in torment.

This is an interesting album but the music is very uneven: the first two movements are long, each well over ten minutes, while the last two pieces fit entirely into the running-time of Track 1. You’d normally expect the third movement to be very important because in a four-movement work, the third must build on the efforts of the previous two movements in intensity and tension to a gut-wrenching climax; the fourth movement deals with the climax itself and the consequences that follow, and then it would just tidy all the loose ends and clean up the splatter on the floor and walls. We don’t get anything of the sort here on “Old Earth”. The flow of tension and energy across the album is uneven: the first movement did well in building up that tension but the second track lost it. This means that the third track has the unenviable job of performing its traditional function plus pick up that tension and conflict in the space of five minutes! “Old Earth” ends up being a lesser album than it could have been. There is not one God-Almighty tension-releasing pyrotechnics display anywhere here: the recording is more or less low-key throughout. Your listening experience will be an intriguing one at times but it’ll also be frustrating.

As a metal album, “Old Earth” certainly proves there’s plenty of life in doom and death metal when they come into contact with avant-garde jazz. It’s a bit of a shame though that Ehnahre seem too enamoured with the idea of playing with the structure of the music to upset expectations of how music builds up to a climax and then comes down, and somewhere in the middle lets go of some tension before climbing up again. Sometimes there are things you just should not deconstruct just for the hell of it, even with unstructured and out-there music.

Contact: Crucial Blast Recordings

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SHIJOX 009

… if a night: trippy jazz big on smooth and suave tricks and not much else


Shijo X, … if a night, Bombanella Records / Five Roses Press, CD (2012)

A very nice surprise here … this is the closest I’ve come to reviewing something that could have been recorded for a James Bond film. Song titles like “Zabriskie’s bench”, suggesting a secret yet commonplace rendezvous (like a bus stop outside a nondescript safe house in a quiet leafy street) between spies, certainly suggest as much – and then there are tracks that count the graveyard hours like “02 a.m.”, “04 a.m.” and “06 a.m.” that bookend the album and cut it into its A-side and B-side. The music sounds as if it was performed by a band but it’s actually the output of an Italian duo, Davide Verticelli and Laura Sinigaglia.

Sung in a sultry and sometimes bellowing voice by Sinigaglia, the songs are short and have a cool trippy lounge ambience. The clean, cool sound is at once the duo’s strength and weakness: the music has a precise, but not too sharp, sound which showcases the singing and the instrumentation clearly but lacks warmth and depth. This throws the vocals and melodies into much sharper focus than might be usual for this kind of music so performances have to be top-notch. I sometimes wish the songs were longer so there would be room for improvised instrumental passages in which atmosphere of a smoky, noirish sort would be pronounced but the choice of instrumentation, musical style and the production prevent this.

Overall the album is very busy and business-like but there’s not much on it that leaves a deep impression or has you thinking of late nights in dimly lit bars where bartenders are packing up, pulling down the blinds and casting sideways glances at the lone customer hunched over in the cubicle staring down into his glass, lost in reminiscing about the mystery blonde with the Veronica Lake peekaboo hairstyle and the silhouette figure in black, tottering down the street in stilettoes towards her gangster boyfriend’s car … and of whom he (the private eye) hasn’t seen or heard in the last five years. He wonders if he should look her up in the battered phone book nearby … then he remembers that news story tucked away in the corner of page 6 not so long ago about a woman’s body answering to the lady’s description being fished out of a polluted river.

Lots of smooth and suave tricks abound but an album of this kind of trippy jazz needs to rise above the cliches and stereotypes associated with the music, and include something that really sounds as if it’s coming from the heart.

Contact: Five Roses Press, Shijo X

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Musings on Mingus

The Sound Projector Radio Show
Friday 8th February 2013

  1. Charles Mingus, ‘Black Bats and Poles’ (1975)
    From Changes Two, WARNER JAZZ 8122765912 CD
  2. Miles Davis, ‘Smooch’ (1953)
    From Tallest Trees, PRESTIGE 24012 2 x LP (1972)
  3. Duke Ellington, ‘Wig Wise’ (1962)
    From Money Jungle, BLUE NOTE RECORDS 7243 5 38227 2 9 CD (2002)
  4. Duke Ellington / Count Basie, ‘Wild Man’ (1961)
    From First Time! The Count Meets The Duke, COLUMBIA CJ 40586 LP
  5. Joni Mitchell, ‘Chair In The Sky’
    From Mingus, ASYLUM RECORDS K53091 LP (1979)
  6. Art Ensemble Of Chicago, ‘Charlie M.’
    From Full Force, ECM RECORDS 1167 LP (1980)
  7. Charles Mingus, ‘Three Worlds Of Drums’ (1979)
    From Me, Myself An Eye, WARNER JAZZ 75679 3068-2 CD
  8. ‘Reincarnation of a Lovebird / Haitian Fight Song Montage’
    From Hal Willner Presents Weird Nightmare, COLUMBIA 472467 2 CD (1992)
  9. Charles Mingus, ‘Sue’s Changes’ (1975)
    From Changes One, WARNER JAZZ 8122765902 CD
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006

Castles in your Heart


Here’s a highlight from February 2012, Age Of Energy (NORTHERN SPY NSCD020) by Chicago Underground Duo – a glorious CD of electronics, jazz cornet, and solid rhythms. No upstarts are Chad Taylor and Rob Mazurek, who have in fact been playing together in various manifestations since the late 1990s, and in turn grew out of a renaissance of improvised music in Chicago which had been burgeoning since about 1990. They’ve had a lot of records released on Delmark and Thrill Jockey (this is their first for Northern Spy) and as this is the first I heard from them, I think that a back catalogue investigation is in order. Album contains ‘Winds and Sweeping Pines’, 20 minutes of beautiful electronic tones including perhaps some treated cornet sounds, and a piece which goes through about a dozen shifts and changes in completely unforced fashion, evoking joyous moods which contrast with more introspective and wistful emotions. Testament perhaps to their non-prescriptive and unprogrammed manner of making music. The drumming is spectacularly inventive throughout and never settles for a tedious motorik or disco beat. We only hear some recognisable cornet tones at the very end of this epic canvas, at which point the Billy Cobham fans will be leaping into the lively arena to grab a piece of this action. More suffused and understated is the track ‘It’s Alright’, a pulsating and inventive drone of textured distorto-electronica used as a platform for Mazurek’s brassy utterances. There’s also the title track, which is probably the cut most likely to appeal to listeners still seeking their thrills from 21st-century updates on Krautrock-inspired music. The rich drum sound here is something most technicians would give their right arm to achieve, smashing against the rippling waves of electronic genius-blather with zesty abandon. But it’s the tricky rhythmical base which once again is so creative, showing Chad Taylor doesn’t take coffee breaks in his mind when sitting behind his kit, and that he’s more in the lineage of a Sunny Murray than a Zappi Diermaier. Chicago Underground Duo were namechecked by the UK duo Warm Digits as one of their major influences, and you can take that to the savings & loan. Warm Digits have not slavishly copied the sounds of the Duo, but successfully emulate their passion, drive and joyful élan. Recommended. Released in March 2012, our copy received 29 February.

A very nice item is Flux (SPECTRUM SPOOLS SP010) by the American composer Robert Turman, an album he originally released on cassette in 1981. Turman’s earliest known work includes a 1979 single Mode Of Infection / Knife Ladder which he realised with Boyd Rice of NON, and because of this and Z.O. Voider he became associated with 1980s industrial music. Flux however is not abrasive grinding noise, comprising six long tracks of very gentle, melodic and understated minimal music made with piano, kalimba, tape loops, and drum machine. It’s beautiful music and the muted sound arising from this rescued cassette tape adds considerably to the charming, dream-like and restful aesthetic. A sort of less strident version of The Residents around the time of Commercial Album, mixed with Brian Eno’s ambient sensibilities, particularly Music For Airports. The press release points out the ingenious cross-rhythms in play, and praises Turman’s skills in realising this complex music while overcoming hurdles presented by the limitations of the equipment available to him, which is now regarded as somewhat primitive. Since 2009, Robert Turman has enjoyed a productive partnership with Aaron Dilloway who released albums for him on the Hanson label, and provided the scans of the original cassette for this reissue. One of the better releases from this label. Released as a double LP on St Valentine’s Day 2012.

The team of Lull, Beta Cloud and Andrew Liles all collaborated to produce Circadian Rhythm Disturbance Reconfigured (COLD SPRING RECORDS CSR139CD), a concept album which aims to suggest the effects of insomnia through sound; in fact the creators were mostly concerned with how the affliction of sleeplessness can affect the thought processes of the human brain. It might be viewed as a vaguely sinister experiment about the effects of sleep deprivation, but also an attempt at a psychological probing of those areas of the consciousness often neglected or overlooked. We received this in February and at first approach, neither ears nor brain nor sleep-sensors were particularly engaged by its empty-seeming surface, but today this album is just right; a clouded-up fogfest of supreme fugginess which leaves the listener adrift in a supremely ambiguous zone for over 20 minutes and hence meets all the requirements of unsettling music in the “dark ambient” genre. Lull is Mick Harris of Scorn, whose 1990s ambient texturising I always enjoyed when I was immersed in the field where every other record was mastered by James Plotkin, and the Isolationism compilation was my touchstone. Beta Cloud is Carl Pace, the American musician whose Lunar Monograph from a few years ago sounds intriguing. Together this pair made the original Circadian Rhythm Disturbance and released it as a three-incher in 2008; now here it is again in full, along with an Andrew Liles remix of same. Liles transforms the original completely, filling it out with horrifying explosions, scalding jet aircraft engines, sinister crackling fuzz and many other unpleasant incidents, completely undermining the menacing yet strangely soothing mood of the original near-blank murkoid statement. If we compare the two, I suppose Lull / Beta Cloud ask interesting questions about the nature and effects of insomnia, while it seems Liles is hell-bent on contributing to or even exacerbating the condition.

Got another bundle of psych-revival music from Dave Schmidt in late February 2012. Electric Moon‘s The Doomsday Machine (NASONI RECORDS 118) was not in fact released on his Sulatron-Records label, but Schmidt features as a main player of this band in his Sula Bassana guise. Throughout, muscular and dense psych-rock music in the Spacemen 3 vein. We’re warned that The Doomsday Machine is “enveloped by a gloomy atmosphere”, which may be true, but to me it’s the kind of energised and flailing gloom as typified by certain favourite apocalyptic songs of King Crimson, Andromeda, or Second Hand when they made ‘The World Will End Yesterday’ or Death May Be Your Santa Claus. The album’s title track occupies all of side one and relentlessly chugs away in a minor key with its thick, clotted sound. The drumming summons an army of skeletons, the throats of the vocalists are stuffed with palpable despair, and the wah-wah guitars in particular produce an inhuman screaming sound that is highly appealing. The rest of the album may not be as crushingly heavy as that supreme downer of an opener, but there are highlights like ‘Spaceman’, a strong contender for matching Richard Pinhas’s soaring sci-fi guitar longform excursions, and ‘Stardust Service’ which ought to bring tears to the eyes of fans of the early Pink Floyd. Ulli Mahn’s overwrought artworks are an integral part of the release, and Electric Moon have made it their personal project to reinterpret these elaborate paintings in music, thus also forging a link with the past (the painter is the father of band member Komet Lulu). All of Schmidt’s projects and releases may stand accused of having both feet firmly cemented into “retro” genres, but he and his bands do it with such conviction and pleasure that I for one cannot resist. Available as a CD and a double-LP with extras.

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023

Umber: the path from A to Z not at all straightforward but it’s there all right


Zero Centigrade, Umber, Observatoire, CD-r obs music 035 (2012)

Zero Centigrade is an electronic improv jazz duo of Tonino Taiuti on electric and acoustic guitars and Vincenzo de Luce on trumpet and sound effects. “Umber” is their third album together. The music is a weird if rather fragile-sounding combination of freak folk, hesitant improvisation and a naif experimental attitude. The men strum their guitars and blow their trumpets as if trying out these instruments for the first time and seeing how far they can bend their toys before they break a string or the instrument flops from the effort of trying to please these humans! Yet each and every sound has a definite existence and is not part of a cacophony of noises which the album could have easily been: a definite purpose stands behind the music through the entire album.

Although there are twelve tracks, I think it’s best to listen to the album in its entirety and view the music as one continuously developing meta-track with different chapters. The structure of the music can be quite fragile and relies on minimalist repetition, long tones and a particular mood created by the trumpet or guitar that is maintained by the deep spaces within the track. Funnily, the album starts off quite brightly and the music is playful, even mischievous, but over time the spark seems to wear off, the musicians get waylaid at times and struggle to stick to the straight and narrow path: not always a bad thing, by the way. But Taiuti and de Luce manage somehow to get from A all the way to Z even though the path is not straightforward through the alphabet: there are times where they seem stuck or might even be going backwards – and then by the next track, they’re already at the spot that they’re thought to have lost sight of.

Contact: Observatoire

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013

St Francis Duo: dark and moody, unpredictable and fiery, mesmerising and absorbing


Steve Noble and Stephen O’Malley, St Francis Duo, Bo’Weavil Recordings, CD weavil47 (2012)

A thrilling barrage of thunderous drums heralds the arrival of this collaboration by two members of the Aethenor project Steve Noble and Stephen O’Malley, and it’s a mighty meeting of psychedelic rock, free jazz, free noise and abstract improv. The recordings on this album were recorded live at Cafe OTO in London over 18 – 19 August 2010. The two musicians could have tried to blast each other off the stage with either heavy tribalistic drumming or long sonorous subterranean guitar drones but instead choose to rampage together through quite dark psych / noise / improv territory in a way that reminds me of Keiji Haino’s work with Fushitsusha but without that man’s vocal gymnastics. The result can be very intense and deep, and O’Malley at least reveals unexpected skill and ability in conjuring up many different and subtle moods with his guitar; as for Noble, I’m not familiar with what he’s done over the past 30 years but here he really immerses himself in collaborating with O’Malley with exuberant, energetic and sustained drumming.

The album tends to be more of a showcase of Noble’s percussion talent than of O’Malley’s work, though the guitarist is very busy throughout the recordings: it’s just that O’Malley chooses to scrabble away on the strings with wild chords and shredded riffing, and shadows Noble’s playing as a foil. The Sunn0))) man has certainly learned a lot about playing heavy moody psychedelic guitar with the Sensei of the Dark Sunglasses. Although all of the music here is unpredictable and often fiery, the first track seems more consistently unpredictable and volatile than the others which have some very long quiet passages. Compared to track 1, track 2 is more restrained and slow-burning at times but is no less energetic and lively. In later tracks  the duo appear to find themselves trapped in too-quiet trance passages when they should just let the music surge forth like powerful death rays but there is no denying that they enjoy playing together and are totally absorbed in the moment.

I’d very much like to see Noble and SOMA continue together as a duo and see how far they can take their brand of free noise improv / psych rock / jazz. One might assume purely on the basis of their past experiences together and separately that they might invite guest musicians (Haino as DJ on synthesisers comes to mind) to perform with them on future outings but it might be an idea for them both to keep performing live and in the studio just as a pair (allowing for some inspiration from others) just to see how far they can go.

Contact: Bo’Weavil Recordings

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A Round Cube

Plaistow Patricia

Lacrimosa (INSUBORDINATIONS NETLABEL INSUB.DLT01) has some fine instrumental music from the Swiss trio Plaistow, comprising Johann Bourquenez on the piano supported by the bass guitar of Raphaël Ortis and the drumming of Cyril Bondi. In their own understated way, these three talented Europeans are doing a lot to overturn a listener’s expectations of jazz trio conventions, and on this album frankly own their interest in the minimal piano arpeggios of Glass and Reich, allied with a solid approach to mechanical drum and bass playing. On the title track this results in some 23 minutes of compelling, repetitive music which won’t let your ears go nor surrender its friendly embrace as it weaves you, the unwilling dancer, around a virtual grand ballroom. Bourquenez in particular fills out the cold precision of standard minimalist techniques through striking rich and warm chordal shapes that evolve and shift in line with very human, intuitive rules…he paints chord changes in diffuse watercolour mode, rather than delineating them sharply in the style of a Mondrian or Ellsworth Kelly. Then we have the equally warm and human rhythm section, who far from acting as a two-man version of the sequencers on a Massive Attack album (as they would seem to wish, according to the press pack), provide a suitably solid structure for the colourful piano drapery to unfold. The results in this case are like a tent of the Bedouin in the desert of contemporary music. On ‘Cube’, the bassist and drummer are showcased with far more complex and tricky time signatures and flourishes that owe as much to European progressive rock as they do to trip-hop. Bourquenez meanwhile restricts himself to single-note plucks that have been treated and filtered to resembled the obsessive plectrummings of a very disciplined lead guitarist. On dirait a more laid-back version of 1970s Miles Davis without any egotistic posturings…it’s supremely accurate music, the tautness of every note and the simplicity of the clean, direct approach is just a delight. They’ve released five albums to date and Plaistow have made all their music available free for download as a matter of principle, and find this attitude doesn’t damage sales of physical product at their concerts; hence they found a home on the Insubordinations net label. The “feathery” cover art may not be much to look at, but the music is like a muscular “wee gem” lettuce standing on two sturdy legs.

In Dreams I Walk With You

American oneirist Joe Frawley has self-released a lot of his oeuvre, but 13 Houses And The Mermaid (TRS013) was put out by Time Released Sound, a small hand-made USA label which specialises in tiny editions with individually crafted covers. I wish I’d told you sooner about this fine item which arrived here 09 March 2012, as it’s already sold out at the website. Musically, Frawley works with his familiar techniques of layering his romantic piano fugues with exquisite sound-collages, using spoken word and sound effects. Previous works (no less beautiful) have resembled elaborate literary puzzles which, given enough time and a library of Borgesian proportions, we might be able to decode. 13 Houses And The Mermaid by contrast is more fragmented in its underlying meanings, much more dreamlike in its connections, and sparing in its distributed verbal and visual clues. There are however suggestive themes which recur from previous records; train travel, and the image of a lost or homeless young woman. Imagine a very fractured, evanescent form of cinema, much like the impossibly wonderful miniatures which Joseph Cornell used to craft through his patient editing and distillation of existing footage. Frawley is also content to align himself with David Lynch’s films, most likely the confusing and labyrinthine structure of Lost Highway. Frawley doesn’t quite probe into the same dark corners of noir psychology, nor are his charming “dreamstories” especially threatening; but in his measured and crafted manner, he does succeed in stirring nostalgic emotions in a completely unique fashion. Aided by Greg Conte and Melanie Skriabine, whose musical and vocal improvisations were incorporated into the composition.

The Mystery of the Red Dragon

Enigma of the month was sent to us on 08 March 2012 and may have arrived from Manchester. Only a small red printed symbol on the hand-made card cover gives any indication of the creator’s name, and said symbol is also stamped on the four postcards inserted in glassine wallets inside the cover. The murky grey images may correspond in some way to the four pieces of sound-art on the CDR, which is likewise a thoroughly baffling spin. The second track is 17 minutes of uncertain vaguely musical plucks on what might be an underwater guitar or a harp strung with lengths of chewing gum, surrounded by some equally hesitant percussive noises. So far this resembles music made by two shy ghosts in white sheets who won’t even come out of hiding as they perform their wispy and ethereal music only for the ears of those who dwell in the phantom zone. The recording itself has a slight hiss too, adding to the distancing effect. After this, the third track is just about identifiable as saxophone music, a lone horn played with such a melancholy quaver and sob of futility that you want to go and throw a warm blanket around the shivering husk of a man who’s making this music. Shortly, he’s joined by the rhythm section – some guy rattling the steel bannisters of a deserted factory stairway. Or is it the underwater guitar again? This music plays hob with a man’s senses until you start to feel somewhat unreal, floating in a dreamlike world where logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead. At length, a piano joins the ensemble and somehow the music gradually begins to coalesce into a washed-out, wafer-thin parody of improvised jazz. You were expecting melodies, maybe? Forget about that…the “Red Monad” group, as I shall temporarily refer to them, take atonality in music into a new dimension, and this forlorn track stumbles along like a wounded insect walking across a plate of Copydex glue. There are two other tracks, including the gritty short opener of chuntering noise which might almost be mistaken for field-recording type music (of the industrial machinery genre), and the last four-minute piece which contains more full-bodied playing, continuous rather than broken sounds, and evidence where the musicians are communing with emotions that resemble warmth and compassion. You’ll find the pace of this one infuriatingly slow, but if you can find your way to the core of this very extreme music, I’m fairly certain it will be something you have never heard before. Assuming you can ever find a copy, that is. The “Red Monad” group have chosen the path of complete anonymity and I have absolutely zero information to pass on about contacts, names, or websites, nor even a recognisable project name. If the creators wish to make themselves known, qu’ils le disent!

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