Tuesday 29 June 2010

Broadcast From The Bunker



Many of you have commented on my apparent obsession with Sun Ra. I am not obsessed, I simply think he is one of the greatest musicians of all time in terms of vision, imagination, scope etc. ‘Well, by what other criterion are you going to judge an artist?’, you may ask. How about grunting and squealing? In that realm there is no contender to the throne occupied by JB. Although Iggy does a good primal scream. Funk rhythm? The Meters take some beating. Orchestration? Mr Ellington. Vocals? Sinatra. And so on...


Having recently watched the film, ‘Adaptation’, I was going to write about it, but have not been able to, properly. Whatever ‘proper’ writing is. Well, Charlie Kaufman writes himself into a film about adapting a real book. He’s played by Nicholas Cage, who also plays his twin brother. One’s idealistic, the other, naive and ambitious. It’s about brotherly love, evolution, obsession and writing. The scene where Cage attends a writing seminar is especially good. But it’s full of good scenes. A great film...





Spent the morning looking for a novel that might be interesting but sticking to my rule of not reading anything thicker than a centimetre (give or take a millimetre) I found nothing. I am so disillusioned with fiction that I might have to fall back on re-reading Graham Greene. This would be no bad thing, but would feel like a feeble retreat from the challenge of discovering something new....

Meanwhile...this is worth a look...a smash hit from that Pop-Art duo Varese and Le Corbusier...


Monday 28 June 2010

Daphne Oram



One of the amazing things about Daphne is her name – a pioneer of electronic music called Daphne? It’s insane. They’re usually called something far more exotic, like Pierre or Karlheinze...OK, there was a John...but Daphne?
   Also, take a look at this woman, does she look like the kind of person who would invent a whole new way of producing sound? But she did, inventing a new form of sound synthesis – Oramics, whereby the composer draws onto 35mm film strips which overlay a series of photo-electric cells, generating electrical charges to control amplitude, timbre, frequency, and duration, apparently.
   No dreams of domestic bliss or supporting hubby whilst minding the kids for Daphne, no, she dreamt of sine wave oscillators and tape manipulation, probably. What was her response in the corner shop when the man at the counter asked her what she’d been doing today? “Oh, the usual, Fred, working on a new system that will synthesize sound.”
   She had a studio built in her Kent oast house, which like her appearance, seems contrary to what she did…an old building once used for drying hops in the process of making beer…now home to a woman concocting her very strange musical brew…
   Perhaps she sat there sometimes, looking out at the countryside…recalling the day she turned down a place at the Royal College of Music…and the day she left the BBC having co-founded their Radiophonic Workshop…those stuffed shirts lacked a vision that matched hers…
   Daphne fascinates me…how could she not? This woman who progressed from being a sound engineer at the Beeb to going it alone, pursuing her musical dreams in England, in isolation from the other pioneers of sound, the legends such as Varese (who would die in ’65)…and Stockhausen or Cage…perhaps she wrote them letters – ‘Dear John, hope your arthritis isn’t playing up too much…just got three-and-a-half grand from the Gulbenkian Foundation – result!’ Something like that. Perhaps all pioneers must, by default, work in isolation.
   On the compilation, ‘Oramics’, we hear the full gamut of Daphne’s capabilities, from lighthearted snippets such as ‘Purring Interlude’ (yes, recorded cats) and ‘In A Jazz Style’ (reverb percussion and scat lasting 43secs), to the 9min ‘Dr Faustus Suite’, which is as sinister and chilling as anything you’re likely to hear. Also included is her work on the soundtrack to Geoffrey Jones’s superb short film, ‘Snow’ (see below), which involves Sandy Nelson’s ‘Teen Beat’ being stretched to nearly 8mins by pitching it from very slow to high speed. ‘Costain Suite’ and ‘Brociliande’ are other examples of lengthier pieces in which Daphne could expand on her vision for electronic sound.
   A maverick not only in her art, but as a woman who denied her supposed ‘role’, Daphne may not have been properly recognised in her day, but thankfully her recordings survived and we, at least, can afford her the respect she deserves by appreciating what she did.


Thursday 24 June 2010

Le Cercle Rouge



I’ve been thinking about Jean-Pierre Melville since watching ‘Le Cercle Rouge’ at the week-end. Is he that great? Is the film really a masterpiece? I only wonder because a lot of people believe both and I’m open to the idea but not fully convinced. Oh, I love the style of ‘Le Samourai’ but part of me thinks that’s its sole asset. My main memory of it is Delon being tailed...for what seemed like an age. I would have told JPM to edit that...though I don’t suppose he would have paid any attention.
   ‘Le Cercle Rouge’ is eminently watchable, not only because Delon is probably the handsomest man in the world (even with a ‘tache) but because it looks so good in those cool muted colour tones. 
   There are odd things, though, like the brilliantly surreal invasion of the marksman’s room by various crawling beasts, which I expected to have some significance later, but it didn’t. There’s no explanation of it, so I presumed he’d been a junky or something. He’s a mess who suddenly cleans himself up when hired for the robbery. I thought, at the crucial moment, he would start seeing iguana’s scampering across the floor of the shop. I mean, that’s what I would have written into the film, you know, to create some tension...will he hold his nerve? Or crack up and miss?
   You see, I really could have made Melville’s films so much better than he did...apart from ‘Bob le Flambeur’, which is all-round great...and ‘Le Doulos’...which is hard to improve.
   There’s also the mystery (to me) of the detective’s cats. Twice we’re shown him feeding them when he enters his apartment. Why? How is that scene necessary? How does it move the story along or illustrate the character? Film students: discuss.
   I read somewhere that the film’s been butchered for release but I can’t believe it was cut to the point of rendering Corey’s relationship with the mystery woman (only seen hiding in the room of a man who owed him money) meaningless – what was all that about? There’s also a strange edit when Corey shoots the man in the poolroom. One shot, rapid and brief cut to dead man’s face. Was he trying to throw in something Godardian? A reference to nouvelle vague?
   The best scene is the robbery, a homage to Dassin’s ‘Rififi’, presumably. No dialogue at all, or music; which makes it all the more realistic. As I said to LJ at the time, if this was a Hollywood production there would be some wah-wah guitar at some point...and possibly ‘tense’ orchestration (as they would describe it on the sleeves of library records)...Lalo, probably, which is no bad thing in any film, except this one.
   As a bonus, Eric Demarsan’s soundtrack is a superb updating of classic Noir jazz. I bought it a few months back, so I had the unusual experience of knowing the music before the film.
   So we all differ sometimes in our opinion of supposed classics. I’m sure there is someone out there who doesn’t rate ‘Citizen Kane’ that highly. Then again, that sounds ridiculous. If there’s a certainty in critical appraisal of cinema, it must be that Welles’ film is a masterpiece.
   As for ‘Le Cercle Rouge’, I’m still not convinced that it’s the classic crime film many so-called ‘experts’ think it to be.

Monday 21 June 2010

Sun Ra - If You Find Earth Boring...



 ‘Nothing Is’ is no longer in my collection, which is a mystery because I don’t remember selling it – but I have a theory that the good Lady may have taken it one day thinking ‘He won’t miss it’. And she was right, because I’ve only just found it missing – she took it as punishment for me playing Ra, loudly, whilst she was in the bunker....perhaps...
   I don’t have a favourite Ra record as such...it would be like choosing your favourite star in the cosmos...or animal on the planet – stupid. I keep on hearing Ra anew because he’s deeper than abortion, deeper than the notion that the world was flat when it was round - that sentiment comes courtesy of Parliament, thanks boys – well there is a mothership connection between Ra and the P-Funk mob, after all.
   ‘Nothing Is’ in a new extended form is good news for us space cadets. It’s brilliant, of course. If you want a more objective opinion, ask a moron. I don’t see how you can be ‘objective’ about Ra...you may as well try distancing yourself from love and analysing that. This music requires commitment, like school, except you don’t leave this one, ever...you keep on learning just how amazing the man and his orchestra were. I know Ra’s not ‘easy’ for many folks, but as the man said in his poem, ‘The Endless Universe’: ‘the past is an eternity / All its own’, just like his music.  
   Furthermore, Art Yard have just release material from the 6-night Detroit Jazz centre residency in 1980, ‘Beyond the Purple Star Zone / Oblique Parallax’. If you’re not one of the lucky few who own the Transparency box set of all the music made over those nights, this is well worth owning.
   Some might suggest consuming mind-altering substances in an effort to open the doors of perception to Ra’s music – me, I’m OD-ing on Thornton’s Brazil nut toffee right now – phew, I tell you, this music and that taste, it’s some trip.
   Rick Steiger, who organised the Detroit jazz centre gigs, recalls the experience in a new book from Headpress called ‘Sun Ra – Interviews And Essays’. A commendable addition to Ra-related literature which also includes a poem by Amiri Baraka along with interviews (with Ra himself , and Wayne Kramer, making the MC5 connection with editor John Sinclair). There’s even an interview with Jerry Dammers in relation to his Spatial AKA project.
   There’s only one interview with Ra, and that’s a bit disappointing, but it really is worth getting. Kramer recalls what it was like presenting Ra along with MC5 to Detroit ‘greasers’, how the atmosphere was initially chilly because they were there to rock, of course. He claims they ‘stood still long enough – their minds stayed open long enough, and then they heard it.’. That’s all you have to do, really.

Sunday 20 June 2010

My Place In Concert History - The Night I Played With Derek Bailey



The Wire editor Rob Young sometimes booked us for Wire-related nights but this one was a daunting prospect. A soundclash with Improv legend Derek Bailey? Well, we had no reputation to lose... 
   So Derek turned to us as we were waiting to go on stage and said "Could you both play at the same time?" I looked at Nigel. He looked at me. We didn't know what to say. In retrospect, it was a great idea, but we were far too limited in our vision to do as he suggested...
   So we went on stage. Nigel's decks were stage left, mine right, with Derek to my right. A packed venue...we started playing records...and Derek began playing his guitar...
   I wish I could have interacted with him more but I doubt that even a turntable maestro could have kept up with his freeform fret dexterity...
   On stage it was impossible to hear the totality of the noise we made but Gary Mulholland's impression (see clipping below) of it sounding like ''Metal Box'-era PIL being repeatedly thumped with rubber bath mats while a rapper shouts at them through a toilet-roll' was probably spot-on...
   I had no idea whether it was a 'success' or not, but it was an interesting experiment. As I walked through the crowd afterwards I recall the singer with Tindersticks (there for headliners Cornershop, I imagine, not us) turning to me and saying with a smile: 'How was it for you?'. I was in some kind of noise-induced trance and did not reply...
   Imagine my surprise when, ten years later, it became a seismic performance...one of '60 concerts that shook the world'... 


   


Thursday 17 June 2010

EGO 20th Anniversary - The Covers

It started in a tiny King’s Cross flat and ended in a slightly larger one in Camden.
Sales were small at first, and remained so.

‘Streets ahead of, say, the increasingly confused The Wire’ - Jon Savage, Frieze magazine.




Tuesday 15 June 2010

Noise Annoys

Noise annoys, no doubt about that – witness the current debate over the vuvuzelas being blown throughout World Cup matches. But obviously to the players it’s not annoying at all, the horn-players, that is, not footballers, some of whom have complained about not being able to concentrate or hear the ref’s whistle. Good excuse - I don’t know why Green didn’t use it for his monumental balls-up – ‘It was those damn vuvuzelas...they put me off.’
   I know all about the psychological damage inflicted by goalkeeping gaffs, having tried to put my foot on a ball that was rolling towards me at junior school, only to see it disappear into the net – you see, I’ve never forgotten it.
   The US government famously used sound as a weapon of annoyance to flush General Noriega out of the Vatican embassy in Panama. Apparently Van Halen’s ‘Panama’ was one track used. Well, I’d give myself up after 24 hours of that, but surely Americans missed a trick – playing Merzbow would have done the job in ten minutes.
   The latest rumour is that the vuvuzela has been exploited as a PYSOP weapon for two reasons. One, to stir up racial prejudice against Africans, thus helping to maintain the subjugation of a continent, the other being an experiment to gauge its effect upon millions of subjects. It looks like it’s been a success as far as creating mass psychological distress, so expect to see recordings taken from football stadiums used to flush out the next opponent of the US. Perhaps they’re about to use it in Afghanistan.
   Noise artists fascinate me – you know, the likes of Merzbow (real name Masami Akita), whose been at it since ’79, which is a long time to be making a Noise which, perhaps, about naught-point-one of the music-loving population actually like. Mind you, it’s not about loving music, is it? More about appreciating the art of noise, presumably. Amongst that crowd (do they constitute a crowd, or a small gathering?) he is no doubt king, a minnow in a puddle as opposed to the ocean of sound which constitutes music.
   I’ve been listening to Merzbow’s ‘Protean World Slide’ from ‘Protean World’ for all of five minutes, for which I think I should get a medal. Mind you, that is after having ‘listened’ to a good twenty minutes-worth of other sounds by him. Of course, I had it on almost the lowest volume possible, but still, my brain is ringing.
   I’ve long thought that enjoying Noise in music is held up as a badge of honour, as if to say ‘I’m more sophisticated in my listening than those who dismiss this as rubbish’. Which, to a degree, I can understand, having championed certain kinds of Jazz for years knowing that a Coltrane solo is, to many ears, just a bloody noise (and I don’t even mean his later works). Likewise electronic music which doesn’t adhere to the formulas of melody, harmony etc. At least straight Techno has a beat, although I’ve a feeling that despite fulfilling one basic requirement Jeff Mills has yet to filter down to that point of mass acceptance which, say, certain Punk bands have acquired.
   I recall Punk being branded as a Noise. I guess it was compared to Yes and Rod Stewart, even though retrospectively many of us recognise a lot of it as no more (or less) than The Stooges rewritten for a UK audience. At the time, being more ignorant of Rock music history, I also thought it was a Noise, but a good one.
   I’ve endured some sonic torture in my time; worse than the vuvuzela, believe me. I once worked at a place where Heart radio was played all day, every day, and you have not suffered until you’ve been forced to hear the same U2, All Saints and Robbie Williams tracks again, and again and again. My protests, needless to say, got me branded as weird and awkward. At least I can turn the TV down during the World Cup.

Friday 11 June 2010

Nouvelle Vague - Michel Legrand


Since this year is the 50th anniversary of ‘Breathless’ it only seems right to be enjoying a CD called ‘Nouvelle Vague’. From the first-rate Universal Music Jazz France soundtrack series, this collection covers work done for Jacques Demy and others as well as JLG, who can be heard talking before each track from ‘Une Femme est une Femme’. This would be great if I understood French...shame CDs don’t come with translation software. ‘Angela, Strasbourg Saint Denis’ is one of the great themes associated with JLG and it’s followed by Anna K singing, so, already it’s worth the money. ‘Hula-Hop’ from Francoise Reichenbach’s ‘L’Amerique Insolite’ is a sprightly gem, all jaunty jazz with scat vocals, but the later treat of the theme to ‘Vivre sa Vie’ just about tops everything in the tradition of heartbreakingly beautiful JLG themes. It ranks alongside Delerue’s music for ‘Le Mepris’ or Misraki’s ‘Alphaville’ soundtrack. In the middle there’s a clutch of songs from Agnes Varda’s ‘Cleo de 5 a 7’, vocals by Corrine Marchand...absolutely superb, especially the ballad, ‘La Joueuse’. ‘Roland reve’ from Demy’s ‘Lola’, is another heart-rending classic. Also included is piano trio work and the kind of jazz that Miles set the blueprint for with his French connection, so all-in-all it's diverse, sophisticated, light-hearted, poignant and further proof that Legrand was an amazing composer.


Thursday 10 June 2010

Of Box Sets And Charlie 'Bird' Parker




Are CD box sets already archaic artefacts?
   Metaphorical secateurs in hand I move towards my music collection, primed for a bout of pruning, and consider the box sets. I recently sold one – ‘The Complete Benga’ (ten discs of all the official releases plus outtakes, versions, interviews and a booklet written by Simon Reynolds)...or did I imagine that?
   I see big box sets as the preserve of mid-life (and older) men having a financial fling with Miles or The Beatles. After all, financial security is a prerequisite to buying those behemoths of sound, isn’t it ? Well, better that than trying for the secretary, I suppose.
   A metal box catches my eye, it’s ‘Charlie Parker – The Complete Verve Master Takes’, which has been opened far more frequently than the one by PiL.
   The Bird box is an absurd example of excessive packaging, an excuse for the price, no doubt. Although, having said that, if any artist deserves to be encased in an indestructible container, it’s Charlie Parker.
   As I open it I’m reminded of how stupid such packaging really is, the awkwardness of getting to all the discs...and not least of all, if I may don my eco-righteous hat, the energy and materials used to make it. It wouldn’t bother me if all future packages were made from recycled cardboard only, the less the better. With apologies to the factory-workers made redundant as a consequence. At least the online listening experience is ‘green’, eh?
   Here’s a box I can’t imagine selling, although it’s entirely possible that one day, as I huddle ‘round the single-bar heater in my old age, wondering where the next slice of bread is coming from, I may well do so.
   It has a booklet, of course, which contains all the recording details along with extensive notes and rather bizarre artwork as well as photos. I’ve never read it, except to identify a track. Some people, I’m sure, will be interested to learn that Manny Thaler played bassoon on the May 25, 1953 session. Manny might have relished being name checked for posterity as someone who backed the mighty Bird...if he was alive when this came out, which I somehow doubt.
   Parker only has to start playing on the first track, ‘The Bird’, and you enter another realm. It’s ‘live’ at Carnegie Hall in ’47 and he simply sounds like the hippest person to ever put his chops around the mouthpiece of an alto. Which he was. At one point he kind of slurs a note, as if drunk on his own brilliance and unafraid to let the world know. Sometimes he was just too far gone to blow anything, but what he played when he was together makes me feel as if I’m high. Many musicians have attempted, consciously or otherwise, to recreate the ‘high’ of drugs...I think most of it is called ‘psychedelia’...none of which I’ve ever bought, mainly because I don’t like their shirts...or hair styles...or, to be honest, much of the music. In one sense you might say that despite whatever substances Bird had flowing through his veins at the time of playing, this music is a kind of ‘natural high’, as opposed to electronically manipulated or ‘artfully’ contrived. There is a track called ‘Cosmic Rays’, but really, everything Bird played was a trip along some strange celestial road laid by Bird’s brain, fingers, heart or soul, if you like.
   I probably said all I can about Parker in my book...but listening again reminds me that almost every Bird experience is like listening anew, because he was such an astonishing player...who could blow hot, cool, crazy, askew...and somehow it feels right to take him out of a box...like an act of resurrection.
   Legend has it that no sooner was he dead than graffiti appeared declaring ‘Bird Lives!’...and I wholeheartedly agree with that...

Wednesday 9 June 2010

Italo Calvino's Cosmicomics



Listening to Dopplereffekt’s ‘Hyperelliptic Surfaces’ it strikes me as a perfect soundtrack to Italo Calvino’s ‘Cosmicomics’, which I’m currently reading. A hyperelliptic surface is just the kind of place the book’s narrator might live at some point. As you know, it’s a surface with an elliptic fibration over an elliptic curve. It might strike you as odd that anyone could live there, but then Qfwfq (yes, that is his name) inhabits many points in space and time throughout the stories. Calvino’s cosmological tales regarding life, the universe and everything are a totally unique vision, imbued with warmth and wit.
   Here’s an excerpt from ‘All At One Point, set at the time when all matter was concentrated on a single point.
   ‘There was also a cleaning woman – ‘maintenance staff’ she was called – only one, for the whole universe, since there was so little room. To tell the truth, she had nothing to do all day long, not even dusting – inside one point not even a grain of dust can enter – so she spent all her time gossiping and complaining.’
   These brilliant stories, like Ballard and Burroughs in different ways, render most sci-fi novels dull and meaningless by comparison.

Monday 7 June 2010

Of The Digital Archive And The National Treasure That Is Autechre


Life now feels like just a matter of waiting for the World Cup to start...a terrible reflection on the state of my existence...which reminds me of the Hancock sketch about Sundays where he sighs and says something like: ‘It’s just waiting for the next meal to come along’. Not that I’m expecting a feast of great football from England...

   The wait is made more endurable by music, of course...and in particular, right now, Autechre’s latest work, ‘Oversteps’. They should be made a national treasure, officially...by the sonic equivalent of the National Trust. Well, maybe not, because if such an organisation existed they’d be busy preserving traditional Folk music...and Elton John, perhaps, who can afford to preserve himself. Although as demonstrated by the new hair he got himself years ago, self-preservation doesn’t always yield the greatest results...
   We have all this music preserved on the PC’s museum of sound, but my generation recalls the legwork needed, once upon a time, to track down oldies-but-goodies, and the extortionate price demanded should that object be deemed desirable by the ‘right’ people.
   There’s an argument that says all music is devalued now, not only in the monetary sense, because it comes to us too easily. I can see that. I mean, there is so much sound stored digitally on my PC that really listening to even half of it feels like an impossibility. Then again, I wouldn’t opt for returning to the days when we paid £35 for an album with one ‘killer’ tune on it. By ‘we’ I mostly mean us Rare Groove/Jazz DJs. Oh yes, the good ol’ days of being handed a pile of singles which Patrick Forge pulled out from under the counter at Record & Tape...
   The other day I had the idea of deleting three-quarters of my digital sound library so as to concentrate on what was left. But I don’t like the thought of deleting something that I might not remember to list again. It’s not the room on the PC, but the room in my head that’s the problem. Some days I flick in a frenzy, just because I can, which results in a brain filled with so much musical spaghetti that I edge towards insanity. I’ve often argued the case for cultural ‘pruning’, but doing it to a list of names is contrarily easier, and harder. Well, it’s not crowding out the bunker, is it?
   ‘Oversteps’ is an album that I’ll be ‘keeping’. It feels like a positive affirmation just to stick it on a digital list. It’s satisfying in so many ways, not least in the inventiveness, which you could reasonably expect from these two, but in the direction it takes overall. In a sense it is more about an ambient atmosphere, rather than their trademark chopped up time signature techno. They are, after all, the Dave Brubeck of Techno (ha!) – and ‘Redfall’ is even kind of ‘jazzy’ with its freeform keyboard ‘solo’...the way Herbie Hancock could have progressed in step with the present, but didn’t. And to add to that, ‘Krylon’ is in a similar mode, but reminds me more of Alice Coltrane harp-playing. Here and elsewhere, they create a kind of harpsichord sound, conjuring up something like church music for the 21st century. I’m sure Alice would approve.
   This is easier listening than many previous works, whilst at the same time being anything but Easy Listening. It’s something to treasure, for sure.

Friday 4 June 2010

Impressions Whilst Listening To Coltrane



Buggering about wasting my time...so I pick out Coltrane’s complete Village Vanguard recordings, select a disc randomly, hit the random button on the remote and get ‘Spiritual’...that’s it, that’s so perfect...hit the ‘loudness’ button to increase the power of Reggie Workman’s wonderful bass riff and feel the power of this music...Dolphy’s bass clarinet not least of all, even though I’m ambiguous about Eric; sometimes I love his sound, then again, I don’t, but you can’t argue with these sets...you could try, but you’d appear foolish...you could say you don’t like jazz, and that’s not a crime, although it might be if I was prime minister...then again, thank god for differing tastes...hold on, they’re playing ‘Impressions’ now...Coltrane sounds as if he’s in complete control of the experience, adventure, trip, whatever you want to call it...before he went Out There, here he is still inside, just, prowling the perimeters of ...what? What we think of as ‘permissible’...‘listenable’? Maybe...and even I couldn’t stick with him when he journeyed as far out as it felt possible to go without the man spontaneously exploding in a screaming cloud of noise...and Dolphy? He’s tearing this up...because he can, he can fire as fast as any gunslinger and right now, hearing what he’s doing, I can’t help but think he was some kind of magician...or alchemist...damn, he’s quick...and I can only imagine what the audience were thinking... ‘What is this crazy shit!?’ McCoy now...he kind of grounds the whole process, but not as if to hold anyone back, but simply reaffirm the meaning of....melody? Harmony? Beauty? Continuity? I don’t know...I have spent time only listening to Tyner solos on Coltrane recording...without wanting to own all the records he made as a leader because for me the magic exists in the context of Coltrane...although to see him at The Jazz Cafe a few years ago was something I’ll never forget...perhaps to an extent he suffered in the long shadow of Coltrane...we all do because...he makes something so powerful you can only hold tight, wither, listen, marvel, cower, cry, scream, sigh, say to yourself ‘What the fuck...I’m gone, I’m nothing, a mere mortal’... just like him, a man capable of playing as if he was a god, a spirit, a voodoo priest blowing such phenomenal sounds into your ear that you can feel mind unravelling along with the solo and yes, at times you might cry for mercy, escape, release, peace, but if you hang on and continue you will come to a place, another place, some place you thought you’d never reach...I don’t know what you’d call it, but imagine being in his head when this is all being created, to be a free-flowing mechanism, a dynamic organic machine made of fingers, lips, lungs...and now I suddenly think of Hendrix’s ‘Machine Gun’, how Coltrane’s tenor is a machine gun ripping the Klan to shreds, scattering bones, blood, bits of flesh all over the South...but the man was a pacifist...and this is black power of another kind...as he plays on the longer version of ‘Impressions’ I begin to think I’m losing my mind to him...and as he reaches towards a scream it feels as if that sound could bring down the walls of the county jail holding all those innocent men and somehow, imagine this, blow life back into the strange fruit swinging from the trees...and around the 13min mark he makes sounds that suggest he is disappearing, a flurry of sounds, not notes, pure sounds, as if to say that even he has reached his limit...but it comes back, he comes back to the melody...a relief, a resolution...and I am exhausted...needing silence to recover...

Thursday 3 June 2010

Sounds On A Summer's Day


Someone just commented ironically that my current listening constitutes ‘nice sunshine sounds!’ – well, it is Pan Sonic who, as you probably know, are hardly The Sound of Summer. But I like dark music, even when outside is all brilliant light.
   (I’ve acquired the nickname of ‘mole rat’ ‘round here, such is my dedication to remaining in the bunker for as long and often as possible, regardless of the weather. Soon (if it hasn’t happened already) I’ll be behaving like my dear ol’ Ma, who always appeared to want to ‘get in’ more than she wished to stay out anywhere...home to watch telly and not, you’ll be surprised to learn, to play Pan Sonic or read Burroughs, watch a film, or write.)
   But what is The Sound of Summer? Usually for me it’s West Coast jazz...or Bossa Nova...or something lush and strings-laden, something Easy. All of which are pretty obvious.
   Summer in the city can be trying, though...all the racket made by neighbours playing their awful music too loudly whilst we choke on smoke from barbeques and gasp for air amid the pollution – fantastic. Best to take a trip to the coast for the day...or rather, somewhere less populated. I’ve nothing against other people but...you know...in small doses...

   So I switch Pan Sonic off and turn to Jimmy Guiffre...‘Memphis In June’...a beautiful, bluesy reverie...fit for fantasising that I’m in the crowd at Newport Jazz Festival circa ’58 watching Guiffre, along with all the other participants in the great American post-war dream of white picket fences, apple pie, Cadillacs and Cool Democracy which no communists or nuclear missiles can destroy – amen.
   Things look perfect on celluloid...snapshots of lives captured by Bert Stern’s lens...all vivid colours and surface style, devoid of the heartaches, pain, angst, paranoia...some of which may have related to celestial crockery. And whilst talking of West Coast jazz, Shorty Rogers once dedicated an album to that phenomenon – ‘Martians Come Back!’ – great title, eh? It’s not exactly a great album, but it’s good enough right now. What I would have loved it to be is an early example of jazz fused with electronic sounds to create an other-wordly atmosphere. Titles such as ‘Astral Alley’ and ‘Chant Of The Cosmos’ demand such sonic experimentation, surely. Instead it’s more like the soundtrack to The Jetsons...but cooler...naturally.

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