音罪

isolationism

2012-01-18T18:39:00.000-06:00

Here is a good definition from Wikipedia:

Isolationist ambient music, also known as isolationism, can be differentiated from other forms of ambient music in its use of repetition, dissonance, microtonality, and unresolved harmonies to create a sense of unresolved unease and desolation. (here)

This is a genre that I've only sampled. I'm aware that there are record labels that specialize in this kind of music. This is one of those genres that really stretch the limit of what we traditionally define as music. It's basically long pieces of industrial drones, hums, feedback, found sounds, loops, etc., that set an eerie and/or unsettling mood. The soundtrack to David Lynch's Eraserhead is a great example.

The following list is a handful of albums that loosely fall under this category.

Lull - Moments
This is Mick Harris from Napalm Death. He basically pioneered this genre. Moments is one continuous piece spread across 99 tracks. Nightmarish.

Kevin Drumm - Imperial Distortion
A two disc set of incredible drones. Kevin Drumm usually releases Merzbow-esque harsh noise releases. He has also collaborated with Ken Vandermark as a member of the Territory Band. However, I especially like this release. My favorite track is "More Blood And Guts" from the first disc.

Jim O'Rourke - Terminal Pharmacy
This is a mysterious album. For the first piece, "Cede", three musicians are listed but it mostly sounds like a collage of slowed down recordings and electronic drones wafting in and out, dropping out suddenly, and occasional bursts of static. It might not really fall under the category of "isolationism", but it produces that same effect of "unresolved unease and desolation". Jim O'Rourke is a musician that almost never fails to impress me despite how eclectic his discography is.

Axel Dörner & Tony Buck - Durch Und Durch
One forty-minute improvisation for percussion, laptop, and trumpet. They maintain a steady and fascinating current of crackling noise and drones. This has been a favorite of mine for some time.

3 Albums

2012-01-02T16:08:00.000-06:00

Jazz
Adam Rogers/John Patitucci/Clarence Penn - Sight (Criss Cross)
I've only seen Rogers with Chris Potter's Underground. He's usually playing a Strat with a twangy tone and a bit of overdrive. Here he's playing a Gibson ES-335 with what sounds like the tone knob dialed back. The general sound of the group is slightly off-putting: the bass seems under-miked and the guitar tone sounds muffled and indistinct. However, the playing is outstanding. Rogers has an impeccable technical facility and a very advanced harmonic sense. Check out "Kaleidoscope" and Woody Shaw's "The Moontrane". "Kaleidoscope" is very Holdsworth-esque as Rogers overdubs himself soloing on a bed of harmonically rich and slightly chorused chords. I would love to hear just the back tracks of the chords and rhythm section. "Moontrane" is a tune I personally love to call out during jam sessions because the chords pull you in very interesting directions. It's fun to hear Rogers slither his way through this tune.

Bill Evans/Chuck Israels/Paul Motian - How My Heart Sings! (Original Jazz Classics)
For some reason I've been particularly drawn to Paul Motian's playing on this record. The first tune, the title track, they are playing in 3/4. Paul is using brushes and creating a gorgeous wash of sound from his cymbals and snares. He's very active during Bill's solo, with nice tight triplet figures between the snare and hi-hat, working in a beautiful washy ride halfway through. He only uses sticks on two tunes: "Walkin' Up" and "34 Skidoo". He has a very gentle touch, and I particularly love the way he works in those gentle explosions with the hi-hat. I wish more drummers would play like him.

Rock/Pop
Eric Johnson - Ah Via Musicom
Wow, this is a cheesy album. I checked this out at the local library because I keep running into articles in guitar magazines (there are piles and piles of guitar magazines where I work) obsessing about Eric Johnson. I can definitely tell why guitar players love this man. He has a soaring guitar-hero tone and can really shred. However, this is one of those "for guitarists only" albums. It has that glossy eighties sound and really lame vocals. Also, it's not a progressive rock style - it's very much a poppy 4/4 formula. I enjoyed it though. The instrumental "Cliffs of Dover" is worth checking out.

Support Independents

2011-12-25T01:27:00.000-06:00

From the October 14th Downtown Music Gallery newsletter:

The King is Dead! God save Jimi Hendrix!

It's TRULY DISGUSTING that the two-faced major record companies scratch their heads in public, lamenting the continuing mass disappearance of the traditional mom'n'pop record stores, and pretending to try to stem the tide with their piddling 'Record Store Day' campaigns [an excuse to peddle mostly vapid one-day-only collectors' items], whilst all the while the same publicly outspoken executives freely allow their distribution warehouses to sell to the public at BELOW THE PRICES THE SAME ORGANIZATIONS ARE WHOLESALING TO THE STORES they're supposedly trying to save, and make deals with major franchises for exclusive editions of products that most retailers have no access to, and the true collector would not want these lesser editions they foist on us. And then they wonder why they're losing overall wholesale sales; wonder why giants like EMI are about to go into receivership??? JUDAS PRIEST, indeed!!!

Latest Case in point? The new Hendrix Winterland 4 CD box - which we could only offer with a meager profit at $45 [IF we chose to carry it, which we won't], while meanwhile you can buy an exclusive 5 CD version from Amazon AT BELOW what the 4CD version costs stores!!!

We won't carry it, knowing it is cheating our customers in more ways than one, and some of those ways would force us to look like we're the one doing the cheating of our clientele!

Some context: I did a quick check and as of now (late December), this 5 CD package costs $40 on Amazon, which includes free shipping. The Downtown Music Gallery is a tiny shop founded, owned and run by Bruce Lee Gallanter tucked in a basement in Lower East Manhattan. For a tiny shop, they have the most incredible selection I've ever seen, specializing in underground jazz, avant-garde, contemporary classical, and rare CDs and LPs. They also have the entire Tzadik catalog in one display. We need to support shops like this. And this means *gasp* buying CDs at reasonable prices. I'll talk more about the fascinating empire of Amazon -- meanwhile check out and buy something from DMG (the relatively primitive and bare-bones website with its email/phone ordering system really puts things into perspective - namely how utterly creepy Amazon can be with their one-click purchase functions and recommendation algorithms).

Allan Holdsworth | 0274

2011-10-19T19:32:00.001-05:00

Allan Holdsworth - Sixteen Men of Tain (Eidolon Efformation)

I've fallen in love with the first track on this album, "0274". The tune itself is basically a string of chords played on guitar and synth, accompanied by acoustic bass and drums. I especially love Gary Novak's drumming on this. This is followed by a mesmerizing liquid guitar solo - one that sort of defines Holdsworth's playing, and a surprise trumpet solo by Walt Fowler.

Again, this entire album is fantastic - my personal favorite of Holdsworth's. He sort of nailed the perfect combination for himself: those strange and airy chords that he likes to explore and soar through with his solos, accompanied by the luscious sound of an acoustic bass. The latter is the magic ingredient, as I'm not a fan of the post-Jaco rock-fusion electric bass sound on most of his recordings. He hasn't released an album since. I sort of hope the next one continues the sound he achieved here.

"0274" (from 1999's Sixteen Men of Tain)

This is an example of the "post-Jaco" bass that I'm not crazy about (although I love Holdsworth's playing on this):

"Peril Premonition" (from 1989's Secrets)

The Sixteen Men Of Tain:

Ikue Mori & Oval: More w/ Less

2011-10-19T19:13:00.001-05:00

These are two albums from two unique computer musicians who like to do more with less.

Ikue Mori - Labyrinth (Tzadik)

A fantastic collection of song-length (averaging between 3 and 5 minutes) pieces, mostly comprised of heavily processed percussion samples. For anyone curious about her methods, there's a nice short interview with her at the Squid's Ear. She explains her evolution from a live drummer moving on to drum machines, and then finally arriving at a laptop. Interesting to note that most of her sounds are taken from her old drum machines rather than sampled from acoustic sources. This is also what I love most about this record: she limits herself to the use of electronic drums and really hones a unique and playful aesthetic. Unlike other electronic artists like Lithops, early Oval (see below), Richard Devine, Pimmon, and Autechre, who seem to go to great lengths to obscure the origin of their sounds and sources, her techniques are more straightforward and in many ways much more enjoyable to listen to. Also, there's a wonderful written piece of hers included on Arcana Vol 1, where she describes her approach to sound design as if she were sharing a food recipe.

"Day of Locusts"

Oval - O (Thrill Jockey)

His first record in quite a while might also be my personal favorite. The entire album uses a very similar approach: layers mangled guitar-like sounds that glitch and pop wildly over beautiful chords. There's a very natural feel to this album, almost like an "Oval goes acoustic" project, which, strangely enough, is somewhat true. The description on Thrill Jockey's website is pretty illuminating: As someone who, at points in his career, seemed more interested in his methods rather than the resulting music (deliberately scratching cds and using their unpredictable loop-points as a foundation, developing extremely custom and bizarre software, etc.), he apparently scaled down his methods dramatically for this album, using only a stock PC with its included music software and tried to push those limitations to its boundaries. What's intriguing about this is that it still sounds very much like an Oval album, but stripped down to its essential components. His sonic vocabulary is very limited, but he manages to achieve a similar aesthetic as Ovalprocess or SO with the unpredictable glitch and whirlwinds of harsh noise coddled by warm drones and semblances of melody. I especially like the 2nd disc, which is a collection of 50 1-minute "ringtones" that uses the same sound source (a weird acoustic guitar hybrid) in creatively concise variations.
My only complaint is that for many tracks on the first disc, he incorporates very fake-sounding drum sounds playing very generic-sounding drum beats (the kind of drumbeats one might encounter on a cheap keyboard with pre-programmed play-along tracks). This was most likely intentional, and it has grown on me a bit after a few listens, but it still catches me off guard everytime.

This is an example of Oval around circa 2000:
"04" (from OVALPROCESS)

Here is an excerpt from 2010's O:
"Panorama"

Jazz Conversation with Jim Hall

2011-09-22T10:18:00.000-05:00

Peter Evans: Post-Bop Meets Post-Classical

2011-09-21T20:13:00.000-05:00

I saw these guys (sans computer) a few months ago at a tiny venue in Brooklyn called iBeam. It's Peter Evans on trumpet, Carlos Horns on piano, Tom Blancarte on bass, and the amazing Jim Black on drums. They played a mind-blowing set of futuristic post-post-bop and avant-garde improv set to these ultra-modern classical-esque arrangements. Peter Evans is one of the most technically astonishing trumpet players I've ever heard. He has flawless classical chops, an impressive range, and an immense vocabulary of extended techniques and noises. Also, he writes absurdly ambitious and difficult arrangements that the group executes without much stress.
I finally picked up his album Ghosts, which also includes fifth member Sam Pluta on computer. His contributions range a wide gamut of approaches. At some points, he records the other members in real time, spiting it back and heavily manipulating it; at other times, he's throwing out shards of pure sound and glitch during the noisy and abstract portions; sometimes he's merely adding various effects and delays to the instruments; and occasionally he takes a standard DJ role and plays samples in the background.
I will say that at times the computer can be too much, and the sound gets too cluttered and distracting. Also, it can obscure the impressive musicianship of the acoustic musicians. There was one point at the iBeam performance where Peter was circular-breathing a single note while the others were engaged in some ferocious free-jazz, making for a compelling contrast. However, during the same piece on disc, Peter is being soaked with delays and electronic harmonizations to the point where the entire band sounds like a big atonal mush. But, by and large his contributions are very fascinating, and this record is highly recommended.

This is their rendition of the old Victor Young standard, "I Don't Stand a Ghost of a Chance With You". If you listen closely, you can hear what sounds like an old record of the same tune wafting in and out of the background.
"Ghost"

This is the beginning of the improv section to "323":

"323"

Here are some examples of Peter's arrangement style:
"Articulation"

"Chorales"

Marc Ducret | Rampe

2011-08-22T09:55:00.009-05:00

From Tim Berne's Souls Saved Hear (2004). This is a Ducret original for the trio Big Satan with Tom Rainey on drums.

I love the raw Fender Strat tone that Marc uses on this. It seems as though most modern jazz guitarists today are unsatisfied by their natural guitar sound and like to muffle it either by using the neck pickup with the tone knob way down (Jim Hall, Pat Metheny), maxing it out with compression/distortion (Kurt Rosenwinkel, Allan Holdsworth, early Bill Frisell), or drenching it with muddy chorusing (John Scofield, early John Abercrombie). I understand this appeal: they try to get away from the twangy/folky sound associated with country and rock, and instead want to better resemble a horn. However, Ducret's sound is very exhilarating to me.

I can't imagine Ducret's tone working within a traditional hard-bop context, but I love what he does on this album. It sounds like he's using a Strat playing through an overdriven mid-sized amplifier, although I think I hear some light chorusing. I apologize for the sound quality of the clip below -- it's a copy of a copy of a copy, so the compression has rendered the drums to a blob.

"Rampe"

Pat Martino | The Phineas Trane

2011-08-15T13:39:00.007-05:00

From "Think Tank" (2003), with Christian McBride (b), Gonzalo Rubalcaba (p), and Lewis Nash (d)
McBride's bass almost sounds electric. For some reason, I like to imagine someone playing a cheap electric bass guitar running through a slightly overdriven amp, playing those amazing lines. I read somewhere that the chords for this tune were apparently devised by Pat using some form of numerology using the letters COLTRANE. Below is Pat's burning solo, and to my ear it doesn't seem to matter at all what chords he's playing over. That is, he only outlines the chords explicitly at the beginning of a run, and then instantly flies off the map. If you listen to the rest of the song, you'll notice that the other soloists seem to be struggling with the form.

"The Phineas Trane"

John Abercrombie | Vingt Six

2011-08-15T13:34:00.007-05:00

From the 2007 album The Third Quartet with Marc Johnson (b) and Joey Baron (d). The following clip is Abercrombie's solo on "Vingt Six". I love how smoothly and tastefully he outlines the chords and how they sort of ooze across the time signatures. Maybe I'm reading too much into this. Also, Joey Baron's cymbal work is crystalline as usual.

"Vingt Six"

More Music

2011-07-01T11:35:00.004-05:00

Here are some amazing discs that I've been listening to recently. I've come to realize how lame it must seem to others who might stubble on this for me to blog about the music I listen to. I promise I've been very naive about it. What with Facebook and all, it seems as though people go to great lengths to craft an image of themselves on how interesting and unique they are. This has so much permeated the culture that I begin to suspect that most of us go about our days assuming that every and any action that others make is ultimately driven by vanity. Like, I can't tell a friend about a John Cage recording without them thinking, "He must want me to think that he's got an amazing taste of music." -- as if to suggest that I wouldn't have listened to it if I wasn't going to tell anyone about it. So, for what it's worth, I should reiterate that this blog (or this particular aspect of the blog) reflects a genuine love and obsession for music that I share with a very small group of friends in hopes to turn them on to some great stuff.

Improvised Music from Japan (10 CDs)
Experimental noise, free jazz, drones, psych-rock, performance art, and a "Florescent Lamp on the Fritz". All the artists are Japanese except for a few special guests (Gene Coleman, Michel Doneda, Peter Brötzmann, among them). I haven't even begun to scratch the surface here, but I will say that this is a truly fascinating collection. The sounds are endlessly intriguing, unpredictable, and beautiful. The "big" names are all represented here: Otomo Yoshihide, Toshimaru Nakamura, Seiichi Yamamoto, Aki Onda, Yasuhiro Yoshigaki, etc. You most likely have to acquire this online, since it quickly sold out almost a decade ago and the few remaining copies go for around $1000.

John Cage - Music For Merce Cunningham
A friend of mine brought this album to my attention. The 55-minute "5 Stone Wind" is a gorgeous combination of bubbly clay pots mixed with David Tudors sparkling electronics. The third member does not enter until the 30 minute point, providing more electronics, amplified violin, and bamboo flute. I recommend investing a little time in immersing oneself in this, but it also works surprising well as background music.

Mary Halvorson - Saturn Sings
I picked this up at the library because one of my favorite bass players, John Hebert, was on it and it has taken me by surprise. This is a killer band playing in a post-post-bop style that beautifully integrates free playing with stunning virtuosity. Mary Halvorson has an absolutely original style - rapid-fire runs darting unpredictably often warbled by a whammy effect, Derek Bailey-esque jabs and clusters, distorted washes of sound, etc. Her use of effects, although frequently and heavily applied, does not at all seem out-of-place or gimmicky. Jonathan Finlayson and Jon Irabagon, a trumpet player and an alto saxophonist that I wasn't aware of, also play beautifully on this. Highly recommended.

Allan Holdsworth - Against The Clock: The Best of...
This is an amazing collection of Holdsworth material dating from his mid-80's "Metal Fatigue" to 2001's "Flat Tire". The first disc features his guitar work, the second his Synthaxe. Again, if you can't stand the sound of 80's synthesizers and ultra-wanky jazz-rock fusion, stay far far away from this. You have to come into it with a sense of humor and let yourself be hypnotized by Allan's unbelievable guitar playing, much like watching an amazing acrobat or surfer.

Chuck Israels on Coltrane

2011-05-25T12:06:00.003-05:00

I might have posted this earlier, but I still find this fascinating. Chuck Israels is a bassist who is best known for playing on a few Bill Evans recordings in the 1960s.

From Cadence Magazine Vol 36 Jan/Feb/Mar 2010

"I think Coltrane played into the aesthetic of the '60s, and I have a lot of reasons to say that, and I think it's an interesting discussion and one that is probably important on some levels. [Basically], the repetitive whirling-dervish, mantra-like characteristic of his playing––one of the things for which he is most well-known––plays into a kind of listening that does not require a recognition of form or development. It's the psychedelic experience, the experience in which you are really not controlling your thinking, or directing your thinking, even."

"I think the best of Sonny Rollins is among the best music––it defines a certain kind of Jazz aesthetic for me. It has form and balance and contrast, the opposites, the pulling of opposites that I think is important in the way people experience things at the most interesting and highest levels. It's okay to experience something that washes over you, sort of this ecstatic, sort of hypnotic state. It's okay. I'm just not as interested in that as I am in… I'm a real western guy, you know, western in the sense of being interested in form and development and knowing where I am in the story, and having a sense of anticipation in order that I might be surprised. I have to have expectation."

This is obviously a huge oversimplification of what John Coltrane was attempting. However, I agree that this is probably a big part of his appeal to listeners.

Recording artists?

2011-05-04T08:44:00.013-05:00

This article is from January 3rd of this year:

Has Music Piracy Killed the 'Recording Artist'

If you have time, read it. Notice that when you view the comments at the bottom of the page, you'll notice that people are so hostile to copyright laws and record companies. They won't even consider the presented argument - possibly out of fear that they might feel even a sliver of guilt for their personal "sharing". However, I must keep rehashing the same point over and over again: there are such things as independent record labels who provide the resources and monetary assistance to allow exceptional artists to perfect their craft. It's not as simple as cigar-chomping millionaires raping the real artists and manufacturing boy-bands and pop crap. That's a very romanic and convenient point of view, but, if anything, those same millionaires are now cutting back on artistic music altogether and focusing exclusively on iTunes pop singles and music videos. For example, Blue Note was able to fund a lot of genuinely interesting and ambitious jazz musicians off the sales of Norah Jones. Now, since we download all our Jason Moran and Andrew Hill for free, what real incentive do they have to fund these projects?

Yes, we have amazing technology and recording software. However, I think it's kinda silly to expect the artists themselves to also fill in the roles of producer, recording engineer, promoter, and distributer. This might be fun and quaint for a group of 20-something-year-old indie rockers with a couple of microphones, Pro-Tools/plug-ins who release their music for free online and sell limited edition pink cassette tapes at shows with D.I.Y. cover art. But it's absolutely ridiculous to expect that from a 50-year old jazz pianist with a family who has spent his entire life perfecting his instrument. Should we expect him to pay for his own microphones and software, learn about acoustics, mic placement, overdubbing, rendering to disk, etc.? Should he open a blog and Facebook account and promote his new record himself? - burn his own CDs and print out his own cover art? Or should we expect him to devote his time playing his instrument and let record labels compete for his talents and offer the funding, recording expertise, and promotion his work deserves?

Many young people are ambivalent to this: This is the new paradigm, they say, and we all have to learn to accept and embrace it. Maybe that's true, but it's not a technological paradigm shift such as "cassette replaced by compact disc" or "VHS replaced by DVD". Rather we have accepted the fact that we are screwing the artists. We justify it with these roundabout ideological arguments about art and community and "shared culture" as well as pointing out (loudly) the evils of profit-driven corporations and government copyright regulation. But if we step back and consider the larger context - namely, that this hippy logic would not apply to any other craft outside the visual/audio mediums (painting, sculpture, cooking, fashion design, etc.) - then maybe we can come to grips with the real issue of ARTISTS NOT BEING PAID FOR THEIR ART. We are no more entitled to their art than we are entitled to their level of talent and hard work.

Perhaps the "recording artist" is becoming obsolete. In fact, both visual and audio artists are probably going to be in free fall for the next few years. TV shows will be at the mercy of advertisers and they will opt for "reality shows", news, sports, and live programming, because they have very short shelf-lives. Animated series, dramas, sitcoms, etc. - which have much higher costs, extended shelf-life/relevance, and can easily and quickly be pirated - will be dumped. Films will be replaced by mindless 3D behemoths to ensure theater attendance and ticket sales. And they will be funded exclusively by those same major corporations that we all despise. Music will become a strictly performance-based medium, with their recordings serving merely as promotional tools. And, like James Murphy from LCD Soundsystem, come age 40 when reality intrudes after years of "critical acclaim" and sleeping on air mattresses in strangers' basements, they will quit and get a "real" job.

Maybe that's overtly bleak. This is definitely an experimental phase that artists are in. Later I'll explore the various approaches artists have taken, largely in vain, to combat this situation.

Illegal Downloading

2011-02-15T09:41:00.002-06:00

Would the Bard Have Survived the Web? - NYTimes.com

The rise of the Internet has led to a view among many users and Web companies that copyright is a relic, suited only to the needs of out-of-step corporate behemoths...
They are abetted by a handful of law professors and other experts who have made careers of fashioning counterintuitive arguments holding that copyright impedes creativity and progress. Their theory is that if we severely weaken copyright protections, innovation will truly flourish. It’s a seductive thought, but it ignores centuries of scientific and technological progress based on the principle that a creative person should have some assurance of being rewarded for his innovative work.
Certainly there’s a place for free creative work online, but that cannot be the end of it. A rich culture demands contributions from authors and artists who devote thousands of hours to a work and a lifetime to their craft. Since the Enlightenment, Western societies have been lulled into a belief that progress is inevitable. It never has been. It’s the result of abiding by rules that were carefully constructed and practices that were begun by people living in the long shadow of the Dark Ages. We tamper with those rules at our peril.

2 Albums

2011-02-08T11:49:00.007-06:00

Allan Holdsworth - Sixteen Men of Tain

I'm still going through a bit of a Holdsworth phase. This is my new favorite of his albums. It's also the most "jazzy" of his releases on account of the acoustic bass. They actually swing-out on the title track, albeit in a weird Holdsworth-hybrid fashion that works surprisingly well. However, my favorite track is probably "The Drums Were Yellow", a guitar-drums duet between Holdsworth and Gary Husband. The synth-axe makes a few more appearances throughout, as do the usual FM synthesizers that keep the music in a strange '80s time-warp. There's just something about his gorgeous lead tone and liquid legato technique that utterly fascinates me.

Evan Parker & John Weise - C-Section

This is an interesting album. Listen to it on headphones or a nice stereo system. John Weise is performing with the same set-up as the video I posted earlier -- a combination of tapes, microphone, drum-machine, and MSP software running on a laptop. Also, the performances are full takes with no edits or overdubs. Evan Parker plays soprano saxophone throughout with his patented spit/sputter approach that he has refined over many years. The sound Weise creates is difficult to explain -- a collage of noises and beeps that ricochet across the speakers. On "No Shoes", he records the sound of the soprano and has Parker interact with it. Cool stuff.

John Wiese - East River Park

2011-01-31T12:49:00.000-06:00

Feb 19th: Available Jelly | DMC+2

2011-01-24T11:52:00.004-06:00

From the press release:

Available Jelly is a 5 piece group featuring some of the Netherlands’ top improvisers - Eric Boeren, cornet; Michael Moore, clarinet/alto sax; Wolter Wierbos, trombone; and Michael Vatcher, drums - with special guest Gregg Moore on tuba.
It’s a pocket brass band that ingeniously blends written material and free improvisation in a warm and natural way. They play originals, and an eclectic mix of jazz, world music and popular songs, cleverly arranged and with plenty of room for improvisation and interpretation.

This show will take place at the Bishop on Saturday, Feb. 19th. The DMC Trio (David Miller, Marty Belcher, Chris Rall) will be joined by myself and Phil Anderson as the opening act. This will be an incredible show, I'm sure. I've seen Michael Moore and Wolter Wierbos in the ICP orchestra (w/ Misha Mengelberg and Han Bennink). There are also great recordings of Moore with the Clusone Trio. They have an unique aesthetic that combines a love for pre-war jazz and world music with a humorous use of free improvisation and the modern avant-garde. This is an over-simplification, of course. Come check it out if you can.

Doo Rag

2011-01-18T17:51:00.000-06:00

Amazing Jazz Albums

2010-12-28T13:41:00.005-06:00

John Coltrane - Live at Birdland

I've mentioned this album several times, I'm sure. "Your Lady" is one of my favorite pieces of recorded music and, in a way, a definitive example of this amazing quartet. It's hard to pin down exactly what kind of music this is. Eastern and African music deeply informs their playing, but in an organic and utterly unique way. Elvin is a crackling fire under the whole thing (or ocean waves against the shore), Garrison anchors the tune, vamping only one or two notes, and McCoy sparingly adds his beautiful chords.

John Scofield - EnRoute

I mostly love this album for Bill Stewart's drumming. Check out "Wee", "It Is Written" and "Over Big Top".

Dave McKenna & Gray Sargent - Concord Duo Series, Vol.2

The cover art is dreadful, but this is a fantastic pairing of musicians. Gray Sargent is a guitarist who comes out of the Charlie Christian/Freddie Green/Barney Kessel lineage (rather than the post-Scofield/Metheny thing) and blends his woody sound seamlessly with the piano. McKenna's claim to fame is his driving left-hand bass lines, and together with Sargent's Freddie Green-esqe comping they nicely reinforce each other. Great traditional jazz.

Later:

Lennie Tristano - The New Tristano

Paul Bley - Footloose

Nmperign - Ommatidia

Rodrigo Amado - Searching for Adam

Trio Sowari - Shortcut

Sonny Simmons - Burning Spirits

The Electrics - Live at the Glenn Miller Cafe

Archie Shepp / Bill Dixon - Quartet

Nate Wooley & Paul Lytton - Creak Above 33

Nels Cline / Wally Shoup / Chris Corsano - Immolation / Immersion

Christian Marclay on Night Music

2010-12-13T14:10:00.000-06:00

Current Viewing & Listening

2010-11-04T14:59:00.019-05:00

I thought I'd provide a few words instead of merely listing things...

Current Listening:

King Crimson - Red

The title track is a classic, but the whole album is really strong. I like the second half of "Providence" with the fuzz bass, Bill Bruford's snappy drumming, and Fripp's unique soloing. Also, listen to the guitar parts on "One More Red Nightmare" (although I wish they would've done without the flanged clapping overdubs).

Dan Deacon - Spiderman of the Rings

This is a really exciting and joyful album. Almost every track is filled to the brim with great melodies and thunderous blast beats. "Wham City" and "Crystal Cat" are standout tracks. It's hard to explain his musical style. His music is electronic, but he doesn't take himself too seriously -- he likes to process his vocals through whammy pedals, and the lyrics are rather silly and childish.

Derek Bailey/John Stevens - Playing

I found this in a $1 bin at my local library. Fantastic "playing".

Cold Bleak Heat - It's Magnificent, but it isn't War

Incredible free jazz. I've been listening to this at work. Chris Corsano is a fierce drummer and Greg Kelley gets some extraordinary sounds from his trumpet. Paul Flaherty is the saxophonist and Matt Heyner is the bassist. I can't really describe what sets this above any other free-jazz record except that they play extremely well together and have no apparent inhibitions. No compositions: just a platter of raw cuts of passionate long-form improv.

Arcade Fire - Neon Bible

This album is somewhat underrated. I really like this band a lot. The singer reminds me of a modern Bruce Springsteen (a childhood favorite of mine) and the songs convey the same epic "forlorn" quality achieved on Born To Run. My favorites are "Keep the Car Running", "Intervention", and the chilling "Anti-Christ Television Blues".

I haven't heard their recent album yet...

Current Viewing:

Peter Greenaway - The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover

This film was recommended to me by a friend. The story is fairly simple (if shockingly brutal), but it is overflowing with gorgeous colors. The bulk of the film takes place in a restaurant, and Greenaway pans back and forth between the kitchen and the dining area constantly, gorging the viewer in contrasting dark greens and reds and taking advantage of all the props (the food, paintings, customers, waiters, table arrangements, etc.) for visual effect. The music is also fantastic, as are the actors. Michael Gambon, who plays the thief, reminds me of an evil Ricky Gervais. Also, Tim Roth has a small role throughout as the thief's loyal and wise-ass henchman.

Matthew Barney - Cremaster 3

I've only made it halfway through this strange film. Matthew Barney is a sculptor who apparently specializes in petroleum jelly. He made a series of films, none of which are available commercially, that supposedly compliment or provide context to his sculptures, which are occasionally displayed throughout the films. There is a large conceptual framework surrounding the the series involving the cremaster muscle (a muscle in the human body that raises or lowers the testes) and all the symbolism that he infers from it, but I'm not going to get into that. Cremaster 3, the most popular and longest of the series is vaguely about the construction of the Chrysler building in New York. And from what I've seen so far, there is no dialogue, a lot of very strange and creepy things/rituals are always going on, and the film moves excruciatingly slow. I made it to the intermission, and I'm curious to see what happens next.

Seijun Suzuki - Tokyo Drifter

Made in 1966 and directed by a renegade contract B-movie director. The plot is rather dumb -- a retiring yakusa member turned drifter tormented by lingering feelings of devotion to his former boss who ultimately betrays him, predictably leading to a big showdown at the end -- but Suzuki chops up the plot to the point of incomprehensibility, and transforms it into a bizarre avant-garde masterpiece of sorts. His use of color, camera angles, and music, is insanely stunning from beginning to finish (the opening scene is filmed in black and white), and the showdown at the end is one of the most surreal scenes I've ever witnessed on film. Don't bother trying to follow the story (in fact I think there's a handful of plot holes -- I suspect Suzuki had disdain for the script); just take it in as a piece of abstract art. Suzuki was given a warning by the company after this film, which only led him to make his masterpiece, "Branded to Kill", for which he was promptly fired.

Terry Gilliam - Brazil

I've seen two of Gilliam's films in the past -- Fear and Loathing, and 12 Monkeys -- and wasn't crazy about either of them. Brazil is not stylistically much different from the other two, but his cartoonish avant-gardisms actually work extremely well in this film. The cast is outstanding: Michael Palin and Robert De Niro in particular have great roles. The story is really ambitious and daunting -- sort of like a comedic version of Orwell's 1984 . It has an oppressively claustrophobic feeling throughout that I really like, and you never really have a clear idea where things are going to go. The ending is one of the most creative I've ever seen. (Be sure you watch the Director's Cut which runs about 142 minutes long, and not the studio version which is shorter and includes an idiot-friendly ending).

Twin Peaks

2010-10-05T11:58:00.007-05:00

I recently finished watching the complete Twin Peaks series. For the last 2 months or so, my girlfriend and I were watching an episode about every other night (followed by an episode of The Office or Fawlty Towers as comic relief) and were more-or-less immersed in that world. I must say, after being utterly thrilled and entranced by the first season, the second season (especially its second half) was a real chore to get through. The only reason for enduring it was to get to the last episode (which, on its own was a beautiful masterpiece, but utterly detached and incapable to redeem the massive shithole the series dug for itself).

What I loved about the first season was the incredible sense of mystery that surrounded the main plot line: the investigation of the circumstances surrounding the murder of Laura Palmer, her secret double-life, the townspeople's varying relationships to her, the bizarre dreams of Special Agent Dale Cooper, the terrifying visions of Laura's mother, and the subtle sense of a supernatural presence in the woods. Every clue opened up new possibilities, every side story seemed to be in some way connected to the investigation, all the townspeople seemed to know and conceal some horrifying secret -- everything seemed to be part of a complex web guided by a larger force. Part of the fun was finishing an episode and mulling over it for a couple of days, dreaming up all the different possibilities and combinations of events, clues, people, locations, visions, etc. I also loved the cast, especially the main character, Dale Cooper: his extreme confidence and cheeriness, his love of black coffee and cherry pie, his quirky obsession with Tibetan Buddhism, and an almost absolute sense moral upstanding.

I suspect that the show's undoing was by collapsing under its own massive weight. The side stories became so ridiculous, and the writers and directors were trying so hard to be quirky and weird that it just became unbelievable and incoherent. The last episode of the first season was filled to the brim with too many cliffhangers and dramatic clichés (an obvious ploy to convince the network to renew a second season), all of which had to be resolved one by one in the next season. And after revealing the killer halfway through the second season, which I thought was sloppy and abrupt (albeit beautiful and surreally horrific), the show suddenly transformed into something else entirely: all the supposed interconnections unraveled or were forgotten altogether, the characters became caricatures of themselves (the writers thinking, "what if we put that character in this set of wacky adventures"), and new and utterly forgettable/regrettable characters were introduced for added "quirkiness", including a cross-dressing David Duchovny. Some of these later episodes were just outright awful. Also, the supernatural aspects of the show, which were so intriguing and subtle at the beginning, became obvious, tacky, and often used as a sort of cop-out for "mysterious things".

The last episode is a surreal masterpiece of a special sort. Co-creater David Lynch, whose films I've been exploring recently, was brought in to direct it after apparently having abandoned the show when the network forced them to reveal the murderer. By that point, I had refused to care about anything that was going on in the series. Yet, unintentionally, that is a big part of why I love that last episode. He treats the characters very coldly, giving them sparse dialogue and a lot of dead time followed by sudden bursts of bizarre action like buckets of cold water -- a Lynch trademark. Nothing is resolved, but what transpires do not feel like cliffhangers either. It just feels like he sucks the life out of everyone, bringing everything to an icy, emotionally numbing standstill. I'm unsure if this was his intention, but in the context of everything that transpired before it, the episode seemed especially chilling.

Overall, I thought the first season was some of the most compelling television I've ever seen; although, granted, I don't watch much dramatic television (I've never seen "24", "Lost", "The Sopranos", "Dexter", etc.). The Lynch-directed episodes are by far the highlights. Also, sticking it out to the end will set you up for one of the greatest and most surreal movies I've ever seen: the Twin Peaks prequel, "Fire Walk With Me".

Allan Holdsworth's Sand (1987)

2010-08-09T13:15:00.008-05:00

Below are some excerpts from my favorite Allan Holdsworth album, Sand. Chad Wackerman and Gary Husband's drumming, Jimmy Johnson's Jaco-esque bass, Alan Pasqua's keys, and others are featured on this, but this album is mostly a showcase for Holdsworth's Synthaxe, a strange guitar/synthesizer hybrid with rubber strings. It's at times unbearably cheesy and thoroughly a product of the 80's, but also strangely beautiful and mysterious. It's jazz fusion for those now-primitive video games. The last track, "Mac Man" features some programming by John England on an early Macintosh.

This album was reissued two years ago in Japan with different artwork. However, I'm in love with the original cover, the circus tent in the middle of a desert. It somehow captures the aesthetic of the music -- exotic performances taking place in the middle of a dry digital universe.

"Sand"

"Distance Vs. Desire"

"Clown"

"Mac Man"

Updates/Activities

2010-07-20T13:54:00.003-05:00

IMP has been on hold for the summer. Many of the regular participants are out of town and it is generally more difficult to bring an audience during these months. I'm pretty excited about the new "season", though, which will restart in September. We have more musicians involved and a wider variety of musical possibilities to explore. We hope to bring in more diverse artists such as poets, painters, and video artists to keep things entertaining. As far as I know we will still be playing Monday evenings at Rachael's Cafe.

I'm currently working on new material with Laughter Has Long Legs. Michael Rings, the leader of the group, has written some new songs which incorporate keyboard and heavily layered loops. It's a bit of a departure from the raw guitar-based music we've been performing earlier, and a lot more challenging to play, but I'm pretty excited about it.

I'm also preparing to go on a short tour in mid-August with Phil Anderson on electronics, Justin Rhody on guitar and trumpet, and Joe Stone on drums. I'm playing electric bass with the group and although we've all played with each other in different configurations, we've only rehearsed once as the quartet. Our best stuff seems to happen when we lock into noisy grooves, with the bass and drums churning on a riff and the guitar and electronics piling on top. The tour will bring us to Indianapolis, Chicago, and Fort Wayne.

Current Listening:

Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavillion

Cosmic Jokers - Cosmic Jokers

Guru Guru - UFO

Nico - The Marble Index

Bobo Stenson - Serenity

Autechre - Quaristice (Versions)

Current Viewing:

Stanley Kubrick - 2001: A Space Odyssey

Stanley Kubrick - The Shining

Ridley Scott - Blade Runner

Ridley Scott - Alien

George Romero - Dawn of the Dead

David Lynch - Dumbland

That Bitch Reptile @ Rachaels (Part 1)

2010-06-19T12:12:00.000-05:00

current listening | June 2010

2010-06-13T13:04:00.005-05:00

The Black Dahlia Murder - Deflorate (2009)

Amazing full-speed hardcore prog-metal goodness from beginning to end.

Magma - Attahk (1979)

French drummer and composer Christian Vander's enigmatic progressive rock band. This late 70s release is a bit silly and almost Zappa-esqe. They had been heavily influenced by funk and gospel music, and had moved away from the Wagnerian epics of their earlier albums. However, this is a great example of Vander's incredible drumming, especially on the first track, "The Last Seven Minutes".

One thing that sets Magma apart from similar bands of this era (aside from the ambitious sci-fi mythology behind their songs, or Vander's self-invented language, Kobaïan), is the lack of guitar in their songs. My greatest complaint about 70s prog rock is the dated sound of post-hendrix guitar solos/noodling. Much of Magma's music is propelled instead by fuzz-bass and vamping, atmospheric keyboards, which I think was pretty innovative for its time. Also check out Magma Live and Mëkanïk Destruktïw Kommandöh

Yellow Swans - Going Places (2010)

Bubbly, gurgling static; elongated, repetitive synth-melodies. Turn this up and soak in it for a while.

Brad Shepik - Human Activity Suite (2009)

I saw Guitarist/composer Brad Shepik recently play this same music with a completely different band here in Bloomington. There is a heavy world music influence on this, but it is actually beautifully done. Each track is a musical portrait of a different continent (South America, Africa, Antarctica, etc.), and they are surprisingly colorful, avoiding faux-world lameness (special guest tablas, congas, flutes, etc.) or "jazzing it up" ("The Swingin' Sounds of the East!"). Brad's compositions are mesmerizing––miniature suites filled with driving rhythms in odd time signatures and darting melodies naturally segueing into improvisations. On top of all this is, of course, Shepik's amazing guitar playing. Features Ralph Alessi on trumpet, Drew Gress on bass, Tom Rainey on drums, and Gary Versace on accordian, organ, and piano.

Keith Jarrett - Up For It (2002)

Recorded on a rainy summer day in France 2002. There is an incredible version of Oliver Nelson's blues, "Butch & Butch". Keith Jarrett really knows how to fly on a blues – listen to the chords he lays down with the left hand to sort of lift himself harmonically. The entire album is great. They stretch out on a joyous version of "Autumn Leaves". Also, I get a kick out of what Jack DeJohnette does on Jarrett's first chorus on "Scrapple from the Apple" – completely running away with the time only to land the downbeat of the next chorus perfectly, achieving a phasing, Steve Reich effect.

Fennesz / O'Rourke / Rehberg - The Magic Sound of Fenn O' Berg

Vangelis - Blade Runner Soundtrack

Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion

Leonard Cohen - Songs

Tonight: Maria Chavez at the Art Hospital

2010-05-24T15:52:00.004-05:00

I keep forgetting to post these ahead of time... Tonight at the Art Hospital, 7PM: Maria Chavez, Seeded Plain, Kray & Justin, Joe Molinaro, and Laughter Has Long Legs. Maria Chavez is an avant-turntablist originally from Peru, now located in Brooklyn. The following is taken from her Myspace page:

Born in Peru, avant-turntablist Maria Chavez currently resides in Brooklyn, New York.

Chavez's work is focused on short solo electro-acoustic sound pieces using a collection of new and broken needles that she calls “pencils of sound” and a selection of records, which provide the palette. Many of her live sound installations have focused on the paradox of time and the present moment, with many influences stemming from improvisation in contemporary art.

Her work has been recognized by the Jerome Foundation, which awarded her the Emerging Artist Grant by New York’s Roulette Intermedium in 2008. In 2009, she became a recipient of the Van Lier Fellowship which is generously offered to young sound artists by The Edward and Sally Van Lier Fund of the New York Community Trust.

She has traveled extensively, sharing the stage with Pauline Oliveros, Alan Licht, Phil Niblock, and Otomo Yoshihide to name just a few. She has performed in venues including the Contemporary Arts Museum in Bordeaux, France; the Akademies der Kunste in both Vienna and Berlin; and Sonoteca in Lima, Peru. She was an artist in residence in 2008 with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and the DIA:Beacon Museum and will perform this summer at the Whitney Museum of American Art as part of Christian Marclay's retrospective.

Michael Rings and I are performing again as Laughter Has Long Legs. It's going to be a good show. Hope to see some of you out there.

Dave Liebman on the Record Business/Downloading

2010-05-04T20:17:00.003-05:00

(Dave Liebman is a soprano and tenor saxophonist, best known for playing with Miles Davis in the early 70s)

Just like everyone else in jazz, I have been writing and discussing the current state of affairs concerning the virtual disappearance of the record business as we knew it for decades, its effect on musicians and what will possibly rise from the ashes. Of course, the younger generation looks to the internet through Facebook, Twitter, etc., as a way of spreading the word and connecting with the audience. I have always contended that although it would appear that without the middlemen (record company, etc.) direct communication with one’s audience should be a great thing, I still feel that without the kinds of resources that record companies had available to some degree or another (obviously depending upon their financial resources and promotional will), the need to promote the music still exists and without it, not much in terms of notoriety can happen, let alone sales of a product. In the past few months, I have had two young associates that after having recorded their music (with me on several tunes for each) agreed to one deal or another in which they had to pay a considerable amount of cash to get things happening. It is apparent that the younger generation is reconciled to this state of affairs and doesn’t really have a choice because the old model is gone: sign up with possible money advance; record company pays for the recording and production; promotion and even tour support follows, etc. As much as I try not to be negative about this state of affairs, I still don’t see how a new artist ((let alone an established one) can get their music out “there.”

Intervals - David Liebman's Newsletter

The Highlife, Laughter Has Long Legs @ Bishop Bar

2010-04-23T15:33:00.004-05:00

Jason Ajemian (Triage, Who Cares How Long You Sink) will be performing at the Bishop Bar with his group The High Life at the Bishop Bar, 8PM this upcoming Sunday (April 25th).

Laughter Has Long Legs, my duet with Michael Rings, will be opening. We will be playing renditions Michael's songs plus a series of improvisations, alternating among guitar, drums and electric bass... Hope to see some of you out there.

Pete Fosco, Vollmar, DBH @ the Art Hospital

2010-04-09T14:48:00.003-05:00

I will be performing tonight (Friday, April 9th) with DBH (Marty Belcher, Justin Rhody, Kray Fanny, and myself) at the Art Hospital. We are opening for Pete Fosco, a guitarist from Cincinnati that I like quite a bit. Vollmar, a fantastic local songwriter, will also be performing a solo set.

Check out "Dust, American Dust" by Pete Fosco. It's difficult to describe his music: heavily distorted guitar played in a very melodic and ambient manner.

Current Listening | March 2010

2010-03-31T13:04:00.005-05:00

Current fascinations/obsessions:

Jazz :

Clifford Brown and Max Roach - S/T

Paul Motian - The Paradox of Continuity

Gil Evans - Old Bottle, New Wine

Gil Evans - The Individualism of Gil Evans

Duke Ellington / Count Basie - First Time! The Count Meets the Duke

Count Basie / Neal Hefti - The Atomic Basie

Thad Jones & Mel Lewis - Live at the Village Vanguard

Krautrock :

Neu! - Neu! 2

Harmonia - Musik Von Harmonia

La Düsseldorf - S/T

Tangerine Dream - Electronic Meditations

Cosmic Jokers - S/T

Miscellaneous :

Tim Buckley - Starsailor

Kletka Red - Hijacking

Autechre - Oversteps

Miles Davis - Get Up With It

DNA - DNA on DNA

Charles Mingus, Live at Antibes

2010-03-17T15:37:00.003-05:00

This is a great record. Listen to the first track, "Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting". This includes one of my favorite Eric Dolphy moments, where he's moved to the point of speaking in tongues through his horn. The audience goes berserk—it's quite special. Also, Bud Powell makes a special appearance on "I'll Remember April". The entire album is incredible, of course...

Recommended Listening

2010-02-10T16:21:00.006-06:00

Miles Davis - Highlights From the Plugged Nickel (1965)

Miles Davis - Nefertiti

Wayne Shorter - JuJu (Blue Note)

Wayne Shorter - Adam's Apple (Blue Note)

I've been listening to quite a bit of Wayne Shorter recently. Highlights in particular has some truly adventurous solos on some far-out versions of old standards. I also like the two quartet albums he made for Blue Note. It took me a long time to really appreciate his compositions (even though personally I've been playing a handful of them for years), and now I can't get enough of them. JuJu sounds like a thick jungle, with Elvin Jones's heavy polyrhythms and McCoy Tyner's earthshaking chords perfectly accompanying Wayne's exotic melodies (only the last tune, "Twelve More Bars To Go" seems a little out of place). Adam's Apple is more varied and jazzy, featuring some crisp drumming from Joe Chambers.

Matt Bauder/Zach Wallace/Aaron Siegal - Memorize the Sky (482 Music)

Reeds, Acoustic Bass, and Percussion. This is one of my favorite recordings at the moment. More akin to ambient music rather than free jazz. Each track focuses on a particular texture or approach, concentrating on developing a simple idea rather than exploring everything at once. They don't engage in any free-jazz noodling or call-and-response, and their sound is very serene and often quite pretty. On occasion, you cannot tell where one instrument begins and another ends. Here are a few examples: "Lake of Light" has the percussionist bowing objects while the clarinet emits long tones. "Etch of Wood" is a mysterious ballad for bass clarinet, bass, and vibraphone. On "Field of Ice", a prepared vibraphone drones on some slowly moving chords with the bass lightly alternating between bowing a high note and plucking low notes, all-the-while as the saxophone makes popping and fluttering noises via slap-tongue techniques. "Cloud of Clay" has the bass rhythmically thumping a single note as the percussion and reeds make unpredictable and unidentifiable sounds. Again, each track patiently explores a unique sound world without the use of overdubs or electronics. It sounds very clinical on paper, but the sound they achieve throughout is wonderfully lush, crystalline, and haunting.

Edit (Feb. 23):

It just occurred to me that every track on this disk has a title such as "House Of Wind", "Brick Of Fire", "Path Of Spider", etc.

Jim Black | Alasnoaxis | Houseplant

2010-02-08T12:42:00.008-06:00

I'm not sure if I had mentioned this album. I think this is their best yet...

I reviewed their previous album, Dogs of Indifference, in an earlier post, where I suggested that they were developing a new aesthetic that was drifting away from the sax-as-vocalist novelty and into something more textural and mysterious. Also, I had admired the fact that they were no longer overdubbing and instead going for a live-in-studio approach. This album reverses both of those trends, resulting in perhaps their most melodic and densely layered release yet. Everything from saxophone overdubs, acoustic guitars, to Eno-esque laptop drones, are piled on here. The tunes feature their most memorable melodies yet, played with very vocal-like inflection from reed player Chris Speed (who sticks with the tenor sax throughout).

Despite this return to a more "traditional rock band" formula, I'm completely in love with this album. I had criticized their early recordings because I didn't feel like the saxophone always worked in the context—that something crucial seemed missing from their sound. Yet somehow everything works surprisingly well here. Every song on this album is gorgeous and includes at least one breathtaking surprise or twist, usually towards the end. The way Chris Speed articulates the melodies—with dry emotion yet warm tone, the subtleties in the amount of breath he uses and the way he cracks the notes during climaxes—now seems utterly convincing as a "lead vocalist". The album is beautifully recorded. Jim Black has one of the most unique drum sounds in the world—an indescribable organic crunch with very little ring to the cymbals. Also, one of the most fascinating things about this album is that they never get too intense: they seem to enjoy simmering at a perfect level; and no matter how noisy the guitars get, Speed never gets carried away and floats beautifully on top (reminding me of a quote from Miles Davis where he described his style as finding the perfect note to permeate the sound).

I'm not going to go through every tune in this post. Believe me when I say every tune is full of amazing moments. However I will point out that my personal favorite is "Elight". The guitars and bass are heavily and slowly arpeggiated, and the drummer is using brushes, playing a lop-sided rhythm. The saxophone gently glides through the melody as the harmonies emerging from the strings arrive in wafts. The total effect is absolutely dreamy—imagine the melody traveling slowly through different colored clouds. The best part occurs in the last minute when the band arrives at the climax of the tune and the saxophone syncs up with the drummer's cymbal on an urgently rhythmic pattern.

Once again, it's disappointing that I never hear this album or band being mentioned in various publications and "best of 2009" lists. I suspect that Jim Black's resume—having worked with Uri Caine, Dave Douglas, Tim Berne, and other so-called "Downtown" improvisors—has kept this band from being taken seriously for what it is. Most of the reviews I've read appear to obsess more about the fact that it isn't a jazz record rather than exploring its actual content. This is unfortunate since Alasnoaxis has been at it for about a decade already.

Festivalen Perspectives 2009

2010-02-04T22:06:00.001-06:00

Mats Gustafsson och Lennart Nilsson på SVT "Eftersnack"

Allan Holdsworth

2010-01-28T13:45:00.009-06:00

Alright, so recently I've become strangely fascinated by the music of guitarist Allan Holdsworth. When I was growing up, I used to see him all the time in those catalogs sent by the Carvin guitar and amplifier company. He was always endorsing his signature guitar model, the "Fatboy", which was an odd-looking instrument. I had never actually heard his music until just a few months ago. I finally heard a copy of "Believe It" by the Tony Williams Lifetime, the group Tony formed shortly after John McLaughlin left to start the Mahavishnu Orchestra. The album is just OK, in my opinion. Tony seems totally uncomfortable in a rock setting, and his beats are awkward, simple, and inconsistent (although the album is not nearly as bad as the atrocious "Million Dollar Legs"). The most interesting thing about the album, though, are Allan Holdsworth's guitar solos. I usually don't like listening to shred-guitar, but there was something about his approach that I found unique...

This album eventually led me to seek out Allan's solo recordings (along with watching a mid-80s interview with Frank Zappa where he mentioned Allan Holdworth as his favorite guitarist). I'll admit up front that I don't really like his compositions. He has a very distinctive way of using chords that I find very counterintuitive. Also, when you couple that with an excessive indulgence with 1980's technology--everything from bad synths (the fake-anything sound of the Yamaha DX7 keyboard, which incorporates a cutting-edge-for-its-time development of FM synthesis), freeze-dried drum sounds (courtesy of Chad Wackermann), his love of the long-discontinued "Synthaxe"--an actual synthesizer guitar (using fully triggered strings, and not just a regular guitar with Midi pickups), to the general "guitar superhero" vibe of the songs--it can make for a very dated and unpleasant experience.

However, if one approaches the music with a sense of humor and allows themselves to go along with it, one thing becomes very clear: Allan Holdsworth is an incredible guitarist. He has a fascinating legato style incorporating a heavy use of hammer-on techniques (allowing him to get several notes per pick of the string) which achieves a surreally liquid effect. His harmonic ideas are other-worldly, using the strangest patterns and wildest intervals. He also has a very clear and soaring guitar sound--at least when he's taking a solo. He has gone on record stating his intense dislike for distortion, which he claims he only uses to sustain his notes much like a wind instrument. His Synthaxe playing, again, despite the corniness of the sounds, is nevertheless pretty astonishing. Anyone who has attempted to play a toy synth-guitar would be thoroughly amused with what he does.

For those interested, seek out the album "Hard Hat Area", particularly tracks 2, 3, and 5. Again, this music is for an extremely acquired taste. It reeks of that macho overindulgent pyrotechnical shredding-in-your face mentality: every solo is blazing fast, including some mind-blowing playing from Icelandic bassist Skuli Sverrisson (who has in recent years sort of reinvented himself as a post-experimental free-jazz rocker dude and currently plays in Jim Black's incredible rock band, Alasnoaxis). Also present are the cheesy synthesizers, the Synthaxe, not to mention the horrible cover art. But Allan's solos are like little miracles--almost like watching an unbelievable trapeze artist or something. Seriously, it's fun to listen to. Definitely more fun than Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, and the other "shredders".

Ken Vandermark on illegal downloading:

2010-01-27T15:28:00.001-06:00

"How are you supposed to convince people -- especially younger people who've come up with this in place where they can get anything for free -- that they should spend $10 to get this person's record?" he asks.
"They're going to be like, 'You're high.' There's no way, logically, that's going to make sense to them. I have friends who understandably get angry about the situation and try to prevent people from recording shows or doing this or that. I see their point of view, but the dike has broken and you're standing there with your finger pointing at it. The issue of making a living with work that is essentially free now -- how do we continue to do that work and pay our bills?"

Peter Margasak Downbeat June 2009

Yeah, I mean, who listens to CDs anymore? Don't most people, particularly those under 30, immediately import the tracks into their iTunes and iPhone anyway? The CDs would just collect dust and take up space. Vinyl records are an indie fad that we will grow out of soon -- I mean, talk about a waste of space! If musicians expect to make a living, they should be forced to tour constantly and perform nightly for obnoxious teenagers with cellphones in front of their faces, posting the blurry clips on YouTube for everyone to post their cleverly unique comments and ridicule. Forget about a retirement plan--no musician is going to be collecting royalties. Yeah, fuck the music industry! And fuck the independent labels while we're at it too, those greedy assholes who help fund all this wonderful music...

Firestarting: Tortoise & Paul Lovens

2009-11-24T11:12:00.004-06:00

Here is that clip from the first track from the new Tortoise Album. Again, I love the way the bass enters and emits a feedback that pretty much envelops the sound like a huge plume of dust. This is followed by an explosion of blissful synths:

The keyboards eventually develop into a Philip Glass space-rock celebration. It's my favorite moment of the album.

Also, I wanted to share an example of the percussionist Paul Lovens. This clip is taken from a track off Alex Schlippenbach's "Elf Bagatellen". Alex is playing prepared piano, Evan Parker is playing soprano. Paul, from what I can make out, seems to be playing an assortment of muted toms and small cymbals, achieving a fleet and sparkling effect:

I saw Canadian drummer Dylan Van der Schyff do something similar to this by placing a washcloth on his snare with a few tiny cymbals facedown on top and rapidly glaze over them with his sticks. Paul Lovens, however, has mastered this art of "small sounds". I also recommend hearing London drummer John Stevens.

Bear's Place; Current Listening

2009-11-18T16:04:00.004-06:00

Last night I performed with two bands at Bear's Place. Chris Rall and I opened with our tenor sax/drums duo. We had a general idea of what sort of territory we were going to explore, but it was basically all improvised. We had a lot of fun, and were well-received by the audience. I hope to do this again very soon.

The set with the rock band was also a blast. There are 7 members, and we were all squeezed on that tiny stage. We played a non-stop set of 4 long tunes, tightly scripted and strung together with segues and such. We were so loud I was laughing at times. Being buried in the pile of amps, I felt as though I were swimming in a thick soup of distorted noise. Afterwards my ears were ringing, and I had trouble getting to sleep. We are booked to play there again sometime next month.

I have some good music to recommend. The new album by Themselves, "CrownsDown", is absolutely incredible. It's the album I always wanted them to make -- everything I ever loved about Dose One condensed into an extremely focused and powerful record. I can't begin to explain it -- completely mind-blowing and unbelievably creative music.

Tortoise's "Beacons of Ancestorship" has really grown on me in a big way. The album as a whole is very strong. Surprisingly, they have left out the vibraphone for this, so it's very heavy on synths and guitar. Some highlights: towards the end of the first track, when they segue into that space-rock section, I really like how the fuzz-bass kicks in like a huge plume of dust, followed by a blissful explosion of synths. There are countless moments like this peppered all over the record. "Prepare Your Coffin" is the closest they've come to a "traditional" rock song, complete with a Jeff Parker (I think) guitar solo. Also, I love that "hardcore" track with the Chinese title. They should do an album-length Tortoise spin-off of this kind of material.

Also, as I mentioned earlier, please take a listen to Boris's "Pink". I don't know what you'd call this: noise-punk? thrash-metal? speed-doom? Anyway, these guys are amazing. If you like Acid Mothers Temple or Mainliner, you'll love Boris.

To be honest, I haven't been listening to much jazz recently. The newish Gonzalo Rubalcaba cd is pretty nice, although I think I'm starting to grow tired of the "post-bop" sound: Dave Holland-esqe odd-timed "funky" bass ostinatos, forms that sound and feel like obstacle courses, and soloists who, on account of the awkward and somewhat unnatural forms, tend to play in outbursts rather than developing anything substantial. But having said that, I always appreciate great musicianship, and these guys are amazing players.

Other then that, I've been listening to a lot of Coltrane -- particularly "A Love Supreme" and "Live at Birdland".

Tatsuya Nakatani; Bear's Place Tuesday

2009-11-16T12:48:00.003-06:00

Tatsuya Nakatani performed last Monday at Rachel's Cafe. That was a fantastic show. There was a great turnout, and we were able to raise a nice sum of cash for him (surprisingly, since it was donation-only). The small groups were a success as well. I was teamed up with Tony Salas, who was playing alto sax, Micheal Rings on guitar and vocals, and Joe Stone on drums. I was originally supposed to play piano, but the small and awkward stage made that less appealing, so I ended up playing electric bass. The sound we achieved was sort of "Tim Berne plays noise rock". Micheal and I spent most of the set scraping our strings wildly while Joe provided hints of rock beats and Tony played more or less traditionally. The few moments of tonality usually occurred when I would emit drones from my amp feedback, and Tony would build a scale on top of it. Unfortunately, our set was not recorded. Hopefully we can continue to make music as a quartet. We all seemed to have enjoyed ourselves.

Chris Rall, Marty Belcher, David Miller, Steve Johnson and others also participated. After our opening sets, Tatsuya gave an electrifying performance featuring his usual trap kit as well as 2 huge gongs that he would strike and bow. Afterwards, he agreed to jam with the local musicians. Marty, the organizer for the event, had suggested that the musicians be grouped into the following catagories: horns, then strings, and finally percussion. I thought overall this was an unfortunate idea, since we ended up with an oversized horn section (about 5 saxophones and a trumpet), which led to a more-or-less monotone and drab sound, and a percussion hippie-circle. It would have been nice to mix things up. But, nevertheless, everyone had a great time.

Tuesday night Chris Rall and I will be performing at Bear's Place as "That Bitch Reptile". We got together Sunday afternoon for a rehearsal, and we are excited to be playing together again. I will also be performing that night with a rock band called "Shoe On Roof" (or "Monks", or "Munks", I'm not sure) where I play electric bass. I'm curious as to how Chris and I will be received. We have only performed twice together, and have enjoyed both occasions tremendously. It is very rare that I play drums publicly, so I usually get a little nervous. I wish there were more opportunities to perform regularly. We are serious about making a few recordings in the near future and getting them released on a few of our friends' record labels. Although Chris has a tight schedule, I'm hoping to book a short tour -- releasing a record would be an ideal excuse.

Cadence; Illegal Downloading

2009-11-16T12:41:00.004-06:00

Quickly, I would like to say a few things about Cadence Magazine. I have always been fascinated by this publication. They are almost entirely reader supported. The design is especially modest; aside from the cover, the entire thing is in black and white, with very basic formatting and is printed as small booklets rather than full-sized 8X11s. I get a small amount of pleasure by simply holding one of these things in my hands. Cadence has been a source of inspiration for me. It has a Do-It-Yourself aesthetic with a no-bullshit approach that I really appreciate (as opposed to those style-over-substance indie-rock publications you sometimes find), and features excellent writers covering both obscure improvised music as well as more "mainstream" jazz and blues.

I had a 1-year subscription to the publication a few years ago. However, I didn't bother to renew my subscription, since about 90 percent of the printed material often bored me. The editorials were always entertaining, particularly from the publisher Bob Rusch, who would occasionally dive into extended rants about popular music and the public's neglect of creative music. But after a while even that would get tedious and depressing. Probably my favorite column was "Sonics" by Vladimir Vastonivitch, the head of their audio department and an expert of audio technology. Much of his writing consisted of useful information about sound quality and stereo systems. Very often he would loudly cry out against MP3 compression and complain about the public's lowering standards. I remember he once wrote a long article bashing Bose that I need to dig out and post here. It was brutal, and he sort of ripped into Herbie Hancock for those infomercials (Does anyone remember them?).

Unfortunately, the vast majority of Cadence consists of countless interviews and reviews of artists I have never heard of. This is perhaps their great paradox: they want to provide an outlet for artists who otherwise would have no media exposure. Yet, as a reader, it's difficult for me to slog through long blurbs of text devoted to artists I'm not familiar with. To make matters worse, their interviews are not prefaced with any description. For example, the September 2009 issue contained lengthy interviews with Lindsay Horner and Lyle Ritz, two musicians I've never heard of. Yet the interviews immediately begin by asking their date and location of birth and proceed through their entire musical development from childhood. Again, as a reader, having no clue who these people are, what their music sounds like, or, yes, even what instruments they play, why would I care about their life story? Yet, I feel compelled to support what they do and may reconsider restarting my subscription.

Anyway, I wanted to share this recent article by Vladmir on the topic of illegal downloading (Vol 35 No 7-8-9, 2009). I have quoted the important excerpts:

"Contrary to all the pundits who write about computer technology, music does not just want to be free. At the end of the day an artist needs to make a living. They may choose to give away their music--that is their prerogative but it should not be someone else's right to make that decision…"

He then briefly talks about copy protection technology. He claims that in the marketplace protections for music files are not as mature as it is for video. And although, for the case of video, it is always possible to find ways to crack the technology, the effort involved is akin to picking a lock to someone's house or store for the purpose of robbing them.

But we should point out something important here. What is especially tricky about his analogy is that the "criminals" in this case are not so much "stealing" in the literal sense as they are copying. Imagine someone breaking into your house without damaging anything, walk up to your living room television set and use some device resembling a camera to take a snapshot which can physically reproduce your television exactly. Now imagine that this was somehow incredibly easy to do, and they went on to share their "acquisitions" freely with anyone who was willing to "trade". Again, no one is getting hurt or losing their possessions; the only ones who suffer are the companies who manufacture the television sets. This is what I find so fascinating about this download phenomenon, and why in this case the term "criminal" doesn't have the same emotional pull.

Vladmir then discusses copy protection technology:

"The specious argument that copy protection only hurts honest customers is hard to defend. Would that same argument be used for locks of all sorts? Those on your house? On your car? Would anyone advocate that we should abandon all locks because the "real" criminals (as opposed to those that act out of convenience) will still be able to steal? I think not."

Here is the "specious argument" that Vladimir is referring to: You can either be the guy who pays iTunes or some other download vendor for an MP3-like file that only plays on 3 devices in one format, or you can download ("steal") it for free without the annoying "protection", play it on any number of devices, edit it, sample it, convert it to other formats, burn mix-discs for your friends, do whatever you like with it. The reasoning goes like this: "If I paid for it, I should be able to do whatever I want with it. Therefore, copy protection is not fair to the honest customers."

Vladmir continues:

"The argument that, Well, if it was cheaper I would not steal it, is equally as specious. As if there is no other alternative? If the product is not worth the money, you are free to do what has been done for ages in the free market: opt not to purchase. Do without. Exercise the rights of your wallet. Have some self-control. Or… you can steal. But let's not pretend you are being "forced" to do this."

This is very well-put. The artists and producers who slaved over the material and spent the time in the studio honing it should have the right to set their price and determine its worth. For example, I once attended an independent art show and came across a painting that I rather liked. I found out that the asking price was fairly outrageous, and I sort of laughed in disbelief. By the end of the night someone had purchased it. Musicians don't have this freedom, so I can definitely sympathize. If Sonny Rollins wanted to charge $100 for a 30 minute album (say with little or no cover art or liner notes), he should have the freedom to do so, and the public would have the freedom to not buy it. Illegal downloading has made this virtually impossible.

Vladimir then reinforces the Video/Audio protection distinction. I find this very fascinating:

"In order to play a high definition signal from your DVD player or cable box it must be connected to a high definition video screen by a high definition (HDMI) cable. All three parts (yes, even the cable) have built-in copy protection that prevents you from making an exact duplicate of that signal and sharing it with all your friends… Every industry where intellectual property, artistic property, or even physical property is at stake has some means of locking access. Every industry except audio. For some reason music is seen as an entitlement for those that wish to have it."

He then concludes with a rather bleak assessment of the modern consumer integrity and urges a strong push for copy protection. Notice how he frames his argument in the context of audio quality:

"What is holding back the delivery of high resolution music (considerably higher than what is available on the compact disc) is not the technology of creation. In the long term it will not be the technology of delivery, it will be the ability to get paid for those efforts. Honesty and integrity left the room ages ago in this debate. The days of expecting people to do the right thing have long passed. A new generation of consumers exists for which the right thing is not even part of the question because the rights of ownership are no longer part of the debate. It is hard to explain to someone what is wrong when the premise of your argument is no longer on the table. These people are not making moral decisions because that is no longer the question; they no more consider what they are doing as wrong in much the same way you would not give any further thought to your right to breathe. Copy protection exists for this very reason. Expecting people to do the right or reasonable thing is no longer in evidence. If a copy protection model existed for these higher resolution formats, you would see a greater move from independents to deliver even more high resolution content to your house."

Again, what I find interesting about this is that Vladimir, as an audio expert and connoisseur so to speak, ultimately sees copy protection as an incentive for higher quality music. This is part of his long-standing disgust with MP3s in general. Yet, although this sounds well and good, the truth is that unlike with HD DVDs most people don't sit down and listen to music with their undivided attention. They want to play it on their iPod Shuffle while jogging, in their cars on the way to work, as background during a party, or on their Myspace page. Also I would argue that, unlike HD video, the vast majority of people can't tell the difference between MP3 and some high resolution format. Maybe this will change as low-cost headphones and speakers continue to improve in quality, but typically people are more receptive to detail in video than in music (I also think this is partly why people are more likely to embrace abstract painting than abstract music. That's another topic for another day).

Copy protection for high resolution audio is a huge investment, I would imagine, and I think it would be a hard sell. Unlike films and TV shows, for most people music is not treated as an event. After a long day, they typically don't sit down to listen to 20 minute symphonies or jazz improvisations. I quoted this earlier:

"[Today…] In order to play a [1] high definition signal from your DVD player or cable box it must be connected to a [2] high definition video screen by a [3] high definition (HDMI) cable. All three parts (yes, even the cable) have built-in copy protection that prevents you from making an exact duplicate of that signal and sharing it with all your friends… "

Again, with video this makes a whole lot of sense. It's very common for people to set up an entertainment system in a comfortable living room with a nice couch and a bag of popcorn to watch their favorite 2-to-3-hour movie in HD. However, can you imagine anyone purchasing high resolution (say, "HR") audio, for their HR audio player, connected by HR cables in order to play a Bob Dylan song, when it sounds equally good to them on MP3? Not only that, but it would probably be extremely difficult to create your own playlists and shuffle mixes.

At best, such technology would be an expensive novelty, and, as is the case today, very few artists will go on board with it. For example, both SACD and DVD-audio are sort of a joke today. Only a handful of classical and progressive rock albums have been released for that format (when I think of SACD, I think of mid-aged upper-middle-class men with expensive surround-sound systems built in their living room, rocking out to a Pink Floyd or Joe Satriani album alone with the lights dimmed---his wife in the kitchen rolling her eyes). I have read accounts of people buying newly released Frank Zappa recordings (usually live recordings) on heavily protected audio-DVDs. Here is one such account from a Zappa-fan blog entry:

"[A]dded to my dismay is the fact that the official recording was released on an audio DVD, severely limiting how folks can play it. I don't have a home theater to play it on and it won't play in my CD changer or in my car stereo, so I had to download someone else's rip so I could listen to it in my car. The official release sits on my CD shelf as a testament of how I occasionally waste my money." - http://frankzappasrevenge.blogspot.com/

The idea that artists will flock to the new technology primarily on account of preventing illegal downloading seems highly doubtful. This is merely wishful thinking on Vladimir's part. If anything, the free market is pushing technology towards more advanced compression and increased portability. Also, as long as someone has a working mixer and some basic audio software, and blogs continue to compete for attention, bootlegging will thrive. And as far as audio resolution is concerned, most of the blogs I visit tend to have fairly high standards – only lossless compression (FLAC) or 320kbps MP3.

So what is the solution to this problem? I'm very curious to see what the music industry will come up with. The era of physical products is sadly declining. One solution that's been suggested is that artists should put more care into the packaging and artwork. I think that is both unfair and unhelpful. Why should a musician be given that sort of responsibility? One wouldn't ask a painter to provide a soundtrack to his work. Also, the packagings for albums are disposable objects. They are cute and novel at times, but it is not what the audience ultimately comes for. I have also heard suggested that albums should come with enlightening liner notes, providing insight to the making of the album and other background information. The objections are similar: you wouldn't expect that from a painter, as fun and interesting as that may be. The only thing that we should ever expect from a musician is a slim casing holding a basic disk printed with the artist's name and a catalog number – But that's not the question. The question is, Will that help? Maybe. Many albums today come with "bonus features" – a second disc with music videos and interviews, a special internet link and password to access extra songs and behind-the-scenes footage, vinyl LPs that come with a link for the MP3 equivalents, etc. But by-and-large this only appeals to the dedicated fan, not the casual listener. In fact, it gives the impression that they are paying extra for material that they're not particularly interested in. Hence, the appeal of illegal downloading: the music files plain and simple, with no bulky packages collecting dust on a shelf, no "bonus features" that one would usually look at only once or twice, and, best of all, for no money at all.

I will return to this topic again and again in the future. I find this utterly fascinating. I will also post a few perspectives from artists who have been directly harmed by this phenomenon such as Ken Vandermark, Jim O'Rourke, Autechre and Sufjan Stevens.

2009-11-08T22:02:00.002-06:00

yes

IMP #3 & Tatsuya Nakatani

2009-11-02T12:49:00.004-06:00

IMP #3 happened last night. I played with Tony Salas and Philip Anderson. We never played together before as a trio. We all felt a bit uneasy about our set, but I was told that the recording came out pretty nice. I guess I tend to be an especially self-conscious musician, particularly when most of the pressure is placed on me to steer the direction of the music. Generally, I prefer to layer myself on/against a backdrop and sort of ride the wave, so to speak.

Triot, with Marty Belcher, Chris Rall, and Lee Guth, were a treat. As always, I absolutely love Chris's playing. He comes directly out of the Evan Parker/John Butcher aesthetic - gushing spurts of sound and extended techniques. Marty is particularly good at the long multi-phonic screams as well as modern classical-sounding lines and figures. Lee mostly provided a light rhythmic groove that the others would float on. It works surprisingly well. Michael Rings joined for the last piece, adding vocals and prepared guitar.

The Right Now Band dimmed the lights for a set of hand-bells, guitar, and distorted vocals and kazoo(?). They were particularly creative with the hand-bells, my favorite part of their set.

I'm not sure what Phil has in mind for the December show. I would love to play with Chris Rall (we rarely play together, but it's always a blast when we do), although it might be tedious to have the same musicians play consecutive shows.

This is sort of a complaint, but I have come to realize that as much as I enjoy performing music these days, I really miss playing with a good drummer. As far as I know, there are no drummers or percussionists in town that play creative improvised music. And also, as always, there is a lack of interesting bass players.

Anyway, speaking of drummers/percussionists, Tatsuya Nakatani is performing next Monday at Rachel's Cafe. I'm excited. Marty Belcher, who is organizing the event, has decided to feature "chance encounters" with Tatsuya by randomly(?) grouping him with various local musicians such as myself. But the centerpiece of the show will be his breathtaking solo performance which he has been honing for quite a while.

TONY OXLEY Taunton 1991

2009-10-28T21:31:00.002-05:00

Why is this in b&w? Anyway, I recommend his recording with Cecil Taylor, "Leaf Palm Hand" (FMP), as well as "The Advocate" with Derek Bailey (Tzadik).

Free Jazz Recommendations

2009-10-07T12:28:00.015-05:00

IMP #2 happened Sunday, and there was a lot of good music. There will be sound clips and video on the website/blog shortly. Meanwhile, here is a list of great "classic" free jazz records I've heard recently. I highly recommend every one of them.

Julius Hemphill - "Dogon A.D." (with Baikida Carroll on trumpet, Abdul Wadud on cello, and Philip Wilson on drums. 1972)
This is often sited as Julius Hemphill's masterpiece, although I'm fairly new to his music and haven't heard many of his albums. Nevertheless, it has probably entered the top 10 of my all-time-favorite jazz recordings. The title track is sloppy-funky, and the solos are raw and explosive. Julius's solo on this is the obvious highlight of the record – he just pours it all out on a one-chord cello vamp. Again, the sloppy and somewhat sparse approach of the rhythm section gives the tune this indescribable feeling that I suspect helped drive his improvisation all over the map. The second track, "Rites", is a blow-out of sorts. After stating the melody, they all spiral around each other throughout the track. This is especially exaggerated by the bowing cello -- achieving this unique "swirl of colors" effect. The cello is definitely the special ingredient to the group's magic and gives this record a wide-open, at times chaotic, and chamber-like sound. "Painter", the third and final track is a pretty tune, with Julius playing flute, Baikida using a mute, and Philip on brushes. The composition itself is gorgeous. The flute plays nice flowing figures while the cello strums the chords behind him. After playing the melody, they plunge into a free improvisation that maintains the implied character of the composition. It's difficult to explain. This is a fantastic album, highly recommended, even if for the 1st track alone.

I'm listening to his other LP "'Coon Bid'Ness", which a friend loaned to me. Side B consists of a single 20-minute track taken from the same "Dogon" sessions entitled "The Hard Blues". This is easily one of the most amazing and passionate versions of the blues I've ever heard. Definitive, really. Julius loses his mind during the solo.

Anyway, since both albums are out-of-print as far as I know, I recommend downloading it here. They have smartly included "The Hard Blues". It's a great blog, by the way, if you're looking for obscure free-jazz recordings.

Lester Bowie / Philip Wilson - "Duet" (1976)

This duo album is really nice. They fill out the disk with only trumpet and drums. This is a rare treat. I find that whenever I pick up a disk of horn-drums duos, the bulk of the disk is filled up with "secondary" instruments. For example, if you pick up a duo album with William Parker and Hamid Drake, Charles Lloyd and Billy Higgins, Don Cherry and Ed Blackwell, etc., chances are that they will spend most of the time playing instruments that they don't exactly specialize in, such as wooden flutes, banjos, Tibetan oboe, hand drums, tablas, piano, etc. That stuff usually lapses into mediocre quasi-"world music" vamping that wears out its welcome within the first few minutes (Evan Parker has referred to this as "faux eclecticism". Don Cherry and Karl Berger were largely responsible for this mess of a trend, I think). Personally, unless you are doing something truly interesting and different, just getting the "general effect" is sort of disrespectful, self-indulgent, and, worse, tedious to listen to.

Anyway, that's pretty much what I expected when I borrowed this album, since the Art Ensemble of Chicago was notoriously multi-instrumental. However, Lester and Phillip stick with their primary instruments and really explore them over the 40mins or so. They really milk out as many sounds they can, yet pace themselves nicely. Lester smears his notes, half-valves, vocalizes, erupts into joyous melody, etc. And Phillip gets into these great "implied-grooves" that I love so much – the sort of drumming that is both really funky, yet indiscernible by conventional standards. I'm sure Paal Nilssen-Love, from The Thing, was greatly influenced by him. He also coaxes a good deal of texture, occasionally bending the drums in tandem with Lester's smears – sometimes sounding like drops of water. They cover so much territory on this. It's really worth a few close listens.

Jimmy Lyons - Other Afternoons (with Lester Bowie, Alan Silva, and Andrew Cyrille. 1969)

This was Jimmy Lyons's debut album as a leader. The line-up really caught my attention. I've only heard Jimmy with Cecil Taylor, so this recording is quite refreshing (The sound of Cecil's piano is pretty exhausting to me. Also, his compositions tend to be super-dense.). In fact, this is the same band (Cecil's "Student Studies", recorded in 1966), only replacing Cecil with Lester and Cecil's compositions with Jimmy's. Everyone plays really well on this. In fact, I think it's a perfect demonstration of their unique approaches to their instrument. Jimmy is a surprisingly cool-toned player, focusing on fluid lines rather than multiphonic screams (although he occasionally lapses into it). Without Cecil's constant, dark, fragmented and dissonant piano disrupting the momentum and turning everything into an atonal mush, Jimmy's ideas peak out much more clearly. Lester is totally explosive and witty, occasionally interjecting vocal outbursts mid-solo, and "commenting" during Jimmy's solos. Andrew Cyrille is all over the place, playing a fairly scaled down drumkit. Also, Alan Silva, who I've almost always heard bowing strange high-pitched figures like a second lead voice, mostly resides in the background (however, his solos are squeaky scrub-downs). The first side, after a tricky melody, is mostly a free-jazz romp (Is there a term for this? It's high-energy with no discernable rhythm, but they're not just blowing their heads off á la Albert Ayler or Peter Brötzmann) with extended solos from all four members. Side Two is mostly a mid-tempo free-bop jam, again with long solos from each. They stretch out and explore their instruments quite a bit. One quirk that I like about this record is how Lester is very attentive to Jimmy's playing: occasionally Jimmy will nag at a particular motif for a tad too long and Lester will join mid-solo and sort of break him out of it.

Ran Blake - "Breakthru" (1975)

Ran Blake apparently teaches at the New England Conservatory. He is also associated with the "Third Stream" jazz movement somehow. However, I've only heard him on two very peculiar (and very hard to find) solo piano albums, "Wende" and "Breakthru". "Breakthru" has the slight edge only because he plays a handful of jazz standards. It's incredibly hard to describe his style. It's very mysterious to me. There is a whole lot of contrast in his playing: slowly and crudely banging out single lines, following it with soft chords, spontaneously erupting into sloppy atonal stride, lapsing into very awkward and seemingly unsure noodling. He's a strange dude. His music puts me in a weird mood I must say. I wonder if there are any recordings of him with a "traditional" rhythm section.

Evan Parker / Derek Bailey / Han Bennink - "Topography of the Lungs" (1970)
This is such an incredible album - a perfect blend of totally innovative musicians at their early, raw and youthful stage. Han Bennink sounds like a one-man tornado on these early recordings (He's gotten a bit too cheesy and repetitive these days, in my honest opinion). The sound they achieve together is really grungy, for lack of a better term. It comes at you in a series of shards and spurts. These musicians have played in countless combinations with each other, but as far as I know, this is the only one featuring the three of them as a trio (they met while working on Peter Brötzmann's "Nipples" and "Fuck de Boere" sessions). Apparently Derek and Evan had a falling out (which prevented the reissue of this album until Derek's recent death), which was unfortunate. I like everything about this album, including the packaging and artwork. The liner notes are absurd and a bit unsettling, sort of setting the mood for the album in a way.

Alexander Von Schlippenbach Trio - Pakistani Pomade (with Evan Parker and Paul Lovens. 1972)
This is another strong early-1970's European Improvised Music release. I especially like this album for Paul Lovens' drumming. He produces a lot of quick and peculiar colors. He plays a strange kit with cracked cymbals, bongo-like toms, tiny hi-hats, and other unidentified objects. Required listening for drummers (as are most of the other albums on this list).

Requests: I'm looking for any Misha Mengelberg, particularly something with saxophonists or guitarists, or anything involving his ICP Orchestra. I've found a handful of solo and duo albums (mostly with Han Bennink) on a few blogs, but generally his music seems really hard to find. If anyone can direct me to his recordings, that would be greatly appreciated. Also, if anyone can find a copy of David Murray's "3D Family" (with Andrew Cyrille), I would be very excited.

Tim Berne Interview

2009-10-05T12:09:00.007-05:00

Here is a fascinating interview with Tim Berne, conducted by Ethan Iverson (of The Bad Plus). He has lots of great anecdotes: he didn't start playing saxophone until he was in college, took private lessons with Anthony Braxton, shared a loft with Julius Hemphill (becoming a protégé of sorts), diving into music more or less by sheer will power, starting his own record label, a funny story about his brief stay with a major label (Columbia), his habit of only buying records he has never heard, etc. It's a bit lengthy, but well worth reading. If you're not that familiar with his music, I highly recommend his album "Hard Cell Live" (w/ Craig Taborn and Tom Rainey) and "Saturation Point" (w/ Jim Black, Michael Formanek, and Chris Speed).

October 4th: IMP #2

2009-09-28T12:13:00.005-05:00

Philip Anderson, a local musician, has started a series of free shows around Bloomington. He's calling it IMP, or Improvised Music Project. The first Sunday of each month the IMP will present 3 local groups or artists, performing 45 minute sets.

The upcoming show in October (this Sunday) should be pretty interesting. This will be the second in the series. The groups are David Miller's Üt Duo, Justin Rhody's DBH, and Steven Bergdall's 5 Gentlemen Dogs (in that order). This is taking place 1:30 PM at the Monroe County Library Auditorium.

David Miller will be performing a trumpet/bass duet with Steve Johnson as the Üt Duo. I can't remember the last time I saw them, but I think they play in a Lester Bowie/Don Cherry free-jazz style. I remember enjoying what they did. I don't know how this group compares with his other regular band, Art Deco, which I believe is his quartet.

DBH is sort of an umbrella title for any improvising project that Justin Rhody (Friends & Relatives Records) puts together. This ranges from large groups with acoustic instruments to smaller groups playing found objects. About a week ago, I performed with Justin and Kray at the Bishop Bar. They were both playing various objects on the floor (plastic bags, cheap microphones, cassette players, broken electric guitars, hot plates, etc.), and I was running Pure Data on an old laptop plugged into a mixer, a delay/reverb pedal, as well as a small microphone (mostly for emitting feedback which would blend with the sine waves from the computer). All three of us were running through small amplifiers that would easily overdrive, which resulted in a nice organic mesh of noise. It was a lot of fun, actually.

I have no idea what he's putting together for this IMP show.

Finally, "5 Gentlemen Dogs", another umbrella title for Steve Bergdall's projects, as well as the title of a song he wrote and recorded, will be a duet with guitarist Joe Lisinnichia. At least this is what I heard – they might be adding a few other members. Again, I'm not sure what kind of thing they will be doing. Their improvisations usually incorporate a large dose of humor. A few months ago I saw "5 Gentlemen Dogs" at the Django Cafe, when they were a straight-ahead jazz quintet playing original compositions by both Steve and Joe. This should be entirely different.

Here is a flyer for the show. It's pretty absurd. It was designed by me, showcasing a particularly sloppy (and ugly) use of Photoshop:

and this is the website: http://improvisedmusicproject.blogspot.com/

Music for long drives

2009-09-14T13:00:00.004-05:00

There's just something about being in motion that sometimes makes music so much more compelling... Here are some recommendations:

Don Byron's Bug Music : Particularly tracks 8-13, the music of Raymond Scott. They rock out pretty hard on this. I wish there were bands doing that sort of stuff today. Honestly, I have yet to hear the original "Raymond Scott Quintette" recordings, but the sound quality of these recordings really add to the enjoyment. Joey Baron is all over these arrangements.

Fennesz's Black Sea : You have to listen to this at a fairly high volume to really appreciate it. Tracks 2 and 3 are particularly mind-blowing.

Plug's EP's 1, 2 & 3 : This is my favorite Luke Vibert material. The bass is really heavy on this. There is one tune that I particularly love...

Sufjan Steven's Illinoise : This is a fun mid-day, midwest driving album.

My Bloody Valentine's Loveless : This is probably my all time favorite album (strictly in terms of "most satisfying feeling"). And this is the only way I listen to it: in a car, late at night, on a major road or highway, in very light traffic at a fairly high speed, and at an extremely loud volume – and I mean really soaking the vehicle with sound. The effect, at least for me, is just being totally pulled into their gorgeous sound world. Also, work the details of the road and surroundings into the experience, it's very beautiful. "To Here Knows When" is the obvious highlight, but I love every song. In fact, I'm obsessed with almost every detail of this album.

Slayer's Reign in Blood : This will keep you awake. Or, it might completely drain you.

DAT Politics' Wow Twist : Another slamming "keep you awake" album. Although I'm probably sick of it by now.

Wes Montgomery's Road Song : From his late muzak period, but still great driving music.

*Also, almost anything by Sea and Cake, Pavement, and Stars of the Lid (for those early-morning sunrise drives).

Tunes evoking imagery

2009-09-14T12:26:00.004-05:00

I have a short playlist that I listen to in a loop as I walk around town. I think they should be soundtracks to some incredible film (maybe some of them are):

Triosk - "Intensives Leben"... the sound of the distorted rhodes like shooting stars, the shimmer of cymbals and shards of metal, and the confident ringing of the bass: Night music, everything in slow motion.

Dulo - "Higher Than Ever" ... toward the beginning of the track when the cymbals arrive like a shower of rain: the screen becomes blurry and dream-like

Dulo - "Orbit Of Dust" ... I imagine a scene involving a lot of snow and a lot of sunshine.

Ekkehard Ehlers - "Plays John Cassavetes (Pt. 2)" ... The melody gloriously repeating itself over and over: the huge emotional climax of a film.

Aphex Twin - "Analogue Bubblebath I" ... when those synth chords come in: a scene at the very end of a film involving a drive leaving a large city at 5 in the morning, and off to some new unknown adventure

*I'll try to add sound-clips soon.

The Opera Browser

2009-09-14T11:37:00.006-05:00

This may be a strange thing for me to post, but perhaps this will be helpful to a few people. If you do a lot of internet research – looking up album information, reviews, news articles, interviews, etc. – I highly recommend using the Opera web browser. They have a setting called "Opera Turbo", which basically loads up a page as fast as possible by disabling certain Flash and video files (which you can easily re-activate by clicking on them) and loading images at greatly reduced quality (which you can display at full quality by right-clicking them). What you end up with is no-bullshit, straight-to-the-point web-browsing. This particularly useful if you have a slow or inconsistent internet connection.

For example, I was listening to an album a friend sent me a while back and I wanted to know who the bassist was. Allmusic.com is usually the best resource for this, but the site has over the years become so horribly bloated with various entertainment features and ads. But, instead of having to wait for all the annoying ads and images to load up just so I can type two words into the search engine, Opera basically muted all the noise and plowed straight to the data.

Opera has a lot of nice features that I appreciate, particularly with shortcuts and keywords. However, it's somewhat unreliable as a whole when dealing with more web-intensive procedures like video or submitting forms and such. Video will sometimes lag or refuse to go to fullscreen, links are occasionally disabled or strangely absent altogether. So, I'll only recommend using Opera for rapid browsing and research and not entertainment, purchasing items or checking your bank account.

So, there we go. Hope you enjoyed this pointless review. By the way, Ray Brown was the bassist.

Dan Deacon @ Rhino's

2009-08-20T20:26:00.004-05:00

About 2 weeks ago, I saw one of the best musical performances of my life. Dan Deacon played at Rhino's, August 5th here in Bloomington. It is difficult to explain what he does. Here are a few videos:

I highly recommend his two "dance" albums, "Spiderman of the Rings", and "Bromst". He also has a handful of early experimental works that are also very fascinating (particularly "Goose on the Loose", a piece for sine wave generators).

Current Listening | July 13, 2009

2009-07-13T12:39:00.003-05:00

Andrew Hill - From California With Love

Bill Nelson - Crimsworth: Flowers, Stones, Fountains and Flames

Olivia Block - Mobius Fuse

Fennesz - Black Sea

Don Byron - Bug Music

Branford Marsalis' take on students today

2009-07-12T12:12:00.002-05:00

Charlie Haden on Nightmusic

2009-06-17T15:37:00.001-05:00

Liberation Music Orchestra. I think that's Ken McIntyre taking the first solo and John Abercrombie sitting off to the side. I can't recognize anyone else. I especially like how Charlie plays on this. However, I don't really like how the other saxophonists shred through their solos. It's like they're in practice room mode or something.

Firestarting: Les Rallizes Denudes

2009-06-05T14:22:00.018-05:00

I have mentioned this album before. I know very little about this group other than what I've read in Julian Cope's JapRockSampler. However, I find the auther to be a very unreliable, albeit highly entertaining, source. Apparently, this band had never recorded a proper studio album. Fans are left only with countless bootlegs with inaccurate dates, track-listings, and personnel information. For example, the copy of December's Black Children that I found does not resemble Cope's description in the book. Also, Blind Baby Has Its Mothers Eyes sounds like a studio effort, but it occasionally cuts out mid-track into excerpts from live recordings. Either these are terrible mp3 glitches, or poor artistic decisions. I suppose this adds to the band's mystique.

The band's formula is extremely basic. Apparently, the music is modeled after the Velvet Underground's "Sister Ray" from White Light/White Heat: a driving rhythm and simple bass line, with a whirlwind of guitar feedback layered on top. Also, every recording features more or less the same songs. I can't really explain the singer's approach -- sort of like a cross between Elvis Presley and Lou Reed with tons of reverb and delay on his voice. But he does this interesting thing where he emulates a blues singer's call and response (sing a line, play a guitar lick, etc.), but instead of playing bluesy guitar lines, he emits huge distorted blasts. After singing the melody, he kicks into an extended guitar solo which basically amounts to sweeping washes of pure noise and feedback drenched in effects. Also, their performances were infamous for both the extreme volume as well as an over-the-top light show. I can't imagine what that would've been like.

There are many bands that have followed this winning formula (Mainliner/Acid Mothers Temple, Yo La Tengo, Scorch Trio, etc.). However, what really attracts me to Les Rallizes' music are the recordings themselves. Since most of their albums are unofficial bootlegs -- like the one shown above -- the sound quality is very lo-fi and amateurish. You can rarely, if at all, hear the drums, and the tape itself is constantly peaking and cutting out. This makes for some fascinating and unintended effects. Listen to the first example below. The guitarist is holding out these single notes, yet it sounds as if large quantities of shrapnel are relentlessly streaming out. I imagine a massive rainstorm of sorts (In fact, Julian Cope has some great ways of putting it: "...Mizutani's axe envelops us in a sonic Niagara Falls" and "...relentless to the point of being meditative...") It is difficult to tell how much of it is intentional, and how much is a consequence of the tape peaking. It is a happy accident that contributes to the character of their music. Listen to the second example from "People Can Choose" (the same track appears on the compilation Yodo-Go-A-Go-Go under the name "Field of Artificial Flowers"). All sorts of crazy things are happening to the tape on that. Yet, I love how the bass plows through and really propels the music.

I suppose this is one advantage of analog over digital mediums: I'm drawn to the unpredictable and organic qualities of tape, particularly at loud volumes. The tape portions of Edgar Varése's Desérts is another good example of this.

Excerpt from "Strong Out Deeper Than The Night":

Excerpt from "People Can Choose":

Firestarting: Charles Mingus' "Meditations"

2009-05-31T17:47:00.007-05:00

"Meditations" -- Listen to the version on the Cornell '64 with Eric Dolphy, Jaki Byard, Ted Curson, and Dannie Richmond. This is jazz from my dreams. Halfway through, it's difficult to imagine that they are playing on a university stage -- the fireball they create conjures imagery of a dark, hole-in-the-wall club in a big city. The rhythm section in particular blows me away. I often complain that jazz fails to evoke unique sound worlds in the way a good rock or electronic group can. This is a special exception. Listen to the pianist, Jaki Byard, and those incredibly thick and dark chords he plays at the top of each form, as Mingus and Richmond swing so insistently. I could listen to them vamp out on that all night, with Dolphy blowing those outrageous things on top with the bass clarinet.

Mingus always had a knack for creating sound-worlds. Two examples: the riff from "Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting", which sounds like the band is being sucked into a black hole. Also, "Don't Be Afraid, The Clown's Afraid Too" from Let My Children Hear Music. This is a breathtaking and trippy masterpiece; Not to mention the freaky sound-effects that occur periodically throughout the tune, I especially love the way the two saxophonists solo together in the middle, seemingly unaware of each other's presence, and those flutes that play that knotty melody during Mingus' solo. (The entire album is totally amazing, and strangely overlooked)

It's unfortunate that Mingus' legacy is reduced to awful high-school band renditions of "Moanin'" and a 30-second late-90s car commercial.

Firestarting: AlasnoAxis - Dogs of Great Indifference

2009-05-31T15:47:00.020-05:00

Listen to Dogs of Great Indifference, by AlasnoAxis. I think this is my favorite album of the several they have recorded. Chris Speed, the clarinet and saxophone player, in particular really stands out on this, in my opinion. I've always liked the band, and I love the concept of having a clarinet/sax in place of a vocalist, but I never thought their recordings were entirely successful. That is, as much as I enjoyed the songs and the musicians, I always felt that there was something missing from their sound. Jim Black's melodies were often very catchy, but it didn't necessarily translate well with the saxophone or clarinet. Perhaps they seemed more appropriate for vocals, as though the band were covering songs from a different group (that is, sounding more like an adaptation rather than an original recording).

Ironically, relating to my concern of a lacking, "Dogs" is their most stripped-down record: There are no overdubs or post-production effects. This is more or less a live-in-studio session. Their previous albums, by contrast, would have layers of guitars and keyboards, reverb effects, ambient loops, etc. However, I feel this is their most compelling album yet. What I like specifically about it is that the melodies are not so obvious and direct (don't get me wrong, I love Jim Black's melodies, I simply didn't think they fully adapted to the reeds). Chris Speed has a much more natural and compelling role on this record. Like always, he plays with a light and dry tone, achieving a floaty sound that glides over everything. But, rather than merely playing written melodies, he often improvises(?) haunting phrases that, in my mind, generate very mysterious and suggestive moods. He picks his notes very slowly and carefully, with each gesture invested with meaning (He's not 'playing the changes', so to speak. This isn't a jazz album). Everything about the album is wonderful: the tunes come off as dark, exotic and organic mood pieces that develop gradually, rather than the quirky alt-rock band of the previous records. Each member stands out more, and approaches each tune with creative flexibility. I have a new-found respect for the guitarist, Hilmar Jensson, who does some rather amazing things on this album (again, difficult to explain -- I'm not referring to any guitar solos, but simply the way he plays with the group, the subtle effects he achieves with feedback and such). It seems as though a solid framework was scripted beforehand, but that their approach and interpretation was left wide open to the individual members. It is by far their most challenging and inaccessible album, but completely successful and, in my opinion, fairly groundbreaking. [listen to example 1 below, from "Tars and Vanish"]

Listen to the title track [example 2 below]. Chris Speed achieves a gorgeous effect on the tenor saxophone. It starts about a little more than halfway through the song. As the band mellows out, Speed starts sort of fluttering each note he plays. It is difficult to explain. It is such a subtle and simple idea, but totally emotionally compelling. It is my favorite thing on the album, and perhaps one of my favorite musical moments ever.

Although I mean no disrespect, I can't help but compare Speed's playing to Wayne Shorter's playing on Weather Report's "Live in Japan". As much as I like that album, I always thought Wayne seemed out of place in that setting. He had a tendency, in my humble opinion, to constantly step on others' toes. He would play these abrupt phrases that more or less directly responded or mimicked the ideas of the other musicians, often killing whatever momentum they would gather. This is a matter of taste on my part, since I'm aware that this is a highly appreciated routine in improvised music: the call-and-response. However, by and large I've never been a fan of that type of playing -- again, not if it involves constantly disrupting the momentum of a tune. Listen to "Vertical Horizon" [example 3 below]. The electric piano, bass, and drums are doing some amazing things, but Wayne seems like a lost child fumbling around, trying to play the game but mostly getting in the other's way. You keep expecting the band to take off, but the rug keeps getting pulled from under them.

So, I've always suspected that this was an intrinsic disadvantage of any horn instrument -- their noodling would always be a distraction unless they were playing the melody or taking a solo (much like a singer trying to 'jam along' with a band). I think Chris Speed, perhaps unintentionally, has set a new paradigm for group improvisation. Instead of constantly soloing or 'responding', he slowly floats over the group with his eerie melodies. His approach is passive and somewhat detached, yet his voice is always there laying gently on top as the band bubbles and percolates below him. As the tune gains momentum and nears its climax, Speed's tone becomes more harsh and chaotic, often giving to multi-phonic screams ala Albert Ayler. I love this idea -- the possibilities are endless.

It's a shame that bands like this are marginalized in the public eye. I had barely heard about this record, which appears to have been released 3 years ago. I suspect that the lack of direct melodies and the ambiguous tone of the album had enabled it to fall between the cracks. I hope they continue to record more albums along these guidelines, and really develop this sound they stumbled across.

Example 1, "Tars and Vanish":

Example 2, "Dogs of Great Indifference":

Example 3, Weather Report, "Vertical Invader..."

Culture Shock 2009

2009-04-21T13:42:00.005-05:00

[Edit 5/31/09: This post was written over a month ago. I accidentally forgot to publish this.]

So, I've been writing many papers recently, so I guess I'm in a writing mood. Maybe this will lead to something resembling regular posting. We'll see.

I saw a few bands at the Culture Shock Festival here in Bloomington last Saturday. It was a beautiful day, and the music was surprisingly good. I won't go too much into detail, but I will mention a few highlights: Dan Friel, from Parts & Labor, performed a great set of dance electronica. All of the sounds were emitting from a small suitcase full of cheap keyboards, drum machines, and effect pedals that he balanced on his lap. The melodies and rhythms were catchy, and it was fun to watch him at work.

Death Vessel was a folk-guitarist and singer. He played a great Fahey-style guitar. His singing was beautiful. He sang in an eerily feminine voice -- by which I mean authentically feminine, not merely "feminine-like" -- that was a bit difficult to comprehend at first (that is, at first it didn't seem as though the voice was actually coming from his mouth).

Extra Golden was a band from Kenya, performing a fusion of rock and traditional Kenyan music. They were fun. They had a great drummer, and the guitar players were doing very interesting things -- like, spidery melodies akin to mbira techniques.

Daniel Bejar from Destroyer also did an acoustic solo singer-songwriter set. This didn't really play well with the audience. Singer-songwriter material isn't really meant for an outdoor standing-audience environment, not to mention how awkward and emotional his presentation was. He sang with an exaggerated Bob Dylan drawl that also reminded me at times of Ian Anderson from Jethro Tull (a certain majestic and whimsical quality to his songwriting). He seemed completely out of place compared to the band before him (the easy-going, fun-loving, danceable Kenyan group), he was emotionally detached, sporting the generic hipster attire (flannel shirt, worn-out jeans, disheveled hair, etc.), and he seemed to take himself a bit too seriously. Also, the songs were very lyrically dense and poetic, often sliding into strange emotional outbursts and obscenities that seemed to make the audience very uncomfortable. No one booed or anything of the sort -- I think everyone respected what he was doing but they just weren't in the mood for it. I actually liked his songs, but the venue was inappropriate (not his fault, of course).

Four-tet was the highlight of the festival. Two laptops, a mixer, and a set of midi-controllers. All of his tunes would follow a similar formula: he sets up a beat, gradually adds layers, and then improvises with his glitchy effects, similar to how a DJ would scratch records. There isn't really much more to say about him. He put on a good show, and the sound was surprisingly good.

Updates, activities, journal, Dinosaur Jr.

2009-04-11T15:15:00.009-05:00

I have been buried in schoolwork for the last two years. I will be graduating (finally) with a philosophy degree in the summer. I am currently studying Kierkegaard, empirical knowledge, late 19th-century French painting (the Post-Impressionists), Macro-economics (the basics), and the Python computer programming language.

I have seen only a handful of musical performances in these recent times (Deerhoof, Chicago Jazz Fest). But last night I finally saw my childhood heroes (and generational father-figures of sorts): Dinosaur Jr. They performed at the Bluebird, apparently their first time in Bloomington. It was a mesmerizing show. They played pretty much all of my favorite tunes as well as some of their new material (they have signed with Bloomington's JagJaguwar, and will be releasing their next album in June). They lived up to their reputation as an extremely loud band. J Mascis, the lead guitarist, was surrounded by Marshall fullstacks, wielding the Fender Jazzmaster, conjuring a ridiculous cacophony, dousing it with effects (phasers, delay, wah, etc.), taking extended solos, and singing with that trademark emotionally detached and barely-audible voice of his. Lou Barlow is a fantastic bassist, playing the full range of the instrument, preferring chords to traditional bass lines, and really filling up the sound. Lou also sang a few songs, as well as contributing some hardcore screams (he is much more outgoing than J, which makes for a nice contrast). Murph is a solid drummer, driving the band, playing with great intensity. Everything was beautifully miked; the sound of the room was completely saturated. It was obscenely loud, but strangely, my ears remained fairly comfortable (although they are very numb as I sit here typing).

There has been plenty written about the significance and immense influence of this band. They were basically the fathers of noise-rock -- the impetus that sparked a movement that inspired several of my favorite bands: Nirvana, Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, and countless others. There are plenty of great interviews that attest to this. But their winning formula was this: huge waves of guitar noise, drenched in distortion and feedback, with gorgeous soft melodies that peak out of the fog. It is at once both tightly introverted and utterly savage; a highly thoughtful and gentle message peaking through a thick soundworld of chaos. This music had a lot to do with shaping my identity as a child and it was a real pleasure to see these living legends. [Note: the original line-up broke up in 1989 -- 20 years ago! They reunited in 2005 and recorded a fantastic new album, Beyond, that pretty much picked up exactly where they left off. Their signing with a Bloomington label is also a nice coincidence.]

Four Tet will be performing next weekend for the Culture Shock Fest at Dunn Meadow. This is exciting.

---

"In a Jar", "Freak Scene", "Little Fury Things", "Just Like Heaven", "Sludgefest", "Almost Ready"

Blame beyond Washington

2009-03-09T23:25:00.000-05:00

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Current Listening (March 9th)

2009-03-09T14:10:00.006-05:00

John Fahey - The Legend of Blind Joe Death

Earth - Earth 2: Special Low Frequency Version

Terry Riley - A Rainbow in Curved Air

Improvised Music From Japan - Disk 1

Charlie Christian - The Genius of the Electric Guitar

Jim Hall & Ron Carter - Live at the Village West

Current Listening (March 2nd)

2009-03-02T18:16:00.003-06:00

Mountains - Choral

Mindflayer - Die & Mold

Coil - Musick to Play in the Dark, Vol. 1 & 2

Pavement - Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain

Autechre - Chiastic Slide

Fennesz - Black Sea

Blue Collar - Lovely Hazel

Russ Lossing - Metal Rats

Don Cherry - Where is Brooklyn?

Recommended Jazz

2009-02-12T20:05:00.004-06:00

Hampton Hawes

All Night Session! Vol. 1-3 (w/ Jim Hall, Red Mitchell)
Blues for Bud (w/ Art Taylor)
Four! (w/ Harold Land, Frank Butler, Scott LaFaro)

Elvin Jones - Puttin' It Together (w/ Joe Farrell, Jimmy Garrison)

Julius Hemphill - Dogon A.D.

Dewey Redman - Coincide

Evan Parker/Derek Bailey/Han Bennink - Topography of the Lungs

Gerald Cleaver/William Parker/Craig Taborn - Farmers by Nature

Musica Elettronica Viva - MEV 40 (w/ Steve Lacy, George Lewis)

Charles Gayle w/ Gerald Cleaver | Live at the Knitting Factory

2009-01-20T22:04:00.001-06:00

Firestarting: Preface

2009-01-08T14:15:00.005-06:00

This is a clip from the first track off Arthur Doyle's "Alabama Feeling" from the mid-70s. I will be using this blog to post my analyses of music using sound clips as examples. However, blogspot does not provide an option to upload audio, so I am experimenting with various imagery. I will probably settle on a flat image of the album cover, since the waveforms are a bit distracting.

I will title all the posts with the heading "Firestarting", which is a term that I use to describe what I think as being the common feature of all good music. I will describe this term later – although I might change it, since I'm still in the beginning stages of this strange idea. Some posts will be full reviews of a particular album, some will be overviews of a particular musician or band's career, some will cover particular genres, and others will focus on particular effects or textures that I like.

Here are a few topics to expect in the near future: Faust Tapes, Duke Ellington, Fennesz's Black Sea, Les Rallizes Denudés, Evan Parker...

The Night of the Purple Moon (1970)

2008-11-29T14:40:00.005-06:00

This is easily one of Sun Ra's most bizarre records. Ra himself appears to be playing some sort of electric harpsichord, and the tenor saxophonist John Gilmore plays drums. Mostly quartet stuff with alto sax (occasionally playing percussion) & electric bass. There are also a few solo keyboard tracks with Ra simultaneously playing the el.harpsichord with a moog or something. Very odd & highly recommended.

Download here.

Richard Foreman

2008-10-17T00:54:00.001-05:00

Takagi Masakatsu | Salida Del Sol

2008-08-15T20:46:00.001-05:00

The Microphones | Solar System

2008-08-09T11:34:00.005-05:00

Les Rallizes Denudés | Heavier Than A Death in the Family

2008-07-25T02:02:00.007-05:00

download here

Julian Cope, in JAPROCKSAMPLER:
"...a one-way trip into the Heart of Darkness..."
"...Mizutani's axe envelops us in a sonic Niagara Falls."
"...splashy cymbals, climbing-the-walls basslines, and on-off torrential guitar torment."
"...relentless to the point of being meditative..."

Dan Deacon

2008-07-23T00:01:00.001-05:00

2008-07-14T10:43:00.000-05:00

Tom Harrell interview with Charlie Rose

2008-07-01T22:57:00.001-05:00

2008-06-30T11:56:00.005-05:00

This is an excerpt from an interesting interview with Keith Jarrett published over 10 years ago:

article by Andrew Solomon in the New York Times Magazine, Feb. 9, 1997

"It's totally unrealistic to think that you're going to be a great player just because you know how to play fast or you know how to play 5,000 styles," he says. "I read reviews of new players who can sit in with anybody or play with five different types of band in five nights - and everybody talks about this like it's a positive thing. If you get an audience and you get gigs and you have a name before you have anything to say, it actually wipes out the possibility of saying something later on. The people who would produce valuable things are waylaid too soon. The bigger the media, the worse it is for the artist. I'm not even sure I should use the word artist. There are some ages, I think, that don't deserve art as much as others. I almost think we live in a time now when that is true."

He begins to sound like some latter-day Rousseau mourning the demise of the noble savage. "The old days of jazz were much healthier for the music itself," he says. "I think there's a horrible thing going on now, where young players haven't been told by the right people that there's more to it than marketing themselves. They expend all the energy they should be using to find their voice, or work on their voice, or listen to themselves play. They've got to resist this stuff. I was called by Columbia at one point when I was with this little ECM record label, and they offered me a giant advance. I said no. It's not just what's getting exposed, but who you're exposing it to.”

Jarrett saves his most pointed attacks on the current jazz establishment for Marsalis. "Wynton imitates other people's styles too well," he says. "You can't learn to imitate everyone else without a real deficit. I've never heard anything Wynton played sound like it meant anything at all. Wynton has no voice and no presence. His music sounds like a talented high-school trumpet player to me. He plays things really, really,really badly that you cannot screw up unless you are a bad player. I've felt embarrassed listening to him, and I'm white. Behind his humble speech, there is an incredible arrogance. And for a great black player who talks about the blues - I've never heard Wynton play the blues convincingly, and I'd challenge him to a blues standoff any time. He's jazzy the same way someone who drives a BMW is sporty."

Kraftwerk | Autobahn

2008-06-21T17:04:00.001-05:00

John Cage | Water Walk

2008-06-18T23:30:00.001-05:00

George Will

2008-06-10T08:27:00.008-05:00

Conservative George Will holds his own against Colbert. Colbert tries a few cheap shots: shaking Will's hand, bringing up universal healthcare, inquiring into George's religion (in what I interpret as an obvious attempt to set up a "conservative Christian" stereotype, and call him out on ideological hypocrisy). George doesn't flinch even a bit, and hurls a well-needed bucket of cold water on this otherwise painfully liberal broadcast. (For the record, I'm a huge fan of Stephen Colbert)

For an in-depth interview with Mr. Will on Charlie Rose:

BlackWoodenCeilingOpening

2008-05-25T22:06:00.001-05:00

Ahmad Jamal Trio | Darn That Dream (1959)

2008-05-17T18:18:00.001-05:00

2008-05-17T02:48:00.003-05:00

hella | cafeteria bananas

2008-05-16T08:18:00.002-05:00

Glenn Gould

2008-05-12T02:28:00.001-05:00

J.S. Bach's Partita #2

Pere Ubu | Breath

2008-05-06T00:59:00.002-05:00

oren ambarchi | strategem

2008-05-02T02:06:00.007-05:00

John Searle | Free Will

2008-04-27T15:20:00.002-05:00

Google's Mountain View, CA headquarters. Discussing his book "Freedom and Neurobiology". October 30, 2007

music recommendation

2008-04-26T16:35:00.004-05:00

M83 - Saturdays=Youth

Autechre - Quaristice

Fennesz - Transition 7"

Wolf Eyes - Burned Mind

Paul Motian - On Broadway, Vol.2

Drew Gress - 7 Black Butterflies

The Thing - Wroclaw, Poland - 2008.02.16.

2008-04-22T03:06:00.001-05:00

Freedom Evolves

2008-04-21T00:42:00.007-05:00

Daniel Dennett gave this incredible lecture at Indiana University about 2 years ago (the second of 3 that I attended). Someone kindly posted the audio on YouTube. His main point is this: "Determinism" and "Inevitability" are not the same thing, and it is due to the fact that we have been equipped (by natural selection) with the competence to avoid things that gives us our free-will (and moral responsibility).

Part 4 @ 9:37

"why do we care about causes? we care about the saliencies in the world on which we can base action. so we always care about what is true in all or most of a set of possible worlds that are all slightly different. it's that halo of difference that really matters for causation, in which the actual world is hidden from us as a needle in a haystack."

Unfortunately, you don't get to see his powerpoint presentation with the quotations and cartoons (aside from the Dilbert cartoon at the beginning).

Here are a few samples:

"Skyhook"

andrew hill trio

2008-04-20T20:50:00.001-05:00

john hebert - bass
nasheet waits - drums

Musician

2008-04-19T22:44:00.001-05:00

WORK series documentary by Daniel Kraus

Adrian Orange & Her Band

2008-04-15T17:51:00.007-05:00

"After however many years humans have existed on the planet we have come to 2008. We made it. Now all of a sudden there is this C.D. among us called “Adrian Orange & Her Band”. Some of us humans made it in a church basement in Olympia, Washington (and on the roads and fringes of the wide United States) but the credit goes to the entire history of human (and inhuman) existence. Everything that happened before this was just a stepping stone in the long progression of events that culminated in late January 2007 with the committing of these songs to tape. THIS RECORD IS THE PINNACLE OF ALL HUMAN ACHIEVEMENT FOR ALL TIME EVER. Is it important to know that Adrian Orange is the person responsible for the music of “Thanksgiving” or that he is a fairly young dude from Portland, Oregon? No. No background information is needed to appreciate the previous wonders of the world; come to this music like a wet baby. It is 2008. Everything is crumbling and blooming together." - pwelverumandsun.com

music recommendation

2008-04-14T22:00:00.008-05:00

Deerhunter - Cryptograms (esp. track 2)

Albert Ayler - Holy Ghost (esp. discs 1, 2, and 6)

Autechre - Confield (prob my fav Ae)

Németh - Film (esp. tracks 4&6)

Oren Ambarchi - Stacte Motors

Fennesz/Sakamoto - Cendre

Arcade Fire - Neon Bible (esp. tracks 2, 4, and 8)

Stars of the Lid - And Their Refinement Of The Decline

Tuba, May 1, 8PM

2008-04-09T17:32:00.003-05:00

forgot one...

2008-04-09T17:23:00.004-05:00

this was a fun show. Pillars and Tongues were a blissful violin/bass/percussion/vocals trio, the Ground-Ups were intense trumpet/sax/2drumkits freejazzrock freakout, and the Chicago Branch/Riordan duo tore the place apart with their explosive trumpet/drums improvisations. I played with the Art Hospital Trio alongside a violinist (Joe Molinaro, who set up the show) and doublebassist, performing original "chamber-jazz" charts and improvisations.

TONY MALABY TUBA TRIO

2008-03-31T10:50:00.001-05:00

Tony Malaby - Sax
Marcus Rojas - Tuba
John Hollenbeck - Drums

Papa Jo Jones drum solo

2008-03-27T02:37:00.001-05:00

CiNEMAT WED MAR05 (EXTREME TROMBONE)

2008-03-02T23:49:00.004-06:00

CiNEMAT WED MAR 5th 8PM $6

Wolter Wierbos Extreme Trombone (ICP, Sonic Youth, The Ex)

üt (David Miller - trumpet / Marty Belcher - sax / Chris Rall - sax / Steve Johnson - bass)

Daniel Wick ( laptop, 4track )

CiNEMAT WED JAN23

2008-01-18T18:21:00.000-06:00

2008-01-11T12:23:00.000-06:00

Classic Blues, Ragtime, etc.

2008-01-10T19:24:00.000-06:00

Apparently, people are posting entire albums on their blogs for public download.

here's a good one:
http://eldiablotuntun.blogspot.com/