Thursday 31 December 2009

Lloyd Miller




Well worth checking out. Miller fusing various jazz modes with worldly influences. Think Yusef Lateef's Eastern experiments and Joe Harriot/John Mayer with added dimensions such as  instruments that I cannot name...very cool...


Wednesday 30 December 2009

Larry Ochs Or Wynton Marsalis? Jazz Battle Rages!

The old battle between jazz factions has resurfaced with Ochs' army on one side and Marsalis' followers on the other. There will be blood splattered across forums as those loyal to freedom of expression hurl insults at traditionalists, neither of whom will concede defeat or admit that both forms of music are valid.  

The Guardian, Dec 9
Jazzman Larry Ochs has seen many things during 40 years playing his saxophone around the world but, until this week, nobody had ever called the police on him.
That changed on Monday night however, when's Spain's pistol-carrying Civil Guard police force descended on the Sigüenza Jazz festival to investigate allegations that Ochs's music was not, well, jazz.
Police decided to investigate after an angry jazz buff complained that the Larry Ochs Sax and Drumming Core group was on the wrong side of a line dividing jazz from contemporary music.
The jazz purist claimed his doctor had warned it was "psychologically inadvisable" for him to listen to anything that could be mistaken for mere contemporary music.
According to a report in El País newspaper yesterday, the khaki-clad police officers listened to the saxophone-playing and drumming coming from the festival stage before agreeing that the purist might, indeed, have a case.
His complaint against the organisers, who refused to return his money, was duly registered and will be passed on to a judge.
"The gentleman said this was not jazz and that he wanted his money back," said the festival director, Ricardo Checa.
"He didn't get his money. After all, he knew exactly what group he was going to see, as their names were on the festival programme.
He added: "The question of what constitutes jazz and what does not is obviously a subjective one, but not everything is New Orleans funeral music.
"Larry Ochs plays contemporary, creative jazz. He is a fine musician and very well-renowned."
"I thought I had seen it all," Ochs, who reportedly suffered a momentary identity crisis, told El País. "I was obviously mistaken."
"After this I will at least have a story to tell my grandchildren," the California-based saxophonist added.

The Guardian, Dec 21
The jazz legend (Wynton Marsalis) wanted to send a large part of his 70-plus catalogue of recordings to the anonymous Spaniard who called police to a jazz festival because the music being played was not, he insisted, jazz. Marsalis just needed to find him. Now Rafael Gisbert, a jazz purist from the Madrid dormitory town of Alcorcon, has stepped forward.








 
Avant-garde music is sort of research music. You're glad someone's done it but you don't necessarily want to listen to it.
- Brian Eno

Even during the major avant-garde period of jazz in the late '60s and early '70s, the songs usually had melodies, some harmonic starting-off point, or something to unify a particular piece in the beginning.
- Herbie Hancock

As far as I'm concerned, the essentials of jazz are: melodic improvisation, melodic invention, swing, and instrumental personality.
- Mose Allison

Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.
- Charlie Parker



Tuesday 29 December 2009

Miles Davis - Heavyweight Champ



The big black box called ‘The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions’ sits on my desk. Perhaps it’s not so big compared to such extravagant productions as the Beatles one that came out this year, or the Miles ‘complete’ set which, if I remember correctly, featured 52 CDs. Christ – what’s the point? If you’re a fan you’ll have bought the best (your favourites anyhow) and if you’re not, why would you bother? A Christmas gift from father to son? “There you go, lad. That’s proper music.” Son struggles to find the correct appreciative expression, as you do when receiving a naff present...smiles, says “Thanks”, wondering if his parents will ever understand his taste...he’d rather have a token that he could spend on Amazon.
If I had a son he’d get a token...and a bash over the head with this Miles box set if he misbehaved. It may be possible to knock not only sense but also sensible taste into a child, I don’t know. Would it depend on your weapon of choice? After all, you can try forcing them to listen, but the direct impact of a hard object bearing the image of Miles might also do the trick. Miles has knocked me out many a time, as befits a man who was a budding pugilist. As far as I’m concerned he knocks out all would-be contestants in the musical ring. I mean, who can go ten rounds with him? Coltrane? Yes, up to a point, but would JC have gone on to make anything as significant as Miles in the late-60s? Ornette? He’s a tough challenger, and although he proved capable of improvising to survive changing times, he doesn’t quite carry the clout of Miles. They named a Coltrane box set ‘Heavyweight Champion’, but the champ for me is the guy whose band he was in back in the 50s. No heavyweight physically, but musically, he’s Ali.
So I listen to ‘Willie Nelson insert 2’ again...the fantastic spaced-out Echoplex sound of Sonny Sharrock’s guitar...funky backbeat by Jack DeJohnette...electric bass by Dave Holland. This black box containing sounds by the black boxer strikes me as monolithic, like the slab in ‘2001 A Space Odyssey’, towering as it does above the rest of the CDs in that part of the collection...a mystifying artefact carrying musical messages from the past...ageless music that will last me for as long as I’m around.
Talking of space odysseys and therefore science-fiction, the player shuffles to ‘Neo’ by Miles, from ‘Saturday Night At The Blackhawk’...one of my favourite things by the man. To enter the matrix of Miles is to enter another world, to become engaged in dimensions of music which somehow seem to exist in a parallel musical world...from a kind of blues to modal modernity...cosmo-electric space noise to bop of the cool post-war world...so many angles to consider and pathways to traverse...
I’m not normally given to lending music spiritual capabilities or, for that matter, extraterrestrial dimensions, but you can’t help it when thinking of, say, Sun Ra, or in this case, the elements of electric Miles. It’s as if, like Ra, he belonged to another planet. Or perhaps he received messages from Out There, directing him towards places no human musician had gone before. Or did The Greys channel their message through Teo Macero? It’s a short spelling step from Teo to Neo, after all, not that I think the film has any significance whatsoever. Yet for Miles the prefix ‘neo’ seems so pertinent...neo-bop, neo-modern...until everyone dabbling or delving deeper into electric jazz made neo-‘Bitches Brew’ music, but none could conjure up the magic of Miles around that period.
Have you listened to 'Go Ahead John' or 'Duran' lately? Players have been trying to emulate, imitate, extract from, build careers on and generally learn from this stuff ever since. All the would-be jazz-funkateers, techno-jazz fantasists...breakbeat kids...muso fusionists...none get close.  

Monday 28 December 2009

Pick Of The Pops - 10 LPs From 2009 (in no particular order)


Silence – Monolake
‘In no particular order’ but this is top of the list, funnily enough

L'Autopsie Phénoménale De Dieu – Kreng
Haunting atmospherics for an imaginary film noir



By The Throat – Ben Frost
Carnivorous ambience for long winter nights

La Vie Electronique – Klause Schulze
Classic synthesiser odyssey for astral travellers




Inspiration Information 3 – The Heliocentrics/Mulatu Astatke
World jazz for the contemporary set

This Way – Bruce Gilbert
You may dance to this...in your head



Work For GV 2004-2008 – Peter Rehberg
A black hole of murderous music that’s worthy of slow investigation

Aquafit – Big Robot/Conrad Schnitzler
Artificial intelligence for moderns



Tracks and Traces – Harmonia/Eno
Immortal electronic music for lovers of the art

Et Cetera – Wolfgang Dauner
Free-Prog-Jazz-Psychedelic mentalist masterwork

Two Fingers (inst) - Two Fingers (Big Dada)

I came across this by chance; my ol’ mate Cujo (Amon Tobin) from the Ninebar label days, along with Joe 'Doubleclick' Chapman, masquerading as a marauding robot Samba band armed with smart samples and pneumatic beats designed to blow your head - great stuff. ‘Subway Rhythm’ revives Prototype-era D&B, complete with the ‘hoover’ bass line, but mostly this extended mutation of the hip-hop original marches to a different drummer, programmed to pound you into submission with devious rhythms and sheet-metal percussion which should shake anyone out of their post-Xmas torpor.

Wednesday 23 December 2009

L'Autopsie Phénoménale De Dieu - Kreng (Miasmah Records)



This album won’t fill you with Xmas cheer but Belgian Pepijn Caudron has produced an exceptional piece of work. It’s a virtuoso studio performance that interweaves samples from movies and music to create an aura of menace and melancholy that doesn’t let up. Like a doomed film noir character for whom there’s no light at the end of the tunnel, hopes of anything lifting your spirits are futile. Yet I find this recording gratifying for that very reason. There are passages of great poignancy (a woman sobs to the sound of Chopin on ‘Meisje In Auto’) as well as brooding menace (‘Transmutation Device’). Subtle rhythms arise with brush strokes on cymbals or minimal drum beats...a bell tolls...piano melodies come and go, as does an operatic vocal...all serving to suggest tragedy and loss. Some of it is reminiscent of Morricone, and Hermann’s soundtrack for ‘The Day The Earth Stood Still’ towards the end of on one of the most powerful pieces, ‘Kolossus’. The last word goes to someone saying ‘Thank you ladies and gentlemen for your boundless enthusiasm’, which sounds to me like a sample from a ‘live’ jazz recording, but I could be wrong. Either way, it’s perhaps an ironic inclusion for a ‘performance’ that deserves applause even though it won't elevate you the way an Art Blakey gig would.

Keep 'Em Laughing (Knickerbocker Publishing Co, 1942)

A tonic for the troops. Can't help wondering if my copy saw any action...


Tuesday 22 December 2009

Some D&B Faves From The Rumpus Room Days

Dusted off the drum'n'bass the other day, as I love to do now and again - clears the air, almost cleared my sinuses. So let's go back to the mid-90s and...

Below are some favourites that I used to love playing...starting with this jump-up classic which had the floor full every time...ah...the anticipation built up by that intro...


This...simply one of the best, most original sounds from those days...


Here's some good advice: never betray your home boys...another brilliant intro...and that evil bass...twisted and nasty...


Had to include some T-Power. Knowing Marc allowed us to air many exclusives. This tune was made with one of my fellow Rumpus Room DJs, MK Ultra...


A masterclass in headf*ckery...not one I'd like to try and dance to, but blending elements of soul and jazz as it did it fitted right in with our eclectic policy and mirrored what we liked to think of as our fearless approach to mixing music...





Would make a change from 'White Christmas'...


Monday 21 December 2009

Report From The Bunker 2



I’ve got no taste, which is not to say I’ve bought the Susan Boyle album, but that I can’t taste anything...
There are more than 200 different cold viruses and viruses can mutate. I wonder how many different types of jazz there are as I listen to the Rollers Instinct remix of T-Power and MK-Ultra’s ‘Mutant Jazz’ - a mutation of a mutation...
So I have another cuppa tea just cause it’s wet, warm and soothing to my throat...
Stare at the pile of DVDs that are to be watched or have been partly watched – ‘Une Femme Mariee’, ‘The Spirit Of The Beehive’, ‘The Big Heat’, ‘Rosemary’s Baby’...
How many films will I never see that I really wanted to?
How many books will go unread?
On the desk sits a birthday card from my big sis, bless her, demonstrating her taste in humour...
Also a box of blank discs tempting me to spend more money downloading music...
Look at the posters on the wall – ‘The City That Never Sleeps’, ‘Invasion Of The Saucer Men’, ‘Kiss Me Deadly’...
The grey sky and cold air creeping through the sash window...
The pile of old photos dug up when rummaging through the cupboard...was that me back then....?
The glass jar containing cash – money’s too tight to mention? Not really. I need some money? Don’t we all want more, but what we want and what we need, oh what a difference...
Money tunes...perhaps I’ll compile a list of favourites...and perhaps I won’t...
Listening to an album by Sart called ‘Sart’ – the crackle and quietness of ‘myk’ is so appealing...peaceful...but not without intrigue...
Look at the pile of books on the floor which are due to be taken to the s/h shop – second from the bottom, Pynchon’s latest, because I’ve given up trying to appreciate or understand why he’s reckoned to be such a great writer. I’ve tried them all and got nowhere...
The Penguin Guide To Jazz on CD sits opened, face down, on pages containing the works of Joe Lovano because I thought I’d give him a listen to see why he’s got so many four-star ratings – did that an hour ago, still wondering, even though I know it’s a matter of taste. I’m in no mood for that kind of saxophone virtuosity – much prefer the non-virtuosity of Sart right now...
Browse my pictures for an image to accompany this post. Tell myself it doesn’t have to relate to what I’ve written about...
And I wonder who the hell I’m talking to...

Thursday 17 December 2009

The Beat That My Heart Skipped

When Thomas Seyr enters the hall for his big audition in Jacques Audiard’s ‘The Beat That My Heart Skipped’ someone on stage is playing what sounds like Gunther Schuller’s fusion of jazz and classical music. Amazingly, in light of the fact that I had just been listening to Cecil Taylor, it sounds like him crossed with Bach.
I’m flabbergasted by the coincidence.
Then I realise that the Cecil Taylor album I had been listening to on the computer minutes earlier had resumed playing, thus merging with the film.
On the DVD case the FT quote calls it ‘A raging gangster film’ although it isn’t that at all. The producers no doubt thought that would attract a lot more (male) buyers than: ‘A film about the one man’s struggle to reconcile his artistic ambition with the lure of life as a morally dubious property dealer’.
Romain Duris is terrific as the troubled soul seeking to put his bruised knuckles to better use as a concert pianist rather than busting squatters’ heads. He’s full of nervous energy; wired into techno when he’s not studying Bach as he walks the fine line between integrity and corruption.
There’s no neat conclusion to this. Seyr enters the auditorium in the final scene splattered in blood; as if no matter how hard he tries his past will always stain his future.

Cecil Taylor - Dream/Reality

Last night I went into a small bar where Cecil Taylor was playing, not with a band, but a rhythm section backing track. He was crammed into a corner, corn-roll hair, staring at the wall, almost anonymous. I was obsessed with what he was doing, but most others in the room seemed more intent on getting a drink and chatting.
I couldn’t see all of his face...the room was dimly-lit...just a weak spotlight throwing a pale yellow circle of light onto his head. I could see no piano. It was as if he was conjuring notes out of the air, out of the darkness in that corner...
The dream made me crave his music when I woke so I clipped ‘Jazz Advance’ into the Walkman and listened to ‘Bemsha Swing’. Was the urge to listen so strong because I wanted to verify the fact that Cecil exists in reality, as opposed to only the dream world? But Cecil’s music is one long dream...of endless intricate possible routes created by notes and chords which, like dreams, warp time and space, and as I listened the sun broke through grey clouds as if to illuminate my moment of confirmation...

Wednesday 16 December 2009

Gong - Trippin' With The Flying Pixies

My brain’s being rearranged by Gong. It’s no bad thing.
The Radio Gnome trilogy (‘Flying Teapot’, ‘Angel’s Egg’ and ‘You’) is a trip of ridiculous dimensions involving a character called Zero Hero and pixies that fly around in teapots. I know, I know – stupid, right? But I applaud this kind of stupidity, which fits right in with the kind of prankster Illuminati conspiracy expounded by Robert Anton Wilson, as well as the UFO cartoon lunacy of George Clinton’s Parliament. Seeing the pseudonyms given to members of the band, I wonder of Clinton was listening (The Good Count Bloomdido Bad De Grass? Dingo Virgin & Hi T Moonweed the favourite?)
I think Daevid Allen was some kind of genius, regardless (or because of) whatever he was on when he created this stuff. It's all over the place in terms of influence – jazz and rock, yes, but what kind of rock is this? It’s rock in the way that Miles made jazz circa ‘Bitches Brew’.
Nothing settles for long in the ever-shifting universe of the flying pixies. Take the epic title track of the first album as it moves from spaced-out ambience to the chanted lyric, sax solo, funky bass, building intensity, wah-wah guitar, and piano that emerges before it skids to a halt to make way for odd vocalising and free drumming before one more blast.
There’s too much to talk about here without going on for pages.
The thing about all this, despite its absurd Lewis Carroll-on-LSD lyricism, is that ten minutes later you can think you’re listening to the Art Ensemble Of Chicago (‘Inner Temple’), or Chas & Dave as hippies on the sing-song ‘round the ol’ Joanna parody, ‘Givin’ My Love To You’.
On ‘Love Is How You Make It’ the song trips along in a fairly normal fashion about the power of love without impressing, but then at the 2min mark shifts gear to become a truly fantastic, marimba and funky drummer-driven thing.
How about the funky ‘space rock’ of ‘Isle Of Everywhere’ from the final album in the trilogy, ‘You’? Far Out, you would expect, but these (tea)pot heads have no right to be so funky too.
Gong have no right to be as good as this because I didn’t expect it and it’s rearranging my brain. At times they're Prog as I would expect, but what with everything else going on my bias against that is swept aside.
So there’s nothing ‘hip’ about Gong, you might say – maybe you’re right. Maybe the drugs I’m taking for this cold have opened my mind to the idea of pixies in teapots.
I’m not going crazy, honest. There really is a lot of am-a-a-a-zing music here. Just listen to the first part of ‘You Never Blow Yr Trip Forever’ and tell me you’re hearing a bunch of tired old hippies. Listen on, and I might agree, but listen further and something else will happen.
Mingus said jazz was the sound of surprise, well, this kind of cosmic jazz-rock is full of surprises, not least in the fact that I find it so enjoyable.

Thursday 10 December 2009

Silence - Monolake

Would you purchase an album by this man?    

'I create music that needs attention and focus, that slowly builds up intricate and fragile structures, morphing timbres constructed of millions of microscopic sonic particles, cathedrals of filtered noises, dynamic and dramatic processes which grab the listener and throw them into a new state, or music that is almost invisible, floating around like air, music that grows when performed live using multiple channels of audio.' (from his website)

He explains himself far better than I could.
I've developed a mild obsession with Henke's music over the last few days. As I've got older, my musical obsessions have got milder, unlike my hangovers. 
Unfortunately, my bank balance prevents me from doing what I would like to do, which is buy everything he has recorded (under his own name and as Monolake). Instead, I must progress carefully.
Henke's music progresses carefully, thoughtfully, but not necessarily slowly. You would expect no less from a software engineer, would you?
You could compile a climate change summit EP with three of his tracks - 'Pipeline', 'Melting' and 'Wasteland'. If you wanted.

< This is his new album. 'Sound sources include field recordings of airport announcements, hammering on metal plates at the former Kabelwerk Oberspree, Berlin, several sounds captured inside the large radio antenna dome at Teufelsberg, Berlin, dripping water at the Botanical Garden Florence, air condition systems and turbines in Las Vegas, Frankfurt and Tokyo, walking on rocks in Joshua Tree National Park, wind from the Grand Canyon, a friends answering machine, a printer, conversations via mobile phones, typing on an old Macintosh keyboard and recordings from tunnel works in Switzerland. Synthetic sounds created with the software instruments Operator, Tension, Analog and the build in effects inside Ableton Live. Additional sound design and sequencing using MAXMSP / MaxForLive. Additional reverb: various impulse repsonses via Altiverb. Composed, edited and mixed in Live with a pair of Genelec 8040s. Mastering by Rashad Becker at Audioanwendungen September 2009. Field recordings captured with a Sony PCM D-50.' (from his website)
The sounds are as pure as fresh snow. As clear as the sky on a frosty night.
Some people dislike the sound of technology, thinking they only hear technology, when in fact they hear, in the case of Monolake, a human totally immersed in technology at the service of the listener. Machines may serve the dancer, but 'Silence' is beautifully composed for your listening pleasure alone.
As with so much of Henke's work, his technical expertise here, in harmony with his creative brain, is a marriage which creates a unique, fascinating array of sounds. Field recordings and the manipulation of technology make sounds you will not have heard before. But the new is nothing if it is only new; it must be composed in such a way as to form a harmonious entity.
Henke is playful with the idea of rhythm. You might say he is a tease. Some tracks, such as 'Null Pointer' and 'Shutdown', contain the skeletal structures of 'dance' music, without adding the flesh that would make them club hits. Henke is not adverse to the idea of club music, but even the tracks he has made which contain more meat do not conform to the rules of simplicity as demanded by dancers.
If Henke has influences (a past or present which shapes his sound) I cannot hear them. This may be ignorance on my behalf; if so, then it is a kind of bliss. Minimalism...Techno...Musique Concrete...these are inadequate labels.
There is so much space in 'Silence' that we are seduced into entering. The title could reflect this condition, if we want it to, because it's as if these sounds are projected onto silence; or that vast expanse of pure snow, rather than trying to fill or smother it. Here, sounds can breath because they're given room. The same is true for the listener. 
You really should buy an album by this man. If you know his work, you won't need telling. I, meanwhile, have presents to buy as Xmas approaches. But perhaps I will buy one for myself in the form of another Monolake album...                                     

Monday 7 December 2009

The Engagement - Georges Simenon (1933)

Following Mr Hire through the frosty streets of a Parisian suburb we watch, like the detectives, for signs of guilt. We wait for him to make a mistake that will prove he murdered the prostitute. Into a brothel, cafe, bowling alley...to a football match, the follower is followed. Mr Hire: the naive, isolated man living a seedy life...the voyeur...and we too are voyeurs, with more information than the police but not enough to provide conclusive evidence. Is this portly outsider a monster, or just a man with a dubious past?

Sunday 6 December 2009

Inspirational Ethio-Jazz Fusion

I’d never heard of ‘Ethio-Jazz’ until this morning. Indo-Jazz, yes, thanks to Joe Harriott and John Mayor, and Cuban Jazz, of course...but Ethio-Jazz?
Well, I’ve eaten Ethiopian food a few times at Lalibela, Tufnell Park, and now I’m consuming music by Mulatu Astatke courtesy of Strut’s compilation, ‘New York - Addis - London - The Story Of Ethio Jazz 1965-1975’. Damn good it is too. I mean really damn good, being one of those surprises you come across now and again, even after listening to music seriously for nearly forty years, as I have.
Perhaps I’ve been slow on the uptake, but this comp really does feel like it shines a light on previously buried treasures, although Astatke may have long been a wet dream for crate-diggers of obscure grooves for all I know.
Now we can all sample the delights of this hybrid music which overall forms a kind of leftfield Latin-Funk-Afro-Jazz mélange of vocal and instrumental tunes. At times it reminds me of Salah Ragab’s Egyptian Jazz (‘Emnete) and Cal Tjader (‘Girl From Addis Ababa’), but the arrangements and solos are often distinctive enough to create something other than mere genre pieces. ‘Dewel’ moves to a mildly funky rhythm but the tenor sax is in ‘free’ mode, whilst ‘Netsanet’ has a ‘Shaft In Africa’ feel (great Acid guitar solo). ‘Yegella Tezeta’ is just downright odd, in a good way, with funky break and muted organ solo.
                                     
Astatke appears again with The Heliocentrics on the third of the ‘Inspiration Information’ series. This is probably my Album of the Year. There aren’t many contenders, but if there were hundreds, this would still take some beating.
The London-based Heliocentrics have worked some post-session magic in the studio, giving it a crisp sound for that updated Sun Ra-in-groove-mode that inspires much of their work. London-based Ethiopian musicians also contribute.
In light of listening to the Astatke comp, this sounds like the perfect modernisation of his styles from that period. Jazz, Breakbeats, Afro rhythms, chants, acid guitar, free soloing, it’s all in here along with much more.
I’m reluctant to pick tracks although ‘Live From The Tigre Lounge’, ‘Addis Black Widow’ and ‘Fire In The Zoo’ do leap out, but then there’s ‘Chinese New Year’ and the lengthiest cut, ‘Anglo Ethio Suite’.
All concerned have contributed to a masterpiece of fusion here, pulled together by The Heliocentrics in a fashion that’s shot through with contemporary edge whilst truly acknowledging past masters of so-called ‘spiritual’ jazz and progressive fusion.



Saturday 5 December 2009

Friday 4 December 2009

The BYG Deal

If you've a taste for the sound of Psyche-Funk-Rock-Prog-Pop then this collection by Finders Keepers should satisfy your needs. I like Funk, some Rock and Pop, but if anyone strung them together as I have and told me I'd like the results I'd say 'Nah'. So surprise, surprise, I do like a lot of this album.

As I'm sure you know, BYG was born in France in the late-60s out of a 'man the barricades' attitude with a mission to prove that beneath the paving stones of the world lay a beach littered with artists who deserved an outlet. And so they unleashed an army of musical revolutionaries, many of whom were black American sonic guerrillas such as The Art Ensemble Of Chicago (represented here with their wry take on Rock, 'Rock Out').
Unlike the BYG Actuel box of ball-busting ‘free jazz’ sounds, this comp features an assortment of styles, from the funky Pop/Rock of Francoise Wertheimer’s ‘L’Automne’ to Alpha Beta’s ‘Astral Abuse’, which defies description, except to say that towards the end the choppy guitar reminds me of The Pop Group.
Thankfully, I don’t understand French, therefore Coeur Magique’s ‘Mademoiselle Marie’ can be enjoyed for the rhythm alone. He could be singing about a girlfriend, or a Parisian lady of the night for all I know or care. Daevid Allen, however, is loud and clear, snarling his way through ‘All I Want Is Out Of Here’ – a defiant rap; something like Punk attitude meets Beefheart.
Joachim and Rolf Khun’s ‘Bloody Rockers’ is a great romp on keyboards and synth across a funky riff, which just grooves in a Prog fashion without the muso noodling.
This album’s definitely worth exploring.

Wednesday 2 December 2009

Sun Ra - Nidhamu + Dark Myth Equation Visitation


The built-in bullshit detector that Hemingway advised all writers to have is working fine, but my Ra-dar is kaput. I didn't know that this LP was released by Art Yard months ago. I'm slipping - but then again, perhaps the little man inside called Mr Sane has been at work on my subconscious, subliminally chanting 'Don't buy and more Sun Ra'. Because? Ra will drive you crazy, as you may already know. Perhaps you've had a listen here and there on the 'net and that's been enough to scare you away, running back to songs that are logical and retain the sense of order that we all crave to some extent.
This stuff is not the product of disorder, but the work of a genius who filled music sheets with marks representing moons, planets, stars, quasars, black holes, comets and so on...probably.
If you dare to venture on this Solar Ship Voyage, which took off from Cairo with Ra at the helm, and the synthesizer as his controls, you'll be in for a cosmic flight of epic proportions...to the outer limits. Well, you didn't expect the musical equivalent of a bike ride around the block, did you.
Two highlights are the opening 'Space Loneliness #2' which, after Ra has seriously rearranged your molucules through the solo synthesizing of sound, turns into a great, drunken, brassy blues - yes, space is a lonely place. And 'Friendly Galaxy #2', where the Arkestra hypnotises us with a steady rhythm, conga and flute, conjuring a mood of relative calm which still creates the impression that there are demons at play, tugging the wings off angels...and as you watch the world beneath your feet dissolves.

Tuesday 1 December 2009

Report From The Bunker 1

Three days after drinking Irish whisky, which was like swallowing a bonfire...that had been put out...with whisky...my brain still appears to have been severely affected to the extent that it barely functions...

Watched the rest of ‘The Dark Knight’ today having consumed it in several chunks...Heath Ledger as The Joker is the best thing about it...as you probably know...some awful dialogue...spectacular action...and the Bat Bike...
Listened to ‘Gilles Peterson Presents Brownswood Bubblers Two’...thinking ‘I want to strangle Gilles Peterson’...which is a terrible thought, I know, but I get the feeling he’s somehow regarded, still, as a ‘jazz DJ’ and, yes, I remember hearing him play jazz records to a man and his dog (and my friend and I) in a Richmond bar back when he wasn’t Famous, which I assume he is now...this compilation makes me want to retch, being mostly smo-o-oth, wine bar bland soul Musak to slit your throat to...
So I drive out those demons by listening to John Coltrane’s ‘Blue Train’...which reminds me: someone I once knew claimed that, whilst recording a session with MacGowan, he was asked to play like Coltrane does on this track...or did I dream that?...no, it definitely happened...I recall seeing a photo of, or hearing about (oh how the retched memory fails!) MacGowan wearing a t-shirt with Charlie Parker on it...but idols of certain artists do not always exert an influence on their music...except to say that in the case of Parker and MacGowan, perhaps Bird influenced Shane’s hedonistic/nihilistic lifestyle...and I read today that Bono loves ‘A Love Supreme’...but we can’t expect him to create cutting edge jazz, can we?...and he’s played with BB King and met Burroughs...so I’m wondering how I can share a love of certain key artists with him and still find his music intolerable...instead of Rock, he should be making cutting edge blues-influenced jazz featuring some cut-up prose...
Cut to ‘Rise From Your Grave’ by Phuture, the dark techno classic from ’92...a message beamed straight to the crack-ridden wastelands where brothers are ‘living a lie selling drugs while they watch their brothers die’...but the ‘Wake Da Fuck Up’ mix proves uplifting...and perhaps my brain will wake up when that damn whisky has worn off...

Birthday Letter To 'A Love Supreme'

45!
Congratulations!
You’re getting on now, and perhaps a line about maturity, the kind you find in cards, is appropriate...‘It’s not the years in the life. It’s the life in the years.’ (Abraham Lincoln)....something like that. Well, there’s a lot of life left in you yet. Actually, I can see you lasting for as long as the planet does, without diminishing in strength or vitality – unlike some of these young whippersnappers.
Strange to think that I’ve known you for over twenty-five years and yet, somehow, I don’t really know you that well. I suppose many relationships are like that. They say one of the keys to maintaining a healthy relationship is for there to always be mysteries involved, not secrets, as such, but unknown depths. In our case that’s definitely true. I must have listened to you a thousand times but constantly find new elements.
Some people find you a bit awkward and at times I’ve also struggled, I admit. But for all your difficulties, the good in you is worth the effort. You can be very melancholic (in a deep way, rather than self-pitying) but being constantly happy and upbeat just isn’t natural, is it?
I may not share your religious beliefs, but you’re not forcing them on me. I know they shape your character, but that has never put me off. Besides, you’re not exactly some dull, conservative do-gooder, are you? I’d even go so far as to suggest that you’ve caused quite a lot of trouble in your time, but hey, that’s the problem of those who don’t understand you, right? Let them call you ‘crazy’ or ‘complicated’ or whatever.
You’ve almost brought a tear to my eye a few times, but I like to think for the right reason...not sorrow...but simply...well, I’m getting into territory which I can’t explain.
Nowadays, hearing you again connects with my own history and we can all get a bit maudlin (?) about the passing of time, can’t we? You, though, you don’t age – you lucky bastard! You’ll outlive me.
Anyway, Happy Birthday. I know you’ll have many more.

(Note: 'A Love Supreme' was born in the studio on December 9th, 1964)
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