Sunday, July 28, 2019
2018: Chasing the Periphery?
¶ 7/28/2019
So, in late 2018, 2019, things got differently scattered
--for instance, UpRoxx was unexpected first-time opp, Pazz & Jop came back from dead, and I'd been putting most of my listening time toward Scene round-up
--- but/and came up with this ballot for UpRoxx:
--for instance, UpRoxx was unexpected first-time opp, Pazz & Jop came back from dead, and I'd been putting most of my listening time toward Scene round-up
--- but/and came up with this ballot for UpRoxx:
Singles:
Robyn feat. Zhala: "Human Being" https://soundcloud.com/robyn/human-being-feat-zhala
Hinds: "Linda" https://hinds.bandcamp.com/album/i-dont-run
Sophie: "Infatuation" https://soundcloud.com/msmsmsm/infatuation
Rich Krueger: "Yesterday’s Wrong (Green)" https://www.richkrueger.com/music/
Riton and Kah-lo: "Ginger" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctxgzPGIXCo
Riton and Kah-lo: "Ginger (Alt.)" should be on same 'Tube page
The Carters: "Friends"
Lonnie Holley: "I Woke Up In A Fucked-Up America"
Lonnie Holley: "Sometimes I Wanna Dance" both here:
ALBUMS
Laurie Anderson/Kronos Quartet: Landfall https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCm7gu87-uU&list=PLe6PXYMMic6y3p0gWJF8NrVvm-nGkNb10&index=1
Dennis Coffey: One Night At Morey’s: 1968
Pistol Annies: Interstate Gospel
John Prine: The Tree of Forgiveness
Tune-Yards: I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life
Lyrics Born: Quite A Life
Pazz & Jop Singles were about the same, I think (not seeing individual ballots on there any more, or my copy on “this” side of the screen)(hold up, P&J Singles did drop something for Sons of Kemet’s “My Queen Is Anna Julia Cooper”--- limber gravitas, layers and texture so involving, even if I did get tired of the tuba on some other tracks----and very intriguing saxophonist Nubya Garcia’s “Solace” https://nubyagarcia.bandcamp.com/album/when-we-are)(also added another Hinds track, "Ma Nuit," wide awake, note by note, in the dark, still seeing the walls, the space, moonlight miles outside)
P&J Albums went more like this:
Laurie Anderson/Kronos Quartet: Landfall https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCm7gu87-uU&list=PLe6PXYMMic6y3p0gWJF8NrVvm-nGkNb10&index=1
Dennis Coffey: One Night At Morey’s: 1968
Tracey Thorn: Record
Jlin: Autobiography (Music From Wayne McGregor’s Autobiography)
Tune-Yards: I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life
Lyrics Born: Quite A Life https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LZURJ5PcCw&list=PLJhNIvYeixioX6ePtWaO2TZ_4LTKY-PBM&index=1
Mulatu Astatke: Afro Latin Soul 1&2
Alice Coltrane: Spiritual Eternal---The Complete Warner Bros,
Studio Recordings
Notes, posts:
Alice Coltrane: Spiritual Eternal---The Complete Warner Bros,
Studio Recordings
Notes, posts:
ANGUISH is the gathering of members of the New Jersey-based experimental hip-hop group Dälek (electronic musician and vocalist Will Brooks with guitarist-keyboardist Mike Mare), the Swedish free jazz group Fire! Orchestra (tenor saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, drummer Andreas Werliin) and the classic ‘70s German krautrock band Faust (keyboardist and 68-year-old founding member Hans Joachim Irmler).
Results, coming at me in headphones: crunching up bits of their musical and all other history, incl. In the making and unmaking, bulldozer bouncing and bleak, wrapping the ceiling zero without ever getting tangled, flapping it---well, words are very occasionally humorless self-parodic, but vox always robust as the rest of the sounds, including screaming in a musical way, without getting fancy.
On Landfall, Anderson's violin and keyboard loops and grooves guide Kronos through vast flooded condo corridors, occasionally checking the stars (yep, still awesome-sounding) that she never got around to naming, in that slowed-goofy-male voice, once more or less purely satirical, that now seems more personal-global, or at least more lived-in, than ever.
Tracey Thorn's Record is crisp, rich and yes analog warm, with the updated satisfactions of 80s-90s UK geodesic wave form, as she testifies about drinking in Boys With Guitars, then picking up her own, beginning to learn the power and responsibilities, while still in gauntlet of gender natch--life behind and way from the mic gets deeper, more bracing (she seemed wispy early on, guess I should fill in the listening gaps).
Tracey Thorn's Record is crisp, rich and yes analog warm, with the updated satisfactions of 80s-90s UK geodesic wave form, as she testifies about drinking in Boys With Guitars, then picking up her own, beginning to learn the power and responsibilities, while still in gauntlet of gender natch--life behind and way from the mic gets deeper, more bracing (she seemed wispy early on, guess I should fill in the listening gaps).
Jlin’s Autobiography is a commission for a ballet I’d very much like to see---better check the ‘Tube---and as always, she cuts up cascading crystal beads of percussive curtains---she came out of or alongside the footwork scene after all----that’s all I got, but this excellent read delves into her earlier music:https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/22/black-origami-jlins-moody-new-dance-album
From I Love Music’s Rolling Jazz 2018, starting from a DownTown Music Gallery newsletter listing
MICHAEL MANTLER With LARRY CORYELL / CARLA BLEY / STEVE SWALLOW / TONY WILLIAMS - Movies (Watt 7; USA) Last sealed copy = $20
MICHAEL MANTLER with PHILIP CATHERINE / GARY WINDO / CARLA BLEY / STEVE SWALLOW/D SHARPE - More Movies (Watt 10; USA) Last couple of sealed copies / covers slilghtly worn = $20
Spotify has these as a twofer: both splendid, though if anything the sequel seems even more consistently engaging on first listen, even getting into kind of an art-metal groove thing at times (not xp "fusion funk")---when was the last time I thought of Philip Catherine!? And I didn't know Carla Bley played tenor sax!
Mantler's 1968 The Jazz Composer's Orchestra is proving surprisingly hard to get through, so far: the initial excitement of hearing these avant stars together----Pharoah Saunders, Don Cherry,Roswell Rudd, Gato Barbieri, Larry Coryell, with Cecil Taylor to come, in front of an Orchestra incl. Charlie Haden, Bob Northern/Brother Ah, Steve Swallow, Julius Watkins, Andrew Cyrille, and many more---gets pulled into the inertia of Mantler's long, lugubrious lines, like the worst of Gil Evans and his imitators. When Mantler the composer's thinking more like Mantler the trumpet player, as on Movies and More Movies, that's what I'm talkin' about. Think I'm going to jump ahead to his albums incl. Robert Wyatt, Kevin Coyne, Marianne Faithful.
Meanwhile, Carla Bley's 1976 Dinner Music seats her and Mantler and Rudd and Carlos Ward with funky-smooth session aces Eric Gale, Richard Tee, Cornell Dupree, Steve Gadd, Gordon Edwards---tuba player Bob Stewart is kind of the hinge--for results that can be sneaky-acerbic in the mellow pocket, keeping or bringing it all back to the foreground, forebrain: "Ad Infinitum" def. keeps it, from the beginning, and Rudd soon takes a hold of the closer. "A New Hymn," after the near-generic chit-chat/inconsequential refinements of "Ida Lupino" and "Funnybird Song"--but "Dreams So Real" seems as sincere and even urgent as highbrow, and "Song Sung Long" is urban romantic intrigue, and "Dining Alone" is urban anxiety unifying furtive imagery (via Bley's sung-spoken thoughts)---the pressure of that Manhattan candlelight!
The opener, "Sing Me Softly of the Blues," starts well but turns into something like more nerf-funk chatter, music for the pilot of a pre-PBS afterschool series, but the good tracks here are really up my alley.
Jumping to ILM thread Robert Wyatt: Classic or Dud?:
Michael Mantler:
The Hapless Child
Watt/4
words by Edward Gorey
(from 'Amphigorey')
Robert Wyatt (voice)
Terje Rypdal (guitar)
Carla Bley (piano, clavinet, synthesizer)
Steve Swallow (bass)
Jack DeJohnette (drums)
recorded July 1975 through January 1976
Willow, NY, and England
A whirlwind right out of the gate, and I knew from later all-instrumental versions how strong some of these frameworks would be---did not expect the excellent and unusual studio effects on some of Wyatt's vocal turns---but eventually, when the words are more upfront, can seem overly emphatic---Gorey's dank little narratives work better with his spare, black white & grey drawings or etchings or whatever they be. Also, c'mon, it's Gorey---think I'll go on to the settings of Beckett and Pinter.
That is, the *overall* effect, the ensemble onslaught, not primarily Wyatt's vocals, can seem overly emphatic here.
Mantler again: Silence (1976)---the overemphasis here is confined to some of MM's heavier handling of Pinter's words, and Chris Spedding's often repeated use of sustain etc., drawing a note out and curving it around 'til it's a needle in my earphones ---but it can hurt so good, and the voices are strong and distinctive, Carla Bley holding her on with Kevin Coyne and Robert Wyatt---and sometimes everybody follows Wyatt's dustdevil percussion, without ever missing their cues (it's a play with a small cast/combo, compressed, maybe condensed, into a single LP's worth of songs).
The text itself may grow on me, but so far doesn't seem up to several Pinter plays I'm more familiar with, though Mantler can highlight the weak spots in his literary sources, maybe by blurring some of the plot points.
Pretty sure I would have bought these in the 70s if had come across them (was mailorderphobic, opp extreme in 80s), and as a Wyatt fan would have been fairly satisfied.
Another Mantler:
MANY HAVE NO SPEECH
WATT/19
words by
Samuel Beckett
Ernst Meister
Philippe Soupault
Jack Bruce (voice)
Marianne Faithfull (voice)
Robert Wyatt (voice)
Michael Mantler (trumpet)
Rick Fenn (guitar)
The Danish Radio Concert Orchestra
conducted by Peder Kragerup
recorded May through December 1987
Copenhagen, London, Boston,
Willow, NY
27 songs in 34 minutes: no sense of fragmentation, maybe because I'm not following the words very closely, but on his site Mantler says they were chosen to fit together in several ways, and sonically they ripple back and forth (while somehow pushing on), between three languages and at least five voices, if you count the trumpet and guitar (singing behind/around the humans, never in the way), sixth is the orchestra far as I'm concerned, though it's never breathing too heavy.
Thread police may get me, because humans are heard pretty much in the order of their billing, I think, though some of these songs are just a few seconds long, and all three sound more flexible than expected.
But, for instance, "A L'Abattoir" will def make my personal travelling mix of RW, ditto "Prisonniers," which is either Wyatt and Bruce or Wyatt and Faithfull, or (more likely) Wyatt and Wyatt in different registers, maybe singing to each other through the wall (not too loud).
Pretty sure I would have liked all of this on first listen with no idea who did it.
Mantler's The School of Understanding (recorded in 1996) mainly features Wyatt on "Understanding," where he's the Guest Observer, riding into a language school on what might be a baby elephant or lofty llama, but is listed as Don Preston's syndrums, which I'd thought only made little pooty sounds, so even more education.
Too bad Wyatt and the syndrums only come in once, but the whole thing's pretty listenable; I especially like when other voices address the refugee student. Woman: "You are a victim, you have suffered so much---you must go." A guy: "What you have suffered is inconceivable." Meanwhile, Alien Girl remembers: "Don't think about it, go to work..it's a long walk through the war, bits and pieces." (Mantler wrote all the words for once, so far turning out at least as well as settings for his literary heroes.)
Digital drums appear once on Mantler's 2000 settings of Paul Auster's words,Hide and Seek (though tuned percussion brings constant and welcome companionship to co-stars RW and Susi Hyldgaard, compatible with Wyatt's own turns on xpost Silence---come to think of it, Preston's syndrums fit the feel of Wyatt's real kit of yore. This anomalous sound may be what's alarming the couple---he: "Have you, no-oh-ticed---?" she: "Yes! Yes! Yes!" "Have you any ideas?" "Yes, I'm going to scream." "When are you going to do it?" "Right Now!"
That's when the whole thing bumps up the word interest, which had previously been mostly Deep Thought mulch for granular melody and rhythm, vocal and instrumental. The final stretch develops circular and spiraling conversations (briefly) from repeated phrases---he: "I don't denyyy..." she: "What?" "Anything." "That's very clever of you." "I'm glad we agree." together/overlapping "I'm glad you're glad." Ho-ho well it sounds good, and yeah several more keepers for the deep fan mix.
The Freelance Mentalists’ advance man John W directed me to this, accurately tagged by bandcamp:
"Downtown Castles Can Never Block The Sun" is as much a 'greatest hits' as it is a 'debut album' for Ben LaMar Gay. It's a collection of music composed, performed & produced by the anomalous Southside Chicago-born, sometimes Brazil-residing artist, compiled from 7 albums he made over the last 7 years but never made the effort to actually release.
With its title taken from the mantra Ben repeats across several tracks on "Grapes" (1 of the 7 aforementioned albums), "Downtown Castles Can Never Block The Sun" is our effort to channel the rainbow of sonic expressions, art & poetry beaming from the ark of his unreleased catalogue into a cohesive & communicable compilation. It's as good of an introduction to Ben LaMar Gay as we could fit onto a single LP. To call it "eclectic" would only scratch the surface. This music is everything.
credits
released May 4, 2018
(from a Rolling Jazz discussion of Jazz and Beatles)I did, this past summer, get experienced by "Eleanor Rigby," of all things, among several revelatory covers of songs I’d never given a particular shit about, on Dennis Coffey's One Night At Morey's: 1968 (the only track I don't like is "Cissy Strut," only because it's too close to the original, although that's quite an achievement in itself, and if I were in the Motor City club audience when they played, with no NOLA or Meters handy, I'm sure I would have minded).
Otherwise, the expertise of guitar-organ-drums as orchestra is as resourceful as you please, in a no-nonsense way---the only per se jazz material is the closer, "Billie's Bounce," but they got the spirit and the focus all through this evening (a regular gig, so they had to keep it fresh, tolerable for the jades---hey, not like there was any lack of good-to-great music all over the Sick Sixties)
From Northern Spy:
A bunch of us purchased Marvin Pontiac’s Greatest Hits back in 1999 on CD, and some of us totally bought into the story: Marvin Pontiac was an enigmatic genius of modern music. He was the son of an African father from Mali and a white Jewish mother from New York. Having been killed by a bus, this was a posthumous collection. Jackson Pollock listened solely to Marvin. Flea, David Bowie, Leonard Cohen, Iggy Pop, Beck, Angelique Kidjo, Mike Gordon and Michael Stipe were fans.
John Lurie’s story was deeply amusing and his music was extraordinary. The whole thing was characteristically ahead of its time and guaranteed to leave a permanent mark on your consciousness. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it still is and still does! We’re blissfully psyched to bring this music to vinyl for the first time for Record Store Day and to compact disc for a one-time pressing. Check out the music if you haven’t already and please help spread the word. The package, co-designed by John Lurie and Adam Downey, features a detail of Lurie's painting The sky is falling. I am learning to live with it.
We also asked John Lurie to take over our weekly Spotify playlist called Office Ephemera. Listen here.
“I have never used Spotify and don’t know what Record Store Day is, but I am releasing Marvin Pontiac’s Greatest Hits on vinyl with the people at Northern Spy. They asked me to make a playlist. They are nice people, so I did it.” – John Lurie
Read a feature by Marc Masters in the Washington Post here.
Me: Boy the brainy 80s NYC hipster rollcall of Marvin's musical attendants---"the downtown crowd," as Lou Reed used to say---really takes me back, though they're a bit underemployed here, despite the alert, expert zigzag elevator groovage---underemployed compared to some other ventures, though not quantity-wise, would be better at half the length---about 25 minutes---or less (an excellent bonus EP w Lounge Lizards box, for inst). "Small Car" gets him out of the neighborhood or ward for a few minutes: it's about tiny farmers with "inch-long dogs" who are happy but one night they start to wonder where the stars come from, so they get in their cars made from cans and drive and drive, happy in the starlight and saying, "Hi farmer" to each other, 'til they come to the giants, us, or people our size, and agree that they don't belong here/there, so get in their can-cars and drive back home, but they enjoyed the trip and they're happy ever after to remember the night. Nice music.
Otherwise, in the usual fedoraheadspace, my fave line is "I put a piece of fur in my shoe to hide it from you. " Last track, "No Kids," has an intriguingly more serious vibe, or back and forth, coulda used a few more like that (although I kept getting interrupted, took most of the day so far to hear it all, so some may take hold later).(Later: not yet!)
follow-up to the 2017 take on Carmaig De Forest (reissue), Alex Chilton-produced:
Chilton also juices the familiars on his own expanded Omnivore, A Man Called Destruction---tempted to say "of course," because the unexpected reliability of this set, incl. alt. takes and prev. unissued titles, breeds a little bit of complacency in the robust litter, alongside interest and excitement---I was already starting to think, re the chunky originals ending the original album, that things were getting a little generic, though its prob the more agreeable, reasonable side of the subgenre which solo entertainer AC staked a claim to: that droll, rolling, r&r&b&b Memphis-NOLA thing, with a tad of country (bonus ["I Don't Know Why] But I Do" reverie not at all bothered by electric horse thermometer bass and equally business-like drums) and Southern 50s-mid-60s AM radio fodder (Brian Wilson contribution to Jan and Dean "New Girl In School," and the diligently, consistently worked-out, silly come-on "What's Your Sign, Girl?", falsetto now reformed to an agreeable twang), all work at least OK, in there with Italian rockabilly and a rockin' dirge and jitterbug jazzabilly and slow dunk unstoppable Jimmy Reed shuffles and heavy power pop---Chilton's sharp-edged, witty, sometimes slightly migrainey, dust devil guitar leads the session, with his voice adding even more genial clarity and definition to the "dry," sufficiently vivid sonics---but like I said was already getting a bit complacently discontented re "generic"/ his kind of subgeneric (which also reminded me of the way NRBQ pulls these ingredients together when they're on it, not to mention some thoughts of Beatles) even before I got to the part of Bob Merlis's notes in which he goes from very detailed and relevant clarity of backstory to opining that Chilton's chunky originals herein are of the rootsy AC vein that "had emerged as his greatest form of self-expression---as opposed to the pristine pop of Big Star, which some fans were still hoping he would produce." It was not pristine, never generic, basically reliably-to-easily-reproducible power pop---well, occasionally too sealed-over in the self-regard, as in words to "Ballad of El Goodo,"---too "pristine" in that sense---but never without some sonic distinction----and here the AC lyrics that are least wet-leafy, most likely to spin the spark and vice-versa, are the ones that have a glint of Big Star:"You're Lookin' Good"'s "I dig your mind/I dig your clothes," and "I'm ravin' I'm your slave/You're my/French fries, " from "You're My Favorite." And yes I'm quibblin' I'm dribblin' all sorts of generous quality, for these are almost all as good as french and even freedom fries, if not quite as in-the-spirit-of- Big Star free-fryin' as I'd like. (Speaking of keeping thinking, was also flagging *several* tracks, all along, as additions to midsize folder of BS faves x solo titbits, from Feudalist Tarts etc.)
"In-the-spirit of Big Star" really means also in the spirit and tradition of pushing the older elements a little further, a little more seemingly off-handed for lagniappe.
come to think of it, the kind of rolling Memphis and especially New Orleans chestnuts he favored could sound kinda droll and detached to start with, like barroom gossips taking us on a tour of funky situations. And/or just a notion that worked out, like "Workin' In A Coal Mine," with its composer, Allan Toussaint, readily pointing out there aren't coal mines anywhere near NO or in all of Louisiana, he was pretty sure.
Def. could have lived without "New Girl In School," esp. compared to some of the bonus tracks left off the original (which was a CD, so wouldn't think he had to keep the whole thing to LP length, unless he was being strictly traditional).
Eventually occurred to me that use of the dishy, convivial pop filter in Memphis and NOLA could be a way of countering outbursts of chaos etc.
Re The Death of Rock, I finally listened, tweeted this:
Peter Holsapple/Alex Chilton, The Death of Rock: main keeper AC's "Marshall Law" (sic): blithe Ray Davies vox over terse VU-ish detail "sharpshooters" etc PH says it's re 70s Memphis Fire & Police Strike, tho incl. "Martin Luther King" (who came to town during Garbage Strike).
The title track is okay too, but most of the vocals are either awkward (PH) or nerfy (AC), too self-conscious no matter who's singing---and AC esp. redic on "Train Kept A-Rolling" and "Mona," though playing is okay on those and several others, incl. stand-alone leftover backing tracks. Somebody cover "Marshall Law."
Several of the PH originals got another chance w the dBs (and "Death of Rock" got retitled remodeled etc. for a Troggs album).
A Big Star audience tape: Digging "Mod Lang" and "Candy Says" in Cambridge---don't think that one's been on legit Big Star album? Supposedly this was recorded on a boom box--and the announcer says they're playing unfamiliar, borrowed instruments, because all their gear got stolen last night, but I especially like the room for aural definition of one guitar, bass and drums, when they get cranked up (from "Mod Lang" to "Candy..." to "Til The End of the Day" to "O My Soul," for inst)
From ILM’s post-Fahey thread:
Speaking of you are there, was just now struck by an exemplary acoustic trio subset, almost midway through Big Star's Live At Lafayette's Music Room: rough and ready recording maps vivid, kinetic detail of "Thirteen," "The India Song," "Try Again," (Dobro? Bajo sexto?), and "Watch The Sunrise," which I think Edd Hurt pointed out on the main Big Star thread as being inspired by and/or lifted from Gimmer Nicholson.
This acoustically electrified sequence def. sustains and builds momentum of the whole, staying in exploratory, retrospective and introspective character while bearing down, committed to the now like trio Richard Thompson (even though press material claims they weren't even sure at that point about making a second album, with Bell gone; maybe shows like this showed them they could).
― dow, Monday, April 16, 2018 3:06 PM (five days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
Also the electrically electrified, yet ballad-y as hell, in a good way, performance of "Ballad of El Goodo," which I've never been el fondo of, but they got me here.
― dow, Monday, April 16, 2018 3:13 PM (five days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
omg i love that song
is there someone singing?
― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera)
Oh yeah you know it! Also good picking and chording in the undercurrents of St 100/6.
― dow, Monday, April 16, 2018 7:57 PM
more on Lafayette's from blogged notes:
A plugged “Hot Burrito #2”, hooked by sour resolution,
worries intractable tractor pulls of desire and fatalism up and down
the back staircase, parking lot, and main drag, like “In A Car”
and several other BS originals, long after the set opens with
poptopia of “When My Baby’s Beside Me” (“I don’t have to think”)
and the ark arcs of “My Life Is Right.” not to mention hairline visions
at lost loveliest / whine as wine “Thirteen.”
Chilton later described his Big Star self as “a maudlin young man.”
Not cool, why try to go back to that? Except on the circuit:
Big Star 2.0's tight tributes swapping spotlights with Box Tops, and solo sets at maybe at best like (see about expanded reissue of A Man Called Destruction over on Alex Chilton S&D)
and lastly maybe, a note to self on Twitter:
n radio interview on @BigStarBand's Live at Lafayette's Music Room, AC worries that forthcoming #1 Record is too much like Rundgren, reminding me not to overemph Beatles influences; also T.Rex v. favorably mentioned; both covered here, as on several other live recordings.
Sorry for the even-more-than-usual hodgepodge; I put a lot more effort into the Nash Scene piece, coming up (another one way way way overdue).
¶ 7/28/2019
