|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
HOSHIZORA NO DRIVE
Aren't the Japanese the ultimate fans? The late leader of early
Pink Floyd, Syd Barrett may have been weird, quirky and whimsical but he could
never possibly imagine how much the Japanese loved him…for his craziness, of
course.
Shots [Jagjaguwar]
And the melodies keep on coming, because for a sludge rock band,
Ladyhawk sure has neat tunes, with Driediger offering more angst - "I just want to feel something other than fear... I just want to
taste something other than tears". Just to show that they can tackle
drunken ballads, there is (I'll Be Your) Ashtray - "I'll be your ashtray if you need me/ 'Cause I only wanna
feel you burning." The morose melancholia continues in Faces of Death, a
slow-burning blues rock groove with the memorable refrain - "I know there's
no such thing as endless love/ Only a joke told in very poor taste/ That
somehow keeps cracking me up". Clocking in at 39 mins, it's quite clear
that Ladyhawk has no time to waste. They cut their tunes tight, they rip
through their solos, all done while high and a little pissed. Even God has no
complaints. (7.5) - Philip Cheah
Phylactery Factory [Dead Oceans] Casey Dienel's second album, but her first
with a band moniker - White Hinterland - is a whimsical, chamber-driven
mélange of both carefully-arranged and improvised pop. Carefully-arranged
because of the use of instruments from Jordan Hudson's vibes (on Hometown
Hooray) to Peter Broderick's accordion (Napoleon at Waterloo), and improvised
because of Dienel's stream-of-consciousness lyrics. The album's opening
track, The Destruction of the Art Deco House sets the tone with its wordy
and precocious words but it's only when the words and music marry each
other that the magic happens. The seven-minute Hometown Hooray, with its
tale of a war casualty told with love and remorse, is carried by a gently
rolling melodic cycle that turns you within its rhythmic coil. Or the
sprightly Dreaming of the Plum Trees with its punchy piano and its strident
melody that follows its "keeping-up-with-the-joneses" theme. Elsewhere,
Dienel's words sound leaden and the charm dries up. Phylactery, the small
leather boxes traditionally worn on the left arm and forehead by Jewish
men when they pray, contains slips of scriptural passages, suggests Dienel's
interest in words of truth. We are now awakened to an interesting new
talent. (5) - Philip Cheah
THE EXPLORERS CLUB Unmistakably Beach Boys. This six-piece band from Charleston, South Carolina like that X-Men character, The Mimic, have the power to make perfect copies. But this is no covers band. Instead Freedom Wind is a brand new Beach Boys album from an alternate reality. So instead of Brian and the boys releasing Pet Sounds, what if Freedom Wind arrived in '66? All the cool instrumental touches are here, right from the first track, Forever, which has that cool Ronettes' Be My Baby intro which Brian used on many of his singles. The main songwriter and singer is Jason Brewer who wrote or co-wrote all the 12 songs. Together with Jimmy Faust, Dave Ellis and Wally Reddington, the four harmonize just like the Beach Boys. Stefan Rogenmoser and Neil Thomas play keyboards and drums respectively. Dont Forget The Sun captures the warmth of the sun with nice BB style bass and drums. While Lost My Head is another echo of the great Pet Sounds. Summer Air is this album's Pet Sounds instrumental. If You Go Now is as touching as Caroline No. But because The Explorers Club hue so close to their inspiration, their tunes are like shadows of the originals and difficult to hold on to. You can barely recall the melodies once the CD stops. The first single Do You Love Me? will street
Apr 8 while the album is due May 20. It will be interesting to see whether
The Explorers Club can take the next step to make a new Beach Boys album
that doesn't borrow from the past but can predict how the band would have
sounded if Brian did not have a breakdown. [7] - Michael Cheah
PHOSPHORESCENT With his third album, Pride, Matthew Houck aka Phosphorescent, has produced music that's too beautiful for today's charts. Who else would begin his album sounding like Robert Wyatt, on the woefully mournful A Picture of Our Torn Up Praise, and offer it as his first single. Music like this isn't meant to move units but to move your heart. As Houck sings: "I won't be breathing like you/ breathe into the light of day/I'll be in the yard/still taking pictures in the dark/of all our torn up praise." He continues with the hymn-like Be Dark Night, his one-man band of instruments transforming into a choir of multi-layered vocal overdubs. But it's on Wolves that his natural singer-songwriter self emerges. It's a confession of hurt and aggression to a lover who's left: "mama there's wolves in the house/mama I tried to put them out/and mama I know you're too wise/to wait till those wolves make nice." Born in Alabama,
Houck's a Southern man, with pundits hailing him as a Neil Young. Both
make equally haunting music but Houck's use of a choral sound has an evangelical
spiritual flavour that sets him apart. But they both share a penchant
for darkness. The penultimate track, Cocaine Lights, which segues into
the instrumental Pride, is a magnificent tour de force of musical and
emotional impact that will leave you stunned and speechless. Here Houck
manages to fuse a drug song and love lyric together (sort of like the
Stones with Wild Horses): "in the darkness/after the cocaine lights/I
will miss you/with no warning." But from the fourth minute till the
end, Houck sounds as if he's doing a one-man cattle round-up with whoops
and yodels while the music drones on. It's stirring, one-of-a-kind music.
Nothing this good ever gets heard on the charts. (8) - Philip Cheah
ALBERT
AYLER QUARTET You can't imitate freedom. Simply because there's always a high price to pay for the real item. These European gigs for free jazz sax legend, Albert Ayler, might not have sounded so good had band member and bassist, Gary Peacock, not made it. Not having eaten for 15 days, Peacock had to be dragged out of bed just to catch the boat to Europe at the end of August, 1964. The other key element that makes this gig so precious is the addition of Don Cherry on cornet. Hearing this session is like hearing Ayler's groundbreaking debut, Spiritual Unity (1964), with one more member, the quietly forceful Don Cherry. While no one can take the stage from Ayler when he starts honking, braying and snorting to the roof of any concert hall, Cherry punctuates him. Ayler by himself is like a conversation that's a stream of unconsciousness. Together with Cherry, Ayler gets to stop and reflect on what's he's just said. Murray too plays with great empathy sometimes propelling the group, at other times, just providing space for them to soar. The Hilversum Session has been available previously through the Japanese and the Europeans but it's so good that it's a treat to have it available again. In many ways, this is also a companion piece to Vibrations (Freedom). While Vibrations was recorded on Sept 14 in a Copenhagen studio, the Hilversum Session took place, also in a studio, on Nov 9 in Holland. But the Hilversum Session sounds like a live recording compared to Vibrations. Just compare the two treatments of Ghosts, the Hilversum version is looser and Ayler clips the melody by rushing through it. Yet Vibrations was a one take affair and the track listing is exactly as it was recorded. Which just proves the brilliance of Ayler, he could be as tight or free-wheeling as he wanted. It was always about finding the centre and feeling of the sound. Hilversum also had the slower, sadder tracks beginning with the dirge-like Angels and ending with No Name. 1964 was the year the Beatles conquered America. It was also the year when Albert Ayler made his debut and his breakthrough and some of the fiercest music ever heard. It was also the time when Americans had no time for their own jazz musicians and when American free jazz instead conquered Europe. (8) - Philip Cheah You can buy
a copy here.
JUAN
LUIS GUERRA y 440 The most
important Dominican performer ever swoops through his usual playfield,
dropping merengue here, bachata there, hints of rock but salsa everywhere.
He even does a version of the title track in English (as "Music for My
Soul") as a kind of starter kit. This is Guerra and his band, no attempt
to "modernize" (and date) the sound with electronics with obvious benefit
to such sweet-tempered songs as "Te contarán" and "Que me des tu
cariño." Although not as great as Bachata Rosa, his 1990 album
which is the Born to Run of contemporary Latin records, this is arguably
his best, certainly his most confidently integrated, since then. -
RRC
UNKLE Functions
as an alternative soundtrack to Michael Mann's Miami Vice movie. That's
true both because its mix of thrilling rockers and ambient soundscapes
would serve that functional purpose and because, like the film, each scene/song
is beautiful and makes sense in itself yet the overall plot borders on
nonexistence. Also like the film, the more attention you pay to War Stories
the more you notice additional details and the way they serve each other.
Heavy programming, live drums and bass, singers who coo and singers who
shout, harmonium, synths, cello, bells, guitar attacks - what could be
pointless eclecticism serves instead to flesh out the cohesive sonic vision
of Unkle major domo James LaVelle. - RRC
DON
CHERRY QUINTET Documented six months before the recording of Symphony For Improvisers (Blue Note, Sept 1966), Don Cherry's quintet live at Cafe Montmartre in Copenhagen is valuable background listening for anyone keen to hear the band stretching out before a live audience. Famed for his forays into world music, this mid-'60s period is significant to reflect trumpeter Cherry's growing excitement at how well-received avant-garde jazz was to the world's audience than at home. This similar open-mindedness was found with fellow travellers in music, who formed this quintet, Argentinian saxophonist Gato Barbieri, German vibraphonist Karl Berger, Danish bassist Bo Stief and Italian drummer Aldo Romano. Excepting Romano and Stief, the others became part of Symphony for Improvisers. Of note is the suite form that Cherry championed, free jazz style, with Complete Communion (Blue Note, 1965), his first recording as a leader. Following the advantages of the LP format, Cherry allows different thematic strands to be improvised into one long cohesive whole. As he explained: "We improvised from the flavour of the tune, from the mode, and the themes come back from time to time, so that it's definitely one thing and not eight." Or as Stief recalls of this date: "Don would conduct musically with his horn in the air, giving a lot of cues and sometimes go into tunes which we never planned to play. The band was always going from one tune to another - no stops in between - he would always cut solos when they were about to peak." Hence as Cherry introduces Free Improvisation Music Now, the band dives into Nu Creative Love, one of the tunes that makes up the title suite of Symphony For Improvisers. Karl Berger's spacey vibes are a cool counterpoint to Barbieri's heated solos with Romano keeping the edges hard. In Complete Communion, Cherry probably surprises his band by leading them into an impromptu version of the pop hit, A Taste of Honey. This date shows him testing out ideas which would find final fruition on Symphony for Improvisers. It's one of the endearing features of Cherry's playing that even when he's far out, there's a fierce melodic touch to his playing. (7.5) - Philip Cheah Note:
Click here
to order Don Cherry live at Cafe Montmartre.
MINUS
STORY There is a yearning intensity to Minus Story that is ultimately endearing and this fourth album is probably what the pundits have been betting on all along. Produced by John Congleton (Explosions In the Sky, The Polyphonic Spree), My Ion Truss is the band's first consciously studio effort. And it pays off. The brash rocking elements of their sound are shaped subtly where you can hear the other instruments in more depth thus enhancing their own brand of folky psychedelic pop-rock. The first cut In Line is a moment in perfection. With an organ drone, it's the best anti-war dirge that you can hear in present times: "In line, in gallant times/Soldiers marching by/like stars explode and die/In line, the world in line/Satellites and it's marching by/Alive and dying." The lyric is brief but like a haiku, it lays out the history of warfare and the totality of the current wars without wasting words. Just to remind you that they ARE a "rawk" band, they scream at you with Aaron, a slew of guitar riffs and even a saxophone thrown in for good measure during the free noise bridge. They don't let up on Stitch Me Up which begins acoustically but hits you fast and hard when it revs up. Guitarist, keyboardist, vocalist and frontman, Jordan Geiger, has a high gentle voice that's perfect in bringing out the heartfelt lyrics. Originally a four-piece band from Missouri, the band has grown since it moved to Kansas, giving full bloom to their layered sound with drummer Nick Christus, bassist Brian Phillips, guitarists Andy Byers, Mark Sanders and Lucas Oswald (who also doubles upon keyboards). There are
many gems to recommend from this album. Among them are The Battle of Our
Lives, a love song which can be read on another level: "They don't
want to give you love/they just want to tell you lies/This is not the
end/this is the battle of our lives/Tell me no lies!" Or the lovely
Parachute where Geiger sings: "I want to feel the shape of your heart."
Oh yeah! (8) - Philip Cheah
VARIOUS In the early '70s you could still find records such as Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway dueting on that immaculate pop classic, Where Is The Love, and it's right next to a seven-minute cut titled Mood where both artistes play acoustic and electric piano against each other. Such was the unpredictability and indulgence of the time. And don't we all miss it? So here we are in the 21st century and Secretly Canadian, a Bloomington, Indiana label, has been trying to bring it all back home for the last 11 years. On their belated 100th release, SC100, the Really American founder friends - Eric Weddle, Jonathan Cargill, and Ben and Chris Swanson, who formed the label in 1996, decided to ask their stable of acts to cover each other's songs over 18 tracks. Of course, that's a recipe for disaster but it also desperately pushes the envelope. So no way is this a greatest hits package and most indie fans will be hard-pressed to find recognisable songs. But followers of the label will immediately recognise the moody styles of their heroes such as when the late Nikki Sudden tears into June Panic's See(ing) Double, or when Jason Molina (of Songs: Ohia) gives his melodic moody treatment of Nikki Sudden's The Last Bandit. Certain tracks just seep into your brain if you don't try too hard to get into this album, like Dave Fischoff's creepy cover of Damien Jurado's Abilene or Danielson's jaunty cover of Fischoff's Propaganda For A Comic Strip. But the off-kilter
hit single should be Jens Lekman's cover of Scout Niblett's Your Beat
Kicks Back Like Death which has a repeated lyric that goes: "We're
all gonna die but we don't know how and we don't know when." This
is the song that people will remember when they look back at the Iraq-War
era. The past has a habit of melting into the future. (7) - Philip
Cheah
THILGES If ever there is an even balance of cultural worlds, then Austrian experimental band, Thilges, comes really close to it on La Double Absence, their second album. Featuring Arabic music set in an electronic experimental context, this is certainly not Arab lounge music. For a start, the oud playing by Asim Al-Chalabi is resonant, insinuating and entirely memorable. In addition, Chalabi had a hand in co-writing all the tracks with Thilges' Gammon and Nik Hummer. The radio single, Izdiucz, is an apt example where Chalabi's playing is a potent evocation of traditional Arabic scales. His quiet, gentle lead-ins increasing to rapid-fire dramatic plucking is a thrilling example of mysterious sensuality. The inclusion of Iranian vocalist, Zohreh Jooya, who specialises in Persian and Afghan music, lends more body to the music. The track, Ayn, shows how Thilges' other-worldly electronics and programming fills out the subtle textures that Chalabi plays. Formerly named Thilges 3, the band was also an experimental sound collective who produced sound installations and performance art. La Double
Absence is filled with complex rhythms. Izdiucz, which means the breaking
of cultural barriers in Arabic, signifies the power of this album, where
two cultures meet and are actually listening to each other. (8.5) -
Philip Cheah
KAMMERFLIMMER
KOLLEKTIEF Now that the Kammerflimmer Kollektief has been pared down to three members - Thomas Weber (guitar, electronics, piano), Heike Aumuller (harmonium, vocals, synths, percussion) and Johannes Frisch (double bass, percussion), the group's multi-dimensional textured sound has also been reduced. The jazz element only makes a cameo on one track when wind instruments are added. Still, it's to the group's credit that their multi-faceted music is so recognisable. Played against their last album, Absencen (2005), their latest and sixth album, Jinx, has all their trademark signatures, the cantering double bass, the sweet almost-countrified pedal-steel guitar, the droning harmonium and ethnic instrumental details (such as the use of the Zimbabwean mbira) plus the hauntingly melodic piano. Instead of the sputtering horn solos the last time around, harmonium player and percussionist, Heike Aumuller, gets vocal chores on Jinx, the title track and Both Eyes Tight Shut. Her wordless vocals are a kind of free scat, atonal and rhythmic. But the stand-out cut is Live at the Cactus Tree Motel. Here's where the most instruments are concentrated with three other friends joining in the jam. Yet it's Martin Siewert's pedal steel that seals in the sweetness of this piece. Even B J Cole would have been proud to be in on this one. Finally, it's a return to minimalism on Subnarkotisch where Thomas Weber's guitar grinds steadily in your subconscious. For a band
that loves old music so much - from Nina Simone, Judee Sill, Tim Buckley,
Coltrane, Brotherhood of Breath to Alan Vega and Jeffrey Lee Pierce (remember
their tribute to him on their last album?) - the Kammerflimmer Kollektief
makes the future shimmer with sweetness and passion. (8.5) - Philip
Cheah
DAVID VANDERVELDE Let's forget about all those Britpop bands because David Vandervelde (from Chicago) has an uncanny gift of resurrecting the swagger of '70s glam rock stars - Marc Bolan and David Bowie, right down to the slight tremble in his vocal. Even the guitar riffing on track two's Jacket, sounds like a blowback to Bowie's album, Ziggy Stardust. But it's not imitation. The songs and the lyrics are his. And so's all the playing. At 19 years old, Vandervelde entered the studio of ex-Wilco multi-instrumentalist, Jay Bennett, and stayed there two years to play everything on this album. The only exceptions are three tracks with string arrangements from Brokeback Mountain soundtrack scorer, David Campbell. Four tracks grab your throat quickly. Nothin' No revs up from your speakers like a rough noisy recording (and yes it is, this album has no studio sheen). Vandervelde quickly recounts his tale of double infidelity, a woman who cheats on both her boyfriend, and her lover: "When your boyfriend drove to meet you/You forgot to cover the bruises on your neck." Then the power of Jacket, the light-hearted fun of Wisdom From A Tree and the superbly catchy Can't See Your Face No More, that rushes by like a hot breeze. If you think he's a one-trick pony, check out the country-ish murder ballad, Murder in Michigan: "I cannot remove the sand from my shoes/ I will not erase the scent of defeat." Or the closing wistful instrumental, Moonlight Instrumental. Vandervelde is another reminder that pop
songwriters today are still trying to find the guts from the past. This
is certainly Number one with a bullet, and we look forward to the next
album. (8) - Philip Cheah
SHINOBU
GOTO'S BIKE Shinobu Goto is probably Japan's, if not the world's, biggest Velvet Underground fan. He lives and breathes VU, and fronts his own band, Bike, playing VU covers and his originals. Late last year, Shinobu released a compilation of Japanese bands, Warrior Heart Of The Velvet Underground (click here for the tracks), covering the Velvets and contributed Bike's own version of Sister Ray. Like that compilation, Electronic Wind, an EP of four songs, is not for sale but for free distribution to fans of the VU, and through the internet as an MP3 download, to anyone who's interested. The internet has made it possible for fans of music to reach out to like-minded fans and to distribute homemade music directly, removing the record company and record shop from the distribution chain. D-I-Y recording on a home computer has made music-making much easier/cheaper as well. The quality of the music hasn't suffered either. Electronic Wind has two tunes, with two versions each. The title track is a lovely VU-styled ballad while the other track are two versions of the VU's Sister Ray. Electronic Wind Version One is the guitar version and is the song with lyrics in Japanese. Over a jangling riff, Shinobu sings/ talks the song's melancholic words. Version Two has the keyboards of Miho Goto leading the melody and stretches out the song's drifting atmosphere pass seven minutes. It mimics early VU's repetitive style, the groove becoming the main attraction. Of the two versions of Sister Ray, Version Two is preferred for the nice long jam that displays Shinobu's guitar powers as well as the drum work of Jun Takano. Bike is a classic power trio sans a bass player replaced by Miho Goto's keyboards. Shinobu Goto's
Bike isn't out to conquer the world but to pay homage to their influence,
the Velvet Underground. It is that deep love and sincerity you will admire
and enjoy. Click
here to download the album.
VARIOUS Guitarist Sterling Morrison, of the legendary avant-rock band, Velvet Underground, died in 1995. He was, as Lou Reed, wrote: "the warrior heart of the Velvet Underground." This new double-disc compilation of Japanese bands covering Velvet songs since 1984, is as hard-core as you can get. Much of it treads the more avant experimental streak of the band. If you think how charming it was that Nico's vocal had a thick German accent, it makes a lot of sense to hear the Velvets in Japanese. Extreme fans will love hearing The Murder Mystery completely in Japanese, or to hear a strangely squeaky vocal of Sunday Morning which gets more endearing with each listening. Shinobu Goto,
the ultimate Japanese Velvet devotee, put together this compilation lovingly
by including many of the varied and strange Japanese acts such as Hananojoe,
Denki-ane, daisyblue and Eyescream I. But his own solo version of Sister
Ray, with his insistently spiky acoustic guitar lead is faithful and moving.
As the song goes, Shinobu couldn't hit it sideways but he sure hit something.
A raw nerve, I think. Fans should also take note of the hidden bonus Sterling
Morrison solo guitar track, an outtake from an '80s Spanish TV Documentary,
Feedback. (8) - Philip Cheah
THE BESNARD LAKES The Besnard Lakes are indeed the dark horse. Who else would compose an entire album of love songs to spies and undercover operatives? It's an interesting conceit since love (if you like Shakespeare) is full of intrigue. And You Lied to Me is about a married undercover agent who never told his spouse about his work, For Agent 13 compares love and war and has this classic line about romantic surveillance: "I'll write you a love song... I'll play it back every day." But what's really a nice twist is that the band, led by a husband and wife duo - Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas - pay homage to the master of American surrealism, David Lynch. While the comparisons to Brian Wilson and Roy Orbison have been made about the band's sound, what gives the music its eerie quality is the Lynch-like, Twin Peaks, Julee-Cruise aura. Just check out Because Tonight. Band member,
Nicole Lizee's string arrangements evokes not only a Lynchian dream but
the nightmare lyrics of murder and mutilation. Besides Lizee, the rotating
crew of band members includes post-rockers Chris Seligman (Stars) and
Sophie Trudeau (Godspeed/Silver Mt Zion). And while the band's name does
not inspire radio friendliness, their music, dense and layered, really
insinuates itself into your brain. On Bedford and Grand sounds like a
more clever version of Jefferson Starship's We Built This City while Cedric's
War seems to even cop a synth riff from David Bowie's Heroes. There's
lots of little clues in the music of The Besnard Lakes. And they all add
up. (8) - Philip Cheah
JULIE
DOIRON Much as I
love singer-songwriter Julie Doiron, weeks of listening to her new Woke
Myself Up, her sixth album, and the latest after two years, have not crept
under my skin. Maybe the problem is that Doiron has woken herself up to
her Canadian indie roots 15 years ago when she played with Eric's Trip,
a folky psychedelic band that got signed to Sub Pop and that broke up
in 1996. Woke Myself Up is produced by founding Eric's Trip member, Rick
White, and features the band rocking on several tracks. So if you like
an edgier Doiron, you will dig the title track, No More and Don't Wanna
Be Liked by You. Doiron doesn't have a rich voice so she doesn't really
need to rock out as much as to reach inward. Her ability to reach inside
has always been her strength hence I Left Town is more classic Doiron,
where she ruminates a difficult drive home to be back in the arms of her
loved one. It's a simple, clever heartfelt lyric. If you haven't woken
up to Doiron yet, then search out Goodnight Nobody (2004). That's her
essential work. (6.5) - Philip Cheah
SUN RA 'Twas a few nights before Christmas and while not a soul was stirring, the Kohoutek comet was about to blaze over the skies on Dec 26 1973. Outer spaceman, Sun Ra and his mighty free jazz Arkestra, assembled on Dec 22 to spread some goofy cheer even as the doomsayers predicted the world's end. And of course, Ra's joke is that Space is the Place! Who cares about the world's end? He revamps his late '50s tune, Enlightenment, into a lyrical sing-a-long before blasting off into Love in Outer Space. On the 13-minute title track, Kohoutek, Ra is soloing in his element, playing synthesizer, alternating between sounds of buzzing circuitry to bass rumbles. But it's Discipline 27 (Part 2) where Ra delivers one of his most soulful moments. The band grooves sweetly behind him as someone duets with June Tyson and asks: "If this is a planet of life, why are people dying here?" If you ever wanted to know what a great lyricist Ra was, just check out the second-last verse: "Are you afraid? /What is it you want to know?/ Do you want to know where the universe came from? / I'll tell you/ At first there was nothing/ then nothing turned itself inside out and became something." Then the band launches into Space is the Place, the title track of the film he had just made with Bill Cunningham. This concert survives from a mono recording that the concert's engineer had made. Ra himself swiped the concert tapes from ESP label's founder, Bernard Stollman. In that gesture, he epitomised his music as that of Kohoutek, a comet that blazed into view just once, a fleeting but highly-anticipated moment. If Ra was the space prophet, Frank Wright, one of the key tenor sax players in the post-John-Coltrane period, was the Reverend. Like his inspiration, Albert Ayler, Wright believed that the spirit spoke through his music. There is no better proof of that than in the previously unreleased Unity album, a 1974 recording at the Moers concert in Germany. Away from the gentler influence of his longtime alto-sax associate, Noah Howard, the posthumously titled pieces here entitled Unity are played with impassioned fury. Not only does Wright blow with furious grace sustaining his energy for long periods over the two near-half-hour tracks, Alan Silva displays his violin training in a remarkable arco-styled bass playing. Muhammad Ali (younger brother of Coltrane drummer, Rashied) blows the Germans away in his spirited drum solo at the end of the first set while pianist Bobby Few is flying away behind Wright providing the wings of melody. Is it any coincidence that one of Frank Lloyd Wright's great architectural feats was the Unity Temple? Consider this as the other Wright's piece of sonic architecture. (8 for both) - Philip Cheah Note:
Visit ESP at http://www.espdisk.com/store2.html
to order the above albums.
THE ROOTS Before the
year ends, we should remember False Media on The Roots' Game Theory which
was released end August. It's one of the angriest things I've heard this
year and a timely reminder that a lot of the hate in the last five years
since 9/11 was inflamed by a media not looking for the truth. As the Roots
say: "Sentence me to/Four more years thank you/I'm gonna make you feel/A
little bit safer/because it ain't over/See that's how we get/Your fear
to control you." The Bush re-election reference is clear and the song
points out what a lot of commentators have said, that the worst governments
today are using fear to get re-elected. It's the Roots theory of today's
mess and it's an end game as seen on the cover artwork of the children's
playing of the hangman's noose. Perhaps that's why they have opted for
a sweeter sound this time around.
VARIOUS ARTISTS After last year's Buddha Machine loop box, China's electronic music pioneers, FM3 (Christiaan Virant and Zhang Jian), turned the world on to the idea of grooving to the Buddha (or ambient sutras at least). For Jukebox Buddha, 15 acts sat cross-legged (Oh really! - Ed.) to meditate on the possibilities of remixing the nine loops found on the original. The original comes in a transistor-like box (in a multitude of fashionable colours) with two batteries included to play the music. The Jukebox Buddha remix is a CD. Maybe it's just our karma. It starts well with upcoming Chinese electronica artiste, Wang Fan who creates a Japanese-like chant which hums and buzzes in drone-like peace and disharmony at the same time. Then it leads into the Kammerflimmer Kollektief's more acoustic, melodic Gammler, Zen + Hahe Berge before Aki Honda throws you off again with electronic squelches in The Buddha in New York. Some are not so wonderful. Blixa Bargeld's electronically-treated bird call (a reincarnation no-brainer) and the not-too-funny BuddhaMachine Commercial by Jelinek/Pekler/Leichtmann. Or Adrian Sherwood and Doug Wimbush's slightly predictable Karma Cola. But SunnO))) brings it back into focus
with the truly meditative BP//Simple. And Sun City Girls' Dry Valley gives
a more ethnographic reading of the source material. Will all this make
you rush out to adopt a lotus position? Well, it might. After all, Alan
Bishop did buy 24 Buddha Machines when he first saw them. (7) - Philip
Cheah
THOM
YORKE Thom Yorke's
solo album, The Eraser (away from Radiohead), proves that he makes up
for much of the Radiohead sound in their later period, from Kid A (2000),
Amnesiac (2001) and Hail to the Thief (2003). The Eraser is filled with
bubbling electronics, sampled sounds and cut-ups. But the fact that Radiohead's
seventh album is arriving shortly, the release of The Eraser suggests
that Yorke had something to say. Most reviewers choose to see this album
as a collection of love songs. On the cover
artwork to The Eraser, an apocalyptic vision is drawn over a 10-panel
unfolding CD sleeve. The world is shown as drowning in a flood. On the
title track, the love song with an "Arab princess" takes on a malevolent
meaning when the lovers' battle to erase each other from their hearts
and minds, becomes a metaphor for the war on terror: "the more you
try to erase me/ the more that I appear." On Analyse, Yorke warns
us that "there's no time/There's no time to analyse." He repeats
the warning on The Clock: "Time is running out for us" and perhaps
in a warning to Bush and Blair: "You make believe that you are still
in charge." THE BUT Elvis lives! So do The Beatles! Since the
arrival of Klaatu, from Canada, in the late 70s, the Beatles have been
a universal band. From Serbia, there is the Rubber Soul Project and from
Germany (the former East no less), there is The But. Collectors will love
their debut EP, Winston (2000) which includes a cover of Lennon's Help
Me to Help Myself, released that same year as a bonus track on the Remastered
Double Fantasy. Winston features a cover referencing the Let It Be album
artwork. Making Gold is their album debut and it features all originals.
Ripe for nostalgia fans, the band has imbibed their heroes so thoroughly
that they even compose, arrange and play like them.
SONIC
YOUTH Reviews that have been calling Sonic Youth's latest album, Rather Ripped, the best in their career are nuts. Perhaps it's best to view it as the band's piss take of their last major label contract album for Geffen. Rather Ripped is so accessible and (dare I say it?) fun that Geffen must be wondering why this contract shouldn't be renewed instantly. Either that or they are cursing the band for making them release their more esoteric albums - NYC Ghosts and Flowers (1999) or A Thousand Leaves (1998). But you see, Rather Ripped is simple for Sonic Youth to make. But their music exists in multi-dimensions. To enjoy the pop of this album, you also have to deal with their interest in the avant-garde (a la Goodbye 20th Century, 1999). This album perhaps puts into perspective their entry into a major label deal in the early '90s. The early fears that the band would sell out weren't borne out. Instead, they have tried to extend the palette of music listening. Unfortunately, their lone voice in major label land (like that of Patti Smith) is seldom heard in corporate boardrooms and on conformist radio playlists. Rather Ripped is also perhaps in the mould of fellow-outlaw-major-label act, the Flaming Lips, who perform with anarchic but melodic accessibility. The outstanding example on this new album is the gentle burn of Incinerate with its liquid fiery guitar riffs which burn a hole in your brain. The idea of a love ballad as a torch song is fully flamed in bandleader, Thurston Moore's words: "I ripped your heart out from your chest/Replaced it with a grenade blast/Incinerate." The catchy tunes don't let up. In Do You Believe in Rapture? (the album's original working title), Moore sings of redemption while his guitar chimes a gentle tune while the rhythm section swells with discord. This is the general M.O. of this album, melodies which lead you into the swelling maelstrom - Reena, Jams Run Free, Turquoise Boy, The Neutral. And if you can't get enough of Moore's open-tune guitar, dig Pink Steam. The band plays for five minutes before Moore starts singing. Even at their most accessible, Sonic Youth challenges you to try ripping them off. (7) - Philip Cheah Note: Diehard collectors' alert: the European edition has two bonus tracks. Click
here to listen to Sonic Youth playing songs from Rather Ripped live
in Paris on April 19, 2006.
MAGNOLIA
ELECTRIC CO Thank god Jason Molina has given up the idea of being as profilic as Guided By Voices. With this second album on his Magnolia Electric Co band moniker, Molina has also recently released a solo album titled Let Me Go, Let Me Go, Let Me Go. If only we could. Molina is still unshakeably prolific. Who else would ritually wake up at four in the morning and work till 11am...every day! Who else would leave aside the Songs: Ohia moniker after 10 years because "there's hundreds and hundreds of songs from those years that we don't even play anymore." So now we
have the new Fading Trails. And the opening track is titled (can you guess?)
Don't Fade on Me. It's apparently a love song with Molina admonishing
his lover not to fade on him. It's a tuneful, impassioned track as Molina
sings: "Even Christ stayed till he ran out of time". In an odd sense,
the song is also a reminder for Molina's memory not to fade on him and
for our memory not to fade on his songs. That's quite the essential problem
for Molina (and for the lo-fi guys before him). He's written so much,
all with a firm sense of structure and form but little that stands out
enough to sink into your brain. Besides the opening cut, Talk to Me Devil,
Again, echoes in your mind but comparatively, in terms of clever turns
of phrases, Mark Eitzel, takes him out for sheer observational sharpness,
and Matthew Sweet can still bring out a tune better. Slot this into your
car stereo. It still makes for pleasant long-distance driving. (6)
- Philip Cheah
FRIDA HYVONEN Frida Hyvonen is good but the hype could
be misleading and ultimately disappointing. Touted as the new Swedish
sensation, her debut Until Death Comes has secured US distribution. The
comparisons come thick and fast from Carole King to Laura Nyro. She's
basically a singer and her piano; and performs solo a la Nyro. So I went
back and played my early Nyro demos. And sadly, Hyvonen doesn't come close.
Where Nyro had soul, Hyvonen is pop. And her sound, even vocally, is trapped
inside pop. That wild unfettered Nyro touch is best heard on You Never
Got Me Right where she accuses her lover of having "a lack of taste."
To her credit, her lyrics are powerful even if her vocals don't resonate,
as on Djuna: "Last night when I was out I bought myself a drink/ Opened
the memories and violence poured out." Interestingly, this album had
funding from the Swedish Council of Cultural Affairs, and contains this
intriguing lyric, which would never get funding in $ingapore nor get airplay
here: "Once I was a serene teenaged child/ Once I felt your cock against
my thigh/ You said you were a poet, man/ Your poetry wasn't obvious to
me." (6) - Philip Cheah
PEACHES Peaches doesn't need to write a book titled: "How to Talk Dirty and Influence People." She sings it. Of course, folks who think that Peaches (aka Merrill Nisker) is a slut talking dirty are woefully wrong. On this cleverly titled album, Impeach My Bush, Peaches proclaims that war is the real pornography. As she sings on the album centrepiece, Fuck or Kill: "I rather fuck who I want than kill who I am told to." It's a wonderful statement because you can imagine all the Christian fundamentalist neo-cons who preach piously against abortion while blissfully supporting new wars getting upset about this. And to prove it, the following tracks are in-yer-face sex songs. Tent in Your Pants puts it bluntly: "we are gonna wash that pole, scrub that pole baby." Or Slippery Dick's dirty talk: "Toss freaker/Floss tweaker/Sauce leaker/Moss shrieker". Comparatively, Madonna was a convent nun. Peaches album (this is her third) makes you wonder whether she's run the course of her dirty talk. After all, the music and her electroclash beats don't seem to vary too much. This time round, fem rocker Joan Jett solos on You Love It while Queens Of The Stone Age's Josh Homme can be heard on Give 'er. Perhaps you can think of her as a one-woman Ramones. As she says: "Well, disempowering is when you haven't made the decision yourself. Because, let's look at Madonna, too. She really played with it at the beginning and I wasn't really a big fan of Madonna. I didn't really get it... I don't really see it (being a female artiste) as sexed up and empowering. I just see it as empowering everything. Just go full on, you know? Like Iggy Pop or something like that just give it all of your 500 percent energy, everything." If you don't
like it, you can impeach (her) Bush! (7) - Philip Cheah
LEAFCUTTER JOHN What does being lost in a forest sound like? Electronic folkie John Burton aka Leafcutter John went to find out. His fourth album, The Forest and the Sea, was recorded in London's Epping forest, and the northern forests of Sweden. John's subject of being lost could be a progression of his previous album, The Housebound Spirit (2003), where he re-creates the aftershock of his experience of being mugged outside his home. The sense of alienation found inside a cramped house is now extended to an alien space in a forest. So in Maria in the Forest, disorientating sounds of horses galloping through a leafy ground, processed and found sounds and even an eerie mechanical drone fill up seven minutes, to tell you the album's story of two people who get lost and are forced to spend a night inside a forest. John's perfectionism is found on In the Morning where his piano was recorded in the middle of a forest at Silence studios, Sweden. More important perhaps is that John's folk roots betray real songs amidst the various soundscapes. So Dream III has a haunting melody and a woefully hopeful lyric: "I can hold out just as long as you can/Many things I hold are the same as this/And I know it will come." As the story unfolds, the pair find themselves
near the sea and try to swim out. This leads to Seba, the other lovely
melody on the album with a sort of erotic death scene: "Let me swim far
below into you." On the final track, Now, the pair have passed on and
reincarnated: "You are an animal." A strange story indeed. (7) - Philip
Cheah
MILES
DAVIS While this
six-disc box set was released last year, it's been a difficult recording
to find in $ingapore. Ironically, I finally found it as a discount item.
Fans take note. This set is essential. A December club session in 1970, the Cellar Door gig was important for Jarrett because for three nights, he played the Fender Rhodes electric piano and electronic organ as the key lead player before guitarist John McLaughlin arrived on the fourth night. The fourth night sessions were released as part of Live Evil in 1971. But for three (never-before-released) nights, Jarrett was the glue between Miles, saxophonist Gary Bartz, drummer Jack DeJohnette, percussionist Airto Moreira and the incredible 19-year-old bassist, Michael Henderson, who was snatched by Miles from Stevie Wonder's band. Cellar Door is also arguably Miles' last great small group before he started having guitar-oriented and percussion heavy bands. Jarrett's explanation is simple. Miles could never again find musicians who had a rich musical past. Jarrett particularly objects to bassist Marcus Miller's (who joined Miles' in 1981) observation that Miles wanted a funk band. As he says in the liner notes: "Remember Marcus, that Miles went way back. His roots were not tenuous enough to accept less than everything he could get. Later of course he got cut off from his roots by an absence of players who could surprise him. Back in 1970, he was still in the middle, however controversially of jazz. If Jack, Gary, or I thought we were in a funk band, we would have been undernourished... "The change that occurred in Miles' bands of this period actually began when Jack DeJohnette decided to leave to do his own thing. Miles pleaded with Jack to stay, at least through the European tour. He offered him more money. Hell, I even pleaded with Jack. Miles was losing his core of players whose grasp of jazz's improvising past motivated and pushed Miles to higher and higher ground." Not only was Miles obsessed with the live sound (that's why each night was recorded) but he was nuts about the wah-wah pedal. Jarrett, McLaughlin and himself were all wired to the wah-wah effect. And as Bartz notes, sometimes the effect was that they were singing/speaking to each other. The wah-wah became a vocal effect. But Miles is clearly enjoying himself and experimenting as well. The groove is what everyone is digging into. There are only seven different tracks here over six discs. The band is constantly jamming different versions of Joe Zawinul's Directions (from nine minutes to 19 minutes), Honky Tonk (which finally appeared on the Get Up With It album in 1975), Yesternow (from Jack Johnson, 1970), It's About That Time (from In A Silent Way,1969), Sanctuary (from Bitches Brew, 1970) and two new tracks Inamorata (heard on Live Evil, 1971) and What I Say. Critics who panned this music at that time described it as soporific soloing. But it does catch fire even without McLaughlin's presence. Check out Inamorata on Disc 4, the final set before McLaughlin arrives. By the fourth minute, the players are burning up the groove. Miles and Bartz are urgently trading punctuating bursts while Henderson is playing his bass as a lead and duets with Jarrett's keyboards. Meanwhile, Moreira chimes in on bells from behind complementing DeJohnette's breathlessly furious drumming. Even when it seems to slow down, it seamlessly builds to another crescendo throughout its 15 minutes. Miles was never to see the same calibre of players grouped together in his bands ever again. (9.5) - Philip Cheah Of special
note to the Cellar Door sessions is the inclusion of Brit guitarist John
McLaughlin. He was much sought-after and was rather prolific during the
late '60s jamming with everyone from Jimi Hendrix to Tony Williams and
even with Miles band. Here's a nice short session with Chick Corea, Dave
Holland and Jack DeJohnette, never before released.
THE
FLAMING LIPS Probably the best alternative band in the mainstream, The Flaming Lips have charmed critics and fans alike with their striking melodic hooks, bizarre humour and cosmic lyrics. After listening to it for several weeks since its release in April, there are many highlights. There's The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song with its social conscience lyric that sticks ("If you could blow up the world with a flick of a switch, would you do it?"), the Beach Boys' warmth of The Sound of Failure, with its satire of Britney-Spears' pop; plus a more cosmic Neil Young on My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion. The Lips fancy themselves as funkateers on Free Radicals, The Wizard Turns On and The W.A.N.D. but the real dope is still better found with Sly Stone or George Clinton. However, they really do excel on pop (the SpongeBob theme song confirms it) and best of all is Goin' On, which closes the album. This one sounds like the return of Todd Rundgren in Just One Victory. (7) - Philip Cheah Need convincing?
Sample the Flaming Lips performing songs from At War With The Mystics.
Click
here.
KAMMERFLIMMER
KOLLEKTIEF Having fallen in love with The Shimmering Collective otherwise known as Kammerflimmer Kollektief's Absencen album, it's really hard to fall in love again with this remix version. There are very few remix albums that overshadow its source material and this just isn't one of them. This new KK remix album, featuring artistes such as David Last, Aoki Takamasa, Jan Jelinek and others, deflates the power of the original, reducing the sum of its parts to echoes. For example, Lichterloh, the stately opening track of Absencen, which unfolds its mystery subtly and gradually, sucking you into its ambient vortex irresistibly, is given an unwanted scat chant in the remix. Unstet, the Jeffrey Lee Pierce, tribute, has the lonesome pedal steel guitar isolated and echoed. But the waves of atmosphere, punctuated by Dietrich Foth's saxophone, Thomas Weber's slide guitar and Christopher Brunner's harmonica are all gone. Absencen, the fifth album by the Kammerflimmer Kollektief was really one of the discoveries of late last year. It's the most engaging mix of influences that you can find which will demolish all genre boxes. Founded by multi-instrumentalist Thomas Weber in the late '90s, the band has truly evolved into a collective with, besides Foth and Brunner, Heike Aumuller on harmonium, Heike Wendelin on violin and Johannes Frisch on double bass. What is startling about the band's music is that they have perfectly meshed acoustic and electronic music. You can imagine that you are listening to ambient electronic music (which is Weber's background) but if you listen closely, you start picking out all the various instrumental solos that are going on all the time. On Shibboleth for example, Foth and Helmut Dinkel are trading saxophone solos above a gentle synthesizer wash. The opening track Lichterloh begins gently but is disrupted surprisingly in its mid-section by free jazz. Absencen means absence. It's an absence of a fixed consciousness. You can enter this album on any level and still find something, even a country groove with the Shenandoah tune on Unstet (the tribute for Gun Club's Jeffrey Lee Pierce). The Kammerflimmer
Kollektief deserve to be better known and its "absence" in the mainstream
is yet another musical irony. (9.5 for the original) - Philip Cheah
VARIOUS
Song And Void Vol 1 [Non-Utopian] Was singer-songwriter Richard McGraw ever a Catholic altar boy? His combination of Nick Cave's religiosity and Leonard Cohen's sensuality sure qualifies him. The gospel-tinged Butter Hill has McGraw declaring himself as the "holiest of them" and in the next verse, he confesses that he "loved her breast, her face and her laughter on Butter Hill." McGraw's desperation is belied by a certain jauntiness and Natasha in High School is everything that you cannot hear in a pop song on radio today - wicked, original humour ("Then there was the kitchen pantries/ panties, flowered lovely for me"), an eccentric wit ("And all of the egos and the ids/laugh at all the stupid things I did") and real love ("And how could it be that/you'd give me your virginity/and I would let you go/on account of bad chemistry"). In a normal sane world, this would be number one with a bullet. McGraw has
taste. Butter Hill features Van-Morrison guitarist, John Platania. And
he doesn't hide. After the songs, there is the void. Find Me Then, the
third number after two rousing tracks, is a cry of defeat: "Oh dear
lord I'm losing again/My body is tired so are these plans/I would like
to buy a neck tie/For every dream I cannot defend". John Platania
returns on Death Is Not Peace to whip up some drive into McGraw's hopelessness
"I think I see a tunnel/I think I hear a train". The songs maintain
their tenderness, anger, worry and desperate cries to God throughout.
Recorded in 2004 in mostly single takes, mounting debt prevented its release
until last month. In the pantheon of desperate, funny, loser singer-songwriters,
please welcome Richard McGraw! (7.5) - Philip Cheah
LADYHAWK Fans of rootsy, bluesy barroom rock will be mightily pleased that Canada is never short of finding the next Neil Young. They don't all exactly sound like him but have that same flair for relaxed groovy jamming with extended winding revved-up guitar solos. And often, it takes more of them to just make one of him. In the case of Ladyhawk (named after the band's predilection for birds and gals), it's four guys who took two years for this eponymous titled debut to be released next month. The album, which is full of nice hooks embedded in seemingly drunken jams, begins with an understated stunner, 48 Hours, about the motives of a hostage-taker. Its mellow soft acoustic start belies the raging middle when the singer asks: "Was it the weight of the sky on a moonless midnight?" Then it ends quietly and abruptly with the observation: "Walk tall like a man's supposed to/Be a hero to a crowd of empty bottles/You broke your own heart but you can't always find another..." Ladyhawk's ability to cut to the core is demonstrated in the campfire singalong (complete with handclaps!), My Old Jacknife. It's a paean to a handy object of emancipation - "every time they tie me down, I cut myself loose" - yet reveals the singer's desolation: "no one cares about me." Even the rocking Dugout, is really a plea for the singer's girlfriend to admit her feelings: "Even the person you love is turning away/ so tell me the truth of your heart". The live
feel of the band's playing is so perfectly captured that on the final
track, New Joker, you can hear a bottle smashing. It's a perfect end to
the long guitar solo before that, testament that the groove will prevail
over any drunken stupor. (8) - Philip Cheah
THE GEORGIA PEACH The stray Peach tracks on gospel anthologies can't prepare you for the full bore impact of 24 sides in a row. With a voice as big as Mahalia Jackson's and a style that renders complex phrasing in a bradly Southern accent, the Peach ranks with the all-time gospel greats. The Peach often fronted male quartets beginning
in the early '40s, undoubtedly helping set the stage for the explosion
of [disgracefully under-reissued] female groups that defines the Golden
Age of Gospel. Her blues-accented Swing Low Sweet Chariot is a startling
redefinition of one of the best-known spirituals and originals such as
God Don't Never Change as well as takeoffs on Bible texts [Blessed Are
The Poor In Spirit] mark this disc as a long-overdue introduction to a
major artist. - Rock & Rap Confidential
SHAWN
CAMP Although
he's written number one hits for Garth Brooks and Brooks & Dunn, Camp
the solo artist is much more of a high lonesome throwback. He's a dazzling
instrumentalist and effective singer who is a country rocker not in the
post-Eagles sense but going further back to the middle of the last century
when country and rock hadn't yet taken separate paths. Highlights include
the title track - reminiscent of the energy of Jerry Lee Lewis rushing
where angels fear to tread - and Beagle Hound, which caused us to wonder
how PETA feels about a love song to a dog that's used to hunt? - Rock
& Rap Confidential
NO NECK
BLUES BAND and EMBRYO In 1966, the critic Susan Sontag, published her seminal book on criticism, Against Interpretation, where she argued that in the future, critics would have to learn to experience art instead of trying to excavate it. She could have been writing about the No Neck Blues Band, a collective of New York and Boston improvisers, formed in 1992 by, amongst others, multi-instrumentalist Keith Connolly and percussionist Dave Nuss. In fact, the band believes so much in the musical experience that they shun interviews and they dislike being identified, a sharp contrast to the world of American and $ingapore Idols, where the music takes a backseat to glamour. In a rare interview early this year, an anonymous No-Neck member confirms the trancelike quality of their music: "It's like if you back further out into space, all of the sudden you perceive all these balls in space in motion, and if you plunge far in with a microscope, you're going to see the same thing. In that way, everything we do is the same. It's the same thing that we're doing every time. It's just that with the proximity that you have to a given album or a given listening experience, you're going to get a variety of sounds." No Neck's off-world fusion spans various regions of ethnic music and is done within the frame of free jazz and improvisational music. For that reason, this CD's collaboration with German experimentalists, Embryo (led by Christian Buchard, ex-Amon Duul II), is long awaited. Buchard's late-'60s band, Amon Duul II were already incorporating world music into their progressive rock experiments. Embryo is the sum of Buchard's cataloguing of Middle Eastern, African and Asian styles. For this album, Buchard dragged his sick drummer, Dieter Serfas, out of bed. As he recalls: "His drumming was like he knew everything. The No Neck Blues Band was flying with us around him. Little melodies we never had heard, different moods, rhythmic interplays, and in between the music making it was like we had been together all the time." Wieder das erste Mal begins the album with a 10-minute-plus Middle Eastern jam with a female vocalist wailing throughout. Cool xylophones lead off the second track, Five Grams of the Widow, where tablas, string and wind instruments interplay around it. After Marja's Cat begins with what sounds like an amplification of a sheesha, with the sound of air bubbles blown through water. It's on track five, Die Farbe aus dem All, that the No Neck's free jazz spirit bursts through where the blowing becomes more frenzied and the percussion more frenetic. Das erste Mal ends the album with quiet bells and everyone plays small tunes to keep the jam flowing. Echoing the opening track, the female vocalist returns while one of the male members helps by mumbling along. The whole
album is a ritual experience in the form of a community jam. For once,
you are not allowed to look at the credit list to see who plays what.
There wasn't any on this advance disc. You are instead asked to empty
yourself. From the embryo, nothing turned itself inside out. - (8)
Philip Cheah
PUBLIC ENEMY An obscure track by the late great LA rock
band Downset starts out with the muttered threat/chant "Anger: hostility
towards the opposition/ Anger: hostility towards the opposition". They
probably had been listening to Public Enemy, which transformed mere discontent
into revolutionary manifestos with the passion and skill to match their
attitude. Chuck D, with a voice and delivery so authoritative that he
made James Earl Jones sound tentative, found the perfect foil in Flavor
Flav, while the music was irresistible on its own terms, dense and catchy
as it veered between avant jazz and rock 'n' roll, massively sampling
everything in between. Harry Allen, in concluding his liner notes, says:
"Today... the matrix is deeper, more diabolical, more pernicious, and
more invisible. Which is why, now, we need P.E. more than ever." -
Rock & Rap Confidential
SPIRIT
OF MEMPHIS The expiration of European copyright, which lasts only 50 years, benefits gospel fans most of all right now, because the late '40s and early '50s were the music's true Golden Age. Even back then, no male quartet offered more thunderous testimony, rocked harder, swung more or crooned better. Plus, what other group, sacred or secular, had a transvestite lead vocalist? These two discs represent a profound bargain - US$13.98 from rootsandrhythm.com. - Rock & Rap Confidential Note:
In the U.S. and countries that signed free trade agreements with the Americans,
the copyright law stretches to 70 years.
JOE
McPHEE I first heard of Joe McPhee in 2002 on Matthew Shipp's Optometry album. Then I bought the Atavistic label reissues of McPhee's earlier recordings from the ‘70s such as Nation Time (1970) and Trinity (1971) and realised that McPhee deserves to be celebrated more than he has. McPhee's vision as an artist is unshakeable. He began by following his heart and instincts and he still does to this day. Just check out his contribution to the Vision Festival 2005 (Arts For Art) with War Crimes and Battle Scars: Iraq by the Roy Campbell/Joe McPhee Quartet. And then compare it against Underground Railroad, the title track of his debut album in 1969. The fury has not abated. And both tracks share a similar approach. Underground Railroad begins with furious drumming by Ernest Bostic which goes on for over six and a half minutes, before McPhee starts blowing. Then you hear free jazz giant Albert Ayler's spirit soaring high once again. The intensity and spiritual passion just flies in your face. On War Crimes and Battle Scars: Iraq, the track also begins with a long percussion intro before both Campbell (on trumpet) and McPhee (on soprano sax) come charging in. What is rare about the Underground Railroad reissue (besides the fact that it was originally only a 500 LP edition) is that the bonus disc contains McPhee's first live performance on tenor saxophone six months before his debut recording. And the song subjects share the same anguish as his playing. Birmingham Sunday refers to a racist church bombing in 1963 where four black children were killed while Windy City Head Stompin' Blues reminds you of police brutality in the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention. Is it any wonder then that Swiss pharmaceutical engineer Werner X. Uehlinger started the Hat Hut freejazz/ avant garde label in 1975, just to record McPhee? Even before that, McPhee's painter friend, Craig Johnson began the CJR label in 1969 just to release McPhee. During the ‘80s, McPhee met experimental composer and accordionist, Pauline Oliveros, whose theories of "deep listening" influenced his instrumental and electronic techniques. He also read Edward de Bono's book Lateral Thinking: A Textbook of Creativity, which inspired McPhee to "think sideways" |
