Signal to Noise #48 - winter 2008

Signal to Noise THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF UNUSUAL MUSIC

Devendra Banhart black dice joe giardullo alan sondheim graham lambkin japanese underground hip-hop his name is alive hayes biggs carlos zingaro issue #48 : winter 2008 : $4.95 us / $5.95 canada

SIGNAL TO NOISE THE JOURNAL OF IMPROVISED & EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC

Joe Giardullo in New York City, July 2007 by Libby McLinn

CONTENTS ISSUE #48 :: WINTER 2008

14. JOE GIARDULLO 18. DEVENDRA BANHART 24. BLACK DICE 30. GRAHAM LAMBKIN 38. JAPANESE HIP-HOP 44. ALAN SONDHEIM plus

8. CARLOS ZINGARO 10. HIS NAME IS ALIVE 12. HAYES BIGGS

50. LIVE REVIEWS

✹ High Zero 2007 in Baltimore ✹ Jazz a Mulhouse in Mulhouse, France ✹ Variously Indeterminate in Wilmington, DE ✹ Eric Roth & the Clark Street Bridge Percussion Ensemble, Chicago ✹ Electric Eclectics, Meaford, Ontario ✹ Guelph Jazz Festival, Guelph

58. BOOK REVIEWS

✹ Check the Technique: Liner Notes for Hip Hop Junkies ✹ The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century ✹ Dub: Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae ✹ Legends of the Chelsea Hotel

61. CD/LP/DVD/MP3 REVIEWS over 200 new releases and reissues under the microscope

SIGNAL TO NOISE

THE JOURNAL OF IMPROVISED & EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC ISSUE #48 : WINTER 2008

FROM STN-HQ TO YOU

PUBLISHER pete gershon MAILING ADDRESS 1128 Waverly Street, Houston Texas 77008 CONTRIBUTORS bill barton :: caroline bell :: jason bivins :: marcus boon :: shawn brackbill :: colin buttimer :: pat buzby :: joel calahan :: christian carey :: john chacona :: mike chamberlain :: cindy chen :: andrew choate :: jay collins :: dennis cook :: larry cosentino :: david cotner :: ethan covey :: michael crumsho :: raymond cummings :: jonathan dale :: christopher delaurenti :: nate dorward :: lawrence english :: gerard futrick :: michael galinsky :: david greenberger :: kurt gottschalk :: spencer grady :: jason gross :: kory grow :: jennifer hale :: carl hanni :: ed hazell :: nate hogan :: jesse jarnow :: mark keresman :: steve kobak :: robert loerzel :: howard mandel :: libby mclinn :: bill meyer :: sean molnar :: richard moule :: larry nai :: kyle oddson :: chris pacifico :: michael rosenstein :: elise ryerson :: ron schepper :: steve smith :: ion sokhos :: thomas stanley :: john szwed :: nathan turk :: dan warburton :: alan waters :: ADVERTISING operations@signaltonoisemagazine.org e-mail for rates & information DISTRIBUTION Our current circulation is 10,000 copies. STN is distributed by Ingram Periodicals, Source Interlink, Ubiquity Distribution and Small Changes.

We are available in most Borders and Barnes & Nobles outlets, and we sell directly to Other Music (NYC), Downtown Music Gallery (NYC), End of an Ear (Austin), Sound Exchange + Domy Books (Houston), Newbury Comics (Boston area), Jackpot Records (Portland, OR), Bulldog Records (Seattle, WA), Jazz Record Mart (Chicago), Dusty Groove America (Chicago), Lunchbox Records (Charlotte, NC), Squidco (NYC), Bop Shop (Rochester, NY), Aquarius Records (San Francisco), Amoeba Music (Hollywood / San Francisco) and Volcanic Tongue (Scotland). We encourage you to support your local, independently-owned retailers! If you’d like to carry us in your store, please contact one of our distributors, or if you’d prefer to order direct from us (min. order 10 copies / no returns), drop us a line.

ATTENTION SUBSCRIBERS! Signal to Noise is mailed at the 4th class bulk rate. This keeps subscription costs down, but if you move, the USPS won’t forward your magazine ... they just throw it out and we’re none the wiser, until we hear from you several months down the road asking where your magazines are. Please apprise us of any address changes to avoid the inconvenience of lost issues and extra expense! Send your new information as far in advance as possible to: operations@signaltonoisemagazine.org MORE FINE PRINT The publisher accepts no responsibility for any opinions expressed by the writers or subjects of SIGNAL to NOISE. All contents are © 2007 STN Publishing LLC and/or its individual contributors. No portion of this document may be reproduced by any means without the written consent of SIGNAL to NOISE. 6 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

When my iBook began to reach the end of it's usable life earlier this year, my wife treated me to the new MacBook for my birthday. It's a terrific machine with a huge memory and super quick processing speed, and it prompted me to upgrade some of my software as well. The fall issue was the first I assembled using inDesign, which streamlined the process quite a bit, and pleased the folks in our printers' prepress department to no end.

Because disk space is now less of an issue, this summer was the first time I really spent much time downloading music from the Internet. I discovered a number of sites such as Church Number Nine which offered rare, out-of-print recordings uploaded by users (be advised ... the site is now dormant and its links decommissioned) and live recordings that are unavailable commercially. I ripped tracks from many of my favorite CDs into iTunes and it's really been the first time that any portion of my music-listening experience has come directly out of my computer. For ease of use, I must admit, it has distinct advantages. But I can't help feel that something is lost in the digital transaction.

Meanwhile we find many labels beginning to offer advance promo copies in digital format. An editor receives an e-mail with a link and a password ... nothing to ship or press while wasting fossil fuels, nothing to unpack, repack and reship, nothing to store ... pretty convenient, right? Well, I have found that many of my writers give digital delivery a big thumbs down. It turns out that not everyone likes to listen to or to obtain music on their computers. Even today, not everyone has a high-speed connection at home, and there are still those that enjoy the experience of opening and handling a CD, examining the packaging and liner notes, and engaging with a physical object rather than a digital file.

On the Organissimo Internet message board, producer and label owner Chuck Nessa remarked that 2007 was the year the "blogs came home to roost" and it's hard to argue with diminishing sales figures. But it seems that for many of the folks who truly care the most about this music, physical media's space is still secure.

For the first time this summer, we offered a free copy of the magazine as a hi-resolution PDF, and through word of mouth, several hundred readers downloaded the (admittedly gi-normous) file over the span of just a few days. It was an experiment worth trying, and it increased the exposure for the artists we covered and for our advertisers, but I had mixed feelings about the endeavor and it reminded me how much I enjoy produc-

ing a tangible paper and ink publication, regardless of whatever inherent flaws and rising expenses may be involved in the mailing and distribution system. I'm not sure yet if we will offer this issue as a PDF, but I do welcome your feedback about it.

Meanwhile I have been asked by my friend Deb Spence to curate an exhibit at the Art Institute of Houston this winter.

Having been over to our place numerous times and having noticed the large collection of gig posters, album covers and other odds and ends adorning our walls and cluttering the shelves of the STN home office, we decided to hand pick a selection of items and get them up on the walls at the art school. Though the exhibit is primarily for the benefit of their student body, if you are in the Houston area you are more than welcome to drop by and have a look, and if you are available on the evening of Wednesday, January 23rd, we hope you'll join us for the opening reception.

It's been fun opening up poster tubes and boxes of LPs that have been sealed since our move from Vermont and putting some of these pieces into frames, and pondering the value and significance of such tangible representations of the music. Many of these items bear the tears, wrinkles, pin holes, scuffmarks, price stickers, signatures and other markings, adornments and defects that accrue over time and bespeak their value as cultural artifacts with a unique history and a story to tell.

Meanwhile, my wife has lately been tuning in to some of the digital music channels offered by our cable affiliate here in Houston. I have heard a lot of great bluegrass and big band music that I probably would not have sought out if left to my own devices, but at the same time, I much prefer the eclectic mix offered by Rice University's KTRU, which you yourself can sample via the Web. The DJs there play a mix of music very similar to that which you find in this magazine, from left-of-center modern rock to advanced electro-acoustic music to hardcore free jazz, usually within the same setlist. I enjoy listening to the DJs announce and report on local gigs and goings-on, and hearing them talk about what music they're enjoying and why. They're a lot like our writers -- enthusiastic listeners who relish the opportunity to act as advocates for the music they care about.

Some things change, and some things will always stay the same. Keep supporting the music, keep attending gigs and keep on keepin' on. We'll keep doing our best to be a useful guide as you traverse the lesser-known pathways of today's musical landscape. Pete Gershon

The Art of NOISE:

poster art, album cover art, and ephemera from the SIGNAL to NOISE collection featuring work by Reid Miles, Wes Wilson, Frank Kozik, Peter Brรถtzmann, Chubby Jackson, Gerrit Gรถllner, David Wang and others.

January 21 - March 14, 2008

Steve R. Gregg Gallery The Art Institute of Houston 1900 Yorktown St, Houston

opening reception: Weds., January 23, 5 - 7 PM

SIGNAL to NOISE #48 | 7

CARLOS ZINGARO The accomplished Lisbon-based violinist flexes his bow in a wide range of creatively improvised settings.

by Kurt Gottschalk

Portugal is known for its Port wine, for its churches and cuisine, and for fado, its soaring, sorrowful folk music. It's hardly regarded as a hotbed for improvised and electronic music, but it is the home of Carlos Zingaro, a violinist who has recorded with Jöelle Léandre, Richard Teitelbaum, Elliott Sharp and many others, and the musician who owned the first ARP synthesizer in his country, carried over from New York in 1979.

He's never had a homegrown community of musicians around him; there is no Lisbon equivalent to the London Musician’s Collective of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians.

Consequently, Zingaro has had to travel to other parts of Europe to find his scene.

But over three decades, he’s built a reputation among other musicians as a committed and deeply informed player.

“He’s a fantastic musician, but more that that,” according to Léandre. “He has a huge culture – painting, poetry. We are very close in terms of this feeling of community of arts. His career goes to sculp8 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

ture, painting, probably philosophy. He’s also quite a political guy.

“We are in the same family, the string family,” she adds. “Carlos has this freedom, it’s so open, it’s a pleasure because everything can happen. We can make it totally musical or totally noisy.”

The isolation Zingaro felt growing up may have made him the musician he is.

He began studying the violin at age 4, and was playing professionally by the time he was 13. But Zingaro – an adopted name, which means “gypsy,” given to him by a music teacher when he was 8 – was under a strict, conservative education in a nation under authoritarian rule.

“I was traumatized by that because it was so narrow,” he remembers. “‘This is true music, everything else is bullshit.’

That’s what I was taught.

“My youth was during the dictatorship, so it was quite closed,” he says. “School drew a line after Debussy or Ravel, not even Schoenberg was taught. In college I went to the American Library at the American Embassy to read Art Forum, Down-

beat, et cetera, and to listen to records.”

As a teenager, however, different influences began to meet his ear. He heard psychedelic rock and Moroccan music on the radio and bought a Cry Baby wahwah pedal and a cheap pickup “with lots of feedback, so it was great,” he smiles.

“Hendrix, Stones, Yardbirds, Soft Machine, Velvet Underground – I loved Cale, wow! Coltrane, Ligeti, Earl Browne, everything when I was very young – 14, 15, 16 – Cage, Stockhausen. It was not Moody Blues or this orchestral stuff. I wanted blood and guts.

“I had nobody to play with in Portugal, so in a way for me not to feel so alone I was playing with loops. It fascinated me, this laboratory, to sculpt, to build up sound.”

Which isn’t to say he wasn’t looking for other musicians. He played guitar and organ in rock bands, and in 1968 founded an improvising group called Plexus.

“At the time, I was more interested in the people than the musicians. If someone could just play a few notes but his

mind or her mind was synchronized, they were in the group. It was like therapy.

That group was considered an expression of revolution – we had three, four concerts a month, mostly for the Communist Party or extreme left groups.”

Plexus took a break for four years while Zingaro entered military service, during which he was stationed in Angola, and then reunited upon his return in 1973, the year before the dictatorship was overthrown. In 1978, Zingaro again broke up the band and headed for England, where he discovered the LMC. He played in a trio with Steve Lacy and Kent Carter, and then went with Lacy to New York, where Lacy introduced him to Teitelbaum, leading to the creation of a duo he remembers as “one of the priceless collaborations I’ve had in my life.”

The New York connection led to a Fulbright scholarship in 1979 which allowed him to attend Karl Berger's Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, New York, where he met and worked with Tom Cora, Roscoe Mitchell, Anthony Braxton, George Lewis, Leo Smith and others, and made trips to the city.

“Coming from Portugal, where at the time there was nothing of the kind, to go to something like CMS and come down [to New York City] to play with Tom, and Zorn was playing with Fred Frith in a small cellar – it was amazing,” he says. “It’s a town that’s very alive, it’s nothing to do with Lisbon. Here things are cooking, any corner you turn you discover something."

The musicians he met encouraged him to remain in New York, but Zingaro returned to Lisbon in 1979.

“Maybe unfortunately, I didn’t stay. I had this perception that something was possible in Portugal, but I was wrong,” he says with a laugh.

He still lives in Lisbon, in a historic neighborhood named for the green windows on the buildings. He shares a modest, fourth-floor walk-up in a 19th-century building with his wife and 16-year-old son (an aspiring violinist), and has a fifth-floor studio with a view of the Tigris. The 25th April bridge and the Cross of Portugal loom outside the windows. Opportunities have opened up in his homeland in the last 40 years, festivals and small clubs in Lisbon and Porto, and last year he made his first appearance at Lisbon’s well-funded Jazz em Agosto festival. He played in duo with the pianist Jorge Lima Barreto, another member of Portugal’s early improv community. The pair made a record 15 years earlier, but hadn’t played together since.

The summer of 2007 was also his first trip back to New York since a 1987 show at Roulette with Teitelbaum. These days, Zingaro has many working bands, but he appeared in June at the Vision Festival with one of his strongest, a quartet that came together at the suggestion of Pedro Costa, founder of the Portuguese label Clean Feed.

“Zíngaro is a close friend and to me the best violin player in improvised music,” Costa says of the band he built. “I'm a string quartet fan and I realized there's not so many of them in improvised music.

I traded the viola for the guitar but it's

almost the same kind of group sound.

I wanted a quartet with a very special sound so I picked Elliott Sharp, one of the more unique players I ever heard and capable of bringing a unique sound to the band. Ken Filiano is one of my favorite bass players. He's truly amazing constructing from zero. Tomas Ulrich was the last one to get on board but the connection between him and Ken made the difference. This quartet could go in any direction and that was one of the reasons I thought about this band.”

The band’s guitarist said he respected the role Costa played in helping to create TECK. “Pedro’s functioning very much in the traditional role of a producer, putting a group together, and it happened to work” Sharp says. “We joked about it being the Hot Club Quartet, which of course it doesn’t sound anything like. I think most musicians are less self-conscious of what the framing is and more conscious of it as music. It’s a constantly shifting environment of backgrounds and textures.

“Improvising is very social, and Carlos is very erudite on so many subjects,” he added. “Conversations with Carlos are really wonderful, they may touch on imperialism or art history or the philosophy of philosophy. Besides having a great knowledge of the instrument and a lot of stylistic approaches, he has great technique, and I like playing with someone who really knows their instrument. It’s a challenge.”

But for Zingaro, dealing with the concept of a string quartet, even augmented, was fraught with the trappings of the classical music he detached himself from years ago.

“I’m always slightly afraid of, even if I’m also fascinated with, the concept of string quartets," he confesses. "I love them, but because of the connections with classical music, academic music, I’m always trying to go sideways to the concept of strings.”

In this string quartet of sorts, Zingaro plays strong lines with big spaces between them, like someone giving instructions to a listener who speaks a different language, as if he wants to make sure everything was absorbed. His speech is somewhat the same. Eloquent even in English, he will make a point concisely, stop at the period and perhaps smile faintly – will his conversation partner say something or should he go on to his next point? Which course shall the conversation take next? Whatever the direction, and whether the discourse is verbal or musical, he will have more to say.

“Dialogue, even if it’s silence – listening is the most important thing about musical improvisation,” he said. “I love jazz, I love Stuff Smith, but I am from classical music and I don’t like this putting frames around music.

“I think that consciously or unconsciously I’ve been avoiding like hell any folkloristic or ethnic approach. Someone once said ‘there is something of fado in your music’ and I was climbing the walls.

I’ve been around – maybe there is something there but to tell you the truth I don’t care. I don’t like things to be pinpointed.

I’ve always been starving for things – all kinds of music and art." ✹ SIGNAL to NOISE #48 | 9

Warn Defever's grafts his brand of polyrhythmic electro-pop onto the Marion Brown songbook.

by Joel Calahan

HIS NAME IS ALIVE Warn Defever, songwriter, arranger, instrumentalist and guiding light for mercurial pop group His Name Is Alive, has a talent for obfuscation that could give a publicist night terrors. “In 1991, I was invited to CMJ to speak on a panel, but I didn’t know what the panel was about before I went on. First question: ‘Warn Defever: growing up outside the United States…’.”

The Livonia, MI native laughs. “I thought, ‘I’ll just go with it.’ So I told them I grew up in Canada.”

Or consider the brief biography on Defever’s Wikipedia page, which runs down a laundry list of childhood illnesses (including “collapsed lungs twice”) that “served to isolate him from other children at school because, as he claims, he was in the hospital so often that no one knew him well enough to befriend him.” Perhaps an insight into the enigmatic songwriter’s reclusive tendencies? “I copied it from Jessica Alba’s biography,” Defever gleefully reveals.

The mysterioso musician loves to play fast and loose with facts. Ask him about the spelling of his first name—Warn or Warren by different accounts—or the pronunciation of his latest pop album, Xmmer, and he’ll hem and haw before offering, “Just use whatever you want.”

That's fine, because facts won’t prepare you at all for his music. Like the majority of pop music’s great writers, Defever owes as much to imitation as he does to ingenuity.

Critics have seized upon bits of worn-out pop styles amid the polyrhythms and processed atmospheres of the band’s eight previous full-lengths. But Xmmer, selfreleased on Defever’s own Silver Mountain label, features a less varied approach than 10 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

other albums in his back catalog. “Repetitive,” is how Defever characterizes Xmmer.

“Simplistic. A little bit boring,” he chuckles. Fixated on rhythmic variation rather than stylistic reinvention, the album uses electronic instrumentation and singer Andrea FM’s breathy vocals as musical hooks.

Since their 1993 breakthrough Mouth by Mouth, His Name Is Alive has led rhythmfirst; Xmmer foregrounds this rhythmic insistence as a creative process, as each song is approached from entirely different trajectories.

The boundary between reworking style versus reflecting the influence of musical touchstones is fluid, as the second release of the year for His Name Is Alive demonstrates. Sweet Earth Flower is a collection of pieces by saxophonist Marion Brown, perhaps best known for his supporting role on John Coltrane’s landmark Ascension.

The tribute by His Name Is Alive features live tracks from a 2004 performance in Ann Arbor, MI as well as studio tracks reworked from the performance.

Through appearances with Coltrane, Archie Shepp, Pharaoh Sanders and others, Brown gained some reknown among jazzbos, but the majority of his own music is still out-of-print and woefully underappreciated. That’s partly Defever’s stake in the project, he says.

“Marion Brown never had his own band, he was always guesting and being featured with other bands and groups," Defever days. "There’s a sense that he never had time to get things fully together.

There’s just something about his work that I thought I could do something with. He does something few other similar improv musicians do, which is [that] he redoes

the same songs. So there’s a fluid notion of albums, of the recording process. And I thought, ‘Yeah, it’s OK to redo these things’.”

Following the influence of African music on Brown’s solo compositions, Defever recruited a session gang comprised of members of the Midwestern Afro-Cuban group Nomo. Sweet Earth Flower shows a softer side that doesn’t appear much on the steamrolling cuts typical of Nomo—the slowly-building “Juba Lee,” for example, works through sustained group drones that crescendo as individual instruments separate from the wall of sound. It’s every bit as intimate as Brown’s original.

Track after track, Sweet Earth Flower makes the impossible leap that Defever seemingly attempts in his style-mongering.

He can’t improve on Brown’s work, of course; instead, Defever reveals hidden aspects of the original—its meticulous polish, its attentive arrangement—that we may not have easily heard in Brown’s own recordings.

Perhaps this is Defever’s truest calling: he manages to reinterpret another’s music in a way that carries with it none of the dismissive claims of non-originality. As he talks about influential songs—“Rhapsody in Blue” was my song!” he exclaims, “Sometimes I wonder if Gershwin got in a time machine, flew forward to somewhere in the future and stole it from me!”— Defever loses the knowing twinkle of the yarn-spinner and sounds more like a fanatic. When he admits that much of his writing comes from trying to finish where other great songwriters left off, you have the sense that he’s finally telling you the truth. ✹

SIGNAL to NOISE #48 | 11

HAYES BIGGS

Joanna Eldredge Morrissey

The versatile composer, performer and academic writes for motley crews at the fringes of contemporary classical music. By Christian Carey In today's competitive environment, multitalented artists are increasingly valuable.

As a composer, vocalist, music copyist, writer, and teacher, Hayes Biggs fits right in. Born in Alabama and raised in Arkansas, Biggs studied piano at Rhodes College in Memphis and then went to Southern Methodist University for a master’s in composition. While in Memphis he studied composition privately with Don Freund, who had a profound influence on him as a composer. He came to New York in the 80s to earn his doctorate at Columbia University, and has since become one of the most sought after choral singers in the city.

He's performed and recorded works from Thomas Tallis's to Milton Babbitt's. Biggs was Associate Editor at music publishing house C.F. Peters for ten years. A dedicated and talented teacher, he’s on the faculty at the Manhattan School of Music. While all of these accomplishments are impressive in their own right, first and foremost Biggs considers himself a composer.

Biggs's compositions are just as versatile as their multi-talented creator. He has written works for orchestra, solo voice, chamber forces, and, of course, a great deal for choir. His pieces celebrate Biggs's omnivorous tastes while stating things with eloquent individuality.

“My music occupies the shadow world between tonality and atonality,” says Biggs. “I spend a great deal of time working out the materials for each piece I compose, especially the harmonies. While my language isn't conventionally tonal, I try to find sonorities that ground the music, implying pitch centers.”

Composer David Rakowski says, “Hayes's range is remarkable. He doesn't 12 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

repeat himself; he can write both the most subtle and elegant choral music and get a saxophone to wail away or a brass section to tear the roof off. And you always feel an underlying vocal impulse.”

An important recent performance of Biggs's music was by the Avalon String Quartet; the group premiered his First String Quartet at Merkin Hall in New York.

The quartet contained adroitly appealing string writing, evoking Bartók's quartets with its piquant polytonal chords and lively syncopated rhythms; it also displayed considerable lyricism, incorporating fragments of two vocal works: his motet, O Sapentia, and the spiritual Steal Away. The latter song is the centerpiece of its final movement, which serves as a memorial to Tony Garner, a choral director at Rhodes College who was a mentor to Biggs. Beginning with a unison statement of the tune, the piece blossoms into achingly beautiful harmonies; the progressions are carefully structured to build to a haunting climax. It epitomizes the craft and sensitivity which typifies Biggs's catalog. “It's a piece I'd like to see recorded,” says Biggs.

Sadly, recordings of Biggs's music are currently in short supply. One of his piano pieces, Tagrango, is slated to appear on a forthcoming CD of tangos by pianist Amy Dissanayake; she’ll also be performing the work at Symphony Space in New York in January ‘08. Biggs says, “Amy plays incredibly formidable pieces, seemingly without batting an eye, and yet the performances are passionate and powerful as well as clear and accurate. She is completely committed to the composer's vision, and a joy to work with to boot.”

Biggs currently has several composi-

tions in process, include a song cycle for Susan Narucki and Christopher Oldfather. The Locrian Chamber Players have commissioned a work from him for flute, violoncello, harp and piano. Biggs says, “I actually enjoy these motley assemblages, which I view as a challenge. Whenever I have such a group of timbres to deal with, I seek out and almost always find commonalities among the disparate instruments that I might never have imagined.”

On February 14, 2008, a piece for twelve instruments, including steel drum, will be premiered in New York at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall. Biggs says, “The as yet untitled fanfare for the Zero Gravity Ensemble is another one of those pieces for a motley crew of instruments. The steel pan is not quite as loud as you might think if your main experience of it is hearing it played in a small, enclosed space such as a subway car. Other instruments must, therefore, be kept out of the way to a certain extent. Still, the metallic quality should mesh well, I think, with the brassiness of the ensemble.” The piece also incorporates a Chinese opera gong. “I'm hoping that its amazing pitch bending capability will enhance the ensemble’s brassy and metallic qualities, as well as the general wackiness of the piece. The fanfare is really about ushering people back into Zankel as the intermission is ending; I have to get their attention, hence the brassiness and wackiness.”

The future looks like a steady stream of work for Biggs, who will, in all probability, be multi-tasking away: singing, teaching, writing, and crafting new pieces in his sophisticated yet emotionally appealing compositional language. ✹

SIGNAL to NOISE #48 | 13

Saxophonist and composer Joe Giardullo takes a fresh approach to democratic, collectively improvised music with a pair of new large-group releases.

Story by John Szwed. Photos by Libby McLinn.

ZONES OF CREATIVITY

14 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

Sometimes when I’m driving through upstate New York's Hudson Valley I get the feeling that if I stopped at any house in any village and knocked on the door, that an artist or a poet or a musician would be there to greet me ... something like the way it worked for Alan Lomax when he went looking for folk singers and found innumerable zones of creativity throughout the rural countryside.

It’s only my fantasy, but one day last spring I walked into a recording studio in Rhinebeck called The Clubhouse where a 15-piece orchestra had assembled to play the music of saxophonist and composer Joe Giardullo, and I wondered where else outside of our biggest city could you find this kind of talent and this kind of music? Could there be a Hudson Valley School of Music, like there once was of painting? Or is it that these musicians are just far enough removed from the metropolis of New York to put that city’s music in perspective, just free enough to be able to rethink it? As it turned out, only half of them were from the area, but the fantasy’s still there: I can’t imagine music like this being recorded in New York or in any other major city today.

Giardullo, like many of the Hudson Valley’s residents, was born somewhere else, in Brooklyn, in fact, and raised on Long Island’s south shore. He grew up playing rhythm and blues, a music he was drawn to by its directness and honesty. Later, in the heat of the sixties, he studied briefly with Don Cherry and Leo Smith, and then began seven years of immersion in the rhythms of Indian music. Meanwhile, he worked in society bands like Lester Lanin’s and did a stint in the house band at Peg Leg Bates’ Country Club, the only Catskills resort for a black clientele.

Giardullo worked his way over to Amsterdam in 1977, just in time to be caught up in the flux of the free jazz scene there. Back in the US again, he found a job in Woodstock as a music transcriber for Anthony Braxton’s Music for Four Orchestras project, where Braxton introduced him to the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen.

With encouragement from Paul Bley, Giardullo made his first record, Gravity, a collection of pieces for small orchestra. Few people in the jazz world of 1979 would have known what to make of that recording, but one who did was critic Francis Davis, who admitted he knew nothing about the musicians, but praised it as “collectively improvised and democratic in spirit. . . a mobile music, with one voice – or two or three – rising above the others, then receding, then rising again in different, shifting combinations.” To describe it, he said, would require borrowing from the language of painting. Just so, for Giardullo came to the music with painterly sensibilities, fascinated by seeing and hearing how form is shaped by technique, and by the sheer physicality of the artists. He was drawn by the relationship of the elements within the frame, and by the parallels between the non-referentiality of painting and of music. That record was the first of what he would call his "Gravity Music," pieces built on ideas that emerged from his interest in questions he had about what you might call the architecture of music -- what holds tones together? what keeps them apart? – questions that had surfaced while studying George Russell’s The Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization.

In 1981, the cycles of life led Giardullo to

lay out from music for a while, raise a family, and lead the life of a businessman. It was only a chance meeting in a club with multiinstrumentalist Joe McPhee, his neighbor 20 miles to the south in the Valley, that brought him back ten years later, and the two of them have played and recorded together ever since. In 2000 both joined Pauline Oliveros in her Deep Listening projects in nearby Kingston. And over the last five years there have been a burst of small group recordings, most of them issued on the Virginia-based Drimala label, that put his brilliance at constructing distinctive saxophone lines on display: Language of Swans (2002), Shadow & Light (recorded September 11th, 2001 and released in 2002), Art Spirit (2003), Now Is (2003), and his solo CD in 2005 dedicated to Steve Lacy, No Work Today. But during this period he’d also been working in the studio with chamber orchestras on his G2 music, a fresh approach to collective improvisation/composition.

The results are just beginning to appear on record, and they are sonic witnesses to Giardullo’s returning to tell the tale of his musical encounters and life experiences.

Red Morocco, recorded in 2005 and 2006, and just released on Rogue Art, was music for 14 instruments, based on minimal written material that was sometimes more visual than musical, more melodic than rhythmic.

In the studio everyone was seated in the same room, in a circle –reeds, trumpets, guitars, violins, cellos, piano, percussion and xylophone, but no rhythm section. The music on the record occurred late in the day, when Giardullo felt a certain clarity was beginning to develop. Everyone may have been tired, but they weren't stressed out, for Giardullo is a gentlemen in the studio: he quietly asks the musicians to be gracious in allowing things to happen, to resist the need to lead or to react to everything around them. At times he asked the musicians to not listen to those around them. Rather, they should be committed to whatever they are doing, no matter how small it is, for “small ideas can be strong if you are committed to them.” But this was not about instant composition as it is usually understood. In Giardullo’s orchestral world what a musician does next doesn’t necessarily need to be related to what he or she just did.

To make his kind of collective improvisation work, he is asking them to give up attitude, ego, and sometimes even what it is that makes them the musicians they are.

Someday there will be a history of modern music that will free us from false dichotomies like high/low, improviser/composer, classical/ non-everything. Jazz history is especially in need of revision because it has its own false distinctions, one of the most pernicious of which is the big orchestra vs. the small group.

Large orchestras, it is said, require written scores because otherwise the musicians can’t cohere musically. Some others have said that jazz is an improviser’s art, and soloists can only shine in small groups. Giardullo quietly goes about ignoring such clumsy binary restrictions, and sets out to find what musicians can actually do in larger settings.

The day I walked into that studio in Rhinebeck, Giardullo was passing out written materials for what would become The Pearl Road (forthcoming from Mode Records).

The strings, horns, reeds, electric keyboard, and guitar were seated in a circle, along

with something new for Giardullo’s music, samplers and laptop. In two separate rooms there were a drummer and two percussionists. The setup was such that the musicians in the main room could not hear the rhythm instruments, the electronics, or, for that matter, the whole ensemble. And neither could Giardullo, who was strolling the room, listening to individual parts from different angles.

This was a session of high risk, right up there with Sun Ra’s Strange Strings, what Ra called his “exercise in ignorance,” where musicians were given exotic stringed instruments to play that they had never even heard of before. Music made this way is risky, but also matter of trust, because trust is a key concept in Giardullo’s orchestral music. He asks the musicians he works with to abandon much of what their music education has been about.

Giardullo suggests that they approach this music by allowing things to happen around them. In his music what a musician does next need not be related to what he or she just did, and the concept of the solo has to be redefined. “There’s a good chance that you won’t get the opportunity to play your shit, that thing you do,” he warns. What he wants from them is a leap of faith, and a refusal to be judgmental about what they are hearing: “Let the density of the music come from how many people are playing. . . . . don’t think about when to play. . . . . let’s not let one sound dominate – strings, brass, whatever. . . . . don’t be afraid to not play. . . and don’t be too much of an editor. . . . . if you feel like rescuing the piece, don’t play.”

Only occasionally does he attempt to redirect the flow of the music, when he is thinking of the larger results At one point, he asked for “more air, more space in everyone’s playing.” At another, “I’d like to hear rhythm develop. If you make a choice and stick with it, a pattern will develop in the ensemble.

Hopefully, by the end, it should dance. I’m thinking of a Jackson Pollack painting: it’s not the details you notice.” At still another point he said, “Try playing in different registers.”

Giardullo suggested time limits for the pieces, sometimes as short as two minutes, and planned to signal the time, but remarkably, many times everyone stopped at the same moment, once even on the same tone, without being signaled.

“I’d like the musicians who play my music to be uneasy -- not about their own situation, but about the totality of it,” he tells me later.

“This music is intended to be non-hierarchical. If you play it from a personal perspective it won’t work.” As the session went on, the ensemble seemed looser, less cautious.

When the first playbacks were started during a break, most of the musicians gathered around the board to hear what they hadn’t yet heard. The real sound of surprise.

Included on The Pearl Road is “Verbs-1,” a piece dedicated to sculptor Richard Serra,.

The title refers to a Serra work in which he collected rolls of rubber, then, looking for some way to turn them into art, began making a list of verbs like “lift” and “punch,” and then turned the words into actions. Giardullo’s “Verbs-1” is played as a series of ten modules, each with directions such as “long tones, left to right,” “unstable timbre,” and “equal sound and silence.” The written material for the piece is two sequences of tones that rise and fall, and each musician chooses to draw on a single line for each module they SIGNAL to NOISE #48 | 15

play, and can change musical lines only when they change to a different module, which they can do at any time. “Autumn Rhythm,” dedicated to Jackson Pollock, is a series of short passages, each of which contains nine notes with no duration indicated, some of them in sequence, others overlapping, still others staggered, from which each musician can chose or not to chose to play. “15 Compositions (Traditional)” is a short piece dedicated to Anthony Braxton, and lasts only two minutes, during which each player is asked to choose a folk tune and play it as the same time as all the other musicians play theirs The focus is on the tone sequence.

Giardullo's only direction was, “If I can recognize what you’re playing, you’re not playing it right.” (The idea came from Marilyn Crispell’s account of playing in the Anthony Braxton Quartet when he asked them to each pick a pop tune and play it at the same time as the others.)

The results are an elegant, shimmering, ringing music, like colors spiking across the plane of a Monet canvas, or spinning as if it were a piece of Calder’s kinetic art; a constantly evolving, deeply sonic performance, collectively improvised, yes, but decentered; a self-organizing musical system, with minimal input or constraints from outside, a music that is emergent in its details, though not in its form. Giardullo is willing into existence a music that occurs beyond his control. John Cage and his followers early on questioned the logic of the music they had inherited from Europe and the social matrix in which it was set, and sought a new way by deemphasizing the composer’s role, and even the performer’s, by putting the weight of the musical experience on the listener. They assumed that every sound is already musical, and all that was needed was to provide a situation that will allow every sound to go with any other.

Indeterminacy was sometimes the result, surrendering of all control to chance.

But this is not Giardullo’s method. Like Braxton, who never fully accepted chance procedures because he values a vision of music that resulted from musicians relating to each other and to the world, Giardullo is finding a way for musicians to be themselves while serving a larger cause. This means he has to surround himself with players who are accomplished, but also open, generous, free to take chances, and willing to be themselves, no matter what. “I want people to be completely independent of the ensemble,” he says, “who play with individual clarity and strong ideas. They are the ones who have to decide when and what to play.”

Red Morocco and The Pearl Road have their sonic precursors – Webern, maybe, Stockhausen, but also Braxton, New Orleans polyphony, African drum groups, Thelonious Monk's “Misterioso,” and Wayne Shorter's “Nefertiti.” In other words, music that is as much the product of an aesthetic as it is an ethic, a way of relating to other people. And this is the ultimate lesson of jazz... ✹ John Szwed is a professor of anthropology and African American Studies at Yale University and the recipient of a 2006 Grammy award for his book Doctor Jazz, included with Jelly Roll Morton: The Complete Library of Congress Recordings with Alan Lomax. This is his first feature for Signal to Noise.

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SIGNAL to NOISE #48 #47 | 17

KEEPER OF THE FLAME SInger-songwriter Devendra Banhart and his hirsute band of collaborators gathered in Topanga Canyon to create a psychedelic blend of Tropicalia and massed strings alongside roots and folk musics. Dennis Cook speaks with Banhart and his associates including Linda Perhacs, Matteah Baim, Andy Cabic, Greg Rogove and Rio en Media and dismantles the 'freak-folk' myth. Photos by Dustin Fenstermacher.

Devendra Banhart is the flame that draws the moths closer. It seems as though people can't help but flutter into his invisible steam in the hopes of catching his psychic updraft. Standing at the back of Santa Cruz's Rio Theatre in early September, you could see the gravitational rush towards him before he'd even said a word or played a note. Simply stepping on stage, accompanied by his ragtag dandies, prompted a quiet stampede.

Without ruckus, the wide-eyed cardigan boys and gypsy-skirted girls pressed in, smiling in moist anticipation.

“The spirit around Devendra and his friends is to live and breathe music,” says Linda Perhacs, the revered folk-rocker whose solitary release, 1970's Parallelograms, earned her an ardent cult following. Perhacs recently returned to music and shares a budding creative relationship 18 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

with Banhart. “The friendship is deep and soulful, and everyone who comes there feels refreshed. 'Charisma' and 'mystic' are words often used to describe an essence we do not always fully understand.

I feel it is the measure of the amount of pure soul energy flowing deeply through a person's life.

“In Devendra,” continues Perhacs, “this deepness of soul is so immediately evident in his eyes and throughout his whole lifestyle. When you look at him, you know he is an older soul in the early part of this life. He is very advanced in his tastes and perceptions, and when you hear his music or see his artwork or when you are around him, you sense that he longs to ultimately express so much more and more and more of the reservoir inside him.”

Upstairs in the dressing room before

the show, this impulse to be near Banhart plays out in an oddly formal way, each courtier patiently waiting their turn for his attentions, listening with interest to his animated exchanges. Tall and full of wooly charm, he cuts an imposing figure despite an innate delicacy that makes one want to hold him like fine china or delicate teak. No one wants to be the one who breaks him, so everyone treats him with care. With impossibly deep eyes and a placeless accent that speaks to his cross-continental upbringing, the 26-yearold singer-songwriter makes you lean in, sharing easy laughter and offhand wisdom in a deliciously conspiratorial way. When he's talking with you he is completely present despite the ever-turning wheels inside his beautiful head.

Out touring behind his fifth full-length album, Smokey Rolls Down Thunder

SIGNAL to NOISE #48 | 19

Devendra Banhart in Philadelphia, September 2007

Canyon (released September 25th on XL Records), his awareness of the power of the unfolding now comes through in a story about an itinerant Black Crowe's performance on “a fun song about flags for dancing people.”

“When we recorded these songs we had all these beautiful, serendipitous, open moments,” recalls Banhart, “like when Chris Robinson – who lives five minutes away – swung by and added a level of authenticity by playing the charango, which is a Argentinean-Peruvian-Chilean indigenous instrument. The body of it is an armadillo. Somehow his first take gives [”Samba Vexillographica”] an incredible sense of authenticity. That was awesome, and it's all part of collaborating with the moment, being open to that who-knowswhatness that makes a record feel alive.

I'm Venezuelan and I play a traditional Venezuelan instrument, the Quatro, but it doesn't compare to Chris' first take charango jam out. He fuckin' shreds on it."

From his first steps onto the public stage with his 2002 debut, Oh Me Oh My…, on Michael Gira's Young God label, there have been many who've tried to crown Banhart the monarch of a movement that some, music critics mostly, have dubbed “freak-folk", a modern brand of psychedelic hippieness. It's a role he resists to the utmost, preferring always to hobnob with the hoi polloi instead of dining with aristocracy. This may be no easy task as his star continues to rise, including his recent hook-up with Elliot Roberts, Neil Young's longtime manager. Banhart is quick to point out, “He has nothing to do with the music. Elliot lets me do whatever I want. He gives me advice on what interview to do or when my license has expired. But, his whole purpose is to help me deal with everything that has nothing to do with music so I can focus on music."

The proof to Banhart's words is found in Smokey Rolls, his most cohesive and artistically dexterous outing yet. While his work has always dipped far outside the folk and indie rock worlds in which he's best known, Smokey Rolls throws vigorous tendrils out to roots reggae, sock hop groovers, heady Tropicalia, '70s soft rock and his ancestral forebears in Topanga Canyon, where he and a number of his crew recently moved and recorded the new album, which carries some of the mood and electric creativity of vintage David Crosby, Michael Nesmith and Joni Mitchell when they inhabited the same dramatic geography in Southern California. Within Smokey's grooves one finds Banhart fearlessly probing what he and his collaborators are capable of. Nothing in his earlier catalog suggested a swinging, unforced epic like “Seahorse,” which 20 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

gently opens with the line, “I'm high and I'm happy and I'm free,” then rises with an unrushed pulse into an aquatic companion piece to Dave Brubeck's “Take Five” and The Monkees' “Porpoise Song.”

Somehow, he's able to merge seemingly disparate elements into something that tastes better than a butterscotch daydream.

“It's a world of what's already out there,” explains Banhart. “What you are is the chooser, the picker. The words exist and the chords exist and the colors exist.

You're just making choices. That's the outer world. Then, in the interior world, in the microcosmos, it's about how I perceive that experience. This is the world of vibrational giggles and it's like firefly hunting or something.”

It takes a weird magic act to pull the elements together – one's own worldly observations, the things you want to do musically, all the myriad personal, artistic and social influences – in a crucible that eventually produces a composition. “My definition of the word 'magic' is the one place where the microcosmic and the macrocosmic cross paths, the moment where they intersect. Art is a snapshot of that,” Banhart says. “I just hope there's something [listeners] can relate to. I don't think anyone wants to be preached at. There's a real thin line in the whole singer-songwriter thing. When you've experienced something and you're singing about it, there's something magical when it works for someone else. When Neil Young writes a song about his friend years ago but I listen to it today and it hits me and I'm so effected by it and I know exactly what he means and it makes everything brighter, well, it's all the magic of music when it doesn't have an expiration date.”

Breathless run-on musings like the one above are common when you're talking with Banhart, if he's genuinely fired up.

He can also be pithy and pointed, choosing his thoughts with an intensity that borders on consternation. He's a free spirit but he's no wildfire. His flame burns with the measured intensity one recognizes in long running creators like Dylan, Young and, closer to home for him, beloved underground troubadour Michael Hurley, who's new album was put out recently by Gnomonsong, the small label curated by Banhart and running partner Andy Cabic of Vetiver. However, unlike the über egos at work in Young & Dylan, Banhart has a ridiculously generous spirit that lustily embraces the ideas of everyone around him.

However, this active overlapping of talents has inspired many to label Banhart, Cabic and others in their circle as hippies, starry-eyed musical throwbacks given the

'freak-folk' tag they universally despise.

“It seems to me that 'folk' alone is a very tricky term,” observes Rio en Medio, another Banhart creative foil that put out her debut, The Bride of Dynamite, on Gnomonsong. “It can mean 'populist,' 'political,' 'rural,' 'acoustic,' 'simplistic,' 'nature-inspired,' 'self-taught' and so on.

It can reference a very bland 'singer-songwritery' genre or it can evoke music from other times, other places. 'Acid-folk' to me sounds vaguely retro and 'freak-folk' slightly derogatory. I guess the latter emphasizes the individualistic nature of what some of us do, but I don't think the goal is to 'be different' or freak anyone out. One thing that I think does unite many of the people who are often lumped together under the 'freak-folk' umbrella is a focus on voice and language. People might say expression is valued over technique, although I'd argue that someone like Devendra is as skilled as he is inspired.

Personally, I am just trying to give way to something greater than myself.”

“They make a cosmology of a scene and then try to justify your place in it,” says Cabic. “Often they only hear one affect or reference point, like I couldn't figure out why people would mention Marc Bolan when they wrote about Vetiver.

For the life of me, I couldn't understand how that would happen. I have a song with the line, 'Put on a tape with Marc Bolan and Vashti,' and I realized that, my god, they might have understood that line to be our touchstones. Of course, I love both those artists but they don't have much going on for me when I write songs.”

Matteah Baim of Death's Groove and Metallic Falcons - whose solo debut, the exhilarating and toughly haunting Death of the Sun, Banhart calls his favorite record this year – adds, “I wouldn't know where my music fits in. I know I want to sit down with the peace pipe and my peers and trip it out as we hang out, agenda free. If I was to give the music I make a name today it would be 'midevil rhythm and blues.' But, I've always wanted to make some 'epic surf rock' so I'm hoping for that one day.”

“I had dinner with one of the assistants to the Indian guru who named me,” Banhart says. “I walked in, and he hadn't seen me since I was eight, and he said, 'People used to call you hippies but I used to call you happy.' I'm not a hippie.

I'm a happy. In whatever the hippie world is I and the people I work with are marginal characters. We are so far from that world but at the same time I don't feel there's a scene, a world or a clique we do belong to. There's just us and being.”

“The only thing is a strange and beau-

SIGNAL to NOISE #48 | 21

Hairy Fairies, left to right: Greg Rogove, Pete Newsom, Lucky Remington, Noah Georgeson (foreground), Andy Cabic

tiful twitch where we're even in magazines and on record labels,” continues Banhart.

“Throughout the '90s the vibe was just getting behind whoever could get ahead.

There is a sense of community among us because everybody plays on each other's albums and we cover each other's songs.

A Welsh journalist put it perfectly. She tried to encapsulate everything and say there's a scene but in the end she said, raising a fist, 'It's more like bring on the confusion.' And I thought, 'Holy shit, you really hit it.' It's not like any of us has an agenda. I'm not thinking about commercial success at all.”

What more open-minded listeners will hear in Banhart, Hurley, Baim and the rest of their extended family is the itch of the universe getting at them, and when they 22 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

scratch it unpredictable things get out.

Banhart jumps in, saying, “I'd like to add the word 'giggle' to 'itch.' What I find so disturbing is say there's a joke song on the record, and, by all means, there are joke songs on Smokey. Somehow that discredits the honest songs that aren't joke songs. Hell, jokes are honest, too!

Since when is a joke a lie?”

For an artist who's long appreciated a good nursery rhyme or scrap of doggerel poetry, new tracks like the naughty American Graffiti ditty “Lover” or “Shabop Shalom,” the tale of a Jamaican boy who falls for a Jewish princess, are just his response to that giggle, aspects of himself no longer stifled by worries of the reaction of others. Another area he's showing greater freedom in lately is his willingness

to embrace his multilingual nature. A decent chunk of Smokey Rolls isn't in English, which has put some writer's tits in a twist.

“It seems so weird that could be seen as a negative thing,” observes Banhart.

“Since when is music NOT the universal language? What does it matter what tongue it's in? I'm not trying to exclude anybody by singing in Spanish. It's a natural tongue to me, and some songs come in Spanish. It depends on what culture I've experienced first hand or even what music I'm listening to. For example, I lived for a while in Melilla in the northernmost tip of Africa in Morocco. I wrote a song in Arabic when we got back, and that felt very natural, very normal when it happened, and it'll be on the next record.

It's just an eight-minute long jam, a dirge or mantra thing, very repetitive. Ali Farka Toure and Tinariwen have that kind of meditative, hypnotic repetition. This isn't my attempt at novelty or showing off. We lived in that country, in that culture, with that people, and the song was born from that.”

Having a home base after years of endless drifting played a huge role psychologically on Smokey Rolls, which is the first album he's ever recorded entirely in one place, save for one song ("Seaside") recorded on a schooner. A sense of relaxed solidity infuses these new recordings. “I think that has something to do with us not going into a studio. We built our own, and did it under our own rules, using our own people. This is literally such a homemade record,” explains Banhart. “We wanted to find the Bearsville [the famous Woodstock, New York recording studio] of the West Coast and we couldn't. The afternoon before we went house hunting with Terry Reid's exwife, Cindy Reid - who's an awesome real estate agent and person - we had Birdie Lawson, who sings with Matteah Baim, read the tarot for us and she gave us the exact address of this perfect house.”

They haven't given it a name yet, superstitious of losing this wondrous place they're building together. When pressed Banhart says, “How about Spiritual Boner? Let it rise and ring out. Welcome to Spiritual Boner. May we plow your fecundate, flowering fields?” Not long after this conversation this name resurfaces at the start of the fall tour, retooled as the band's new name. After a plethora of temporary monikers including the Hairy Fairies, the hirsute group - who resemble a mish mash of Elizabethan & Old West highwaymen as much as rock 'n' rollers – adopted the erectile title and it appears to have stuck the first few legs of what is likely to be a Rolling Thunder style never ending world tour. They've added a silent “z” at the end for a splash of glam flair.

Drummer Greg Rogove, on loan from Priestbird, discusses the Bonerz's sartorial bent. “You need that moment of switching yourself on to bring out those parts of yourself that maybe don't work so well in the regular world out onto the stage, more of your spirit being getting out.

You have to be able to share the secret that everyone has publicly,” says Rogove, who drummed on Smokey Rolls and has nothing but good things to say about his work with Banhart. “He's a fantastic collaborator. He exhibits the perfect balance of knowing what he wants and giving us the freedom to express our own creative voices. Plus, it's always a pleasure to work with someone who wears a magician's cape and nothing else."

Watching Banhart discuss transitions and nuances of their increasingly refined live set with his bandmates, it's clear he's slowly accepting his role as leader and letting go of some of his ingrown fan instincts. At times, he seems more enthusiastic about his peers' work than his own, but one suspects that's just an attempt to sidestep overt personal ego.

During the two days we spent together

Banhart repeatedly jumped out of the way of himself, creating room for others to shine and bypassing the cult of personality he could so easily reign over. Knowing this will be a cover story he makes me promise to include his new sonic enthusiasms since moving to Los Angeles. “This is important to me,” he says with uncharacteristic hardness. Currently flipping his wig in L.A. is Hecuba, Entrance, Lavender Diamond, The Icarus Line, Winter Flowers and Mountain Party – all kindred spirits that share Banhart's love of broad dynamics and welcoming nature to the quieter things.

“The space inside music is where the story is really told,” comments Baim.

“When you're in the silence surrounded by sound, it's like being held in the arms of music while it whispers in your ears.

You can feel the secret breathing of the song in your own. It's like those moments of grace while your ice skating.” “[Devendra] purposely places areas of space and silence in his music because he knows we need space and silence in order to reflect inwardly, and to contrast all the noise and confusion in our lives,” Perhacs says. Rio en Medio adds, “My favorite thing in the world is when a song becomes a space where things arise and events take place in real time and in configurations that seem to shift with every listen. As an artist you create the world, the players, the circumstances, and then you watch what happens. Andy's voice is so delicate and beautiful. Whether he aspires to sing that way or it is just his nature I couldn't say. Devendra's magical sense of melody and reverence for the world is likewise a mystery. I don't think anyone is trying to make quiet music. In fact, it would probably be a lot easier if we were all a bit louder!"

Banhart's music has been compared to that of the Beatles on numerous occasions. While there are surface similarities on some early tracks and a cheeky toss away actually titled “The Beatles” on his previous release Cripple Crow ("Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr are the only Beatles in the world/Do you feel like dancing, are you getting hungry/Do you wanna be my girl?") but where he truly overlaps with the Fab Four is how each album is a personal revolution. Rubber Soul isn't A Hard Day's Night by a long shot but who could have seen Revolver coming after Rubber Soul or Sgt. Pepper's after that? None of the Beatles later albums was made with commercial concerns at the forefront, and it's the feeling of personal discovery and play, wonder and experimentation that make them endure. As Banhart evolves on vinyl one catches much the same spark.

“Each record is a document of the experiences they were going through at the time of recording. They're real documents of what's happening spiritually, physically and emotionally to each band member,” offers Banhart. “At the same time, there's the seed of it, which comes from some exterior universe, though the second layer of that seed is the inner & outer universes of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, for the most part. It's a document of them, but, of course, it gets

attached to a time because it has a huge impact on people. The Beatles were harmoniously expressing both the macrocosmos and microcosmos. It's a very good balance. It's the voice a universal howl.”

“In either Lame Deer Seeker of Visions or Black Elk Speaks, there's a little paragraph that says, look around, God loves circles. The bird's nest is in a circle. The sun is in a circle. Our human experiences are cyclical. You'll have moments of goofing around & joking and then some heavy news will get dropped on you and it's a heavy moment. So, why not make records true to all those cyclical experiences? It's a bumpy maze full of giggles and tears in ascending and descending tiers. I guarantee, depending on where your mind & spirit is at any moment, each turn will reveal a different epiphany or experience.”

Banhart plants all his philosophizing in a concrete example that grounds these winged notions nicely.

“I've always been shocked by my first reaction to Gillian Welch's Time (The Revelator). I was at Tower Records and it was in the listening station and I hated it, just couldn't stand it. Jump to a year later, I'm living on the street, and luckily someone put me up on a couch somewhere in Queens. They had a copy of Time (The Revelator), and it was all I had access to so I gave it a chance and it blew my mind!

It's now one of my favorite records of all time. It's very strange but we have to be compassionate to our younger selves. I think that's why I'm so attracted to Native American poetry and writing, which teaches us to walk with compassion.

And I suppose it's why I'm interested in Hindu spirituality because it preaches that love, happiness and compassion should not be dependent on anything but you.

People say they're happy because they have kids or a certain job but it shouldn't be because of anything it should just be because."

At one point in the dressing room in Santa Cruz, the chatter subsides as Devendra sits in a plain wooden chair, legs crossed with a guitar cradled against his chest the way many a young patchouli queen has dreamed about. He sings so low he appears to be whispering into the wood as his long, expressive hands smolder on the strings like dancers in tight step.

Most of the people in the room, mainly tour personnel and members of Spiritual Bonerz and their paramours, go about their business with hushed indifference.

They respect Banhart enough to keep it down but they've clearly been around for many such solo interludes. A few of us are stopped in our tracks, grateful to be present for such talented intimacy.

When he looks up, he smiles, taking in our gawking with gentle grace. Devendra Banhart is getting used to being stared at these days, content if not comfortable beneath a spotlight that readily swings his way with increasing frequency. ✹ Dennis Cook lives in Sunnyvale, CA and is also an editor at Jambase.com. He wrote about Comets on Fire in STN#44.

SIGNAL to NOISE #48 | 23

Brooklyn's Black Dice have grown up, grown out and blown their load on their new album. Is their aggressive, distorted blend of noise, hip-hop and post-punk really the new mainstream music? Story by Kory Grow, Photos by Shawn Brackbill.

ON A ROLL

24 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

“It was a nightmare,” says Black Dice’s Bjorn Copeland, the band’s scruffy blonde multi-instrumentalist. During the recording of Load Blown, the trio's latest album, the bases were loaded, and a major player almost struck out. “My shit started breaking.

The only custom-made piece of equipment that we have, which is my main jam for the whole album, crapped out.” For what was already a difficult session, with the band under pressure to record new material that would link the contents of two independently recorded EPs (2006's Manoman and 2007's Roll Up) for a full-length release—the loss of Copeland's 10-step sequencer, built from scratch by his former label-mate, muti-media artist and electronician Gavin Russom, could have brought the entire project to a dead stop.

With Russom in Berlin, the band took a breath and challenged themselves as they hadn’t before. The Brooklyn-based sonic experimenters, known for their distorted, avant-garde interpretations of everything from hip-hop to post-punk—usually all at the same time—would normally have no problem rejiggering their malleable symphonies, especially in their early stages.

But “Scavenger,” with its warbling static tangents and vocals perfectly balancing the clash of influences on Blown Load, depended on a guitar part—a sound captured on the sequencer—that had existed for weeks. Everything Bjorn had written and everything the band had rehearsed hinged on the contents of that box.

Additional key pieces involving the unit hadn’t even been played for the others at that point, and now it was ripped open, unusable.

“I felt like I had just come into the studio with no ideas and felt a shitload of pressure all of a sudden,” Bjorn says.

“But the one thing that was hard for me to remember is that one of the best things about the band was that it isn’t just one person’s thing.” Eric and Warren re-imagined their contributions to the song, abandoning the structure they had established on recent tours. As it turned out, Russom flew back from Berlin to fix the sampler, and the band used it slightly differently than they'd intended on the song. The result is a skittish, echo-laden collage of rhythm and melody, tuning in like a radio between stations. Despite the anxieties attached to its recording, Bjorn now likes the song, which he sees as a kind of turning point on the album.

Such were the travails that plagued the recording of Load Blown, the trio's fourth official full-length and first for Paw Tracks, the label run by their friends in Animal Collective. Looking back, it was one of their most tedious to make. This album, more than any of their previous, represents change and struggle. After a decadeplus of music, they’re still challenging themselves as musicians and their listeners. No longer the college students that formed the band, their art has remained their master: none has a day job, they tour constantly and they each have their own extracurricular artistic endeavors.

As they’ve grown older, each musical statement has become more meaningful.

The band’s past 10 years, and especially the two years separating 2005’s Broken Ear SIGNAL to NOISE #48 | 25

Record [DFA] and Load Blown, have lead them to realizations about their recording and writing processes; if the new album isn't drastically different from past releases, it's certainly their most precise in its execution.

Formed in 1997 with a punkier manifesto, Bjorn, along with his brother Eric— who looks like Bjorn, but skinnier, and more clean-cut—and two other members who have since left, built reputations for their sonic and physical assaults; with Aaron Warren, who has long, dark hair and a beaming smile, they have formed a unit that could turn the formal notions of popular music and songwriting, not to mention avant-garde experimentation, upside down.

“I accept a lot of my shortcomings in a way that maybe I didn’t before,” says Eric, who is sitting in a venue restroom, having just finished a solo set opening up for Animal Collective. “I feel like I’m dealing with Bjorn and Aaron in a way that I haven’t always been. It’s a sort of intense relationship, and I think that all of a sudden all of us can get in a room and talk about music like it’s not music in a way, and I think that’s very healthy for us… Maybe it’s just a confidence thing. All of us have gotten a little more confident and involved in the process.”

If art is a culmination of experiences— one’s own or through observation—Black Dice’s past two years have been especially fruitful. For every unfortunate event (and broken instrument), good fortune shone on the band as well. Warren got married.

Bjorn’s art was shown at P.S.1, an influential contemporary art museum in Queens that has ties to Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art. Eric garnered positive reviews for his solo release Hermaphrodite. And the band collectively released Gore, a book compiling the members' individual and collaborative artwork.

“I feel like it was a very honest approach,” says Eric about the recording of Load Blown. “We’re just broke all the time.

We can never get shit together. It was a really hard record to just commit fully to, but I know we all have to and we have to maintain a personal and financial life. It sucks to talk about but it’s sort of where we’re at right now. We don’t make any money or anything. It’s a struggle to work on.”

Seated in Aaron Warren’s apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, he and Bjorn alternate between ambivalence and optimism about the past few years’ events.

The successes have been exhilarating and the trying times have been difficult.

As Bjorn relaxes, Warren approaches his turntables—set up for a DJ, with !!! slipmats—and places the stylus on a record by “oogum boogum” soul man Brenton Wood; later he plays a comp called Cosmic Dancer Voyage One, which contains a “special rock version” of a cover of Jethro Tull’s “Locomotive Breath.” As each side ends, Warren carefully turns the LP over; his taste in music is as varied as that which he plays. His apartment itself is a testament to polyglot pop culturalism. Next to an exposed brick wall, a bookshelf contains books with books the likes of a Lester Bangs anthology, tomes about Warhol, 26 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

Larry McMurtry’s The Last Picture Show and Last Night a DJ Saved My Life. The walls are covered with Black Dicey art and the furniture could easily fit in the display at a vintage shop. It’s the perfect shrine to eclecticism and a fitting metaphor for what inspires Black Dice’s music.

As they talk, one experience in particular seems to have reaffirmed the group’s faith in their music: their trip to South America in late 2006. Invited to play the TIM Festival in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, the band obliged, feeling it was their duty to bring something different to a bill of artists that included TV on the Radio, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Daft Punk. For a festival that cost concertgoers hundreds of dollars in American currency, the band did their best to give them their money’s worth.

Tropicália propagator Caetano Veloso performed an impromptu set right after the band, which solidified the night’s importance to them as artists. But as thrilling as the high-profile festival was, it couldn’t compare with what they experienced in Lima, Peru.

Performing a free show at an art gallery, it was the polar opposite of the Rio show.

“The fact is, it’s really weird music, but if you put it in the right context, all of a sudden people can hear it in a different way,” Bjorn explains. “For some people you need to present a really heavy-duty noisy rock show and that’s how they connect to it, and [for] other people you play it in an art museum” Most exciting, however, was how well the audience seemed to know their music. “When they curated the thing, they just did a really good job,” says Warren. “[The promoters] knew a lot about us already going into it, when they brought us down there, and they did a shitload of press; it was like national press and national TV and stuff. It was really mainstream.

They presented us as if we were this—” “Popular rock band,” Bjorn says, without missing a beat.

“People were excited about the performance afterwards,” says Warren. “People from the museum were like, ‘This is really rare to see all these people just hanging out and talking.’ It just seemed like it was a really special event. Even though that thing in Rio made it possible for us to go down there, this was almost like a flipside of it, that was totally inclusive. It was really special, this noncommercial event completely.”

During the visit, a gaggle of over a dozen South American indie 'zine editors followed them around. The band found that they were knowledgeable about their music, as well as that of obscure bands like ’60s Japanese experimentalists Taj Mahal Travellers and psychedelic New Yorkers Silver Apples. “They know everything because of the internet and they know every release,” says an elated Warren. “They’ve got everything for free. It’s awesome! What I found when I was in Peru is it’s the most awesome side of illegal file sharing and trading and shit like that, because it’s just like buying music is an impossible expense for living down there. You can’t afford it.”

“The guy who brought us down… is really smart about how he did it,” says Bjorn. “He talked this national pop music show into letting us play on national televi-

sion. And like while we were playing, these people were looking around like, ‘Is this the music? Are they playing?’ So in some ways, unbeknownst to us, we kind of came in through the back door a little bit. For us, it was kind of a landmark trip… It really felt, to me, like what it felt like on the first couple tours, where you show up in the city and it’s like, These people know us!”

“It’s crazy,” continues Bjorn. “[It’s like when] these three kids who worship Gravity Records bought this, And that’s kind of what it felt like. All of a sudden you’re like, It works! It was really fantastic.”

Black Dice first made their reputation through one violent show after another.

Eric, then 18, would often be seen thrashing around, pushing people, throwing mics, chairs, whatever he could get his hands on and just generally acting out.

Oftentimes he came the victim of his own misfortune, smacking himself in the face; unlike most hardcore shows, it was the band who was frequently on the receiving end of their own aggression. As they grew older, and changed their sonic style, they reevaluated how they were spending their energy. “Everyone was so beat up and thrashed and emotionally spent that it was really hard to go out [and play],” says Bjorn. “You don’t want to go out and try to do stuff like that… It just became something where we [needed to] control the sound a bit more, which is a lot to do when you are playing like Harry Pussy-sounding thrash, while you’re running around a room.”

Touring in the U.S. these days couldn’t be more different for the band from either their early days or their recent South American adventure. Since they only hit the road every couple of years as it is, the band has found it hard to maintain a fan base. “Even in New York, there was a peak of people coming to us years ago; it’s cool,” says Eric, surprisingly accepting of the cyclic nature of their popularity. “It’s what it is. I feel like we travel a lot to play these real specialized things, but it’s not like we have a thousand people coming to us at any city anywhere in the world. But at the same time, I think there’s a lot of difficult stuff that has been embraced more.”

In fact, attendance numbers at their gigs remain fairly consistent, but their audiences these days are comprised of completely different people. But for the most part, though, people seem to have held the same misconceptions about the band consistently over the years, some people viewing the band as sadists trying their patience maliciously, mostly due to the open formalism that defines their sound. “I think that some people think we don’t give a shit or that we’re just trying to fuck with people for no reason,” says Warren. “And that’s totally not the case. We think about it a lot. But at the same time we try to have a little bit of fun with ourselves and with the material and the audience as well…

Sometimes it does feel more antagonistic than we mean it to be at times.”

“A lot of it is really fun-sounding to us,” Bjorn rejoins. “And if you heard it really loud, it would be like a carnival ride or something like that. That’s part of why our shows have big volume and kind of a

SIGNAL to NOISE #48 | 27

28 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

Opposite and opening spread: The Black Dice rehersal space Previous page, top to bottom: Eric Copeland, Aaron Warren, Bjorn Copeland in Brooklyn NY, October 2007

strobed-out projection thing just so that it does have another way of hitting people physically and engaging them.”

Because Load Blown is the culmination of three smaller works, the events in between are amplified in the songs, though not in a way that is overwhelmingly evident. “It would take up to two months to record,” says Bjorn. “We’ve had to learn how to do things a little bit differently, but it’s still very much the way we’ve always done stuff by always changing and always trying different things, always trying to be really attentive to our personal needs. The band serves a big role in all of our lives, but I think it’s a flexible enough thing that it can be what everybody needs it to be at any time… It’s not like one person’s operation. Not anymore.”

Mostly, the music reflects the band’s maturity. For Eric, that meant letting go more when it came to songwriting and recognizing the other members’ strengths.

“I can stand behind them as friends and I can recognize what they’re doing and how they approach music and their lives,” says Eric. “Aaron does a lot of stuff on his own in the studio, and it’s not how I do it.

He’s doing it for the same reason that I am; he just has a very different method. And Bjorn’s the same way. He’s making the stuff he makes, whether it’s music or whether it’s visual art, and it’s both very obsessive in a way that’s not unhealthy. They’re just focusing in on what they mean, and I feel like we’re all equally calibrated, but it’s in a different space to me.”

This evolution comes from sharing the same successes, anxieties and life experiences. Living in New York, their sounds reflect the noises they hear every day from grinding, metal-on-metal subway brakes, the ubiquitous reggaetón and hip hop that fills the streets, and the lulling chatter of pedestrians also trying to make sense of their own needs. The band has always soberly maintained that their music contains elements of the mainstream world—even if you have to look for them—and this one in particular is a symptom of their shared experiences. Their bio characterizes Load Blown as a “work of over-stimulation, a product of frenzied media culture,” and that’s not just hype.

At his art studio, Bjorn listens to Hot 97, a popular, New York hip-hop radio station and talks about how he loves the songs’ repetition—not within the songs, but of the songs. “I guess for this record, it was the first one where I felt like we used a lot of pretty mainstream samples and stuff like that,” Bjorn says. “You’ll never be able to tell—I feel awkward talking about it because the way that we use them is unidentifiable, but the nature of using samples is a pretty slippery slope… I felt like we bor-

rowed whole ideas from pretty mainstream things on this record in some ways…

People are used to listening to some pretty weird shit now. I mean the idea of the mashup and things like that are not very far from what our friends and us have been doing for 10 years at this point… It just seemed interesting that all of a sudden, even though what we’re doing [specifically] isn’t embraced by the mainstream very heavily, I think that the relationship to what we’re doing is actually closer than ever, but not through any effort of us.”

Aaron argues, “I think the overall sound is the least accessible compared to our other stuff. It sounds less commercial. It doesn’t sound like the source material that it came from at all. It’s just really degraded and altered and processed and shit like that. I feel like it’s a different relationship that we have with pop culture that I feel like we’ve had with prior records. There was a time, when we did Creature Comforts, where I was watching so much TV and listening to so much radio and working on the album, I was like, we’re fucking a part of this thing. We’re just fucking out there. We’re doing it. And I would always say that when I was talking to press. And then I listen to the record now, and I’m like, this thing has nothing in common with anything that was going on at that time.

“I disagree,” says Bjorn. “The only introduction most people have to abstract sound is through commercials and movies in sound effects. And that was the first record where we totally backed off [from] anything that was a recognizable instrument sound. The drums are toned so far down. A lot of ways, in my head, that was a sort of a folk-rock record, except using…”

“It sounds like a weird folk record,” Aaron agrees. “It’s just so removed, as I see it, from fucking Britney Spears at that time. It’s quite a bit different from what was actually really popular at that time. So what I’m saying is now, as I see it, our relationship to the contemporary pop landscape has changed a little bit where we really are this little leech just riding on this giant fucking thing and our contribution to that is totally a little niche kind of thing and sonically that’s how it relates and that’s more explicit now… And I think sonically, it’s in there, too. If you listen to it, you can’t hear those elements really at all. They’re disguised and diminished.”

Perhaps the most obvious degradation of popular culture on the album is the first track’s title, “Kokomo.” Pinching a title from the Beach Boys' 1988 comeback hit seems like a chintzy move, but Black Dice maintain there's a reason behind it. Titles are often afterthoughts for the band, and they’ve complained before about how critics have taken their song titles too

seriously. For this one, it was the energy of the song—the juxtaposition of two totally different musical ideas within the actual song—that inspired the title. It came from playing the song live and “trying to rock different parts,” as Warren says, that it took on something title worthy. “When we went back to finish the record, it was really easy to just drop [the new parts] in and it had more of a live feel than a studio construction. The title is the last step in creating an image for the song.”

“Kokomo’s an awesome song too,” rejoins Bjorn.

“It’s a killer song, and it’s got a slick, cheesy ’80s production on it and the band is all old when they did it,” says Warren.

“And we’re using similar drum sounds. I feel like it contextualizes the music in this awesome way and the opposite of [where] most people would choose to go with the actual sounds. So I feel like that just kind of works.”

In many ways, Load Blown is the sound of Black Dice, grown up. (Incidentally, Eric says the title references Civil War gun lingo and nothing risqué, although he enjoys the double entendre.) Over the past ten years the band has gone through a lot, and the music on the CD reflects their journey.

Also, this is an album of “nots” for the band. They’re not on DFA anymore (although they appreciated being marketed as a bigger band than they feel they were.)

They’re not relying on one or two members to write their material. And although it is an album, it’s not an album. This is their art. Even though the audience seems to change from tour to tour—and they might not have any more fans than they've had in the past—it’s still the same kind of audience after all of these years: intelligent, curious music fans who are enthralled by the post-postmodern sounds that come from the band’s standard guitars and drums… and patched-up 10-step sequencers.

“Maybe people just think we’re purposely difficult,” says Eric. “Maybe it’s true… I don’t feel difficult. I don’t really feel it’s a word that makes sense to me. I feel like it means I’m unsuccessful or I’m trying things I know are bad. That I’m going after something that’s meant to bum people out or something. I don’t want to bum anybody out. But I think in terms of the music we’ve made, it’s always had a little bit more. It’s not like we’re here to celebrate and just ‘jam…’ I think we also have good times. I think that’s sometimes downplayed that we have good times.” Consider that corrected.

Kory Grow is the associate editor for Revolver magazine and assistant editor for PaperThinWalls.com. He wrote about Animal Collective in STN #47.

SIGNAL to NOISE #48 | 29

SWIMMING UPSTREAM Sound and visual artist Graham Lambkin quietly released engrossing, otherworldly avant-garde albums throughout the '90s with the Shadow Ring and Tart and with his wife Adris Hoyos in Transmission and Elklink. Dormant for three years, Lambkin returns with a collaboration with Jason Lescalleet and "Salmon Run," an album that looks to change the listening experience. Story by Stephen Kobak III.

30 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

A soft synthesizer soundscape flows by steadily in the forefront, but a few creaking domestic noises add an unsettling feeling. The sound stops abruptly for a split second, as if the deejay yanked the needle away from a record. As the music briefly reconvenes, a man enters the sound sphere—walking toward the speaker then commandeering a microphone. The music gives way to the shadowy figure’s heavy breathing. Building static signifies the return of a semi-musical sphere, as it births the briefly looped sound of a manic celebration paired with a bell clang. Bottoming out again in favor of vacuous sci-fi drones and minimal metallic percussion, the composition now coexists with the shadowy figure, his odd bodily sounds adding to the sparse intergalactic spirit-summoning ceremony.

Enter the world of sound and visual artist Graham Lambkin’s Salmon Run; an album in which mundane noises from everyday life, odd vocal sounds, field recordings, audible emotions and Sasquatch imitations converge with pre-existing compositions lifted from a variety of sources. Lambkin points to the “overpainting” artwork of Arnulf Rainer as its precursor. Rainer, an Austrian-born abstract artist, painted dark blurs of color over illustrations and photographs during his “Destruction of Forms” period. Often masking the subject’s face or the entire original work with shapeless brush stroke patterns, Rainer’s prints evoke a wholly different set of emotions by building from the source material instead of merely vandalizing it.

“There’s a line of thought going around like: ‘You can’t smear a masterpiece,’” remarks Lambkin. “Well, you can, actually, and it can sound quite beautiful.”

The disk takes the listener on a 48minute journey through Lambkin’s mind as he places himself in various works of 20th century music. He wished to “intrude on someone else’s work in a respectful way” and generated scenarios for various pieces of sound art. He avoided copyright infringement by choosing older compositions whose age made them public property. Using heavily-treated versions of the tunes as a blue-screen, he cries, laughs, breathes heavily and inserts various sound effects overtop the source material, constructing audio movie scenes for the listener to ponder. The disc advances the dialogue of avant-garde music, providing a unique listening experience by allowing him to eavesdrop on the creative process. “It’s a direct reflection of not only his art but it makes you think of things as a listener where you’re not only fixated on the performance or the subject matter,” says guitarist Matt Valentine, Lambkin’s longtime friend. “Every time I put that thing on, I find myself in a whole other space. That’s the ultimate achievement.”

His first solo release since 2001’s Poem (for Voice & Tape), Salmon Run marks a return of sorts for Lambkin to the underground music sphere. The album took over a year to record and edit, as Lambkin gleaned perfect sounds from a box of source tapes and edited the album fastidiously. Initially rejected by Canadian label HP Cycle, Lambkin quietly released Salmon Run in May 2007 through his own KYE imprint in an edition of 300. He's already sold 200 copies of the disc, self-distributing it through eBay without a tour, advertising

or even a Web site behind it.

But that's typical. Lambkin has steadily worked to this point with little or no fanfare, all the while progressing aesthetically and changing his sound for each album. His erstwhile band, the Shadow Ring, evolved from an amateurish English bedroom folk duo to a mesmerizing electronic trio within a ten-year span with unremarkable record sales for an underground album that received barely any coverage , from even the underground press. Lambkin’s poetry propelled the band; his cohort Darren Harris read the words in a deep British voice, painting bleak alternate realities onto a sparse soundtrack of detuned guitars and ringing junkyard keyboards. As the band progressed, each album dug more deeply into the avant-garde until the band silenced their guitars to make way for Tim Gross’ electronics and traded their T. Rex and the Fall fixations in favor of an affinity for Fluxus composers and early tape music.

The band split up in 2002, after ten years of music-making. While Harris quit musicmaking all together in favor of his day job as a mailman in Folkestone, Lambkin remained active, constructing challenging, engrossing albums as Elklink with his wife Adris Hoyos and Tim Goss, with Idea Fire Company members Scott Foust and Karla Borlecky as Tart and under his own name. In 2003, Lambkin began slowing his productivity, eventually stepping out of what little spotlight he had commanded to raise his son.

Amidst rows of similar red-brick multifamily houses in a small town in upstate New York, uniformly spaced and separated by perfect landscaping, sits the Lambkin’s apartment. The two-bedroom flat measures the same as neighboring apartments and comes complete with similar paint, tile, storage space, carpeting and built-in kitchen appliances.

In their personal life, as in their careers, Hoyos and Lambkin remain hidden in plain sight. They admit lacking friends in the area. Whereas many avant-garde musicians involved in similar scenes choose to live in cities with like-minded people, Lambkin and Hoyos prefer solitude and practicality.

They chose this apartment for its proximity to Hoyos’ job, and both regard their musical careers as sort of a fluke. Hoyos gives the impression she considers music a hobby rather than a career and Lambkin continually classifies himself as “not a musician,” at one point noting the lack of instruments in the house. A beat up dictophone, the sole instrument in their house, sits out of sight.

Lambkin and Hoyos chose the path of the defacto aesthete in their respective musical careers. Hoyos picked up the drums for Harry Pussy at the urging of her then-boyfriend Bill Orcutt, and Lambkin constructed his first album with Harris simply for their own amusement. Both gained a level of notoriety in the early ‘90s through a network of photocopied fanzines and independent record distribution networks. Harry Pussy and Shadow Ring failed to pack clubs most nights but eventually sold out of their early records. While Hoyos’ fame blossomed after her retirement from music, Lambkin remains underappreciated even by the standards of underground music. Harry Pussy’s influence continues to ripple throughout the

current noise scene. But the Shadow Ring lacks such a fanbase, something Lambkin could care less about. “When I see a bunch of 18-year-olds just making a racket and then walking away like they’ve done something amazing,” says Lambkin, “you can’t help but be a bit cynical.”

Lambkin has spent his career avoiding trends and following his own muse. He remains underground by proxy. None of his projects overtly wear their influences and each sound like its own exemplar. He has constantly changed throughout the course of his group and solo albums, ensuring a different sound on each record. Lambkin’s records radiate with a personality and style wholly his own, each twisting and contouring in unexpected ways while challenging the listener. Throughout the course of his career, he has honed his craft to a science, retaining a few distinctions while venturing in exciting new directions.

Lambkin and Harris formed the Shadow Ring in Folkestone, a quiet resort town in Kent, England. They grew up listening to classic records by The Fall, Tyrannosaurus Rex and Lou Reed, studying the elements that made each work. They viewed the album as an art object and both loved the idea of the album as a serious artistic statement. Neither party knew how to play an instrument.

They assembled a music-making arsenal, acquiring guitars from rummage sales and a drum from Lambkin’s sister’s boyfriend. The pair numbered their guitar strings and wrote out rhythmic patterns based on the results of explorative instrumental tinkering. Harris once entered a music store after breaking a low E string. The clerk asked him what string he needed. Counting on his fingers, he replied, “I guess I need an F.” The band developed the key elements of the Shadow Ring sound while recording in Graham’s bedroom throughout 1992; finding their voice through detuned-buthighly-structured guitar strumming and stern, deadpan British vocals propelled by Lambkin’s surreal poetry. Lambkin also constructed the band’s artwork aesthetic—black and white animals with human qualities. His pen-and-ink drawings featured mice and cats smoking cigars and drinking cocktails.

The duo recorded two limited-edition cassettes and distributed them among friends, receiving negative feedback from the surrounding community. “I don’t think they completely understood what we were trying to do,” said Lambkin. “Our records were very different from what they were used to.”

City Lights, the band’s first full-length, provides a glimpse into the 21-year-old minds of Harris and Lambkin. As both reserved a disdain for improvisation, their compositions featured labored structures with creative, absorbing amateur guitar lines overcoming their instrumental limitations.

Sometimes the lines lingered beyond their welcome but lyrical content made up for the faltering. Lambkin’s lyrics presented a dark, childlike worldview with surreal imagery, all perfectly annunciated by Harris’ dry English voice. “The Visitor” hints at future Shadow Ring records, as cheap keyboard effects and minimal industrial guitar sounds converge with the band’s usual detuned guitar delivery. As the bleak, apocalyptic rhythm proceeds, Harris sings about keepSIGNAL to NOISE #48 | 31

previous page: Graham Lambkin in Poughkeepsie. opposite: Adris Hoyos

ing “the devil from the door,” dropping lines like: “At list of my words, he smiled/or seemed to show teeth/turned and vaporized/into what was left of the night.”

Matt Valentine became one of the first to write about the Shadow Ring, interviewing Lambkin for his Cock Displacement fanzine.

The band’s aesthetic, both in art and music making, attracted Valentine. “It was kind of intense to know he was dedicated to the art of making these records,” said Valentine.

“There was a lot of polar thought among the underground here. The British people I would talk to couldn’t really dig it but the Americans seemed to love it. It just seemed like people over there had a crazy concept of what music was.”

City Lights gained distribution through the American independent record seller/ fanzine Forced Exposure, allotting them access hundreds of avant-garde music enthusiasts throughout the world. Hyped in various photocopied fanzines, the band gained a cult following in the pre-Internet United States underground. The records failed to find an audience outside of the small niche of like-minded musicians who championed the band’s style. Critics floundered while trying to review the band. The band seemed indebted to bands like The Fall and Door and the Window but their amateur instrumentation and spoken word delivery threw music scribes for a loop. The band seemed to work from their very own musical blueprint.

The Shadow Ring soon started corresponding with various movers in the American underground, including Scott Foust and Siltbreeze label head Tom Lax. Soon after receiving a copy of the City Lights LP and “Don’t Open the Window,” their first seven-inch, Lax claims he signed for a package from the band containing the master tapes for what became their first Siltbreeze release, 1994’s “Tiny Creatures” single.

Enthused by the band’s unique sound and D.I.Y. aesthetic, Lax asked the band to record for the label. Shadow Ring received prime placement in a roster that included influential underground bands like New Zealand’s Dead C and Miami’s Harry Pussy.

Lax took the band under his wing, ensuring them distribution and attention from the core of the American underground.

In 1995, the band received a ticket out of Folkestone: an invitation to tour the United States. A variety of guests backed the band, including Coffee in Rochester, NY and Alan Licht in New York City and at Pennsylvania's Swarthmore College. Although some of the shows attracted no more than 20 people, Lambkin found it amazing that anyone at all was willing to listen. The band didn't bother to rehearse before the tour and received 32 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

lukewarm receptions from audiences. Still, America seemed a shiny alternative for the band, as pub rock dominated the musical taste of Folkestone. “You have to understand that the town where we grew up is very small," explains Lambkin. "For [two] people who couldn’t play their instruments to suddenly be going on tour, a lot of people were confused by that. They probably weren’t jealous if they heard the music.

Why would they be jealous?”

As the Shadow Ring evolved, they incorporated electronics into their usual guitar, vocal and junkyard percussion dynamic.

New member Tim Goss allotted the band space to expand upon their bleak imagery, using of a Korg mini-Moog’s wail to send the band into a progressive sound realm.

Wax-Work Echoes (Corpus Hermeticum), Goss’ first album with the band, stands as the band’s most dissonant album, with synth-generated sound blurs and shards of metallic feedback accentuating compositions. Recorded in Graham’s bedroom and at Goss’ parents’ home in Valebrook, the album forsakes the claustrophobic aura threading through the Shadow Ring discography for a live band vibe. For the first time, the band played into amplifiers while recording instead of feeding their instruments into direct line inputs. Goss weaves his Moog perfectly into the band’s characteristic dingy guitar patterns, allowing the synth to bleed space age sound in a disturbing, non-psychedelic manner. An entropic piano line on the fifteen-minute opus “Catching Sight of Passing Things” gives Goss room to interfold prog-rock accents into the exercise. Harris lyrically assesses the band’s progress as the band grows more crazed in their instrumental delivery. Eventually, the rhythm gives way to an ambient nature imitation full of vibrating insect imitations and bright piano chimes.

The tune ends with Harris previewing “Rats and Mice,” the sixth track on the album, via a telephone conversation, relaying the lyrics “It’s only mice and rats who scurry/In and down telephone lines.”

Returning to North America in 1996 to tour alongside Harry Pussy, the Shadow Ring met key players in their future artistic endeavors and artists who shaped current trends in underground music. Scott Foust, who began writing to the band after hearing their 1995 Siltbreeze release Put the Music in its Coffin, attended a show in Massachusetts. The band shared a bill with Charalambides and Tower Recordings, the cornerstones of what would later become known as the “new weird America” scene.

“Back then there was a different feel to the gigs,” said Valentine. “Then, when we played gigs, the strangest people came out of the woodwork that you wouldn’t think

would listen to your music, let alone be at a concert setting up in the taper’s pit. I think we were all pretty mystified.”

Lambkin befriended Adris Hoyos, drummer for his tourmates Harry Pussy and his future wife, on the tour. Harry Pussy typically played a short 12 to 20-minute set filled with raucous minute-long blasts of energy.

Bill Orcutt and Mark Freehan, the band’s guitarists, ripped through dynamic riffs on four-stringed guitars like Magic Band guitarist Zoot Horn Rollo exploring ‘80s hardcore.

Hoyos, the band’s centerpiece, viciously struck her drums while bleating into a microphone headset. Her high-pitched screams punctuated the frantic rhythm and sometimes unleashed a fury of screeched threats to unsuspecting audiences. Lambkin watched Harry Pussy every night in awe of their tight musicianship. “I am privileged to be the person outside the band who saw them the most,” said Lambkin. “They put the fucking work in. They rehearsed that stuff. That stuff sounds perfect.”

The bill seemed stacked with opposites, as the quiet eeriness of the Shadow Ring met the abrasive, confrontational Harry Pussy. In Rochester, the crowd heckled the Shadow Ring for their lack of musical ability.

At the same gig, Orcutt told the soundman to record Harry Pussy’s set and to snap on the strobe lights when the band wished to start. As the band took the stage and the strobe lights began blinking, Adris kicked over her drum kit and began to threaten the sound technician. Understandably startled, he forgot to record the show. Audience members harassed both bands as they left the venue but, while Shadow Ring suffered jeers about their musicianship, some violent audience members physically threatened the members of Harry Pussy. “We were rolling out and I heard these two people, just as we went past them, they were saying, ‘If I ever see those motherfuckers again, I’m gonna kill them,” says guitarist Freehan “It’s so perfect because we were driving right by in a white van. I think we probably left a lot of places like that. I don’t know why.”

Though they came from different ends of the musical spectrum, Hoyos and Lambkin developed a bond on the tour, hanging out between gigs. Lambkin returned home to Folkestone and soon thereafter, Hoyos visited for a month. The pair recorded material under the name Transmission, mixing Lambkin’s detuned guitar lines with Hoyos’ hardcore sensibilities for a wholly new sound. Though they showcased some avant-garde tendencies with Lambkin’s guitar scrapes and Hoyos' spoken-word pieces, the band forsook exploration for a firm, fluid hardcore identity. The sessions yielded one single and a full-length album on Audible Hiss. Lambkin says the sessions helped him

SIGNAL to NOISE #48 | 33

focus. “She brought a much more professional edge to things,” he said. “If there is anything to be said about that it’s that there is a nice tension on that record between a more jutted, aggressive angle and what I bring to the table, which is incompetence.”

Jumping to the roster of Scott Foust’s Swill Radio label in 1998, the Shadow Ring found themselves well-matched creatively.

Foust, a philosopher, musician and writer, encouraged creation and surrounded himself with like-minded artists. To Foust, art must continually progress and evolve to remain relevant. His own records came with a booklet on the philosophy surrounding it. Lambkin claims not to understand Foust’s theories, yet his band conforms to Foust’s “Anti-Natural” mission statement.

Foust aimed to “reassert the critical value of art with the multi-pronged philosophy, giving a small circle of artists a rallying cry.

He advocated the incorporation of nature and life into art. “The total aestheticization of experience requires an ongoing act of the will,” wrote Foust. “One’s personal and social practice is to be regarded as an art object. The art object is a constructed one, in the sense of being intentionally planned and executed.”

The Shadow Ring undertook this challenge with their next venture, a sprawling double-album bursting with original ideas called Lighthouse. Journeying to the outer edges of music-making, the band dropped all notions of “being a proper band” and focused on their strongpoint: mistakes. They mapped out an idea for a four-sided opus with running themes and significant new directions for the band. “We just worked through our own system,” said Lambkin, “and I think that’s when the Shadow Ring started to sound like we were interesting by ourselves.”

Recorded in eight weeks and mixed on a four-track, the album feels like being trapped in a room with the band. The band pushes Harris’ voice to the forefront and he sounds like a professor addressing a class.

Foust, Borlecky, Hoyos and a host of other guests donate some sounds to the Shadow Ring’s dark psychedelic magnum opus. The band spiced up their usual guitar, drum and minimal electronic set-up with piano, feedback, tape loops and synthesizer. For all of its variation and experimentation, the four sides of Lighthouse retain a fluid running scheme. The tracks flow into one another, each augmenting narrative, lyrical and instrumental motifs. Everyday domestic sounds, such as an arm hitting ashtray or footsteps, play pivotal roles in the band’s compositions. Running jokes, Dadaist chants and instrumental motifs reinforce the feeling of eavesdropping on the creation of an album. A booming, God-like male voice interrupts tracks on the album, injecting the flow with a series of nonsensical orders.

Coughs, laughs and grunts precede and break up some readings. During “Knock Between Doors,” a knock interrupts the a piano, electronics and drum jam and a voice asks for Darren as Harris recites a spoken word piece to horse-trot percussion.

“When I first heard [Lighthouse], I couldn’t place those sounds but I know there was a way those records were getting in my head,” says Son of Earth's Matt 34 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

Krefting, Lambkin’s friend and collaborator.

“I learned after the fact that it’s somebody walking around outside. I guess that’s why it’s so unnerving because there are sounds you can’t place and, on one level, your brain knows them.”

Lambkin’s poetry alternated between surreal and mundane images but preserved a childlike playfulness, mirroring the music.

Harris states: “Here, the opposite black chalk/Shining like a lion tonight/Is a lemon in limelight” to a descending piano line and dissonant prog-guitar workout on “Black Chalk.” Harris bleats: “Brown or white on the night flight/Rolls, loaf or something else perhaps/Oh, look/He’s got one of those bun things” throughout side four, assessing someone's eating habits and placing the mundane on a poetic platform. Lambkin also creates characters throughout the album’s four sides, painting each as an isolationist and relating each to the lighthouse.

“I stayed inside my home,” states Harris on “I am the Lighthouse,” “and stroked rough minutes into smooth hours/I am a lighthouse beam.”

Though the band employs more instruments on Lighthouse than any other record in their catalog, they convey their strongest messages with sharp, repeating electronic tones. With the opening notes of “I am the Black Piper,” the band paints a haunting landscape with dabs of feedback and a keyboard line that sounds like a song from a decrepit ice cream truck, as each note wavers and decays. “The British Army Can Eat” buzzes with laser synth noises accentuating each stanza break in Harris’ reading.

“Working for the R.N.L.I.” features a loopy keyboard line tweaked through decrepit tape loops. “Lifesavers” marries the light and lively keyboard line with industrial clanging and droning squeaks.

After Lighthouse, Lambkin moved to Miami and married Hoyos, living in her parent’s house as she finished up her college degree at Florida International University.

Harris stayed in Folkestone and the Shadow Ring kept band activity to a minimum.

But Lambkin stayed busy, recording as Elklink with Adris and Tim Goss. The band recorded their only release, 1999’s The Rise of Elklink (Polyamory), on a boombox in the confines of Adris’ tiny bedroom. On a limited budget, the record draws from Robert Ashley’s Automatic Writing and the compositions of Alvin Lucier and signifies a movement toward a more abstract mode of composition for Lambkin. Soft vocal sounds dominate the two compositions on the tape, as Lambkin and Hoyos create a disorienting soundscape by simultaneously whispering random consonant sounds.

The Shadow Ring's music grew increasingly claustrophobic, minimal and beautiful with their newfound geographic distance.

Recording sessions in Poughkeepsie found the band blending Lambkin’s domestic noise accentuations with Goss’ stark electronic terrain and cementing the brooding sound with Harris’ frank readings of Lambkin’s writing. Lindus, the resulting album, revels in a darkness generated by static, droning electronics and tape manipulation.

The band ceased using guitars, percussion and piano in favor of a full line of electronic instruments. Their layered oscillating synth lines underscore Lambkin’s distressed lyrics,

above: Shadow Ring, Folkstone, 2001 left: with Scott Faust, Miami Beach, 2003 below: Harry Pussy live in 1996

“When I see a bunch of 18-year-olds just making a racket and then walking away like they’ve done something amazing,” says Lambkin, “you can’t help but be a bit cynical.”

as he painted portraits of isolated individuals with Harris’ reading as the brush. On “We’re Complex Piss,” Harris states “We’re complex piss/running down our legs/ and into open drains/Filling up baths and buckets/Spreading hepatitis if you swallow us.”

A buzzing, slow synth tone accompanies Harris, occasionally breaking from a drone into a series of dissolute chords. Amplified foot-tapping and metal clinking add to the frightening mood. Harris vocals become double-tracked and slightly misaligned, as the synth augments and eventually pushes to the forefront, swallowing the song into a droning void.

The Shadow Ring recorded their tightlycomposed final album, I’m Some Songs, by trading tapes through the mail. The record finds them growing even more stark and minimal, painting an ambient template with gently blowing, steady-paced wind gusts and molasses-paced vocals. A metal object hitting the floor cues each song’s

vocals. Lambkin used the same backing tapes in different combinations to orchestrate a sense of déjà vu. Starting with the gentle hum of “Ro,” the band concocts an apparitional flow, reminiscent of Brian Eno’s darker ambient work, with slow footsteps adding to the narrative. Each track on the album built from this mold taking an unsettling minimal electronic base and often adding manipulated everyday sounds to heighten the black intensity. “Start Repeating,” the album’s lone sign of optimism, isolates a spiraling computer texture, warps its notation and adds a wavering drone to its base, giving the impression of a decaying rainbow. “Drainage,” a nine-and-a-half minute work, pulsates with an insect hum, using running water, a soft drone and an opening door to construct its mood. A snailpaced voice glides through the tune. The title track cumulated the album with slow synth waves washing over a ghostly formation represented by creaking floorboards

and reverberating quarters. The slow voice again enters the song like a mystical demon in a horror film. A corroded rainbow synth line ends the piece underneath soft vocal breath, summarizing the rough beauty of The Shadow Ring’s career.

After the Shadow Ring dissolved, Lambkin focused his energy on Tart, a band he formed with Idea Fire Company members Scott Foust and Karla Borlecky. IFCO’s hypnotic synth lines and layered electronic compositions combine with Lambkin’s affinity for everyday sounds and repetition to create sound sculptures of labyrinthine beauty. Two albums, Radio Orange and Bring in the Admiral, resulted from the collaboration. The band’s chemistry ensured that even the most astute listener failed to dissect all the singular components melding to form each composition. “Two Kings” from Bringing in the Admiral exemplifies the band’s fluidity, as human-like electronic noises and a low, dark synth line pairs with SIGNAL to NOISE #48 | 35

violently crashing vocal waves. The tune surrounds the listener with a repetitive web of sonority, holding attention with its maze.

Thinking that a combination of the Shadow Ring and Idea Fire Company would mean a compounding of fanbases, Foust optimistically pressed 1000 copies of the records but has only sold a couple hundred copies of each. Even as the neo-“noise” scene surged in popularity with aggressively dissonant bands like Wolf Eyes and Prurient taking the genre to the masses, Foust’s records faltered, a fact he attributes to a shift in underground audiences’ taste. “Our music was getting prettier while everyone else’s was sort of getting uglier,” Foust says.

Matt Valentine invited Elklink to perform at the Brattleboro Free Folk Festival in Brattleboro, VT for Lambkin’s last live appearance in 2003. Elklink seemed out of place on a bill with Sunburned Hand of the Man and Scorces, as both Lambkin and Hoyos created highly structured music far from the often chaotic nature of improvisation. Foust and Krefting joined the core group of Hoyos and Lambkin and the quartet presented the audience with droning visual feast. Accompanied by a canned soundtrack of scraping carrots and domestic noises, the band mimed a performance. Krefting sat by an amp, turning on the sound and snapping it off. Foust wore an orange track suit and peeled carrots into a bowl. Lambkin sat on a chair, tuning and detuning a guitar. Hoyos stood with a hood masking her face, hitting a cymbal with a mallet at odd intervals. The theater charged Valentine a clean-up fee for the carrot peels.

“We were trying to be as non-musical as possible,” said Lambkin. “I guess it’s kind of obvious that we’re an odd fit and we were just trying to push that fact.”

David Keenan documented the festival in his in his August 2003 cover story in The Wire. But Keenan arrived after the Elklink set and failed to mention it in the piece. The article unleashed a flurry of interest geared toward the “freak folk” scene represented at the festival or, as Lambkin calls it, “all those chummy, interlinked bands that go on about ‘freedom.’” Music enthusiasts flocked to underground record distribution networks and eBay to scoop up records

by Sunburned Hand of the Man, Tower Recordings and other acts discussed in the article. But Foust still sits on boxes of the Shadow Ring’s Swill Radio releases.

Over the next four years, Lambkin’s visual art became more apparent, popping up on albums by Double Leopards and the English industrial group Splintered. In 2007, Tim Shortell published “Unfocused Hands,” a collection of Lambkin’s drawings. Collaborations with Shortell produced the short films released on the Uberkatze Studios compilation. The duo thought of ways to use common items in a more abstract manner. “Rouffley” features objects like bananas immersed in magazine cutout set pieces, making it difficult to distinguish material objects from photographs. A fluffy stuffed mouse toy and a sinister-looking rabbit figurine move in front of food pictures as a sinister-sounding low-end drone provides the soundtrack. Silent movie narration flashes “A hallucination?” In the remainder of the film, the filmmakers submerge animal figurines in one-dimensional magazine 36 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

pictures, such as cut-outs from furniture catalogs. It becomes harder to orient depth, as a bear puppet appears between wood furniture pictures.

For “Motion Painting,” the pair’s newest release, Shortell wanted to give the camera a new function. The film guides the viewer through the 83-minute video painting, as the artists create a Jackson Pollack-like abstract painting in Lambkin’s kitchen. Neither artist appears in the film but colored liquid materials continually flow like water down the easel. Though the films convey a loose, experimental flow, Shortell and Lambkin administered a long brainstorming session and heavy editing process for each of their projects. “Part of the fun is the editing,” said Shortell. “We haven’t done anything I think you can call improvisation.”

Lambkin continued to record but focused on raising his first child rather than releasing an album. He's filled a box with tapes of his excursions, recording one particular “creaking and croaking session” with Matt Krefting, a multi-instrumentalist from Son of Earth and the Believers. Using a tape recorded at half-speed, the pair captured themselves blowing into tubes, turning on the sink and walking around while a keyboard drone played on the tape.

Lambkin also dabbled in field recordings.

Hoyos and Lambkin dragged equipment to a refuge for sick animals and recorded the animals during a thunderstorm. Some of this material found its way onto the odds and ends cassettes Draining the Vats. Lambkin also gleaned snippets from the hours of tapes for Salmon Run. However, the box sits in the corner of Lambkin’s living room, its resources largely untapped. “That’s how I work,” quips Lambkin, “by reduction.”

Lambkin sits in front of his computer, overseeing his three-year-old son Oliver as he plays with toy trucks and talking about recording with Jason Lescalleet.

Overhearing his name, Oliver retrieves a photo of himself sitting on Lescalleet’s lap.

The Boston-based tape manipulator spent weeks collaborating with Lambkin on The Breadwinner, an album of original material, utilizing Lambkin’s apartment as a makeshift studio. Lescalleet says the duo spent a lot of time “using common everyday items musically and recording mundane sounds.” The pair incorporated tape loops, manipulated sound samples, field recordings and other techniques into their compositions, constructing surprisingly fluid sound sculptures.

“I think we both learned a lot because he’s much more precise and very serious about what he does,” says Lambkin. “I don’t mean I’m not serious but I’m more childish, more playful where he’s very interested in making sure everything is endued perfectly” Lescalleet and Lambkin met at a Tart gig in 2001 and soon started corresponding. They found they shared ideas about sound, as both enjoyed analog tape experiments and held similar aesthetic beliefs.

Communication grew more frequent after Lescalleet dedicated a composition to him but Lambkin still shied away from collaboration. Lescalleet kept sending releases and eventually Lambkin could no longer refuse.

The pair began working together last year and gelled instantly. Lescalleet sent Lambkin tapes and asked Lambkin to add to the

sound. Lambkin refused to touch the tapes, stating they sounded fine as they were. He, in turn, sent Lescalleet tapes of new compositions to fiddle with and Lescalleet wished not to mess with them. The pair eventually decided to meet at Lambkin's apartment and record together.

“Our approach to music is in similarly natural in that much of it is unspoken," says Lescalleet. "There are some concepts that we would come at from very different angles and that’s what made our collaboration interesting. We would share common ground and tolerate something about the other person. Tolerate might not be the right word but we would accept input that we probably wouldn’t have come up with on our own.”

Throughout the making of The Breadwinner, Lambkin transformed his flat into a recording instrument, documenting its every move from the heat-swelling groan of the radiator to water running in the sink.

The duo recorded in Lambkin’s living room, hallways, den and even stairs going up to the apartment, capturing each room’s feel and sound on a mono microphone. Even outside acoustic events found their way to the duo’s recording regimen, as the pair fed the sounds inside to the internal recording system and slowed their pace to a crawl.

Sometimes the pair overdubbed sounds on a never-ending tape loop, recording themselves while playing the tape back and layering sound until it became a sonic blur.

At one point, Lescalleet brought old reel-toreel machines to Lambkin’s house and the pair ran tape from room to room.

“It absolutely wouldn’t have sounded like it did if it were recorded anywhere else,” says Lescalleet. “A lot if the sounds you hear are Graham’s creaking floor or we recorded his neighbors talking through the wall. We would just make full use of the place and his wife left us alone for the day.”

At odds with improvisation, the artists constructed a general strategy before sculpting their sound. Through tape loops, field recordings and live overdubbing, the artists shaped a vast sonic collage. The pair mangled sounds snatched from everyday life by slowing a tape’s recording speed or distorting the sound, rendering the source unrecognizable. Recordings of Oliver splashing around in a bath and Lambkin’s neighbors fighting morphed into entirely different sounds. Each artist challenged the other to explore new territory. Lescalleet adapted to Lambkin’s use of other artists’ work and Lambkin became accustomed to Lescalleet’s perfectionist production techniques. Lambkin wound up constructing a track he thought sounded like Lescalleet and Lescalleet tried to mimic Lambkin’s style for another tune.

“He was attracted to the idea that all I had to record on was this dictophone,” said Lambkin. “He came down with these very expensive mics and he spent two hours setting his equipment up. There’s something to be had from trying to collaborate with someone on the opposite end, even when they’re thinking along the same lines.”

The duo valued the editing process as much as recording. Lescalleet compares the recording process to painting with water color and the editing process to filling in gaps in the artwork with pen and ink. Whit-

tling six to eight hours of material down to 53 minutes, the duo carefully constructed the record, recording extra subtleties when the composition called for it. Lescalleet and Lambkin, again, compromised on the outcome. Lescalleet embraced amp noise, line noise and 60-cycle hums generated from Lambkin’s lo-fi recording technique and made part of the music. Lambkin allowed Lescalleet to smooth out certain areas, although he prefers “working with nothing” equipment wise.

On Salmon Run Lambkin honed each thing he's learned about his craft into one finely tuned masterwork but The Breadwinner smooths out the edges, making the record potentially more palatable to a larger experimental music audience. Each of the album’s eight songs sketches a surreal world via a droning base, non-narrative play acting and found sound subtleties. The album incorporates Lambkin’s use of everyday sounds and non-vocal narrative into striking works of sound sculpture. Stormy sonic force fields breed with clips of existing compositions to create unsettling worlds of sound. On “Job to Job,” audible static humming perpetuates a negative space wherein ice cubes clinking in a glass and percussive footsteps create movies in the mind. Both “E5150/Body Transport” and “Listen, The Snow is Falling” build on soft natural sounds; the latter ascending to a chaotic static-and-snoring climax while the former mixes in corroding choral works, rainfall and a crying baby. “Lucy Song,” the album’s apex, blends an emotive, slow piano line with an inaudible female voice and a soft edge of static to give the sense of a fading memory. “The Breadwinner” closes the album with a slow, stuttering voice joining a piano and a grumbling drone. As the voice stretches and slows, the instrumental accompaniment grows darker and sparser.

A few industrial clangs and a hellish gargle soon swallow the composition, spitting out another slowed vocal tone. The vocal tone takes its final bow at the five minute mark and clinking percussion and soft breathing sputter through the speakers. When the composition finally gives way, a few seconds of blank space allow the listener to ponder if it actually ended, as the duo heightens the awareness of sounds produced by inanimate objects.

Though it's true The Breadwinner could potentially bring Lambkin’s music to a larger audience, Lambkin sees the work as a new artistic stride for himself and Lescalleet, not a stab at the spotlight.

Lambkin still has no plans to tour behind the record, as he quit playing live in 2003.

For now, he’s content to sit back, construct traffic jams with Oliver and take care of his newborn son Thomas. Lambkin plans a two-disc Shadow Ring retrospective and possibly, work with tape manipulator Moniek Darge. “I’m going into hibernation after that,” he said. “People might get the wrong idea.” ✹ Check out Steven Kobak's blog at: satanrulez.blogspot.com. He wrote about the history of the Siltbreeze record label in STN#46.

SIGNAL to NOISE #48 | 37

HALF JAPANESE In the Land of the Rising Sun, a coterie of avant-garde rappers are appropriating American hip-hop and redefining the genre on their own terms. David Morris went to Tokyo and spoke with Rumi, Ari 1010, Candle, Katchitola Haguretic MCs, and the elusive Origami.

Origami's Shibito and Nanorunamonai in Tokyo, Japan, August 2007

38 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

You can see the signs everywhere in Tokyo. Small posters of grimacing Japanese musclemen with full-sleeve tattoos posing next to Cadillacs and flashing gang signs.

Boutiques selling Houston-style grills and neck-greening cheapo chains. Clubs with names like “Harlem” or things even less subtle. American hip hop acts break into the charts in Japan pretty frequently, and homegrown Japanese rappers are often right there with them – the cultural currency of hip hop in Japan suffuses the buildings, the boardwalks, and the back alleys of the capital city. J-Pop star Namie Amuro’s sixth album was advertised with ten-story billboards, declaring in English that she was the “Queen of Hip-Pop,” while just beneath you could find a tiny shop with a hand-painted sign selling home-burned CD-R albums by underground Japanese acts with names like Killer Bong. High-priced hip hop fashion boutiques occupy prime real estate in Harajuku, and the flashy clubs sit dead center in Roppongi – but out in the margins of Ebisu and Shimokitazawa things have an altogether different texture.

And it’s a good thing, because Japan’s mainstream hip hop scene can be embarrassing. Until recently Tokyo crawled with kyogaru, teenage girls who would tan themselves deep bronze in an attempt to look black. On their albums, megastar J-rappers pepper their flow with broken English half-phrases about pimps and hustlas. After one listen to The Best of Japanese Hip Hop Volume 1, I sincerely hoped it wasn’t. The unhesitating imitation of American hip hop can be an infinite source of entertainment, each new gem of implicit racism or cultural ineptitude cause for knowing snickers. The nadir for me was a guy called Mars Manie, who wore a fitted cap and billowing jersey on his album’s cover and nonetheless spent a stiff, scripted intro insisting in stilted English that “Ah hab no influences. Iz just me.” Certain used record shops can be a great source of gag gifts for friends back home.

Elsewhere, Tokyo yields music you can’t laugh off. Like America a decade ago, there’s now a thriving underground hip hop scene that stands against the iniquity of fake thuggery. ECD, among the first to take Japanese hip hop away from an imitation of New York sounds, put out albums with mannequin’s torsos on the cover, stuffed full of ominous, grimy beats and growled vocals. The Overrap! compilation was a spectacle of noise and adenoids. A girlish woman named Rumi dances through fields of neon flowers and spit crazed battle rap over electro beats.

On the Mary Joy label, artists like Candle and Ari1010 reproduce the claustrophobic, messy splatter of some of my favorite American underground acts.

In the Jet Set store in Shimo one day, I found a CD with an odd cover painting of a man’s face. The paints were smeared and the face morose, like Francis Bacon raised on rain. The sounds on the disc were beautiful, but inscrutable – slow and quiet and sad, two men’s plaintive voices skittering freewheel over smokey, uncertain beats. Almost whispers sometimes. There was no bluster, no pretense of anything, and in the rhythmic chants and traditional

instruments that lent many tracks their odd beauty, I heard a uniquely unapologetic affirmation of Japaneseness. The tone was hopeful but supplicant, as if two children had made a hip hop album as an open letter to God. The album title translated to “The King Who Lost the Moon.” The duo was êDê_ – itself notable, as very few Japanese musical groups of any kind write their names in kanji. This one transliterates to Origami, but that’s just a bit of bad luck. This isn’t about making little cranes and footballs and maybe dragons if you’re really good at it. This is a completely different Origami, spelled differently, and it means "Rising Gods."

I didn’t understand it. Crass, commercialized imitation was one thing – East Asians basing their entire lives, careers, futures on a form forged from stolen electricity by black Americans (known to most Japanese only through TV) in the ghetto (which Japan essentially doesn’t have) as an attempt to escape racial oppression (an issue Japan scrupulously ignores). This was funny, embarrassing, maybe a little annoying – but in a globalized world, that’s life. What was I to make, though, of an even smaller group, with no immediate profit motive, spending their days and nights trying to subvert, expand, or even mock a tradition from halfway around the world? The only way to find the answer, I decided, was to ask.

I meet Rumi at a chain diner called Joseph’s that sits at the top of a long Shibuya hill. I can’t tell if the faux Americana of the place – vinyl booths, cheap white coffee mugs – is self-conscious. She’s the schoolgirl wet dream of America’s biggest otaku, with pigtails that arc up from sides of her head, striped kneesocks, and a tiny, pixiesharp face. She’s too small for the booth, like her feet shouldn’t touch the ground.

This, I have to remind myself, is the fiercest grime MC this side of Dizzee Rascal.

With a bloodthirsty flow and a taste for anodized steel beats, Rumi is what M.I.A. dreams of being – a girl who will hurt you and make you like it. One listen to “HesoCha,” with Rumi’s pit-fighter wheezes and machinegun kellies over a lurching, menacing electro pulse, and you’ll burn every Lady Sovereign and Ms. Dynamite record you might have the misfortune to own.

“Everyone in Japan used to think that New York was the only type of hip hop," she tells me, "or else it wasn’t right. If you sang, or rapped in a monotone, and didn’t copy the cadences or the styles of American rappers, then it wasn’t hip hop.” A wry smiles tickles my lips at this reinforcement of my worst assessments: the Japanese are good at appropriating, sucking the life out of things they don’t understand, but they don’t have a creative bone in their bodies.

“I felt very misunderstood and isolated – I was totally alone.” She made her first record, the existentially angsty Hell Me Tight, and self-released it on her own label Sanagi, or caterpillar – a symbol of transformation. “That record is just about me, alone, and all the sounds are just me being alone in my head.” Then she began to make allies, meeting people who accepted her divergence from dogma. Her new album reflects the confidence of someone

who has found their place. Hell Me Why? is more accessible and less angsty, full of mind-blowing, hyperkinetic tracks like “Cat Fight” and “Fever.”

I’m hoping these smart, alienated people – artists like Rumi who are reflective, trying to buck trends, trying to do something different – can help me understand the oddity of black culture’s currency in Japan. Who better to ask: Why do Japanese people love hip hop?

Rumi laughs, looks out the window briefly, her pigtails bobbing. “Don’t ask me.”

Myspace and Youtube are postmodern scrying crystals, chock full of noisy beats and jerky live footage from places halfway around the world from wherever you are.

Much of it will seem familiar - basements full of yes yes y’all’s and hoodies, dudes rapping as fast as they possibly can over slowed-down dog farts. I emailed a lot of interesting artists for this story, based just on digital leads, and while many were difficult in various ways, Origami remained uniquely out of reach. For the two months before heading to Tokyo, I emailed Origami every way I could figure out, through every label, distributor, and third-degree connection, but never heard a word from them.

A few of the noisy basement navigators I’d been hunting were going to appear at an overnight concert in Tokyo’s famed Liquid Room, and I hoped they might be able to lead me to Origami. The crowd at Liquid that night is smallish. A beautiful Japanese woman paints a mural onto butcher paper against one wall, a few spare blue circles that she adds to bit by bit. Japanese hip hop guys in dreads and tams and baggies do tricks with fingersized skateboards.

After two easygoing intro acts, Ari 1010 (pronounced Arisenju) hits the stage like a ton of angry bricks. The energy in the room goes immediately from social to mildly worshipful, as flashbulbs pop and all eyes lock to the stage. Ari’s beats are loud, and his vocal chords strain as he bends at the waist, pouring himself into the mic. Girls shout his name. There’s some stage patter, a few hey-ho throw your hands up chants, but mostly what’s palpable is his earnestness, from his black t-shirt and militaresque cap to a greasy pallor that screams “bedroom auteur.” I’m reminded not just of the energy of my own hip hop past, but also of the misanthropy and angst that characterized so much of what came out of the U.S. underground.

Ari1010’s debt to Anticon and Def Jux only becomes clearer when his DJ/Producer, Mihara, pulls out a bass guitar and starts slamming distorted metal riffs over the boom-bap.

Ari’s torrent of words outpaces my blurred mind, stampedes me, tramples me into the ground. All I’m left to hang on to is the swing, the grinding noise, and Ari’s emotive cues. I discover that I can tell, even without understanding him, the difference between his thoughtful, introspective numbers, and his invective-laced social critiques. It’s sort of like suddenly discovering I can see through walls. I bang my head with the rest of the crowd, our SIGNAL to NOISE #48 | 39

Katchitola Haguretic MCs: Chinza Dopeness (left) and Katomaira (right) in Tokyo, Japan, August 2007

responses in wordless sync, and we all collapse into smiling satisfaction at the end.

Between sets I start introducing myself around, a couple of drinks and a lively crowd having loosened my frightened tongue. I meet the head of Mary Joy, who hasn’t been returning my emails, since, he says, he didn’t figure I was actually coming.

He seems pleased, though, and we set up some interviews.

Three MCs, looking like they dressed themselves with whatever was on top of the pile, roll onstage and start swapping sharp rhymes and goofy patter over bright, electro-funk breaks. One of them is almost comically skinny, with a narrow strip of wispy beard and a bobbing neck that makes him look like a bird. He clowns, headbangs, and taps on an MPC as he drops rhymes. Then the funk morphs into a doubletime drum-and-bass workout, and this goony birdman takes a deep breath and dives in, suddenly a creature of pure speed and precision timing. The group, I find out, are called the Katchitola Haguretic MCs, and the skinny guy is Chinza Dopeness. They are a genuine revelation – energetic, playful, and amazingly tight.

The headlining act is Candle, movie-star handsome and boyishly self-serious. His songs are moody, cocky, slightly off-kilter, but the crowd’s energy level is so high by now that a little preaching can’t dent it.

By this point, it’s nearly 6am, and while a few have curled up like kittens on various couches and ottomans in the room, the remainder of the crowd moves with the music, fewer flashbulbs now and more pulsating, swaying bodies. The mural has blossomed into a huge peony reminiscent of classical woodblock prints, and the painter takes a break to dance, her paper fan bobbing in the air. At the climax of Candle’s set the curtain behind the stage is taken down, and sunlight streams in through a huge bay window. My questions about sincerity and authenticity fade, for the moment - I’m too busy dancing.

I meet Ari the next evening in an Okinawa-style restaurant done up in teak and deep reds, its menus written entirely in kanji that he has to help me navigate. This isn’t some kind of antique, though – the place is packed with Tokyo’s young and overdressed. Ari says he’s been drinking so much he can’t eat, so all he orders is a plate of bitter pickled melon. However worn down, he hits me with sharp questions of his own. “I’m not really so interested in interviews,” he admits. “I’m doing things with words, and words about 40 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

words kind of defeats the point, you know?

But I’m interested in your questions. Why are you interested, if you can’t understand the words?”

I’ve been asking myself the same question, but Candle answers succinctly the next night. In a list of favorite MCs he names Mikah 9, a cutting-edge and extremely fast rhymer from California’s Freestyle Fellowship. I tell him that even I can’t understand Mikah 9 sometimes.

“You may not be able to understand exactly what they’re saying,” he replies, “But you can tell when someone’s a real MC. It’s a feeling you get.”

At the concert, I’d been sure that Ari1010 was a passionate youngster, just starting out. But as we talk I discover he’s actually over 30, with a career already under his belt. He started out in the transpacific group Dragons of Eden, who have since moved to California. Monument, an album put out by Ari and producer Eudai Monus, is a dense slab of static and otherworldly noise, deep bass rumbles and atmospheric swells that crest into woozy beats. The resolute bizarreness of that disc seems to have been refined into the Blade Runner velocity of his new single, "Zero.”

“I wish I could rap like King Crimson plays,” he wistfully muses. He also claims kinship with Jodorowky’s El Topo (along with the extremely obscure Japanese avant-garde rapper who took the film’s name). “I want to get that feeling across with my lyrics. There’s a world of things, and some of those things are cool in themselves. But there’s another world, of mystical things and secret things.” It’s a strange sentiment from such a voluble guy, especially given his smiling, shouting stage presence.

For all the artsy sentiments and weird noises, Ari’s also got affinities closer to home. He credits early Japanese acts like Scha Dara Parr, Rampai, and Microphone Pager – groups with definite debts to the classic New York sound – with inspiring him to start rapping. He barely mentions American rappers. He claims he knew, very early on, that he’d end up on Mary Joy – easily the most important ‘underground’ hip hop label in Japan. “I knew that nobody else would be interested.”

Candle, it turns out, is the youngster of the two, too new to the game to anticipate how annoyed I (to say nothing of my translator) am likely to get when he shows up to the interview more than half-baked.

He giggles, pauses, changes directions, forcing my translator to jump-cut between obscure metaphors about hip hop as

mother, hip hop as civil war, hip hop as Tokugawa shogunate . . .

He tells me his first album was partially produced by a guy named Maji. “He heard some stuff of mine and liked it. Right now he’s in the States, making dubstep and grime with Eligh [of the Living Legends].”

The dubstep connection seems to proliferate the more people I talk to, and a club night called Murder Channel is infamous in Tokyo. I ask Candle why that particular sound is blowing up.

“I think it’s because we’re on the same footing with the States. Usually it’s like things just trickle down, we get it second.

But finally, we’re not following – we got it at the same time, so that’s exciting.” This sense of competition is a weird sentiment, especially since it’s one of only a very few references to the U.S. from any of the people I talk to. I came expecting to hear open worship of American acts, but instead most of these cats grew up listening to earlier Japanese rappers. In only a few years, it’s become a largely separate tradition.

As for my questions about the mechanics of global culture? Ari allows that there might be some broader forces at work – but still, only within Japan. “[Hip hop] bands like Rip Slime and Clever are getting big, because the majors are pushing them.” Candle’s answer is more succinct.

“Hip Hop and Reggae are popular here because people think they’re cool!” he giggles, like it’s the dumbest question ever (and maybe it is). “Think about it. You have one guy in a necktie and slacks and a dress shirt, compare that to a guy in a big t-shirt, big pants. The second guy, he just looks more hardcore. He just looks heavy.”

Candle and Ari both laugh when I tell them I want to interview Origami – they actually laugh in my face. “Man, good luck,” says Candle. “Those guys run on their own time. They turn off their cell phones. If they’re in the studio, you’re out of luck.” Still, he obliges me by calling up Shibitt, one half of Origami and head of their Temple ATS label. Nobody’s home – but the next day I finally get a reply to one of my emails.

After being blown away by the Katchitola Haguretic MCs in person, I look them up online and find a ton of videos featuring Chinza Dopeness in particular (See Sidebar). Most of them are shot in dark clubs, nightvision and overdriven mics capturing what I can say without exaggeration is one of the greatest flows I’ve ever heard, often laid over the grimy sci-fi crunch of dub-

SIGNAL to NOISE #48 | 41

Live at Tokyo's Liquid Loft, August 10th, 2007: Above: Ari 1010; Right: Candle

Candle: “I wish I could rap like King Crimson plays. I want to get that feeling across with my lyrics ... there’s another world, of mystical things and secret things.” step or jungle producers like Skyfish and Goth-Trad (both of whom also produce for Rumi). On their self-released debut CD-R, the group as a whole is sharp, smooth and effortless where Ari and Candle audibly reach for the sky. Chinza and partner in crime Katomaira (minus third man Sabo) meet me out in the light, in a park.

“We used to do street performances a lot, right in this park,” says Chinza. “We got a unique audience, sort of random, with kids and old people mixed in. We’d just freestyle in the park, and we adjusted our style according to the audience.” This seems to be what has made them so absolutely unique among their peers. While plenty of Japanese rappers can make damned good abstract or aggressive hip hop, Haguretic are the only emcees on the 42 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

island who are truly, preternaturally funky.

This wasn’t an intentional homage to hip hop’s outdoor origins, though. “When we first started, we couldn’t get any traction in the club scene. We couldn’t get any shows, and we wanted a bigger audience, so we went outside.” In fact, their name is drawn from “hagureru,” which means “to go astray.”

On one of Haguretic’s songs, there are repeated references to pimps and hos, seemingly just the kind of thing I’m trying to avoid. But the irony in the song is palpable, even if you can’t fully grasp the lyrics. Chinza clarifies for me. “It’s about a part-time worker. He talks about how he makes a thousand yen [about $9.00] per hour, but he doesn’t pay any taxes – so he thinks that makes him a gangster.

When [other] Japanese rappers use those terms, they just lift them completely from American artists. They put on a bandana and wave a fake gun [firearms are illegal in Japan], and they say they’re a gangster.

They think it’s cool. So we want to critique that kind of attitude.”

The group’s self-awareness is as unique as their talent. How far ahead of the curve do you have to be to live in Japan and realize that thug rap is a bunch of madeup bullshit? And to make fun of it when all around you people are losing their heads in an unquestioned collective fantasia?

And then, on top of that, how do you turn around and make an American weaned on Wu-Tang and N.W.A. laugh as you clown on hip hop catchphrases - in Japanese?

When Americans laugh at Japan’s inept

appropriations of commercial hip hop, we like to pretend that it’s because they’re imitating, because they’re not “real.” But c’mon, folks. Fifty Cent may have actually been shot a few times, but he’s no less of a laughable cartoon character than Mars Manie. Who’s more closely connected to Afrika Bambaata – Cam’ron, or DJ Krush?

Does it matter? Even underground status is no guarantee that you’ll produce actual art. As Ari1010 puts it, “Some guys, they just want to play Anticon.”

I don’t actually speak Japanese. At least, not very well. Not well enough to follow the abstract, florid lyrics of Origami. Their words flow, stumbling against one another, so free they might as well fly when they feel like it, and I’m landbound, grasping fragments about mothers and children and desire. So, I can’t really comment on the brilliance of their wordplay or the depth of emotion they’re plumbing – I haven’t, technically speaking, got a clue. But on their second album, The King Who Lost the Moon, that flow, their plaintive tone, the droning flutes and zen chants and dusty drums (mostly courtesy of producer Onimas) become something beyond language, and my imagination fills in the blank poems with amazing tales.

The email that I finally get after Ari and Candle call Origami is from someone named Yoshimoto, who says he runs Temple ATS, Origami’s label. He gives me a phone number, and a subway station, and a time. When I arrive at the meeting spot, I find a young man in a traditional yukata. This is Yoshimoto. I ask him when he expects Origami to arrive. “Ah,” he replies, “I am Yoshimoto, but I am also Shibito, of Origami.” Soon we are joined

by Nanorunamonai – a name that translates roughly to “No Name to Call Myself.”

He is older, with a quiet bearing and small mustache, and also wears yukata.

We travel through a typical Tokyo neon technoscape, then down a small alley and into a different time. Paper flowers fountain along the wooden walls in a cluster of buildings that seem like secret prewar survivals – small, delicate, dark buildings lit warmly from within. We step into one where a man prepares food over a tiny charcoal-fired grill while a couple sits at a small table in the window. Shibito leads us upstairs, where we find a traditional room with low table, tatami, and rice-paper windows. There are, it seems, only two tables in the establishment. Over the course of the evening, the proprietor will bring in one tiny dish after another, from edamame to marinated tofu to roasted fish. I ask Origami why they came dressed in yukata.

“The two of us talk about this,” says Shibito. “We don’t want to ‘represent Japan’ in some big, dramatic sense. But we think the sound of Japanese is quite beautiful, there’s something deep about it.

We grew up in this linguistic environment where, yes, there are lots of foreign loan words, but we still listen to thousand yearold folk songs.”

“We don’t want to appeal to [Japanese] people who just listen to American hip hop,” continues Nanoru, “But we don’t want to appeal just to people who listen to Japanese hip hop, either. It’s more refined

than that.”

I tell them about my language barrier issue. “Maybe not understanding our lyrics is the right reaction,” says Nanoru.

“We’re expressing chaos. If you think you understood, you probably really don’t.”

That chaos contains, among other things, the music’s underlying sense of loneliness and melancholy. “I’m not drowning in melancholy all the time, but it’s definitely there,” allows Shibito. “But letting those feelings flow away, letting them just pass, seems an even sadder thing than doing something with them.

Like, if you see a movie, some are very sad, but thank God they made it into a movie.”

I point out the contrast between where we sit now, and most of Tokyo, and ask how they can make such beautiful, organic music in such an anesthetized city. “Even if there’s no forest in front of my eyes, it’s in my heart,” says Shibito. “I can close my eyes and it’s there. When a Japanese person says thank you or hello, they bring their hands together and close their eyes, so they can see what’s beautiful inside.”

“I don’t think I’m a beautiful or correct person – there are some ugly, imperfect, misformed parts,” Nanoru follows. “But because I’m imperfect, I want to make something great. And maybe Tokyo is the same way.”

These beautiful aphorisms and insights catch me off guard. The unfolding conversation is not about hip hop, or even music, but about life. This is, I find, not without rationale. “Hip hop’s not that old of a genre,” says Shibito. “But maybe we’re making a new genre – just call it Origami.”

This kind of boldness rises nearly as much as the zen wisdom – Nanorunamonai and Shibito have absolutely no doubt that what they’re doing is unique and important.

When I ask them about their place in Japan’s hip hop community, Shibito is baldly dismissive. “We’re not really concerned with what those people are doing now.

Recently, Nanoru has been saying – there are some people who should be loved, and some people who shouldn’t. And that’s true also in the hip hop community.”

Nanoru says he likes the Mary Joy artists as people, but cagily claims not to know their music very well.

I broaden the question, asking if there are any artists, even outside of music, to whom Origami feel a kinship. Shibito considers, then answers: Probably not. “I’m a person who – if I think, ‘Wow, I’d like to have a band like that,’ or be like that other person, my next thought is, ‘Okay, let’s do it.’” There is, undoubtedly, a maturity and artisanal dedication in Origami missing from their hard-living counterparts.

Nanoru has a wife and two children, while Shibito writes and works so much that he has been described by some as a hikikomori, or hermit.

Even these iconoclasts, though, started out listening to some very standard hip hop, citing both Yo! MTV Raps and MC Hammer as early exposure. But these were merely curiosities until they started hearing rap in their native language.

“When you listen to music in English,” says Nanoru, “You can’t really get the content, so it’s just music. But when Japanese rap started coming out, I understood what

they were talking about, what the values where, and that’s what made me want to come out and do it.”

Values seem to be a key term for Origami. We talk, at various points, about the importance of respecting one’s elders and the threats that current hip hop trends pose to children. In talking about the philosophy behind the Temple ATS label, Shibito turns to farming for an explanation of the satisfaction he’s seeking. “Look at people who grow peaches – people who make things, in general. You look at the things that they make, and you think, wow, this is incredible, this object.” He’s disappointed that hip hop shows little of this respect for those who have come before.

“Everyone saying ‘motherfucker’ all the time pretty much sums it up.”

After our roaming conversation about filial piety and the construction of civilizations, it seems truly trivial. But I’ve gone too far now, so I ask the question I came hoping to answer: Why do Japanese people love hip hop so much?

Shibbit pauses for a moment, then answers in his halting English. “Japanese people . . . is very easy to brainwash.” He continues in Japanese. “It’s a real shame that the music that’s gotten popular doesn’t have any lyrical content, it’s just gangster posturing. I wish people would just listen to the sound as sound, rather than listening for some kind of expression of some kind of lifestyle.” It’s the same basic message Chinza Dopeness gave me.

“Japanese like to follow trends. When something gets popular, everything tends to follow the trend.”

It’s hard to take all of this at face value.

Most of Japan’s underground hip hoppers seem to have the same criticisms of their mainstream that Americans do of their own – the only difference is that the Japanese see it as a problem with Japanese hip hop, while the Americans see themselves as out to save the soul of hip hop, period. Even if American commercial hip hop artists have some claim to legitimacy that Japan’s fake thugs lack, that doesn’t make their music any less abysmal. Meanwhile, the best of the acts I’d found in Japan – the ones in this article and others like them – were as good as anything in America’s increasingly lackluster underground.

As Nanorunamonai put it: “I’m a hip hop kid, I grew up in hip hop. But not just hip hop – music, too. When you become an adult, you stop worrying about these questions of how people look at you.”

Purity, authenticity, “keeping it real” – these are the wrong goals, limitations that, if they’d ever really been enforced, would have left hip hop stuck in the South Bronx.

It’s the people who keep it unreal, push over boundaries of sound and language, who have created all the hip hop, and all the music, that’s ever mattered. The boundaries of culture and country are just another set to break through. Let’s dance to the sound of their destruction. ✹ David Morris has written for Maximum Rock N' Roll, Popmatters.com, Skyscraper, and Audiogalaxy. His blog can be found at sleepnotwork.blogspot.com. This is his first feature for Signal to Noise.

SIGNAL to NOISE #48 | 43

THE IMPOSSIBLE RITUAL Through film, digital media, dance, words, and improvisational music, Alan Sondheim investigates the shortcomings and impossibilities of behavior. Story by Clifford Allen.

Photos by Mike and Fiona Galinsky

Imagine the convergence of Lightnin' Hopkins, Albert Ayler, virtual reality, dance, poetry and film, and you might scratch the surface of what inter-media artist, multi-instrumentalist and sometime-professor Alan Sondheim’s work brings to the fore. His art is founded on an interaction with extremes, an interest in pushing the body, the mind and the instrument to the absolute physical and conceptual limit. In dance, Sondheim’s choreographed collaborations find what the human body cannot do and creates situations in which impossible movements are made real. His music is predicated on similar extremes, whether shattering the tangible limits of space within an instrument’s actual corpus, or finding sounds that operate well beyond the limits of human perception and amplifying them. His music has run the gamut from solo artist (with new records on Fire Museum and Qbico) to directing group-ensemble improvisations in the tumultuous late ‘60s. And yet at heart, Sondheim is an improvising bard, telling a story of the impossible made possible, even when it confronts, disturbs or annoys us.

After all, just because we can’t fly doesn’t mean we don’t look at the sky or, to take it to another level, cover our arms in feathers and honey.

I visited Sondheim and his partner – dancer, vocalist and performance artist Azure Carter – in their Brooklyn home in August. The walls are lined with books, abacuses, and non-western instruments, all artfully arranged. At the time of my visit, 44 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

two VLF radios and their attendant wires sat on the coffee table. Sondheim talks fast, ideas constantly flowing forth with sharp wit, direct but full and multi-layered, a conversational analog to the ergs of energy that give rise to his art. In addition to his varied visual arts practices, Sondheim is also a professor, and he taught at the Rhode Island School of Design during the height of post-movement, concept and antiform art during the late ‘60s. He is currently teaching film at Brown University.

Sondheim’s initial musical impulse came in early college while at Brown (he is a Pennsylvania native, raised in Kingston).

Though not particularly encouraged to practice music beyond a few piano lessons, the end of a bad relationship spurred him on to explore blues guitar. “I heard Lightnin' Hopkins and that got me really interested in music. Because I tend to work fast, I wanted to pick up music as fast as possible, and I learned the guitar chords in alphabetical order because it didn’t make sense to me otherwise. When I played the blues, it was still kind of crappy blues playing in a way.

I can play really good blues on an electric [guitar] because I can hold the note, but on acoustic – well, I guess I’m okay, actually.

But I can’t sing along with it, so there’s not much point. I was listening mainly to people like Charley Patton and Son House, the Delta players who just blew me away – I couldn’t see anything else that interested me that much.”

SIGNAL to NOISE #48 | 45

Alan Sondheim in New York City, September 2007

Though now known as a multi-instrumentalist, his tough-love for the guitar is obvious.

Sondheim’s guitar playing is extraordinarily complex within a self-created idiom, improvised but outside the realm of free-jazz, physical without being particularly gesturebased. “I was not able to sing a note in tune,” he admits. “If you play a note on the piano I can match it somewhat, sometimes with my guitar playing, but I can’t really sing in tune. I can’t hear in tune that well, and my hearing is physiologically bizarre. I can play something really complicated harmonically and I can always follow the structure and get back to the tonic without any problems, but if you ask me to play 'Yankee Doodle' or whatever, I don’t think I could do it because I don’t hear those things in my mind.”

While he notes an ever-so-slight relationship with the playing of Derek Bailey, Sondheim’s physicality is a coarse test on what can be done sonically within a narrow area – say, the few feet of space within which the guitar operates spatially: “I wanted to be real-time and I wanted it to be a kind of labor or a kind of engagement of a certain limit, like playing as fast as I can or moving my hands so fast that I can’t follow what I’m doing, or where the chords are – trying to do it as quickly as possible.”

It isn’t just the intervallic leaps that mark Sondheim’s kinship to Bailey (and extension of, qua Skip James). Tactile, harsh strumming conjures a real feel for the working of hands and fingers on taut strings, tense forearms and deliberate rhythms that seem a unification of instrument and body as much as a doubled over Coltrane blowing the tenor. Indeed, coming up in the 1960s, he was exposed to the music of ‘Trane, Ayler, Mingus, singer Patty Waters and others in the New York free jazz scene. In this context, he started playing the alto saxophone and, with a variety of collaborators including drummers Joel (Rafi) Zabor and Barry Sugarman, cornetist Bob Poholek, bassist Chris Mattheson, and vocalists Ruth Ann Hutchinson and June Fellows, cut three Ritual All 770 albums for the Riverboat and ESP-Disk’ labels between 1967 and 1969: The Songs (Riverboat RB-3, reissued on Fire Museum); Ritual-All-7-70 (ESP 1048) and T’Other Little Tune (ESP 1082).

“What happened was that I went abroad to Europe in the late ‘60s and I met this guy Joel Zabor, a drummer, in Paris," remembers Sondheim. "(ESP-Disk producer) Bernard Stollman’s brother was hanging out at the Shakespeare & Co. bookshop, and he talked to Bernard and we decided to put out some music. I know I started boppin’ about on the horn – I can’t honestly say that I play saxophone, but I started playing 46 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

around on it with the soprano, and before that maybe with the C-Melody or the alto.

Anyway, I don’t know what I thought I was doing. I thought it was interesting, and I wanted to create a structure that would allow me to push myself as far as possible within that structure. On one of the ESP records [T’Other Little Tune, 1969] I’m playing trombone, which I can’t play for the life of me – we were in a huge hall and [saxophonist] John Emigh was on one end and I was on the other playing against each other’s echoes, so that was a given situation. I think by the point of T’Other Little Tune, I had become very interested in electronic music.

I don’t even see that as jazz or jazz-related; one of them only got two stars in the Penguin Guide to Jazz.”

Sure, the overblowing of saxophonists like Ayler or circa-’68 Charles Tyler might have been an influence on Sondheim’s approach to that instrument, but the coupling of vocalists, flamenco guitar, brass and percussion is a conspicuous nod to the most prominently-displayed album on his record shelf, Mingus’ 1963 Impulse! LP The Black Saint and The Sinner Lady. Not easily understood by the music press, the ensemble records hold up well perhaps because they make their own gravy: “somebody compared [the Riverboat record] to 'the poor-man’s Ascension,' and somebody else compared it to a car wreck -- which I actually preferred.”

The Songs begins with a trundling country-blues line, quickly trumped by Hutchinson’s and Fellows’ vocal lines and alternately frenetic and loping group improvisation. Mostly, the instrumentalists play as fast as they can, with Sondheim and Zabor probably the most comfortable in their sweat-inducing idiom. And despite the fact that Ritual All 770 seems to operate in its own orbit as a free improvisation group, Sondheim’s flashes of unaccompanied guitar playing are drenched in country-blues twang, surges of pure energy though they may be. In essence, the distance between these recordings and his recent projects is not all that far.

One of the most curious and appealing things about these early Ritual All 770 LPs is the vast array of instruments that Sondheim employs; in addition to alto, soprano and c-melody saxophones and a variety of guitars, he also plays zheng (a Chinese cousin of the koto), shenai (an Indian double-reed instrument), Indonesian and Indian flutes, gamelan and xylophone, a Chinese oboe, and Cor Anglais. Certainly, approaching the unknown parameters of an unfamiliar instrument is an attractive notion to an artist who delights in pushing boundaries as

much as he does buttons – “I’m fascinated by instruments that I can’t play which have a wider range of tonalities than Western instruments.” Amassing such a diverse palette “probably started right from the beginning through listening to Indian music, which to me is still overwhelming and frankly exhausting to listen to. When I play tabla, it’s free-form; I can’t do anything on the level of an Indian musician or anything.

Jagdish Sachdev opened up a shop in Providence, and right after I started listening to the music I met him and he would sell me instruments for close to nothing.”

Seemingly simple, and the modest Sondheim remarks that he “should’ve put [a few of these instruments] down,” but this healthy naïveté is what drives a restlessness in approaching new situations, ranging from free improvisation on unfamiliar instruments to the employment of homemade electronics during the height of the group’s experimentation: “we needed our own synthesizer. At that point it was $6,000 to $10,000, which would be about $50,000 today. We couldn’t afford it, so we built our own synthesizer. I did the rough design, and [flutist] Gregert Johnson had a degree in quantum electrodynamics and he did the circuit design.”

Of course, there’s an aesthetic interest in the instruments themselves – Sondheim’s various axes are, indeed, gorgeous to look at as much as they’re obviously put through their paces. Artfully arranged atop the bookcases in his home are zithers, a Chinese erhu, and other more unfamiliar stringed instruments procured from junk shops and through friends. “With the guitars, like I said I have three guitars and two of them are amazing; it certainly has something to do with the beauty of the instrument. I’m interested in is old or analog instruments which, like the earth, require tending. For example, this guitar has had to be fixed so many times, I have to take care of it in a certain way or it’s not going to work, and also recognizing something of the organic in that.” It’s all part and parcel of the work that one puts into making art.

An important extension of Sondheim’s musical vocabulary is his current collaboration (along with Azure Carter and, for a time, Maud Liardon) with Swiss dancer Foofwa d’Imobilité, a former member of Merce Cunningham’s company. He approaches the limitations of the body with an exhaustingly severe physical stance, shaking, bending, tensing and bludgeoning his body through combining dance with seven-mile runs or moving as quickly and harshly as possible.

One piece involved Foofwa and Liardon

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“The dancers quake and vibrate as though afflicted with some strange neuromuscular disease” Foofwa and Liardon in a still from Sondheim's "The Wall"

doing a run-dance across a dam high in the Swiss Alps, while others have made use of Sondheim’s avatar-based choreography, which finds humans imitating the impossible constraints Sondheim has set upon the figure in a virtual reality environment.

“I did an avatar piece with motion capture and Foofwa would imitate the avatar in real life. He’s one of the only people who can do this; it’s incredible dancing, really. I would take what Foofwa did and return it to the world of avatars and we’d go back and forth between virtual and real world.”

The avatars may bend their arms backwards and through their stomachs, twist about in impossible directions, or become broken apart and reassembled – a neck gives way to a leg, a body made from a mass of appendages spinning and contorting in midair at speeds nearly blurring the grotesque contortions. Many of these creations, both in their computerized and real-time form (from about a thousand total, in Sondheim’s estimation), are readily viewable on You Tube via the asondheim page.

A prime example of their collaboration is “The Wall,” a thirty-second piece featuring Foofwa and Liardon in an Alpine barn, confined to a narrow space between a water pipe and a wall. The dancers quake and vibrate as though afflicted with some strange neuromuscular disease, their faces blank and expressionless and eyes dead as they grapple detached with one another, an arm behind a head, neck bent, legs stiffly lifting and jutting as they butt up against their environment. They are like trapped insects with broken wings, struggling in invisible amber. With actual faces attached to these movements, these avatar actions are particularly unsettling, a movement so off-putting precisely because the viewer has a gut feeling that people aren’t supposed to move that way – there’s something wrong with this context, with these new sets of limitations imposed on one’s body.

“For me, the reason I like him is because while he’s a top dancer, I see him as a performer," says Sondheim. "He upsets dancers a lot, even avant-garde dancers, because he’s always pushing really strange boundaries, and he doesn’t settle for anything. He ran in the New York Marathon, which dancers aren’t supposed to do because it wrecks their legs. He came in 200th, which sounds low, but out of thirty thousand people it’s impressive. He started doing dance-sport, it’s incredibly exhausting and he did some of it onstage while other dancers are having difficulty keeping up. Again, he’s always pushing these boundaries.”

Sondheim and Foofwa have done duets as musician-dancer as well – “the idea of 48 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

the piece is that I play guitar as fast as I can and Foofwa dances as fast as he can, and we do it for as long as we can (which usually is about ten minutes and twenty seconds).

That results in this kind of furious movement that you also see in the avatars.” Disturbing and confrontational as these dances might seem, when put to the soundtrack of Sondheim’s guitar playing (or even one of the Ritual All 770 records), they are perfectly synchronized with vicious speed and action – arms flailing wildly but with pulse, as frantic zheng arpeggios match a body’s stalled vibrations. The unity reached smooths over the inherent roughness of either action, creating an inner peace amongst jitters.

A major factor in Sondheim’s work is developing a relationship with one’s environment and its limitations. One learns as one discovers the limits (or perceivable limits) of one’s experience; Sondheim’s thirst for experience thus reaches beyond the art world into the natural world. For example, he is a dedicated student of VLF, or very low frequency radio. VLF operates within the narrow range of 3 to 30 kHz, and has been used to transmit information from deepsea submarines and for radio navigation purposes. “The radio range is roughly the same as that of human hearing, since it's not acoustic but the radio spectrum, and you pick up lightning, auroras, spherics in general (which are all these clicks and hisses that come from the atmosphere). You get really strange signals and anomalies sometimes. I’ve gone out and done a lot of recordings – made that way and then manipulated. These are just for amplification, there’s no tuning, and you attach very long cords to it. One goes to ground, the other one in the air, and you get these crackles and pops. Azure and I, when we travel, we find the quietest place – Antelope Island in the middle of the Great Salt Lake, for example, it’s the quietest place we’ve been.

We couldn’t hear any hum from the power grid at all. That’s what you want, and you start to pick up spherics and all that stuff.”

Sondheim has employed the sounds picked up from VLF radio into his music, and has even attached VLF antennas to a dancer's body, in a sense mapping their interference in an electromagnetic environment.

Certainly there’s an attraction to what can be done within a very narrow environmental area, and as much as VLF is a tight area to work in, the sounds Sondheim has discovered and the uses he’s found for them are extraordinarily diverse.

Ironically, for all the interest in imposing limitations on the body or confronting limitations instrumentally, he’s extremely

concerned with the limitations human beings have placed on their own environment.

“We belong to PETA and when we can go hiking we do. I have no patience for people who mistreat animals or who don’t believe in global warming. I try to be vegan; Azure is vegan, and though I’m not always that successful, we’re pretty much tied into that.

We do a lot of walking in the wilderness, and usually when I’m going to do a presentation, I bring this up. The fact that polar bears are cannibalizing each other now, that elephants are raping other animals – the species-rate of extinction is three to four an hour, because of the wholesale destruction of world-wide environments, including Brazil, Madagascar, our own Appalachian habitats, and so forth. We keep up with this stuff, and I talk about it as much as I can.

What most people think about is pandas – they always celebrate the birth of a panda, but that is no compensation for the death of an entire ecosystem. It’s all over the place, and there are some hopeful signs like the enclaves set aside in the oceans, but it’s only about .01% of the ocean that’s set aside and the rest of it is butchery. We have nightmares over these things and we take them personally. Everyone should.”

If one can ascribe a common thread to the art of Alan Sondheim, it is the idea of labor – not only that which goes into creating, but the idea that creative expression and experience are derived from stretching oneself to the physical and intellectual limit.

Whether playing as hard and as fast as he can on instruments with which he’s only barely familiar (as well as those he’s spent the last forty-odd years playing), asking the human body to make movements it doesn’t normally make, or tending the needs of his chosen medium, Sondheim is a worker. It is through these acts that he has come to truly experience his working environment.

This work has both emphasized and created tension. Of the latter, the creative impositions brought upon oneself to one’s own environment are in direct opposition to those brought about by humanity to the eco-cultural environment. Conversely, he embraces tensions between analog and digital environments (the avatar-dance pieces with Foofwa d’Imobilité and mixing VLF and acoustic sounds) or between instrumental knowledge and ability. Without tension, however – without a gap to bridge, circumvent or heighten, there is no work to do. Alan Sondheim’s art is Experience.✹ Clifford Allen lives in Austin, TX where he writes for AllAboutJazz and works on a Masters Degree in Information Sceince.

SIGNAL to NOISE #48 | 49

LIVE REVIEWS

bottom: Michael Muniak

Caught in the act, significant concerts from around the globe

top: Audrey Chen, Asimina Chremos, IDM Theft Able bottom: Marina Rosenfeld's "Criminal" 50 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

High Zero 2007 The Theatre Project, Baltimore MD 9/27 — 30/2007

As anti-thematic and irreducible as a festival could be, Baltimore's High Zero nonetheless wound up being a showcase for the human voice in this, its ninth year. Besides the eminent virtuosity and tomfoolery of Jaap Blonk, emerging hyper-eccentrics Shodokeh and IDM Theft Able were revelations and a handful of other voices glimmered among the often bewildering maelstrom of improbable improvisational encounters that defines this annual convergence of over a dozen Baltimore musicians and at least as many visitors from around the world.

Sofia Jernberg was the only performer who used voice exclusively during the festival, often evoking Jeanne Lee's warm avant-scat, but occasionally switching to an unnerving quiet howl reminscent of Ami Yoshida. Sadly her songstream was largely polluted by non-responsive or overbearing playing from her improvisational partners, but I cherished the brief passage where she added a contrastive layer to a dramatically intimate episode of delicate French singing by Eve Risser, which then became a vocal trio of sorts when Eric Franklin entered with a traditional theremin sound.

The voice received its most explicit staging in Marina Rosenfeld's “Criminal” performed by nine vocalists improvising in response to a sound construction prepared in advance by Rosenfeld that they listened to individually with headphones and portable music players. It was as soft and sublime a tapestry of murmurs and melodic fragments as I'd ever heard before.

The voice's incidental appearances were equally valuable. While Peter Glasser and Kyp Malone spent most of the festival concerned with their tasteful, modest instrumental contributions on homemade electronic oddities and effects-laden electric guitar, respectively, when they sang for a brief spell I felt the casual beauty of a Robert Wyatt interjection.

An imposing, slightly comical figure with his long hair and gigantic red beard, ID M Theft Able was a tornado of ecstatic gestures. Whether he was contorting his mouth to splatter gibberish or animating

small objects atop an amplified sheet of glass, each gesture was a jump-cut in a unified full-body cycle of rapid, exaggerated tension and release with visceral pauses and dynamic leaps. His solo set was the runaway highlight of the festival for me, and in another set he went for broke with his ideal sparring partner, Audrey Chen, whose riveting vocal psychodramas, cello scrabbles, and electronic squelches are similarly unified as a genuine bodily immersion in the moment.

Shodokeh is a “human beatboxer” with an intensely virtuosic command of various dance idioms like hip-hop, trance, jungle, etc and a shocking ability to emulate other instruments and environmental sounds using his mouth, throat, and a microphone. He's also one of the most brilliant improvisors I've ever witnessed, listening intensely, responding with clever, surprising, varied, subtle ideas, and sustaining them with precise intentions, in contrast to the typical free improvisors who toss out half-baked phrases and abandon them before anything takes shape.

In fact, I was frustrated more than a few times during the festival when I'd hear a great convergence between players and then a few moments later one of them would prematurely kill it by switching to an unrelated idea, as if they weren't paying attention to the actual music happening or they've been conditioned by a certain self-consciously experimental subculture of free improvisation to avoid repetition or narrative. Even when he stuck with the same material for long passages, Shodokeh's elastic and intricate variations in tempo, phrasing, and dynamics massaged the group sound instead of trapping it. Like John Butcher, Michel Doneda, and Toshimaru Nakamura, Shodokeh revealed the potential for architectural focus in free improv.

I'm not suggesting that great improv requires development or narrative; after all, there's a grand tradition of moment form (e.g. Derek Bailey, Jack Wright, Paul Lovens), but among this year's 24 sets arguably only two reached that level of split-second reinvention. Nearly ecstatic in her virtuosic athleticism, dancer Asimina Chremos nevertheless played second fiddle in a quartet with ID M Theft Able, Audrey Chen on cello, and Eve Risser on voice, piano, and toys that amounted to thrilling information overload. Similar in its intensity of mindfulness in the kinesthetic

moment, the convoluted interplay of John Dierker's elegant reeds, Stewart Mostofsky's exotic circuitry, Jaap Blonk's gleeful voice and joystick-controlled software, and Dan Breen's you-have-to-see-it-withyour-own-eyes was a magical, beautiful theater of sound and action teetering on the brink of disaster.

The Breen set validated the festival's radical philosophy of testing novel combinations of improvisors in the hopes that we might discover music we'd never imagined before, but unfortunately I can only cite one other set that bore strange fruits without leaving a bad taste in my mouth. Chiara Giovando, Aaron Dilloway, Bonnie Jones, and Audrey Chen discovered an inscrutable, rapturous way to arrange woozy white noise, pinprick squeals, synthy swoops, Autechre-ish loops, violin slithering, cello scrabbling, motoric buzzing, and all sorts of other innocent sounds in an extraordinary set highlighted by Chiara Giovando's stark and beautiful singing.

In the end, it was mainly the comfortable, familiar aesthetics that brought pleasure. With the safety of numbers and no electronics to fear, Chris Heenan, John Berndt, Jaimie Branch, John Dierker, and Matana Roberts played their horns and Thomas Helton played his bass, each enjoying a relaxed alternation between melody and edgy extended techniques, realigning themselves to achieve a consistently balanced ensemble sound.

Jeff Carey, Donna Parker, Aaron Dilloway, and Shodokeh delivered the hot “noise” set that many folks desperately craved, with a thick, slow, graceful, epic, surging, majestic, visceral, cathartic first movement, and an equally satisfying second movement of relatively sparse, gritty, nuanced, hovering, static sound-purging.

My pleasure buttons were locked in the “on” position for every precious moment of warm, crackling, fuzzy, glitchy electroacoustic texture from the perfect and obvious combination of Bonnie Jones' exposed-circuit devices, Marina Rosenfeld's extended-technique turntables, and Massimo Simonini's theremin-controlled software.

Even after witnessing 162 of the 196 sets in the festival's 9-year history, I'm still surprised by the fresh set of challenges and rewards each year as High Zero renews itself as a fertile laboratory of musical possibility without equal.

Michael Anton Parker SIGNAL to NOISE #48 | 51

Freedom France: clockwise, Charles Gayle, Barry Guy and Lauren Newton with Paul Lovens

Jazz a Mulhouse

Sébastien Bozon

Various Venues, Mulhouse, France 8/20 — 25/2007

The annual jazz festival in Mulhouse, near the Swiss-French border, has attracted loyal performers and listeners for decades. Setting aside the lead-in events, which vary from year to year, the four-day Jazz a Mulhouse is built around a free lunch-time concert in a deconsecrated city-centre chapel, another free event early in the evening at the main venue, and a typically three-part concert that finishes well after midnight.

In one of incoming director Adrien Chiquet’s innovations, each of this year’s lunch-time concerts were for solo piano.

Fred Van Hove is a pioneer of European improvisation and the freshness and energy of his playing in this, his seventieth 52 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

year, showed that he is still a truly free spirit. There were times when he might have been an improvising Debussy or Ligeti; at others, he seemed to dwell in the piano's rumbling lower register, working it relentlessly, with a prolonged, disciplined excursion inside the instrument's body. Right-hand escapades were quickly rounded up and returned to base before an airier concluding phase.

Two years ago at Mulhouse, in a duo with guitarist Olivier Benoit, Sophie Agnel created a subtle poetic drama from small gestures on the edge of silence. This year, the timing, the concentration were the same, the ability to draw poetry from a restricted vocabulary too, but the gestures were more commanding and overtly expressive – as when one note hammered and allowed to decay was repeatedly brought up against carefully shaped scrapes and rumbles inside the piano.

Frédéric Blondy’s playing was exuberant, youthful, and romantic. Head almost

in the piano at one moment, body leaning back the next, then hands swooping on the keys from a height, he energised the space around the piano as much as the piano itself. Finally, in a typically varied and zestful program, Swiss pianist Irene Schweizer – who has collaborated with countless European and American players, notably including Pierre Favre to George Lewis - showed that she has the whole jazz tradition at her fingertips.

The lead-in and early-evening concerts were a mixed bag: teasing variations on standards from guitarist Noël Akchoté; the energetic blowing from Swiss multi-reedist Lucien Dubuis, insufficiently supported by drums and guitar (and the agonising love song at the end deserves merciful anonymity); Donkey Monkey (Eve Risser on piano, Yuko Oshima on drums), playful and happy to play well within their considerable abilities; Akchoté again in an Anglo-French trio that never really got going; Kif Kif providing a pastoral interlude;

a workshop performance well marshalled

by Evan Parker; and the charm (or was it the self-satisfaction?) of the laid-back song-based project Magic ID, featuring Christof Kurzmann, Michael Thieke, Kai Fagaschinski and Margareth Kammerer.

A cleverly-curated festival can raise questions that might otherwise have remained out of sight. You listen to the trio of sax-player Urs Leimgruber (anything like a fully blown note thwarted at first, but a wider array of sounds gradually brought out), Jacques Demierre (a pianist who is beginning to make his mark) and Barre Philips (the legendary double bassist as impressive in his silences as in his discreetly shaped interventions) – and you're impressed by the intense but subtle collective ethos of the group.

After a very different second act with Olivier Benoit conducting (and, with all eyes fixed on him at all times, very much controlling) twenty-two players – another trio appears: Tom Chant on saxophone, Benjamin Duboc on bass and Didier Lasserre on percussion. Does your heart lift as you realize, within minutes, that this is going to be a trio even more committed to breathing rather than blowing and to interlocking small gestures – or do you catch yourself thinking that maybe one such group in an evening is enough? As it happens, this trio is very effective. The bassist is as interested in resonance as in overt activity; the ear adjusts to the multiple shadings of the soprano sax; and percussion crucially provides the sense of space against which the other two define their gestures. In such a context, a slight increase in pressure, a hint of acceleration, can be quite dramatic.

The same could be said of the Bertrand Gauguet (sax) / Martine Altenburger (cello)/ Frédéric Blondy (piano) trio the following night, though here a different question was raised: did the fuller voicings of the cellist (her near-perpendicular bowing action the outward mark of a personalized approach to the instrument) counterbalance or clash with the carefully shaped half-sounds of sax and piano?

The questions posed by the Spanish/ Basque Billy Bao trio — Mattin (guitar, lap-top), Xabier Erkizia (guitar) and Alberto Lopez (drums) — are completely different. Mattin staring out blankly at the audience for minutes on end, with the occasional walloping of a drum the only on-stage activity; a sudden onslaught of screeching, banging noise and shrieked vocals; then Mattin getting off the stage and wandering through the hall abusing and challenging the audience… Is all this a radical critique of the politics of consumption, of ossified social structures, of political passivity — or has this kind of supposedly provocative gesture become merely one style option among many?

With a very fine percussionist in Makoto Sato and Jean-Marc Foussat getting everything possible out of his synthesiser, with full-on guitar blasts, gentle lyricism and much more from Jean-Francois Pauvros, Marteau Rouge took us through an almost baffingly varied musical landscape, culminating in an imaginative reworking of the Internationale. At one point, with his face obscured by his hair, with his nose

practically in the strings of the guitar on his lap, Pauvros was as focused as a pig unearthing a truffle. (Lovers of French food will know there is nothing derogatory in the comparison.)

I'll admit I'm a skeptic when it comes to vocal improv, but I could still appreciate Lauren Newton’s vocal dexterity, range of effects and sensitivity to her fellow-musicians in a trio with double-bassist Joelle Léandre—a typically energetic performance that included some yowls and barks of her own—and percussionist Paul Lovens. Using a limited kit and a seemingly simple vocabulary, Lovens spins a fascinating personal syntax that somehow always respects and supports his fellowplayers’ language. His special talents were also to be displayed in a lively duo with Thomas Lehn on synthesiser.

Another impressive percussionist, Mark Sanders, figured in a fine trio with bassplayer John Edwards and the wonderful Spanish/Catalan pianist Augusti Fernandez. Two of these players were also to feature on the closing evening of the festival. Sanders had been brought aboard the Charles Gayle Trio in an emergency and remained for the rest of the European tour. Saxophonist Gayle is a great free player but he seemed to offer little freedom to his sidemen. It was almost shocking then to hear a musician as subtle and creative as Sanders being ordered in mid-beat to put away his brushes and use sticks, or to see Gayle stamping his foot to signal the exact moment when he wanted a piece to end, tarnishing the music's positive aspects.

The closing set of the festival embodied happier and more democratic values. This was emphatically the Parker/ Fernandez/Guy/Lytton quartet, and not a long-standing-trio-with-guest. The first piece lasted about thirty minutes. It was fine music-making by any standards but not the highest these musicians could reach. The second piece, of roughly equal length, began with a long and almost demonically intense solo from Barry Guy— he was all over the instrument, plucking, slamming, at times seeming in danger of impaling himself on the wooden bow that he inserted between the strings. Even his fellow-musicians gazed in wonder – until Paul Lytton’s discreet cracklings intervened and hinted a change in direction.

From that point on, these four superbly attuned and mutually respectful musicians seemed to catch collective fire, in a performance that encapsulated all that is best in free music – breath-taking technique and interaction, yes, but in the service of passion, lyricism, explosive energy, collective joy… Parker and Guy are rightly acclaimed for their leadership as well as their playing; Fernandez, if he is not already, will be known as one of the great pianists. And Lytton is a genius, whether as the dynamo driving the group on or, while reacting with extraordinary invention to what is happening right now, offering multiple simultaneous routes towards what is to come. As if nobody, audience or musician, really wanted to let the occasion go, the kaleidoscopic encore went on for twenty minutes.

Barra O Seaghedha SIGNAL to NOISE #48 | 53

Variously Indeterminate

Wilmington Music School, Wilmington DE 9/22/2007 Concentrating on the “New York School” of composers, the titular highlight of the Wilmington Music School's "Variously Indeterminate" concert was a world premiere of a new Christian Wolff piece, “Grete”, commissioned specifically for the eight-member New Music ensemble Relâche. As great as this piece proved to be, the rest of the program was equally marvelous.

Relâche — named after a 1924 Dadaist multi-media work co-authored by Erik Satie, René Clair, Jean Börlin and Francis Picabia, and having the theatrical meaning "no performance," or "the theater is dark" — is one of America’s longest-running avant garde ensembles. Based in Philadelphia, the group is co-led by oboist/English horn player Lloyd Shorter, and flutist Michele Kelly. Opening the concert was John Cage’s 1940 composition Living Room Music, which began with the ensemble arrayed across a stage that was transformed into a Pirandellian space, an intimate living room for which the audience now became voyeurs. Familiar objects — a lamp, a coffee pot and cup, an orange, a pint of nondairy creamer — dotted several tables, and the black-clad musicians variously sat in chairs, at tables, or rested on the stage itself, wholly absorbed in their own thoughts, a stack of books (Marcel Proust among them), or a newspaper.

Originally composed for percussion and speech, Cage’s score calls for the former instruments to consist solely of “household objects or architectural elements”; on this night, the musicians’ own bodies were included among the elements. Over the four movements - "To Begin", "Story", "Melody", and "End", Cage’s dictum that all sounds could be music was lucidly displayed in a sharp, witty performance full of impressive polyrhythms. A rhythmic, multi-voiced reading of lines from Gertrude Stein's 1939 children’s book, The World is Round, deconstructed its text, whistled, and hissed at it, until a mysterious, mesmeric, and very Satie-like flute melody led the body/ furniture department into a tribal percussion feel. Like Ray Bradbury's vision of hearth and home in his short story "The Pedestrian", Living Room Music manages to locate an entire cosmos in that most common of places, a furnished room, and makes one wonder if the humans present signify any more or less than the furnishings they decorate.

Like Cage, Earle Brown dealt in unusual, graphic notational methods, and Relâche next performed his famous, "open-form" piece, December 1952. The score consists entirely of horizontal and vertical lines, of varied width, spread over one page. The performer interprets the score visually, translating the graphical information musically; Brown also suggested that one consider the score’s twodimensional space as three-dimensional, and imagine moving through it. Indeterminacy occurs, then, in the individual performer’s interpretation of not only the score’s lines, but of the spaces between them. The striking ensemble colors, Ruth Frazier’s viola, Doug Mapp's contrabass, and Bob Butryn’s clarinet prominent among them, made for a fascinating contrast with David Tudor’s classic 1974 recording for solo piano, and the score came alive with finely-nuanced dynamics from all hands.

Christian Wolff was a close associate and one time student of John Cage’s (in a remarkably prescient move, Wolff once gave Cage, as a present, his first copy of the I Ching). Wolff 54 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

rubbed shoulders with the likes of Brown and Tudor, as well as Morton Feldman and Merce Cunningham, and would later become involved with two other revolutionaries, Frederic Rzewski and Cornelius Cardew. Still active as a composer, Wolff has also performed as an improviser with Christian Marclay, Keith Rowe, and AMM, and Sonic Youth recorded his “Edges” and “Burdocks” on their SYR release, Goodbye, 20th Century. His “Grete”, written specifically for Relâche, was submitted to them, as oboist Shorter told me, “as a number of ‘exercises’ for the ensemble to arrange in any order, but with specific rules regarding whether or not they could be repeated; some had open instrumentation, and others had very limited choices or no choices.” The idea, as Relâche interpreted it, was “to enhance ensemble sensitivity and interaction, to make each ‘exercise’ very collaborative, and to explore each sound-world.”

Like Living Room Music, "Grete" also incorporated ensemble percussion. Beginning with a dramatic flourish, a low figure from pianist Andrea Clearfield was soon stomped on by a series of percussive jabs that wrung overtones from the piano; a Stravinsky-like melody appeared, only to be fractured by a cracked, buffoon-ish melody for soprano sax and flute.

A boisterous section for percussion and voices appeared five minutes in, after which a dark, luscious passage for full ensemble, with some astonishing sonorities. Wolff's writing can be so evanescent that it can elude the ear, scenting the air with hints of structure that vanish and reoccur in different forms. But in a good performance — and this was a very good one — the organic quality of Wolff's music is keenly registered by the listener, from the quietest passages to the loudest. Chords formed by various parts of the ensemble flowered like roses in time-lapse photography, swelling open only to pass into emerging tones from other parts. Harmonies seemed to morph into and out of each other almost erotically, triggering, as Wolff once said of his music, "…a collaborative and transforming activity (performer into composer into listener into composer into performer)”. Beautifully executed by the ensemble, one hopes that Relâche will record the piece, named after Wolff’s piano teacher Grete Sultan, for wider dissemination.

John Cage popped up again in the form of one of his "Ryoanji" pieces, named for the famous rock garden in Kyoto, a site that dates to the 15th century. (One could argue that Earle Brown’s score for December 1952 is itself a representation of the garden, which contains only white gravel, sand, and 15 rocks.) This particular Ryoanji was scored in the 1980's by Cage for oboist James Ostryniec, and Lloyd Shorter tackled the piece’s difficult glissandi with aplomb; tapes of him playing other oboe parts generated further resonances, and Chris Hanning brought the right touch of Zen-like detachment to the percussion part. A haunting, restless stillness marked this performance, yet it jelled perfectly with its less passive companions on the program.

The ensemble concluded the evening with a performance of Jennifer Barker’s sair wrocht wi lilt (Scottish for “laden with rhythm”), that was anything but passive. Unrelated to the New York School works on the program, the piece (commissioned by Relâche) turned them, as Barker puts it, into a “quasi-folk band”, and added baritone Robert Joubert. Born and raised in Scotland, and living in America since 1987, Barker is also active as a pianist, and is an Associate Professor of Music Theory/Composition at the University of Delaware. Combining contemporary classical structure with material in the Scottish folk tradition, sair wrocht wi lilt came blazingly alive, with lovely, aching melodies that evoked not only Barker’s homeland, but Americana as well, even recalling a phrase from “Shenandoah” at one point. Heavily percussive (again including the performers' bodies

Above: members of Relache performing the music of Cage, Brown and Wolff in Wilmington Right: Eric Roth and percussionists on Chicago's Clark Street Bridge

as instruments), the piece turned literally into a dance when Bob Butryn set his clarinet down for a show-stopping, superbly executed tap dance. I was reminded of film director John Ford’s wonderful, country dance set pieces, and also of the fact that the “avant garde” need not be unapproachable. Relâche’s ability to entertain as well as edify was on strong form this night, making for an unusually memorable experience. Larry Nai

Eric Roth & the Clark Street Bridge Percussion Orchestra Clark Street Bridge, Chicago 10/6/2007

People began milling around on Chicago’s Clark Street Bridge at about noon, expecting that at any minute, a concert featuring the bridge itself as a percussion instrument was about to begin. As it happened, some local press outlets had announced an incorrect time for the event, which was actually at 1 p.m. But conductor Eric Roth was already leading a small cadre of percussionists in a run-through of the pieces he had composed for the occasion, while the man who dreamed up the concert, conceptual artist Hugh Musick, passed out Vic Firth drumsticks, circle sticks, marching bass mallets and rubber-ended hammers to anyone who wanted to take part. Someone asked him if anyone had ever done this on the

Clark Street Bridge before. Musick shook his head. “As far as we know,” he said, “it’s the first time anyone has played a bridge.”

Chicago claims to have more movable bridges than any other city in the world – 37 are still in operation – so it seems like a good place to forge a new genre of bridge percussion. Of all the bridges that span the Chicago River near the city’s Loop district, the one on Clark Street was best suited for Musick’s purposes. Built in 1929, it’s a bascule bridge – a sort of drawbridge that takes its name from the French term for "seesaw." But more important to Musick and Roth, the bridge features two arch-like structures of maroonpainted, rivet-dotted steel, rising up between the bridge’s inner traffic lanes and its outer pedestrian walkways. With these risers, plus the railings and the metal grid that cars drive over, the Clark Street Bridge offers a wide variety of surfaces. Like a 10-ton drum kit, it makes noises ranging from resonant gong hits to dull thuds, depending on where it’s being struck.

As Roth’s Clark Street Bridge Percussion Orchestra practiced and early-arriving concertgoers tried out their drumsticks, it started to sound like an orchestra tuning up before a concert. The bridge shuddered slightly with each passing bus, and then city workers in organ safety vests closed off the bridge to traffic, putting up striped barricades and yellow police tape. It was an unseasonably warm fall day, with bright sunlight beaming down on the river and puffy clouds drifting across the sky. Looking a little puzzled, pedestrians unaware of what was going on walked through the growing throng on the bridge.

At 1 p.m., Musick climbed atop the

bridge’s truss and announced that the concert was about to begin: half an hour of pieces composed by Roth, followed by half an hour of improvised free-for-fall. “We really want to see if the city can hear us,” he said.

In fact, Roth’s music sounded surprisingly quiet. Sweat glistening on his forehead, Roth leaned through a gap in the bridge’s truss and conducted as several musicians tapped, ticked and hammered out patterns that sounded like a slightly avant-garde variation of marching band rhythms. It was not exactly thunderous, fading away in the background noise of the city if you were standing near the bridge’s ends, but the crowd listened in respectful silence. Roth’s music was not necessarily groundbreaking, but it was fairly engaging and apt for the occasion. Near its conclusion, Roth’s suite called on the performers to chant, grunt and shriek along to the drumming.

And then Musick opened up the concert to anyone who wanted to hit the bridge. An incoherent clatter rose up, gradually coalescing around some recognizable beats. The sound changed depending on where the listener was standing. In one spot, it sounded like marching soldiers. A short distance away, the noise was closer to Caribbean steel-drum music. The bridge finally began making some truly loud noises when a few people pounded pipes up and down on metal panels in the bridge’s traffic lanes. With the spirit of a communal drum circle, the event, which was part of the city-sponsored Chicago Artists Month, proved popular with its participants, who ran the gamut from hipsters to families with kids and senior citizens. As the din subsided, someone asked, “Next Saturday?”

Robert Loerzel SIGNAL to NOISE #48 | 55

Shock therapy: Barry Schwartz with Tesla Coil sound-sculpture

Electric Eclectics Festival of Modern Music and Irritainment

Laura Kikauka

The Funny Farm, Meaford, Ontario 8/3 — 5/2007

Driving through the rolling countryside and the cattle pastures, Napoleon XIV’s “They're Coming To Take Me Away, Ha Ha!” seemed to be on infinite repeat on the media player inside my mind. After all, if you’re going to stage a three-day experimental music festival at a farm on the outskirts of a small village in Midwestern Ontario, who knows what sonic craziness might be lie ahead? With an impressive lineup of local, national and international artists, this second edition of the festival encompassed all aspects of multi-media, from installations on and off site to performance art to video projections to a hypnotist and to music that spanned that the gamut of experimental music: funk, noise, dub, indie rock, techno, free improv, electronic free jazz, abstract laptop and avant hip-hop.

Still, most concertgoers were probably unprepared for the unusual welcome to the Funny Farm, the home of long time experimental sound composers Gordon Monahan and Laura Kikauka, managing director and artistic coordinator respectively, of the Electric Eclectics festival and the location of the festival itself. At the entrance, you're greeted by a pole with a plastic toy horse with antlers tied on top, and beside it, a ’70s Malibu muscle car, covered in green webbing.

Then you notice the baby doll heads lining the 56 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

steep, winding driveway. Indeed, this kitschy display foreshadowed the playful sense of absurdity and adventure that permeated the entire festival.

The stage itself, shaped like a hockey stick (how Canadian) and perched on the crest of a hill, provided the perfect vantage point for performers to gaze out at the sprawling magnificence of the gently sloping landscape, and in the evening, to spectacular sunsets. The artists seem to feed off the beauty and splendor of the view, as well as the festival’s casual vibe. This was apparent throughout the weekend: Toronto free jazz improvisers, Bitchin’ Quick Thinking ended their AACM-like set, in midstream, upstaged by a trio of bitchin' canines engaged in their own sonic dialogue as they chased each other through the crowd. Aggressive, punk/prog Toronto outfit Rozasia spontaneously decided to eschew the stage altogether and play on the grass in front of it, to ensure that the audience would make direct contact with their Gogol Bordello-like flailings. In fact, the whole weekend was full of these delightful contrasts and coincidences, such as when the jet engine-like blast that capped the Megoinspired set of Montreal laptop/guitar duo Blube coincided with a jet passing, high above them, its long white trail, stretching across the blue sky. Or when one of the members of the Toronto punk noise duo, Gastric Female Reflex, who impressed with their own set of analog circuit bending, ran across the stage during Disguises' set and planted a plastic Danger sign on the table where the Toronto guitar/drums/bass/vocals/electronics group were pummelling and abusing out their generators, filters, pedal effect boxes and instruments into the red zone in a fierce, cacophonous display. Or when Viennese vocalist and Theremin maverick Dorit Chrysler, in a red dress and gloves, opened her suave set of standards and experimental compositions by trying out a Moog Theremin live for the first time. Would it work?

After a minor adjustment, it did.

In fact, each night's schedules seemed to be designed for jarring juxtapositions in sound and approach, such as Saturday’s program where the London, Ontario's legendary noise improv outfit, Nihilist Spasm Band, joined by Einsturzende Neubauten bassist Alexander Hacke for a muscular yet strangely, ethereal cocktail of chugging caterwaul, was followed by the spontaneous, whimsical conductions of Toronto songstress Mary Margaret O’Hara, whose improv set assiduously avoided any song-based material from her classic Miss America album. She, in turn, was followed by Hacke (dressed in top hat and tails), and his partner Danielle De Picciotto (clad in a nurse's outfit) whose multi-media performance of their “The History Of Electricity” project, mixed ’50s-style classroom videos with the Renegade Soundwave-style, big beat hip-hop.

Friday's line up benefitted from the same kind of odd pairings. The hilarious set by multi-tasking, Los Angeles performance artist, John Kilduff, the host of Let’s Paint TV, a public access TV show in his hometown, who simultaneously painted a landscape, played a game of chess, and took questions from audience, all the while, walking on a treadmill, was abruptly counter pointed by that of violinist Tony Conrad, whose rapturously abrasive harmonics and drones soared and wailed with a profound insistency.

Other highlights included the seamless transition between the magical sets of two local Grey County electronic groups As Is and Clock Din on Sunday; and the gaseous drones, internal feedback and musique concrete of Hamilton's clarinet/trumpet/prepared guitar threesome Fossils. They were proceeded by New York’s Hallicrafters- Eric Hubel (Glenn Branca) and Algis Kizys (Swans, Foetus). Taking their name from the vintage radio receiver and transmitter company, the pair sat with their backs to the audience,

facing stacks of old skool analog equipment.

With the cool precision of lab coated researchers, the two, slowly turned knobs and dials, while the equipment’s luminous dials glowed, issuing a barrage of Morse Code blips, short wave frequency modulations and oscillations and sine waves, that whooped and whirled with the force of a Sikorsky, that in doing so, imitated their namesake.

The minimal techno and astonishing laser show of Rotterdam’s Edwin Van Der Heide gelled with that of Toronto dub funksters, Brian Fudge, and the soothing Raster-Noton/Ryoji Ikeda-inspired improvisations of Toronto laptop ensemble I/0 Media complimented the majesty of New Yorker Lary 7’s ambitious set, who improvised on a keyboard that was connected to 32 pitchselected old car horns and powered by six volt batteries that had been placed in the farm’s silo.

While the massive resonances of this car horn fugue, like J.S. Bach on acid, were impressive, Monahan, like all good curators, left the best to the last.

Barry Schwartz’s electrifying installation was exactly that. Curiosity surrounding Schwartz’s large high-voltage Tesla Coil installation had been building all weekend as the San Francisco performance artist tinkered with his Futurist-like sculpture of coils and wires on the far side of the stage. Indeed, up to the last moment, his attendants were still attending to preparatory details, as the crowd watched a hilarious 1950’s training video on the dangers and hazards of electricity and snacked on “shocklick delights”, small, portable batteries dipped in chocolate. Dressed in a white tuxedo, Schwartz’s bravura entrance was combination of hip-hop and Broadway showmanship, as he walked through the crowd, scratching and playing his customized steel turntables. Once on stage, his donned large rubber gloves and flippers. Then, in a bizarre fusion of electrician and musician, he began, systemically, checking the flickering and sparking wires and coils, while, simultaneously, caressing them, as if they were parts of a towering instrument, with each test, following the current higher, as he moved up the installation. When Schwartz reached a tiny, smiling, Buddha sculpture at the top, he banged out a nursery rhyme on a toy piano to a round of gleeful applause. It was a fitting, climatic performance that was truly lived up to the festival’s name. Richard Moule

Guelph Jazz Festival Various Venues, Guelph, Ontario 9/6 — 9/2007

The slogan for the 14th edition of the Guelph Jazz Festival was “People Get Ready,” a reference not only to the Curtis Mayfield song and to the notion of liberation music, but also, it seemed, for the lofty ambitions that festival organizers have about bringing jazz and improvised music to the people. Artistic director Ajay Heble has always been very conscious of the festival’s place within the community; this year, however, the festival served as a launching pad for a project that Heble and cohorts hope will have repercussions far beyond the festival itself.

In addition to community outreach, the Guelph festival has always been unique in its efforts to connect music to interdisciplinary academic concerns, with its colloquium as an integral part of the festival experience. The ideas brought forth and discussed at the colloquium over the years always inspire a great deal of reflection on new perspectives on jazz and related musics.

So the announcement of the awarding of grants from the Canadian government’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, as well as from several Canadian universities and private foundations and partners in support of a $4 million, 7-year project involving some three

dozen researchers and a dozen community groups, was a momentous occasion for Heble and all those involved. The goal of the project is, in brief, to examine how musical improvisation can provide models for human interaction in other fields and to try to apply this knowledge in a practical manner, with several community projects to be used as case studies.

As might be expected, at a festival that thrives on conversation as much as on music, the announcement of the project and its parameters—none of the funding is to pay for performances and journalists are not included among the researchers, for example—generated its share of heated discussion. The excitement of the research team was tempered by William Parker’s plaint that, while in official discourse jazz is regarded as a treasure, not much of the treasure finds its way to the musicians. To be fair, it should be noted that the restrictions on how the money is spent are determined by the funding agencies, and the researchers hope that there will eventually be money allocated for performances within the context of the project.

That said, the festival lineup reflected the notion that music can be a catalyst for social change, including among the artists Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra, William Parker’s Curtis Mayfield Project with Amiri Baraka, and Anthony Braxton’s Diamond Curtain Wall Trio. Rob Mazurek’s Exploding Star Orchestra, Trio M, and the guitar duo of Nels Cline and G.E. Stinson were high profile artists featured.

In addition, there was a strong Quebec presence at the festival. In contrast to more recent editions, there were fewer concerts scheduled overall, with an emphasis on quality.

As usual, the festival kicked off officially on Wednesday evening. The opening concert was slated to be a duo by pianist Michael Snow and percussionist Jesse Stewart. Unfortunately, Snow was involved in a minor traffic accident a few days earlier and couldn’t make the gig (his injuries were minor). In his stead, guitarist Kevin Breit joined Stewart. The pair form two-thirds of a group called the Tall Boys, and they enjoy a warm musical rapport. Breit used electronics to build loops of country-flavored guitar licks while Stewart, who we’ve seen grow up as a musician over a decade of attending the festival, used a fairly conventional drum setup in providing solid, if unobtrusive color to Breit. In all, the performance was a warm, satisfying leadoff to the festival.

Marianne Trudel is a young pianist based in Montreal, and she and her quintet concluded a series of performances across Canada with a concert at the Guelph Youth Music Center.

Trudel’s playing is bright and spacious, and her compositions have a lot of room for improvisation, but the drummer was not really on form on this occasion, and the affair showed flashes of both clarity and disjointedness.

The Exploding Star Orchestra appeared as a sextet, reduced from the fourteen pieces heard on their album, We Are All from Somewhere Else. Rob Mazurek and Nicole Mitchell were in especially fine form. But the monotony created by a succession of compositions built on ostinato rhythms was off-putting. The final piece, though, was brilliant—and it wouldn’t have been out of place on a classic 1960s Blue Note album.

The duo of Nels Cline and G.E. Stinson created an ambient mood with electronic manipulation of guitar sounds. While Cline’s work with the Nels Cline Singers is fierce, harsh, and direct, he and Stinson created a dreamlike atmosphere that unfolded very slowly, in tune with the midnight hour mood.

A happy revelation was Malian kora player Jah Youssouf, appearing as a guest of Toronto musicians who are members of Woodchopper’s Ball, a veteran group on that city’s scene. Lewis Melville, Dave Clark, and two other members of WCB had traveled in 2004 to Mali on a cultural exchange, where they met Youssouf, a master of the kamelan n’goni, a stringed instrument made

of a cassava gourd a bamboo neck. The resulting collaboration brought Youssouf to Ontario for the summer, where he joined Melville, Clark and others for a series of concerts. For the Guelph appearance, American banjo player Jayme Stone (Tricycle) joined Youssouf and the Canadians to play a kind of hypnotic West African proto-blues that had the audience in the outdoor tent in rapture in was a perfect example of a fruitful cross-cultural collaboration.

Friday evening’s double bill at the River Run Center, a large concert hall, had Anthony Braxton leading members of Toronto’s Association of Improvising Musicians (AIM) in a piece from his Ghost Trance Music series of compositions, followed by William Parker’s Curtis Mayfield Project. The first half of the concert was a qualified success, as long as one kept in mind the complexity of Braxton’s musical system and the difficulty inherent in playing it.

Braxton had three days of rehearsal with the Toronto musicians, and what we saw at Guelph was very much a work in progress. It would be unfair to compare the AIM performance with the brilliance of Braxton’s 12(+1)tet heard on the Iridium box set or at Victoriaville earlier in the year. Instead, Braxton and the AIM should be applauded for their effort, with shortcomings attributed to the relatively small amount of time they’d had to work together.

The Parker project was, on the other hand, quite disappointing, though it was not necessarily the fault of the musicians. Apparently, there was a different sound engineer than for the Braxton/AIM performance. The sound was a muddy mess, and to comment on the playing would be grossly unfair to the musicians. Many found Amiri Baraka’s rant about the injustices and horrors perpetrated by people in power to be a bit long, though to be sure, 15-20 minutes of tedium balanced against several thousand years of oppression is a small thing.

Trio M’s performance on Saturday afternoon was an unqualified success. The music of Myra Melford, Mark Dresser, and Matt Wilson was bright, direct, and playful, featuring a high degree of musical invention and communication. Melford played a whole lot of blues and barrelhouse piano, which Dresser and Wilson played off of brilliantly.

There was much very good playing in the Liberation Music Orchestra’s performance on Saturday evening at the River Run Center, particularly from trumpeter Seneca Black and French horn player Vincent Chauncey, with no sound problems to mar the experience. The music itself, though, is less than exciting, or perhaps the LMO’s re-appropriation of classic American themes does not resonate enough with these Canadian ears. Also, I find Haden’s enthusiasm for the orchestra’s efforts somewhat self-congratulatory. Still, you can’t fault people for doing what they can to change what Anthony Braxton would term a “complex” political situation.

The best concert of the festival came last, with Anthony Braxton’s Diamond Curtain Wall Trio at the Guelph Youth Music Center on Sunday morning. Braxton, Mary Halvorson, Taylor Ho Bynum, and the Supercollider computer program were joined by guest saxophonist Kyle Binders for an hour of very beautiful and luminous music. The piece flowed organically from one section to the next, the musicians sensitively attuned to the most minute variations of the others. The sounds were delicate and shimmering, propelled by a heartbeat pulse, ethereal yet grounded. It was one of the finest concert experiences I’ve ever had.

So finally, while the Haden and Parker projects expressed political concerns overtly (and let’s be clear—people need a kick in the rear from time to time), it was Braxton, especially in his mentoring role with the members of AIM, who demonstrated most clearly the type of potential as a model for human interaction that the improvisation research project and the festival itself envision. Michael Chamberlain SIGNAL to NOISE #48 | 57

BOOK REVIEWS

turning up the volumes: writers' looks at books, 'zines and other printed matters

Chairmen of the Board: Public Enemy

Check the Technique: Liner Notes for Hip Hop Junkies Brian Coleman Villard Books

Brian Coleman's Check the Technique is the follow-up to his 2005 book, Rakim Told Me: Hip-Hop Wax Facts, Straight From the Original Artists: The ‘80s. With Roots MC “?uestlove” (Ahmir Thompson) providing a foreword, Coleman chooses 36 albums (15 of which are new to this edition) for their lasting impact on the music. Listed alphabetically by artists’ name, he starts off with 2 Live Crew and the Beastie Boys, and finishes with X-Clan. A photo of the individual release fronts each chapter, so 2 Live’s subtler-than-you-think cover for As Nasty As They Wanna Be hits the eyes first.

Each chapter but one has Coleman placing the releases in historical perspective; he then gives it over to the MCs, DJs, and producers themselves, for track-by-track commentary.

These remarks are by turns technical/cerebral, in true liner note fashion, and hilarious (Luke Skywalker might just as well be Charles Bukowski when he says “You give me a bottle of liquor and I’ll come up with hooks and concepts and all kinds of shit”). The book’s title is key: if God is in the details, the details of this music come down to the instrumental, vocal, and sonic techniques that are stretched, mastered, and experimented with. Eric B is frequently cited as an 58 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

influence—for example, Black Moon’s lead MC, Buckshot, says that “Rakim was the first DJ who I heard that introduced me to the technique of rhyming”. He offers further illumination when he says that “Rapping is like a snake traveling up a tree. It’s so slitherful.” (Compare this to KRSOne’s comment that “Most MCs keep their first rhyme in their head. It’s like the seed rhyme for all their other rhymes”—or, from another genre, Steve Lacy’s observation that improvisation is like taking a line for a walk).

One of the neatest ways a book like this can connect with its audience is when the reader and the writer’s tastes intersect, and Check the Technique connects with this particular reader big-time. Coleman, a journalist whose work has appeared in Wax Poetics, Scratch, CMJ Weekly, and numerous Boston area newspapers, does gratifying justice to many of my own favorites throughout this book. Among them are Black Moon’s gritty Enta Da Stage, whose technical details (among them sampling strictly from cassettes) are given context in the work of Large Professor, D.E.A., and Pete Rock; The Fugees’ The Score, which doses Rotary Connection-era psychedelic soul with heavy pharmaceuticals; Beastie Boys’ Check Your Head, a mind-bending fusion of post-everything popular music; and Public Enemy’s massive It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back, a disc I’ll put up there with anything you can name, and Coleman’s own choice for the best/most influential HipHop album ever made.

Coleman’s preservation of the music's oral history of the music suggests all kinds of cross-disciplinary resonances. Consider Onyx,

who took LSD liberally while recording 1993’s Bacdafucup—as did John Coltrane, who tripped 28 years earlier on his 1965 OM sessions. Then there’s MC Butterfly from Digable Planets, who was on a tear reading the Argentinian modernist writer Jorge Luis Borges at the time of the recording of Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time and Space). An early member of The Roots, bassist Josh Abrams, now works with the likes of Axel Dorner, Town and Country, and Prefuse 73, while “?uestlove”/Ahmir Thompson’s direct family roots are in gospel and doo wop. And anyone who thinks that IDM (Intelligent Dance Music) started in the 1990’s is hereby directed to Run DMC’s 1986 Raising Hell.

For my money, one of Hip-Hop’s towering achievements—up there with The Clash, Pink Flag, or Double Nickels On The Dime—is Boogie Down Productions’ 1987 LP Criminal Minded. This particular chapter has Coleman dropping his basic format, and turning the words completely over to BDP’s KRS-One. Among the music’s most eloquent MCs, KRS tells his fascinating story over some 20 pages, taking it back to the 1970’s, when Kool Herc was holding his influential block parties, and KRS was writing poetry that was inspired by his mother, who said to him, Sun Ra-like, “When there is no light, there is chaos”. KRS also reminds us that the details of this music come down, not only to its technical genius, but also to its soul, its history, and its pride, placing it firmly in the tradition of Great Black Music. As X-Clan’s Brother J says, “You only needed to talk to your grandmother to know how proud you were supposed to be and who you were.” Larry Nai

The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century Alex Ross

Farrar, Strauss & Giroux

The columns of the New Yorker's classical music critic Alex Ross have espoused a vision which brings the genre out of its rarified "aural museum" and into the culture at large; he's also a persuasive advocate for this cause on his widely read blog TheRestisNoise. com. This, Ross's first book, also titled The Rest is Noise, expands upon his previous work, fashioning already-published articles and a great deal of new material into a series of chapters that provide a narrative history of Twentieth Century music. Beginning with Richard Strauss's opera Elektra (1906) and concluding with John Adams's El Nino (2000), it is a fascinating traversal of a wide swath of musical terrain.

The Rest is Noise does an excellent job of placing musicians in their cultural and historical surroundings. Artistic trajectories are well explained; those new to contemporary music will learn how the context of the times inspired trends such as modernism, serialism, and minimalism. Especially compelling are Ross's chapters on music under the Nazi and Communist regimes. It's clear that the author has conducted exhaustive research of the various types of censorship, repression, and outright persecution used against composers by the agents of Stalin and Hitler. His portraits of Strauss in Germany and Shostakovich in Russia are particularly vivid. Strauss was in a tight spot, attempting to appease Hitler and the Nazis in order to save his Jewish relatives while maintaining some semblance of artistic and personal integrity, with decidedly mixed results. Shostakovich treaded a careful line too, trying to combine modern musical materials with then politically necessary inclusions of bombastic and jingoistic music. Particularly moving is Ross's description of Shostakovich's ceaselessly anxious, bemused demeanor; being forced to be a member of the propaganda machine exacted a terrible toll on the composer.

The six-hundred page volume contains a wealth of information. Ross is talented at creating vivid character sketches which contain many artistic and personal details. His lengthier depictions of composers such as Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and Britten provide much food for thought. Other analyses, such as those of Carter, Pärt, Schnittke, and Zimmerman are tantalizingly brief, leaving the impression that Ross has a lot more to say in future books. In particular, one hopes he will pen a volume focusing on recent music, as The Rest is Noise covers the post-1968 era at a galloping pace.

Ross has a penchant for "warts-andall" portrayals. The book contains dirt on many of the century's musical figures, and it is often amusing to see Ross slay a figure who's achieved the status of sacred cow. For instance, we learn that some of the composers ostracized by the Nazis weren't the white knights we might assume; Hindemith, for example, would have been quite happy to compose for a totalitarian regime if the Nazis hadn't decided he was persona non grata.

That said, the author sometimes leads with salacious details at the expense of a more balanced portrait. He is particularly hard on Aaron Copland, quoting embarrassingly self-congratulatory letters written during his short-lived attempt to be a leftist spokesman in the 1930s. One wishes he might have mentioned more about Copland's advocacy and support for fellow American composers. When the author cannot find much untoward to

mention about Oliver Messiaen's "saintly life," he makes a point of relating not one but two anecdotes about his enthusiasm for dessert!

This search for "sizzle" occasionally seems a needless distraction from Ross's greatest asset: his extensive knowledge of music history and repertoire.

Indeed, Ross is an excellent writer about music, crafting a book that combines sophisticated understanding with the all-too-rare ability to communicate elegant descriptions that a non-specialist reader can readily understand. His tastes are commendably catholic, allowing him to discuss works as disparate as those composed by Babbitt, Ligeti, Bernstein, and Reich with enthusiasm. This makes The Rest is Noise an enjoyable and edifying read for a wide audience and a valuable addition to every musician's library. Christian Carey

Dub: Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae Michael E. Veal Wesleyan University Press

It's a given that listening to great music is more fun than reading about it. Nonetheless there are books that enhance the experience of music by informing, analyzing, or imparting love for the subject matter. Dub: Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae does all three. It is not a history, although it does tell the story of dub reggae. Rather, Veal uses ideas drawn from ethnomusicology, art history, and literary theory to read dub reggae's codes, observe its proliferation, and assess its impact on contemporary music twenty years after its demise in its native land. Veal does explain how dub came about as a creative response to Jamaican poverty, which first forced musical entrepreneurs to economize by running sound systems instead of live musical events, then made "versioning" — re-using stockpiles of recorded backing tracks by making remixed, mostly instrumental versions of popular tunes that DJs used to talk over at dance parties — a viable strategy. He describes how the island's close ties to the USA fueled a hunger in the dancehalls for American soul music, and when rock and roll slowed the flow of great r&b 45s provided access to the technology to start up a local recording industry. But Third world circumstances created a class of engineers uniquely comfortable with improvising with their equipment and pushing it in ways that its designers never intended. Ironically the same forces of technology and economy that birthed dub lead to its demise when producers realized that they could ditch musicians altogether and reggae when digital in the mid-80s. Veal provides detailed descriptions of how the music was made, and the different ways that key figures such as King Tubby, Coxone Dodd, Augustus Pablo, and Lee "Scratch" Perry expressed exploited or subverted its parameters.

Veal's passion for the music and his musicological chops dovetail to delightful effect in analytical passages such as. for example, the one that recounts the methods King Tubby used to turn Jackie Mittoo's Santana knock-off "Sniper" into something exceedingly eerie and disorienting.

But he also roves beyond facts and description to focus upon dub through non-musical lenses. He considers the way diverse diasporic African arts express the trauma of exile and slavery through the use of discontinuity, and also parallel's dub's inherent fragmentation of its material with the linguistic fragmentation of magical realist literature. Veal goes beyond informing to enrich the reader's understanding of a music too often cloaked in mystery and misinformation. Bill Meyer SIGNAL to NOISE #48 | 59

Hostel Environment: the Chelsea Hotel

Legends of the Chelsea Hotel Ed Hamilton Thunders Mouth Press

In his monumental memoir Timebends Arthur Miller describes New York's legendary Chelsea Hotel, where he stayed for a time in the early 60s, as an "impromptu, healing ruin" with a "unique air of uncontrollable decay ... It was not part of America, had no vacuum cleaners, no rules, no taste, no shame." Miller said he felt at home almost at once in this surreal citadel where "the ceaseless Chelsea party... went on celebrating something no one could name." Indeed, to this day the twelve story building there on 23rd Street between 7th and 8th Avenues presents an imposing facade, with rows of wrought iron balconies perched above the broad thoroughfare below and the classic vertical neon sign dangling the name Chelsea over the sidewalk. Well before the beats, the hippies and the punks made their mark, the place had been a haven for all sorts of creative people —Mark Twain, O. Henry, Edgar Lee Masters, Sarah Bernhardt, Virgil Thomson, and of course Dylan Thomas who spent the last months of his life there from '52 to '53.

Ed Hamilton's Legends of the Chelsea Hotel: Living with the Artists and Outlaws of New York's Rebel Mecca grew out of a blog about the hotel that he started after moving there from Kentucky in 1995. Hamilton relates how he himself was drawn to the Chelsea by the fact that Thomas Wolfe had written You Can't Go Home Again while in residence there.

The book is organized as a mixture of journal entries and anecdotal vignettes covering the period from the mid 90s to the present, with brief portraits of Patti Smith, Ryan Adams, Dee Dee Ramone, Sean Penn, Edie Sedgwick, Herbert Huncke (the inspiration for Burroughs's Junky) and others who passed through the 60 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

Chelsea during these years. But Legends also includes miniature essays depicting some of the past luminaries who stayed there: Kerouac, Ginsberg, Warhol, Sid and Nancy Vicious, as well as Arthur Miller. One particularly interesting portrait is of Harry Smith, whose 1952 compilation recording 'Anthology of American Folk Music' helped to spark the folk revival of that era. Here is part of Hamilton's description: "It is well known that underground filmmaker Harry Smith was also a painter, folklorist, and ethnomusicologist, and that he collected string figures and paper airplanes. Less well known is that, during his time at the Chelsea, Harry kept a Zombie. A disciple of ubersatanist Aleister Crowley—whom he often claimed, much to his mother's embarrassment, to be his real father—Harry was a consecrated bishop in the O.T.O., the Order Templi Orientis, a mystical order founded in Germany in 1902 and reorganized by Crowley in 1912. The order is fairly eclectic, embracing all world traditions of magic, and that's what led Harry to the study of voodoo." A lot of the characters and scenarios in Legends are aptly summed up in Hamilton's quip: "Crazies and creative types: the line was kind of blurred."

Part of what is unique about the Chelsea is that the residents are a mixture of transient and long term guests. In one room there'll be a fresh faced young couple from Anywheresville enjoying a weekend getaway in Manhattan, and in a suite down the hall there'll be some reclusive octogenarian sculptor who keeps fifteen cats in an apartment full of clay pots, huge slabs of wood and countless empty whiskey bottles, and who has been living there for several decades. The lobby is of course the grand meeting place—Hamilton calls it "the vortex of the building's fabled madness"—and tourists will sometimes linger there hoping to catch a glimpse of or maybe even talk to one of the building's obscure or famous personages. It seems clear that whoever stays at the Chelsea has to have a pretty refined appreciation for

chaos, surprises, and just plain weirdness.

Look at some of the lesser known but stellar eccentrics who appear in some of these blog entries: Hiroya, "the crazy Japanese graffiti artist"; the Umpire, "a middle-aged woman who hangs out in the Chelsea lobby and apparently can't control her gestures"; Cowboy Doc, apparently a physician of some sort who dispenses flu shots from his second floor apartment while classic rock blasts from his stereo; Michael Alig, the notorious party maestro, drug addict extraordinaire and murderer; Storme DeLarverie, the famous drag king who is credited with igniting the gay rights struggle by starting a brawl on Christopher Street in the West Village in 1969; and lets not leave out Hamilton himself, a former philosophy teacher whose aesthetic explorations are in the field of what he calls "garbage art". Many of the chapter titles in and of themselves capture the atmosphere of the place: 'Con Games', 'Tricksters and Inadvertent Performers', 'The Transformative Power of Dirt', 'Dietary Tips of the Homeless', 'Bathroom Hi-Jinks', and 'Dormitory of the Deranged'!

Just this past summer some big changes have been introduced at the Chelsea Hotel.

Stanley Bard, who has been running the hotel since the mid 50s and who has preserved the off-beat character of the place by keeping rents reasonable and by welcoming artists of all types, has been forced out of his management role by the hotel's board of directors. As a matter of fact, when I was walking along 23rd Street just a few weeks ago you could see banners hanging from some of the hotel's windows protesting his dismissal. Many residents feel there's a danger that rents will significantly increase and marginal characters will cease to find a home in this bohemian bastion of counter-cultural wackiness and subversive energy.

Let's keep our fingers crossed and hope that the Chelsea party, celebrating that something that nobody can name, is somehow enabled to continue. Alan Waters

SIGNAL to NOISE #48 | 61

CD / DVD / LP / MP3 the season's key releases and reissues from the world of creative music

Miles Davis

The Complete On the Corner Sessions Columbia Legacy CD x 5

Thirty-five years down the line, and the music Miles Davis recorded in the early ’70s hasn’t lost its power to fascinate, amaze, and frustrate. The final installment of Columbia’s mammoth Miles Davis reissue program covers the years 1972 to 1975, which saw the release of two studio LPs—the unclassifiable cult classic On the Corner and a sprawling double LP compilation, Get Up with It. In addition to the released music, this 6-CD set contains more than two hours of unreleased material, including the original jams from which On the Corner was constructed.

At the time of its release, jazz critics and acoustic-Miles fans almost universally hated the loud, funky, guitar-andpercussion heavy On the Corner. To be fair, it’s still hard to know what to think of the album. Prior to this, on LPs like Jack Johnson and Live/Evil (reissued on The Cellar Door Sessions 1970), Miles had stripped down the denser textures of Bitches Brew.

Michael Henderson’s funk bass lines had simplified and aired out the rhythmic foundation, guitar grew more prominent, and Teo Macero’s editing had reshaped the final product in many cases. Still, the connection to jazz is much more clear and straight-forward on those earlier albums.

The first CD of unedited jams from which Davis and Macero derived the final On the Corner mix makes clear just how radical the album is in the context of Davis’s career. Most of the band is familiar from previous Davis sessions—Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, John McLaughlin, and Jack DeJohnette, among them— and many of the musical gestures on the master tracks are familiar, just played out over a funkier rhythm with sitar and tabla providing an additional psychedelic rhythm layer.

The released music, found on Disc 6, is still quite shocking. Macero and Davis dissected the master tapes, pulled out them apart and reassembled them into substantially new music. The title track, the first number in a twenty-minute medley, wallops the listener with its funk aspirations from the opening seconds. Drum and tabla patterns loop, the trumpet shrieks a single note, and Henderson’s bass slinks in, setting up a monster groove about as far from jazz in sound and spirit as can be. There are solos—stinging ones at that—but it’s the aggressively funky beats, shifting and jumping cutting, colored by sitar, synthesizer, and scratching guitar, that drive and ultimately make the deepest impression.

The drum pattern on “One and One” is guaranteed to elicit a “goddam” faster 62 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

than Carlos Garnet’s soprano solo. “Black Satin” has an irresistible hooky melody, which a cocky Miles plays as if he’s flipping the bird, but overdubbed handclapping, and weirdly incongruous whistling give a decidedly surreal edge.

What to make of it? There’s too much going on for the album to be called pop music and there’s no song form to speak of for most of it. It’s as much an artifact of studio postproduction as it is of improvisation, so it’s hard to unequivocally call it jazz.

It’s irresistibly funky, scary, absurd, sexy, and utterly quirky. It’s little wonder that nearly everyone coming to it finds something to please them and something to mystify or annoy them. In short, On the Corner is a deservedly influential and important album and it will probably continue to fascinate and ultimately elude us for another three decades.

In a sense, the name of this set is misleading. On the Corner was one of a kind.

Get Up with It, which is culled from several studio sessions, is far more representative of what Miles was up to. The bulk of the set is from sessions that went into the original double LP. Like it’s studio predecessor, most of it resists easy classification and is rich in ideas that musicians have been profitably mined ever since. Some of it was recorded just after Duke Ellington died, and the album’s inside right gatefold cover said simply (and with chilling effect) “For Duke.” The music bore little or no resemblance to anything Ellington ever played but it was a dramatic gesture of respect from Miles to another genius who was impatient with, and truly transcended, the “jazz” label.

The fourth CD holds the original LP’s two long set pieces and they’re among the period’s best tracks. Macero’s hand, although more restrained, is evident again on the epic half hour “Calypso Frelimo,” which percolates over some of Mtume’s funkiest conga patterns, sharp guitar riffing, and overdubs of Miles on organ. Ten minutes in, the tempo evaporates, then slowly regroups as guitarist Reggie Lucas erupts into the foreground. The band settles into a nasty groove behind a knifesharp Davis solo to conclude. The form is sprawling and the logic elusive, but it’s a powerful half hour of music that could have only come from a Miles Davis band. The dedication to Ellington, “He Loved Him Madly,” is a long, funereal piece, almost immobile with grief. It’s chilling music and features one of Miles’ most dramatic entrances on record, an inconsolable cry that he gradually bends and shapes into melodies of devastating clarity and pathos.

Then there’s “Rated X,” one of the most forward-looking things Miles ever recorded—and he doesn’t even play trumpet, just organ. He leans on the keys, creating an insistent, menacing layer of sound as

one of the densest rhythm tracks he ever worked with is cued in and out abruptly.

It’s one funky, concentrated, seven-minute snarl that sounds barely 35 days old, let alone 35 years.

During this three-year span, Davis recorded with 15 different combinations of players; every band was in some sense transitional. The previously unreleased material in the set reveals new aspects of Miles’ unsettled odyssey. “Chieftain,” recorded by the “Rated X” band, is a major find, another bad-ass jam fueled by the potent Al Foster-Mtume percussion combination, Reggie Lucas’ sharp rhythm guitar, and Henderson’s nasty bass mischief. Miles eventually dropped the Indian instruments and different saxophonists came and went.

But when he added guitarist Pete Cosey, who brought a space-age urban blues sound to the rock-jazz-funk mix, Miles had himself another classic band. Cosey is a huge part of the success of Get Up with It. He figures prominently on some the set’s best unreleased tracks, such as “Mr. Foster,” “Hip Skip” (with Cosey on drums and Miles in a relaxed and inventive mood), and two extended jams on “Big Fun/ Holly-wuud.” There are occasional (and inevitable) dull or directionless patches, even on the released material, but that’s the price paid for music exploring new stylistic terrain.

During this stretch of his career, Davis was famously inspired by both Stockhausen and Sly Stone, but in the end, the music seems far removed from either. The open-endedness and rhythmic density of the music can just as easily be heard as an extension of what John Coltrane was doing at the end of his life; Davis was always connected to jazz, even as he reached out to a broader African American culture field of reference. This music is also now firmly entrenched as the starting point for a continuing strand of jazz exploration. Davis’s example must have played some role in Ornette Coleman’s formulation of his Prime Time nand around this same time.

Medeski, Martin, and Wood and any number of jam bands would not exist without the example of this music, and surely, the hip hop-free jazz collaborations brokered

by Matthew Shipp are another legacy of this period, as well. The list stretches on and on—and branches out beyond jazz, too.

The Complete On the Corner Sessions covers some of the most controversial, prolific, and creative years of Davis’s career.

No other period so stubbornly defies categorization—populist gestures coexist with radical experimentation, jazz complexity with pop simplicity, deliberate studio manipulation with live spontaneity. But few other periods have had an equal influence on as wide a range of genres and styles that followed. Ed Hazell

courtesy Columbia Legacy

The Miles Davis finishing school: l to r, Reggie Lucas, Lonnie Liston Smith, David Liebman, Pete Cosey, Miles, Michael Henderson, Khalil Balakrishna, Mtume

SIGNAL to NOISE #48 | 63

left, Nils Wogram & Simon Nabatov right, Matthias Ziegler

Urs Leimgruber 13 Pieces for Saxophone Leo CD

Franziska Baumann & Matthias Ziegler Voices & Tides Leo CD

Joelle Leandre &Kevin Norton Winter in New York 2006 Leo CD

Simon Nabatov &Nils Wogram Jazz Limbo

Wogram/Nabatov: Friedrich Von Hulsen

Leo CD

With over a dozen new releases in 2007, producer Leo Feigin and his cast of regulars ensure that listeners and critics alike have plenty to chew on. Though specializing in jazz, Leo's stylistic variety is wide, ranging from the most extreme ends of European new music to glacial, ambient soundscapes. Let’s take a look at some of the new releases in more detail.

The absolute standout here is Urs Leimgruber’s 13 Pieces for Saxophone. The Swiss-born composer, now residing in France, delivers something of a manifesto for the instrument in a series of thirteen tableaux. Rejecting the ingratiating humor of Carlos Actis Dato or the gut-wrenching sentimentality of Joe McPhee, Leimgruber’s approach has its most obvious stylistic forebear in England’s Evan Parker.

Indeed, the similarities are striking: like Parker, Leimgruber utilizes the techniques of circular breathing and multiphonics in a way that borders on the obsessive, careening through repetitive phrases in rapid flights of atonality. But when he isn’t indulging in the spiraling gymnastics we associate with Parker, he focuses his energy on the sheer range of the saxophone's expressive potential. “Solo #3” is built out of dense crackling from which an occasional, ecstatic note flutters. Elsewhere, he pushes his instrument to the very limits of human hearing, flying into the highest registers with piercing harmonic overtones; once the listener becomes habituated, however, the playing begins to resemble the sub64 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

lime sounds of nature – birdsong in particular. The ninth solo is perhaps the most stunning: with full command of his instrument, the musician sounds off with the effect of an electronic sine wave, creating rapid-fire oscillations that give his playing the quality of Morse code. When Leimgruber periodically returns to the Eastern-influenced, circular insanity that characterizes his densest and most accomplished pieces, the listener comes away with the feeling that 13 Pieces moves in ellipses. After dissecting the saxophone piece by piece, he condenses each of his techniques into one steadily shifting timbral body, at times paper-thin and at others overfull; both a distant, fugue-like rumbling and a percolating violence, ready to surge forward at any moment in colorful arabesques. It is this combination of surgical precision and serpentine structure that is at the heart of Leimgruber’s provocative solo music.

Voices and Tides, a new outing by vocalist Franziska Baumann and multi-instrumentalist Matthias Ziegler, is interesting in concept but mixed in results.

Utilizing a special glove fitted with SensorLab electronics, Baumann has developed a way to manipulate her own voice in real time, allowing this most ancient of instruments to take on bizarre, otherworldly qualities. Ziegler is in charge of loops and various wind instruments, often favoring that most unlikely of flutes, the contrabass. The deep, warm tone of the instrument allows Ziegler to mimic the sound of a standup bass played in the arco style, adding some much needed low-end to the ethereal flights of Baumann’s voice. As one can tell by the title Voices and Tides, the misty landscape photography that accompanies the disc, and composition titles like “Hydrological Groove,” the two performers are predominantly focused on the natural music that birds, insects, winds and rivers produce for us with profound indifference. At their best, on pieces like “Critical Velocity,” the two improvisers crafting elegant soundscapes out of shifting electronic textures, strange chirps and distant whistles, guttural breaths and ghostly voices, often bracketed by the concrete sounds of running water. On the titular piece, particularly, Baumann and Ziegler merge into an organic whole, the blubbering drone of the Swiss improviser’s voice creating an unsettling effect in tandem with accelerated runs on the contrabass flute. Voices and Tides looks beyond the calm of nature and into the fury seething beneath its placid façade – a theme that the two will hopefully continue to explore.

The prolific French bassist Joelle Leandre returns to the States this year in a duet with New York percussionist Kevin Norton. Winter in New York – 2006 is taken from a live concert held in late December at John Zorn’s venue The Stone Though active in the jazz circuit, both players' backgrounds in new music are felt here in their elision of traditional improvised styles; the abrupt movements and generative use of silence are certainly products of a different beast.

There are shades of brilliance on this recording to be sure; you can hear it in track three’s opening bass notes, each plucked and strummed with such ur-

gency that one wonders from what demon Leandre is running, her unsettling punctuations eventually finding shelter among shimmering ethnic percussion and waves of crashing cymbals. The tension is marvelous as the two give way to a deafening silence only interrupted by Leandre’s repetition of a single note. Track seven recalls Eric Dolphy's Out to Lunch, as the duo's seesawing phrases congeal in the instant of a single solid strike on the vibraphone.

Leandre’s arco here is stunning, pulse-like and guttural. She reminds us of the instrument’s most sensuous qualities, the physicality of an instrument that dwarfs the body in its shadow. The closing piece is a tour-de-force, propelling Leandre into spontaneous vocal phonetics. For the first time, Norton is compelled to play something resembling a standard rhythm, pushing his partner onward to further extremes. The blueprint for a great record is contained in these passionate fragments, and this is what one is most likely to remember of Winter in New York, while the remaining tracks simply come and go, leaving no trace.

Pianist Simon Nabatov’s and trombonist Nils Wogram’s Jazz Limbo is the most conventional recording here. What it lacks in formal novelty, however, it makes up for with a set of absolutely thrilling performances. From the very first notes, Jazz Limbo is marked by an intimate, telepathic communication between the musicians, pairing beautifully descending lines with rapid-fire articulations, accelerating and decelerating with gruff brass overtones and powerful punctuations from the piano’s bass end. Nabatov is a brilliant player with a dexterity equal to that of Sergey Kuryokhin (Russia’s answer to Art Tatum and the mad father of Pop Mechanics). Wogram’s tone is rich, yet full of subtle pranks, squeaks, zips and bent notes. Even on first listen, it’s obvious that Jazz Limbo isn’t a soloist’s record, but rather a work of constant interaction and harmony. Its players prefer to move around each other in concentric circles rather than create an unnecessary splash. The fourth movement (there are five in total) begins with Wogram’s cool, unaccompanied trombone gradually increasing in volume with breath-like effect, soon joined by Nabatov’s angular, abrasive interjections. A circular motif is established, and the performance’s structure continues fundamentally unchanged for the piece’s first half, though Nabatov deftly constructs a network of piano lines that lash out at the listener like a hydra head. Wogram re-enters with a theme of considerable emotion, marked as it is by shades of Eastern Europe and klezmer. Trombone and piano, once an unlikely combination, here mesh so well that it becomes hard to distinguish from which instrument a phrase begins and on which it ends. The two blend effortlessly into the next movement, now full of the sing-song gospel that once marked so many of Jackie McLean’s records.

Hints of the original tune make their way to the surface, but most of this final piece is dedicated to quieter explorations. The two masters seem to be approximating the spliced aesthetic of musique

Muhal Richard Abrams

Vision Towards Essence Pi CD

This 60-minute improvisation, recorded at the 1998 Guelph Jazz Festival, demonstrates beyond all doubt why pianist Muhal Richard Abrams has been one of the most influential figures in creative music over the last forty years. It also stands as the definitive example of his solo pianism, both for sheer length and for the development and unity of its musical material. The improvisation begins with gentle, spare motifs, slowly developed in long washes of space and repetition. Much of the performance exists in this place of quiet luxury, typified by the perfumed language of modified impressionism. Abrams creates a post-Sorabjian universe of planing chords, leathery-soft scales and single tones and octaves that stand stark like signposts. These markers point the way toward a particularly thrilling moment, hurtling out of relative calm, of descending shock-wave clusters that burn and melt as they fall, decreasing in heat but not in intensity. The placement of this granite wall amidst the softer landscape is a thing of beauty, both a wonder to behold and a shock to the system. Abrams' command of physical space, of the piano’s full range, sets the performance apart; though he does not make use of the piano’s insides, his choice of interregistral combinations exploits the whole spectrum of overtones. One notable passage involves hammer-blow reiterations of the piano’s lowest and highest notes to stunning effect.

These, in tandem with the sweeping scales and velvety tonal insinuations, form the contrasts that serve as timbral support for the whole performance. Stoically, amazingly, a circle is achieved, as similarly simple motivic material brings this mammoth construction to a close. A final arpeggio, almost an afterthought, brings the curtain down to a well-deserved burst of audience enthusiasm. The recording is superb, transparent when necessary, strong and full when required. Those who have reveled in Abrams’ fantastic orchestrations will savor similar qualities in this release, which I simply cannot recommend fervently enough. Marc Medwin

John Luther Adams For Lou Harrison New World CD

Red Arc / Blue Veil Cold Blue CD

For the sake of convenience, let's just call John Luther Adams (born 1953) an American maverick composer of the West Coast/Southwestern minimalist division. Adams' approach reflects the Western desert idylls of his CDs' cover art -- pastoral in a manner recalling the semi-austere Americana of Charles Ives and Aaron Copeland; pretty, though ruggedly natural, like seeing a beautiful sunset in person rather than replicated in a photograph. For Lou Harrison is, obviously, a tribute to the late Californian composer, whose works bridged the Euro-American classical tradition with the Pacific Rim folk and

classical traditions (The latter used to be referred to, in less politically correct eras, as “Orientalisms.”) Harrison also presaged some aspects of minimalism. This homage doesn't directly recall Harrison's music, but it does evoke his warmth of his expansive, humanistic spirit. Played by New England Conservatory's large chamber-style ensemble Callithumpian Consort (conducted by Stephen Drury) and featuring piano soloists Yukiko Takagi and Keith Kirchoff, “For Lou Harrison” sounds like a Mozart piano concerto gone minimalist.

It's a captivating, heartfelt listen, and a nigh-on perfect gift for that person in your life needing an introduction to modern melodious minimalism.

Adams' set on Cold Blue is a whole 'nother pot of chowder. Red Arc/Blue Veil consists of four lengthy compositions for one or two pianos and/or percussion. This is a much more austere recording, at a casual listen closer to the spare, elemental sound-worlds of Harold Budd and Morton Feldman. The title track shimmers in an almost Christmassy manner, like wind-chimes phasing in and out of earshot, the sound undulating from gentle rattles to orchestral-sounding swells. “Dark Waves” rumbles like ocean waves lapping at the shore, its resoluteness recalling Charlemagne Palestine's pianistic locomotion, before Bernard Herrmann takes over with waves of James Stewart's obsessive Vertigo -- all this with just two pianos. The low-volume “Qilyuan” is “just” percussion, its creepy whup-whup-ing cadences evoking the sound of approaching military helicopters in the movie Apocalypse Now. Red Arc/ Blue Veil is, oddly, more introspective (though hardly serene), more provocative, and more cinematic than For Lou Harrison — both are, however, very fine, each in their own way. Mark Keresman

Mahmoud Ahmed & Either/Orchestra Ethiosonic Buda DVD

This DVD documents a concert at the 2006 Banlieues Blues Festival that brought together the famed Ethiopian pop singer Mahmoud Ahmed and Boston's Either/Orchestra, adding rehearsal footage and interview segments with E/O leader Russ Gershon and Ahmed himself. From these features and the spare voice-over narration, we get a sense of the history of Ethiopian urban/electric popular music and its relationship to American musical traditions, including rock, pop, blues, jazz, soul, and perhaps most importantly, Afro-Cuban music. As the film explains, the form that Ethiopian pop music of the 1950s to 70s assumed came about largely by accident, an unintended consequence of Emperor Haile Selassie’s fascination with military music, which introduced clarinets and saxophones into the Ethiopian musical tradition. In the 1950s, electric guitars and basses as well as trap drum sets were also imported, and Ethiopian musicians blended Ethiopian modes and melodic approaches with American influences. A common element,

Gershon points out, was a love of triple meters, 6/8 and 12/8, found in both latin and African musics, which evokes a looping effect, the latin rhythms being heavily African-based.

Many Ethiopian musicians were employed in military or police bands, and thus had ample time to practice.

They also moonlighted in club bands nights and weekends, and a popular music based on a hybrid of Ethiopian traditions and American—both latin and euroamerican—arose. As a boy, Mahmoud Ahmed, born in 1941, loved to sing, and he was exposed to Ethiopian pop music on the radio.

He would hear the songs coming from bars as he worked on the street shining shoes, and the next day he would sing them at school. He became a very popular singer in the 1960s and 70s, singing with the Imperial Body Guard Band until the chill brought by the abdication of Selasse and the rise to power of the military dictatorship in 1974. He has continued his singing career since then and owns a record store in Addis Ababa. Gershon was introduced to Ethiopian music in the mid-80s and has studied it ever since. He found that with the innovations made by Ethiopian musicians in the preceding 40 years that they’d already built a bridge halfway to the Americas, which made Ethiopian music both exotic and familiar for him. The Either/Orchestra’s 2004 visit to Addis Ababa enabled them to absorb Ethiopian music heard on its own turf and incorporate it more fully into their own playing. As the film shows, Ahmed and the Either/ Orchestra clearly enjoyed a good rapport from the beginning of their encounter, and the concert footage is quite exciting. Female singer Tsèdenia Bèbrè-Marqos makes a guest appearance, singing an incredible soulful song that is a kind of Ethiopian blues. Director Anaïs Prosaïc combines interview and concert material by using a split screen over the concert segments. Some viewers may find this technique distracting; they may also be inspired to purchase some of the titles in Buda Musique’s Ethiopiques series, if they haven’t already done so.

Michael Chamberlain

Akron/Family

cut “Love, Love, Love (Everyone).”

This is a plainly Buddhist philosophy, meant to engender compassion for others. Subsequent track “Ed is a Portal” features group chanting and Eastern-sounding rhythms. My first instinct was to dismiss the song as New Age gibberish, but repeated listening revealed the sound of communal rapture, free of the kind of groupthink gimmickry that pervades Polyphonic Spree's efforts.

The experience of open awareness involves a necessary acceptance of the impermanence of phenomena, an outlook which Akron/Family embrace. “Don’t be afraid, you’re already dead,” they intone on the elegantly minimal “Don’t be Afraid, You’re Already Dead.” Indeed, the title is the message. Clear minds have no need for clutter. “I’ve Got Some Friends,” concerns the mystical union of opposites. “I’ve got some friends that you should meet / All good Man and all good Woman are their names / But don’t go see ’em if you are shy / Because they are always in embrace beyond propriety,” exclaims the verse. The chorus is pilgrimage minus destination: “Like a white cloud floating free, aimless I wander.” Musically, the track “wanders” from bumpkin country to Yes-worthy splendor, with a few bursts of noise in between.

There’s a fine line between “All Together Now” rapport and cultish spookiness, and Akron/Family trod all over it. The second half of “Lake Song/New Ceremonial Music for Moms” evokes a less beatific “family” — namely, Charlie Manson’s. Still, it’s highly engrossing. By disc’s end, acoustic ecstasy takes a backseat to shambolic electricity. “Phenomena” is particularly excellent, calling to mind The Beatles at their White Album gnarliest. “Pony’s O.G.” hovers like a heat mirage, while “Of All the Things” rips like Steve Howe in India. The lyrics contain references to “planting seeds,” which one can only assume to be those of karma.

Akron/Family’s sheer commitment to the transcendental ensures that Love Is Simple is more celestial than corny.

It’s hard to imagine a record being of benefit to all sentient beings, but if there were to be one, this might as well be it. Casey Rae-Hunter

Love is Simple

Oren Ambarchi

Devotion of one kind or another has long had a place in popular music.

From Brian Wilson’s surfer boys choir to Sufjan Stevens’ Christian tone poems, the Spirit , be it musical or metaphysical, motivates many an artist. You could say that the very act of creating is an extramundane process, involving the transformation of the personal into the universal.

Well, that’s the goal, anyway. The Brooklyn-based quartet Akron/Family, whose giddy brand of indie-folk often veers towards the ecstatic, have just released what might be called a Tantric jam album. Superficially hippie-dippy, closer examination reveals a surprisingly clear view of vajrayana Buddhist concepts.

“Every precious human being has been a precious parent to you,” instructs the first line of the opening

Touch CD

Young God CD

In The Pendulum's Embrace

Giuseppe Ielasi August 12K CD

Giuseppe Ielasi and Oren Ambarchi have a lot in common. Both men are primarily associated with the guitar, but are actually multi-instrumentalists; both refuse to be confined to one side of the improviser/composer fence; and both have great facility with conventionally beautiful sounds, yet they unhesitatingly embrace noise when the mood strikes them.

August is Ielasi's fourth solo album, and it's several strides ahead of its self-titled predecessor from the previous year. While it is divided into five untitled tracks and is the result of eight months of mostly solitary work, SIGNAL to NOISE #48 | 65

A pervasive, autumnal air: Thurston Moore

Thurston

Trees Outside The Academy Ecstatic Peace! CD

WZT Hearts

Threads Rope Spell Making Your Bones Carpark CD

Val Denham & Oli Novadnieks Raw Powder Blossoming Noise CD

Pocahaunted/ Robedoor Hunted Gathering Digitalis CD

Okay, fess up: you were expecting Trees Outside the Academy to be an out-and-out noise album, weren't you? Me too, to be honest.

Sonic Youth – as a whole and separately – have long made a practice of publicly cherry-picking aspects of their favorite blossoming underground scene-trends and recontextualizing said plunder within the idiosyncratic framework of their ongoing, elder-subterranean-statesmen career(isms). What with all that time spent hanging with/collaborating with/signing up the cream of the note-fried crop, you’d think SY axman Thurston Moore’s second “official” solo record would actually be farther out and less listenable than 1995’s Psychic Hearts. That record fully embraced the alt-rock era: it was goofy, overlong, gangly, awkward, and in naked thrall to Moore idols like Yoko Ono and the Beatles. It was fun, funny, and made clear just how key Moore – and Steve Shelley, who keeps time on both Hearts and Trees – is to Sonic Youth’s songwriting style. Whether he’s hewing to the present epoch’s norms or just reflecting a more mature perspective (the guy's almost 50, after all) Trees is a significantly different animal. Moore subtracts his last name from the album's billing, perhaps because there’s no-one more visible in his particular sphere of influence named Thurston, or maybe he’s riffing on the media/cultural trend of severe abbreviation, the tendency to reduce certain celebrities’ names in order to inflate them to demigod status: so, you know, Elvis, Bruce, Kurt, Avril, Kanye, Brit66 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

ney, Beyonce, Justin, and now, um, Thurston.

There is noticably less electric guitar; instead, the acoustic and Samara Lubelski’s stately violin strokes dominate. For better or worse, Moore’s vocals have lost much of their former agility and outright brattiness; no track breaks the six-minute barrier, and the whole thing’s over in fifty minutes or so. What we have in Trees is an eclectic folk album whose host has made the jump from worshipping (or snickering at) exalted elders to sorta being one himself.

As Lubelski’s strings and first-draft ax leads from J. Mascis abound – other guests include Christina Carter, John Moloney, Andrew MacGregor, and Leslie Keffer – Moore strums rhythm-rivers and engages in his usual intuitiveif-mostly-unparsible poetics; you never doubt that his lyrics carry personal meanings, but their value is listener-specific. There’s a pervasive autumnal air to most of Trees that works if one’s in a contemplative, relaxed mood; otherwise, the album feels a bit tame, kinda rote: save the scenester-speak sweep of “Fri/end” and the down-tuned, sorta-snarling “Wonderful Witches,” this complacency is limited to the verse-chorus-verse fare. As was often the case with Heart, most of the magic’s in the instrumentals, where composition isn’t beholden to vocal pacing. “Off Work” is an effective-ifunshowy favorite, its prototypical SY melody (which, actually, reiterates “Frozen Gtr” – Trees’ opening tune – somewhat) rendered via chicken-scratch guitars and compressed into a minor diamond by bongo patter from below, conservatory-worthy strings from above, and a growing static mist at eye-level that eventually fries everything it touches to a distorted crisp.

“Trees Outside the Academy” evolves from an unsurprising ramble-bramble into a blazing forest of dark, twisted jams; the concise “Free Noise Among Friends” is simply 34 seconds of flatulent electronic-noise frippery. As for “Thurston@13,” well, everyone reading this probably fooled around with tape recorders a few times while under the intoxicating influence of youth; Moore was smart enough to hold onto this tomfoolery and frame it as an indication as to how he’d spend his adult life. “What you’re about to hear is me taking off the cap of a Lysol spray disinfectant can,” indeed.

Moore’s distro deal with Universal probably means that more people will hear Trees than any of his past or present noise/avant-garde/ whatever solo or collaborative project discs; that’s a damned shame. This record is so frustratingly uneven that I hestitate to recommend it to anyone other than those who probably already own it, who were hella psyched for the recent Daydream Nation concerts and reissue.

Rather, why not check out Hearts or any of

Moore’s other releases available via Forced Exposure, Eclipse, Other Music, or Fusetron?

So let’s talk about a couple other 2007 albums – ones Moore probably enjoys if he’s heard ‘em – that blow Trees out of the water.

Baltimore’s WZT Hearts is all about snake, tremor, rattle, and roll – sometimes all four at once. Threads Rope Spell Making Your Bones comes on as thoroughly immersive, a heady, overloaded roil of laptops, guitars, pedals, and “tapes” that singe and soothe the senses.

“Lava Nile” is as prickly as the quartet gets, trailing drumkit bashing down several flights of stairs choked of crackling FM samples and white noisy toxic static clouds. Then there’s “Jeep Uzi” with its clanky, watery chiming snuffles, twitchy, bleepy “Hearth Carver,” and otherworldly slow-broiler “The Den”; each track is its own soundscape universe, as warmly clamorous in its own intimate way as its construction is utterly and totally unfathomable to anybody who wasn’t in the studio when this droolerific slab was recorded and mixed.

On the other hand, Pocahaunted and Robedoor – a mysterious pair of bands involving the married couple who run the Not Not Fun label – worship the drone. Haunted Gathering is one of those scrambled “split” double CDs that deny listeners the ease of spending a long, uninterrupted stretch with either group.

As such, I consider this set the work of a single drone-minded collective that reflects a number of moods: there’s spiritualist, wordless femme vox drone with a sort of Age-of-Aquarius vibe; there’s roaring, crushing broadcasting-from-thecenter-of-a-storm drone; there’s ritualistic, sleepwalking-through-azure-clouds drone; there’s wary, thrumming, gimlet-eyed prelude-to-noise drone. It’s a lot more satisfying and meditative than that admittedly flippant description suggests; moreso than any other record considered in this review, Gathering rewards late-night, repeat exposure in a semi-secluded environment with good headphones.

No such conditions are necessary to enjoy the excellent, mescaline-scented Raw Powder, the sort of head-trip-on-aluminum Robert Pollard, Gary Young, Ariel Pink, and Marble Valley ought to be taking careful notes from. Blonde bombsell Oli Novadnieks kicks out bloozy, unhinged licks on a guitar strung with barbed wire while anti-singer/multi-instrumentalist Val Denham makes like a hobo suburban alien, yowling and warbling on about his pet dog, Jimmy Swaggart, and whatever other deranged, halflucid nonsense comes to mind for a good hourplus. That’s it in a tinfoil-wrapped nutshell, and it’s more than enough to sate whatever hunger you might have for this sort of fried, loose rock for a good long while. Raymond Cummings

it feels more like a single continuous performance. The opening gambit, a loop that wouldn't sound out of place on an early Seefeel record, is also deceptive; things don't stay so simple for long. In short order tiny metallic tones and soft, sandy implosions pan across the spectrum, creating the aural illusion of precipitation, and then more loops -- a strummed double bass, a couple drum beats poke up like time-lapse videos of plant growth. By the time you get to the sixth minute a meandering piano, skittering electronics, and some resonant guitar swells seem to be playing in three corners of a large field; the listener occupies the fourth. Rather than continue with the note-by-note, let's just say that Ielasi never drops the compositional ball or settles for mere prettiness. His disparate sounds advance as inexorably as a stream coursing through a valley and use their loveliness as lure the listener into considering some unusual juxtapositions; they climax in the fifth track with a prayerful mix of ascending organ figures, shadowy echoes, and shortwave static.

If August seems bathed in light, then the opening minutes of In The Pendulum are the sound of luminescence in retreat. Ambarchi hasn't really changed his approach to the guitar; he still makes it sound like notes from a Fender Rhodes popping through tightly stretched plastic wrap, and he still suspends those notes between bass tones that seem to emanate from your gut as much as the speakers. But he has harnessed those elements to a slowgoing drum cadence and fashioned them into melodies that occasionally seem like excuses to physically sense the sound; the opener “Fever, A Slow Poison” is one train of stompboxes away from sounding like a Sunn O))) track. The drums drop out on “Inamorata” to make space for, well, a lot of space. Eventually strings emerge from the gaps, but then they vanish as though they were flying up and out of the music. But the greatest departure comes in the final track, where melancholy acoustic guitar shapes and backwards voices navigate the surface like uncertain but faithful sailors on an unfamiliar sea. The dolorous attractiveness of Ambarchi's sound world may put off difficult listening devotees as much as Ielasi's, but that's their problem; the beauty on display here is more than skin deep. Bill Meyer

Scott Amendola Ben Goldberg Devin Hoff Plays Monk Long Song CD

Does the world really another trio interpretation of Thelonious Monk's music? Well, take one look at the personnel involved here, and you'll know this isn’t simply another stab at revivalist orthodoxy. Bassist Devin Hoff, drummer Scott Amendola, and clarinetist Ben Goldberg have worked together and separately in many of the Bay Area's most interesting groups (Hoff and Amendola are two thirds of the Nels Cline Singers; Goldberg is the newest member in the Tin Hat ensemble) and each is a

strong band leader in his own right.

They’ve also participated in two of the more intriguing recent homages to jazz masters. All three were members of New Monastery, Nels Cline’s recent homage to Andrew Hill; and Hoff was the bassist on The Door, the Hat, the Chair, the Fact, Goldberg’s tribute to Steve Lacy.

Goldberg’s musings on Monk’s music published on the band’s Web site sums up the trio's approach nicely.

“Each song is a unique parable of form, timing, concision, and motion.

The musician who investigates this material finds, additionally, a series of interlocking meditations on the fundamentals of melody, harmony, rhythm, and form.” They zero in on Monk’s propulsive motion, angular melodic contours, and skewed sense of time. Rather than attack the heads and then string out a series of solos, they use the melodies as structures for weaving collective improvisation.

At any point, any of the members may take the lead. Goldberg’s snaking clarinet may voice the theme which gets shadowed by Hoff’s driving bass. But then Amendola’s tuned drums can step forth to shift focus to the tumbling rhythms as bass and clarinet bubble underneath.

Navigating their way through a tunes like “Work,” “Green Chimneys,” or “Four in One,” the improvisations use the forms as a framework for explorations that edge toward freedom without loosing the thread of the melody. Other pieces like “Reflections” or “Skippy” are based on melodic extrapolation. With all pieces in the two to five minute range, the interactions are stripped of excess, while still displaying a relaxed spontaneity. Amendola, Goldberg, and Hoff make the most of Monks book, distilling the essence of the music while making it uniquely their own. Michael Rosenstein

Even though the compositions on Roamin’ are mainly Andreini’s, they are suffused with the same bare knuckled, confessional spirit as “Fingerprints”, right down to Andreini and De Dionyso’s nasal vocalizing and De Dionyso’s jew’s harp improvisations. Of course, the obvious difference between the two records is in their structure. The dirge-like stomp of Fingerprints, however implosive it might get, still cleaves to a traditional folk and blues framework. Roamin’, on the other hand, hews to the tradition of skittering, wandering, small sound gestures and generations of the British school of free improv.

However, both discs involve a high degree of physicality. In the case of Fingerprints, the squeezed-out sound has the heft of a elephant, whereas on Roamin’ , these emissions sound like a dance of insects.

While both discs are cathartic, they, also share a similar raison d’etre that Andreini articulates in Roamin’s liner notes: “You know when the road starts, but never where it goes”.

Richard Moule

Jacopo Andreini Arrington De Dionyso Scott Rosenberg

Sarah Vaughan

Roamin'

Rai Trade CD

P.A.F.

Fingerprints, Medicine Barely Auditable CD

Saxophonist Scott Rosenberg is becoming known as one of America’s most far-reaching improvisers, and to those already familiar with his work, Roamin’, his collaboration with Italian multi-instrumentalists Jacopo Andreini and Arrington De Dionyso will simply be a reinforcement of his rigorous, elastic, gritty approach. But P.A.F? Who knew that, since 2004, Rosenberg, has also moonlights as Scott Pinkmountain, the guitarist/vocalist of an indie Americana trio, that draws comparisons to Crazy Horse, Magnolia Electric Co. and Saccharine Trust and whose sound has been referred to as “free country”, “threadcore” and “Deep Listening Punk”? Not this writer. That said, while these two projects might not, on the surface, have much in common, dig a little deeper, and there are more similarities than you might think.

First, both discs share a raw, spare, lurching, barely hinged aesthetic.

Louis Armstrong

Live at the 1958 Monterey Jazz Festival Monterey Jazz Festival CD

Miles Davis

Live at the 1963 Monterey Jazz Festival Monterey Jazz Festival CD

Thelonious Monk

Live at the 1964 Monterey Jazz Festival Monterey Jazz Festival CD

Dizzy Gillespie

LIve at the 1965 Monterey Jazz Festival Monterey Jazz Festival CD

Live at the 1971 Monterey Jazz Festival Monterey Jazz Festival CD

With a half-century of performances in its well-preserved and recently digitized archives, the Monterey Jazz Festival's in-house label is off to an impressive start with superior sets from five certified jazz giants—and the promise of more to come.

Louis Armstrong headlined the first night of the inaugural festival in 1958 with a standard-issue All Stars set list. With trombonist Trummy Young and clarinetist Peanuts Hucko, this is not the best All Stars line-up, but Hucko is in fine form, especially on “After You’ve Gone.” Pianist Billy Kyle is also having a good night, swinging hard on “Perdido” in particular. Armstrong’s singing very nearly outshines his trumpet playing, especially on the opening “When It’s Sleepy Time Down South” and “Blueberry Hill,” but his seemingly effortless swing and heraldic tone are still with him. This isn’t essential Armstrong, but there is almost always something to recommend in an Armstrong performance, and this concert is no exception.

Miles Davis came to the 1963 festival with his recently assembled Hancock-Carter-Williams rhythm

section and saxophonist George Coleman. Falling in the valley between the peaks of the band with Coltrane on the one hand and the quintet with Shorter on the other, this is a group that never really got its due, although it’s one of Davis’ finest units. This set isn’t a patch on their definitive Philharmonic Hall concert (which belongs in every serious jazz collection), but this was a band that made enormous strides every time it played. The rhythm section just loved playing together—they sound more impatient for the music to start than the audience does as they wait for Miles to come out. And when they start, their excitement and joy in playing together just electrifies the music. On “Autumn Leaves” Williams is like a third hand for Hancock, so closely do they work together.

They accepted nothing as given. On “So What,” normally Davis’ uptempo flag waver, they half the tempo at times, suspend it at others, then nail it and push it forward aggressively.

They were close listeners, too—Carter was “on” that night, and Hancock and Williams open up and let him step forward. Miles is the master dramatist on “Autumn Leaves” and “Stella by Starlight,” while Coleman is the hard bop warrior “Walkin’” and “So What.” This is one of the highlights of the first batch of Monterey Jazz Festival releases.

All these releases are by essentially working ensembles, which certainly partially accounts for the high quality of the music. An established working relationship was perhaps most important for Thelonious Monk, whose music does not reveal its secrets readily to dabblers. Monk’s quartet at the 1964 festival featured long time associates saxophonist Charlie Rouse and drummer Ben Riley, with a young Steve Swallow sitting in on bass for the first and only time in his career. Rouse and Monk are each in sly, sardonic form, their interactions on “Blue Monk” and “Bright Mississippi” sound like two men sharing an in-joke no one else gets. Monk’s solo on “Blue Monk” is loose and funky and propelled by his utterly idiosyncratic sense of time.

The depth of his harmonic thinking is heard to best effect on “Bright Mississippi,” which is not only richly dissonant, but vibrantly swinging. The band peaks on “Rhythm-a-ning,” in one of their best recorded live tracks.

For the last two tunes, a horn section arranged by Buddy Collette joins the band, but the rather conventional arrangements add little to the proceedings. Still, this album is worth it for the first four tracks alone.

Dizzy Gillespie’s sextet, with regulars saxophonist James Moody, pianist Kenny Barron, bassist Christopher White, and drummer Rudy Collins, is joined by conga player Big Black for a set that veers between genuinely exciting bop, comedy, and trite novelty tunes. “Trinidad, Goodbye,” is crackling Afro-Latin jazz, with Moody’s raw-throated tenor tearing through his solo and Gillespie in whip-smart form in a harmonically adventurous and articulate solo. “A Night in Tunisia” features a refreshing new arrangement and an especially adventurous Moody. “Poor Joe” is a dispensable SIGNAL to NOISE #48 | 67

Study in Contrasts: Arve Henriksen, left, and Frode Haltli, right

Arve Henriksen Strjon

Rune Grammofon CD

Supersilent 8

Rune Grammofon CD

Frode Haltli Passing Images ECM CD

Christian Wallumrød Ensemble The Zoo Is Far

Haltli: CF Wesenberg

ECM CD

With John Coltrane and Miles Davis still casting immense shadows, the challenge for a saxophonist or trumpeter to establish an unique voice remains considerable. Despite the enormity of the challenge, some do rise to meet it, a case in point being Norwegian trumpeter Arve Henriksen whose solo works include the zen-like Sakuteiki, melancholic Chiaroscuro, and now Strjon. His trio work by itself testifies to his artistry, but Henriksen is also a member of Supersilent and makes valuable contributions to other artists’ albums.

Though Strjon, the mediaeval name of Henriksen’s home village Stryn (situated on the west coast of Norway), refers to a streaming water or river, the title choice is rooted less in nostalgia or nature inspiration and more in the fact that some of the album’s material originates from youthful sketches produced at Stryn; consequently, despite the presence of Supersilent members Helge Sten (aka Deathprod) and Ståle Storløkken, the album is somewhat of an exercise in self-discovery for Henriksen, a theme suggested by the music’s oft-sparse and intimate presentation (“Wind and Bow,” for example, which features his trumpet alone but for Sten’s bow accompaniment).

Much has been made of Henriksen’s distinctive sound, a soft burr-like tone one might describe as a molecular fusion of Jon Hassell and the shakuhachi, with a muted dash of Chet Baker and early Miles Davis added for extra seasoning. That sound comes fully to the forefront on “Ascent,” where his soft cry flutters over a vaporous backing, and even more movingly on the skeletal “Leaf and Rock” and closing “In the 68 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

Light” which show him able to wring profound heartache from a single smear.

But speaking of Strjon in a jazz context makes little sense, as it inhabits an entirely different realm, and, for that matter, is hardly a ‘trumpet’ album either (some pieces, like the church organ interlude “Ancient and Accepted Rite,” exclude horn playing entirely). The material eludes easy stylistic labelling, though to call it meditative, electro-acoustic soundscaping comes close. Sten’s presence as a producer and collaborator is clearly felt in the brooding “Black Mountain” and in the title piece, whose dark, cavernous rumble would sound equally at home on a Deathprod release. Elsewhere, Henriksen’s trumpet meanders languorously through the gamelan-inflected “Green Water,” a remarkable polyphony of voices (including Tuvan throat singing) chants in the droning “Glacier Descent,” and a glorious trumpet chorale graces “Alpine Pyramid.” Though each piece possesses unique character, they collectively cohere into an extraordinary, intensely personal portrait.

After a near-five year absence, Henriksen returns with partners Sten, Storløkken, and drummer Jarle Vespestad for Supersilent’s eighth outing. Strjon and 8 are about as different in character as might be imagined, as the latter’s nightmarish opener, an eleven-minute, coagulant sludgefest of arrhythmic drumming, bass-heavy fuzz, and tolling bells, makes clear. In this context, Henriksen’s trumpet is merely one voice of many (its first appearance comes during the funereal meditation “8.4,” thirty minutes into the album), with the focus instead on collective music-making that references Krautrock, electronic composition, and free-form jazz without committing itself to one more than another. Rooted in an improvised, real-time approach (sans overdubs), the group’s material develops organically, and exudes a primal feel similar in explorative spirit to the Art Ensemble of Chicago’s open-ended style (the closing minutes of “8.3” could even pass for a harrowing King Crimson improv circa 1972).

In the album’s most extreme case of contrast, Henriksen’s falsetto voice floats angelically during “8.6,” an exercise in restraint obliterated by the incinerating meltdown of “8.7.” Such long-form pieces constitute a challenging listen, to say the least, but Supersilent’s uncompromising music oozes integrity.

Frode Haltli’s accordion is the first sound one hears on Passing Images and what a wonderful sound it is, especially when the album, his second for ECM under his own name, opens with the stately folk beauty of “Psalm.” The transition from Haltli to his guests is effected artfully, with a pair of bent notes by the accordionist

echoed by fearless vocalist Maja Ratkje, who is in turn augmented by Henriksen’s trumpet and Garth Knox’s viola. Generally speaking, Haltli’s album alternates between boldly experimental pieces and gorgeous traditional folk settings.

On the one hand, there’s the virtually harmolodic “Vandring,” whose elastic free treatment radically redefines the boundaries of the waltz form, while, on the other, there’s “Lyrisk vals” (‘Lyrical Waltz’) by fiddler Gustav Kåterud, a mournful dirge which pairs Haltli’s flowing lines with Henriksen’s plaintive cry. Though the trumpeter and Knox certainly make their presence felt, it’s Ratjke’s virtuosic vocalizing that leaves an even strong impression, especially when two spotlights, “Inter” and “Lude,” grant her audacious approach full reign. The quartet’s handling of experimental material impresses, but the sensitive treatment of traditional material (like the gorgeous closer “Vals” and riveting folk ballad “The Letter”) is even more affecting. What most recommends Passing Images isn’t Haltli’s bravura playing but the collective interplay, as all four musicians breathe inspired life into all of the music on this fully-realized recording.

Henriksen’s a long-standing member of the Christian Wallumød Ensemble, too, and his trumpet is heard to good effect on the Norwegian pianist-composer’s fourth ECM album The Zoo Is Far. It’s an unusual recording on multiple counts, with the chamber group performing twenty-four compositions that take their inspiration from Baroque music (extracts of Henry Purcell’s music are referenced in three “Backwards Henry” pieces), new classical, folk, and minimalism; interestingly, jazz is present tangentially, if at all. Many pieces are fragments and solo settings, while others feature full group interplay. “Psalm Kvæn, solo” (one of four “Psalm Kvæn” variations) offers Wallumød a stately spotlight, while Henriksen’s gentle cry dominates “Arch Dance with Trumpet.” By contrast, the related “Arch Dance” traffics in hypnotic minimalism with harp, glockenspiel, and piano suggesting raindrops falling lightly upon a windowpane. Like Passing Images, The Zoo Is Far is distinguished by rich instrumental color, in this case produced by three string players—violinist (and Hardanger fiddle player) Gjermund Larsen, cellist Tanja Orning, and Baroque harp player Giovanna Pessi—whose contributions are complemented by Wallumrød’s piano (and Toy piano), Per Oddvar Johansen’s percussion, and Henriksen’s horn. If there’s a downside to this remarkable collection, it’s that the sheer multitude of its pieces prevents it from easily cohering into a unified statement. That caveat aside, Wallumrød operates within a boundless musical universe that invites admiration for its bold adventurousness. Ron Schepper

calypso novelty that hasn’t aged well.

The comedy interlude is actually a fascinating time capsule look into Civil Rights era humor and the mix of anger and laughter is uncomfortably hilarious. Over all a good set from a band that never really lived up to its potential on record.

Sarah Vaughan’s 1971 set nicely encapsulates her artistry and appeal. Effortless uptempo romps like “There Will Never Be Another You,” lush ballads like “The Lamp Is Low” and “Tenderly” and some virtuosic scatting. I can do without her game attempt at Lennon and McCartney’s “And I Love Her (Him),” but there’s enough great jazz singing elsewhere in the set to overcome one misguided attempt at mass appeal. A jam session organized by Jazz at the Philharmonic impresario Norman Granz fills out the disc and features more scatting from Vaughan as well as exciting solos from tenor saxophonist Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, trumpeter Clark Terry, trombonist Bill Harris, and altoist Benny Carter—a foretaste of Granz’s Pablo label, which he launched in 1973.

A serious collector of any of these artists will want to pick up the one by their favorite; each set has moments that make them well worth the price of admission. Ed Hazell

pioneer Bob James, experimental poet Alan Sondheim and politicized folkie Tom Rapp. Ed Askew is another of that secret cabal, and his debut self-titled album is one of ESP's more primitively dosed hermetic folk experiments. Little Eyes should have been Askew’s sophomore joint, but the tapes lay unreleased for thirtyseven years. If you’ve communed with Askew before, you’ll know roughly what to expect: he pitches these songs close to Bob Dylan at his most stumblingly hallucinatory, streaming an altered consciousness via tumbleweed strums on a fragile guitar and huffing wheezes into a rusted harmonica. The voice, too, is close to Dylan’s nasal whine, but it also channels the warbling countenance of Rapp’s Pearls Before Swine recordings. When sat in front of the piano, Askew unlocks his romantic side, though he takes great pleasure in undercutting this with the surrealist family tree traced by “Old Mother Moon”. Though it’s nice to have this all documented, the disc is overlong, which has Askew slightly wearing out his welcome. Regardless, it’d be great to hear more from this side of the ESP vaults—maybe De Stijl could dig out some off-cuts from Mij’s Martian Love Call. That’d be a goddamn good thing. Jon Dale

Arp

Omer Avital

Smalltown Supersound CD

Fresh Sound World Jazz CD

In between her work with indietronic band Tussle and improvisers The Alps, San Francisco artist Alexis Georgopoulos funneled her deep love of electronic music onto a home demo recorded mostly with a 4-track, which Smalltown Supersound presents here unadorned.

The dusky, mostly organic feel of the songs—which generally build from dueling rhythmic and ambient synth lines, with the occasional pulse machine, effects pedal and flute or piano thrown in—was Georgopoulos’ reaction to the coldness she began hearing in even so-called pastoral electronic albums.

Echoes of Cluster (“Potentialities”) and Ralf and Florian-era Kraftwerk (“St Tropez”) ring loudly, but nods to old-school minimalism and the old Eno/Fripp collaborations make this far from a Krautrock throwback.

Georgopoulos describes the effect she was going for in 3rd person imagery: “The faint glow of neon [of a discotheque] sill lingers in the protagonist’s memory. The sun is starting to rise; the protagonist and his/her friends decide to say up and sit on the balcony overlooking the ocean.” After 12 songs paced to the gentle surf, the tension of the dance floor’s rigid click is all but forgotten. Nathan Turk

The Omer Avital Group

In Light

Ed Askew Little Eyes

De Stijl CD / LP

In the '60s, Bernard Stollman’s ESPDisk imprint made its reputation by recording some of America’s most vital free jazz, but for all its focus on Fire Music, the label’s catalogue is heavy with great slabs of indefinable loner vision by characters like fusion

Arrival

Asking No Permission Smalls CD

The cover photo of bassist Omer Avital's Asking No Permission shows the artist as a young man creating a tableau vivant of the Fountain of Brussels, as his brother looks on, amused. It's the portrait of supreme confidence, and nothing much seems to have changed in the intervening three decades or so.

Avital anchors the scene centered on Smalls, the basement club that has become for a new generation of aggressive New York players what the Village Vanguard was to their forebears two generations ago. It's also the source of the CD, recorded in 1998, that features a raft of younger lion saxophonists in a sort of live reenactment of Bob Weinstock's late 50s Prestige blowing sessions. It's exciting stuff, not least for the rainbow of saxophonic styles on display from altoist Myron Walden (coiling and vinegary), and tenor players Charles Owens (discursive and Trane-y), Gregory Tardy (angular and rangy) and Mark Turner (muscular and questing). Drummer Ali Jackson and Avital channel Dannie Richmond and Charles Mingus, respectively, in organizing and motivating the music's direction. He's not Mingus' equal as an instrumentalist, of course, and he's not at the great man's level as a bandleader, either—not yet, at least. But like Mingus, Avital seems to grasp the importance of being at the center of things, of being a guy who makes interesting things happen.

More of them happen on Arrival, a studio session from 2006 that finds the Israeli-born bassist moving, like

Mingus did, along the jazz dialectic of writing and blowing. To be sure, there are plenty of fiery solos here, from trumpeter Avishai Cohen, saxophonist Joel Frahm and Avital himself. But there's also a compositional maturity evident in the easy way Avital moves from the Bachian harmonic movement of “Third World Love Story” to the gospelly and poppy chord progressions of “Sea and Sand” and the title cut.

The latter is so poppy that it's twochords-and-a-bridge structure could have come from a 1970s George Benson record (so could the cheesy string pads). But they're having fun (and the laughter at the end of the tape roll proves it). They attack this material with a death-or-glory intensity that's as exhilarating as it is exhausting. A lot of the credit has to go to drummer Jonathan Butler, who plays as though he has something to prove (and proves it), and Avital himself. Immersion in New York's multinational stew has brought out the best in Avital's accretive tendencies. And contact with Latin rhythms seems to have deepened his beat and increased his, well, confidence.

He's a much more dynamic and assured player on Arrival, and it's a stronger record for it. The CD opens with a sampled recording of oud music and the oud returns for a two-minute interlude before the final tune “Lillian in the Big Blue.”

With its boiling Latin beat and assertive solos, it's New York all the way. Avital has arrived, it seems, at the very place where he has always belonged. John Chacona

Martyn Bates

Migraine Inducers / Antagonistic Music (Complete Versions) Beta-Lactam Ring CD x 2 / LP

One of the founding fathers of England’s ‘hidden reverse’, Martyn Bates’s name largely rests on his ongoing Eyeless In Gaza collaboration with Pete Becker, where Bates sings a peculiarly pastoral English folk-blues over arrangements that move between the baroque and the blasted. However, his extra-curricular projects are often the most convincing: witness, for example, his 1990s collaborations with Scorn’s Mick Harris, where traditional murder ballads float unhinged in an Isolationist sea. Antagonistic Music rewinds the clock far further, back to 1979, where the breakdown of his first outfit The Reluctant Stereotypes pushed Bates into home studio lockdown, taking DIY’s liberating drive to heart and recording one cassette of fever-dream analogica as Migraine Inducers. It’s reissued here, alongside subsequent revisions of the material from 1981 and 1994. This coarse, rough listen yields its pleasures slowly, pulsing out of the speakers like blood from a fingertip insulin jab. Home fidelity coats the pieces with an uneven glaze, and brute edits leap the listener into different configurations of time-space. Bursts of thumb piano and glistening acoustic guitar weave their way through tape splices and whistling string-spools of feedback, admitting tenderness and melancholy to abstract concerns. Yet,

although Antagonistic Music is ‘of its time’, there is plenty here that’s instructive, and plenty that could sit proudly amongst the roughhousing experiments of current underground noise artists. Antagonistic Music lifts the veil on Bates’s precocious pre-history: let’s hope Becker’s early tapes are revisited next. Jon Dale

Bear in Heaven

Red Bloom of the Boom Hometapes CD

Once the solo project of ex-Presocratics member Jon Philpot, Bear In Heaven has since expanded to full group dimensions, adding James Elliott (aka Ateleia), Joe Stickney, Adam Wills and Sadek Bazaraa to the line-up. Stickney and Wills share connections to minimalist guitar technician Rhys Chatham, but Red Bloom of the Boom drifts far from those areas, the staggering density of “Fraternal Noon”’s white-light, pulsing sheet-noise textures notwithstanding. Rather, Bear In Heaven gesture toward the structurally complex avant-pop of Animal Collective and Grizzly Bear, with touches of This Heat’s modular ambitions and the quizzical pop of Gastr del Sol’s Camofleur. Philpot’s voice is high and weightless, a thin, wispy thing that glides effortlessly through the balladry of “Werewolf” but has trouble keeping up with the rockist energy of songs like “Slow Gold”. The discomfort in listening to Philpot’s occasionally fumbled singing is balanced by the ambition of the compositions, though they’re also fraught things. “Werewolf” breaks into full-blown stadium pomp six minutes into its lugubrious sprawl, and “Slow Gold” pants as it tunnels through countless variations which sometimes sit uncomfortably together. Ultimately, at this moment the idea of Bear In Heaven is more appealing than the reality. Hovering between epic rock and fractured pop is a brave move, but the group’s forays into the former can be gloatingly grandiose. They would do better to focus on and amplify their pop concrète tendencies, which is where their real talent lies. Jon Dale

Black Lips

Good Bad Not Evil Vice CD

I don’t believe anyone enjoys the Black Lips as much as they enjoy themselves. Yet, while many bands with such an attitude contribute nothing more than heaps of self-absorbed bullshit, this Atlanta foursome manages to craft deliriously enjoyable pop songs. Love it or leave it, it’s rock ’n’ roll through and through. Good Bad Not Evil, the band’s first studio offering from the hipsters at Vice Records is hands down their most solid set o’ tunes yet. The drunken, drugged-up good times are on display as ever this time backed by the catchiest, tightest songs these dudes have yet displayed. “I Saw A Ghost (Lean)” rockets the album off with a stomping garage rock homage to “lean,” the infamous cocktail of promethazine/codeine cough syrup and Sprite that is at the heart of Houston’s SIGNAL to NOISE #48 | 69

Susan Alcorn

Susan Alcorn

And I Await the Resurrection of the Pedal Steel Guitar Olde English Spelling Bee LP

Tetuzi Akiyama Jeffrey Allport

Live at the Western Front Vancouver B.C.

Alcorn: Pete Gershon | Akiyama: Shawn Brackbill

Simple Geometry LP

Times are really hard for the record industry, or so we're told. It seems many labels, large and small, are so concerned about their shrinking profit margins that they can't (or won't) send out "real" copies of their releases to the very people they're counting on to help sell them: Journalists. An unadorned CD-R in a featureless plastic sleeve with the words "PROMOTIONAL COPY NOT FOR SALE" embossed furiously all over it in bold type is off-putting enough – as if the only thought that ever enters a music journalist's head on opening the mailbox is to race off to the local emporium and convert his ill-gotten gains into hard currency (I admit I know a few who do, though) – but we're now being asked to make do with "digital promos", i.e. an mp3 tucked away on the label's website and a cursory email with info and artwork attached as a pdf file. To be frank, this is nothing short of insulting, especially considering that the only remuneration many of us receive for reviewing a new disc is the disc itself. So here's a big shot out to the people at Olde English Spelling Bee and Simple Geometry, two small labels that not only go against the grain by releasing limited editions of cutting-edge new music on vinyl but also send out complete copies of their offerings as promos. Rest assured I'll be taking these off the shelves and admiring them on the way to the turntable long after the digital downloads from the "major" labels have been consigned to the trash.

Japanese guitarist Tetuzi Akiyama is no stranger to bijou collector releases, as any proud owner of a copy of Don't Forget To Boogie! (Idea, 2003) will confirm. This latest highly collectable platter, the first vinyl 70 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

Tetuzi Akiyama

release on Chandan Narayan's Simple Geometry imprint after a couple of CD-Rs (wish I could find a copy of Narayan's own Glass Plates II with Allport and Robert Pedersen because it sounds tasty) documents Akiyama's first duo appearance with percussionist Jeffrey Allport at Vancouver's Western Front art space in July last year. Allport, according to the minimal sleeve note information – all the better so as not to detract from James Whitman's fine artwork – is playing nothing but snare drum (though there are a few other objects strategically placed on or near it, including rubber balls and cymbals), but the sounds he conjures forth from it are surprisingly varied. In terms of kit – not the music that comes from it – he joins Lê Quan Ninh and Sean Meehan as the latest member of the "less is more" school of contemporary percussion.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's pithy maxim is still the first thing that springs to mind when anybody asks for a definition of minimalism, and minimalism is a word that often gets bandied around when discussing Akiyama's work. But he's moved on quite some way from the ultra-reductionist releases of the late 90s / early 00s (The Improvisation Meeting at Bar Aoyama, At Penguin House..); 2002's Résophonie (A Bruit Secret) was one of the most abrasive solo guitar outings of recent times – thanks as much to Akiyama's metallic resonator guitar as to the deadly clang of the samurai sword he attacked it with – and there's some of the same corrosive edge in evidence here. (Remove dentures before checking out the plastic comb scraped across the guitar body on side two.) But there's plenty of space too for the distant roar of passing traffic to drift into, and Allport's mysterious frictional drone groans complement it beautifully. The result is a compelling listen, if not always an easy one.

If Allport's snare drum hardly ever sounds like a snare drum, we're never left in any doubt that Akiyama is playing a guitar. Unlike many improvising guitarists today, who seem to go out of their way to make the instrument sound like anything other than what it is – teasing sounds out of it with EBows, threading its strings with rulers and springs, scrubbing its pick-ups with sponges and steel wool – Akiyama, like Derek Bailey, has always revelled in the sheer guitarness of the instrument, whether picking delicate post-

Fahey post-Connors one-note blues (Relator) or burning your speakers out with power riffs (Don't Forget To Boogie, Route 13 to the Gates of Hell).

Pedal steel guitarist Susan Alcorn, who's recently relocated to Baltimore after years plying her trade on the Texas Country circuit, is as in love with her venerable instrument as Akiyama is with his. And I Await The Resurrection Of The Pedal Steel Guitar, like its fantastic intricate ornamental gatefold cover, is dark, intricate and haunting. There's always a hint of melancholy in the pedal steel sound, not just because of the swoony glissandi that have characterised the myriad teary, beery Country ballads it's invariably associated with, and Alcorn's mastery of the instrument – check out the nuances of attack she uses on the opening "Heart Sutra", the subtle microtonal inflections and impeccable control of the pedal – digs deep into that tradition without feeling the need to throw in the tasty Country licks that first drew my attention to her on Eugene Chadbourne's Texas Sessions.

Here the references lie further afield, from Buddhism (the opening transcription of the "Sutra of the Heart of Transcendent Wisdom) to Bob Graettinger, whose City of Glass "conjures a stark landscape of urban alienation and existential loneliness", to quote Alcorn's elegant handwritten liners. But the album title, and also the longest piece on offer here, is a homage to Olivier Messiaen's Et Expecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum, and the guitarist captures the essence of the French composer's luminous apocalyptic ritual without the slightest recourse to quotation and pastiche. It'd be all too easy on the pedal steel to trot out the gaudy purple harmonies of Turangalîla or imitate the sexy swoops of Messiaen's trademark Ondes Martenot, but Et Expecto is a craggier, more challenging edifice, and Alcorn has the good sense to remain in awe of it. My battered old vinyl copy of Et Expecto has done years of valiant service, and I can assure you Susan Alcorn's wonderful LP will get some heavy possing in the years to come. But I'll do my darnedest to keep it looking good, because what those penny-pinching pen-pushers at the majors don't realise is that a record is something to treasure in the hands and eyes as well as in the ears. Seek out these vinyl wonders without delay. Dan Warburton

“chopped & screwed” hip-hop scene. On “O Katrina” the band chops through a three-chord stomp about a “ruthless old bag” let loose in New Orleans. The lyrical content isn’t exactly thesis-worthy, but the band makes no claim to be highbrow; this is boozy, tit-shaking rock ’n’ roll excess and all the better for it. “Vendi Vidi Vici” has a particularly corroded guitar lead and the kind of dirty strut that would be expected from a young Rolling Stones on 21st century drugs. “It Feels Alright” is an ode to bad luck and getting high.

The anthemic “Bad Kids” features a similar call-and-response vocal and showcases witty troublemaker lines such as “don’t try/to give us pills/oh wait/give us all your pills.”

Each song here is a gloriously un-PC burst of garage punk badassness, with “Navajo”—a Native American love song complete with peace pipe smoke sessions and tee pee shagging—taking the cake for pure uncouth raucousness. The only true stumble is “How Do You Tell a Child That Someone Has Died,” a sungspoken joke track centered around, you guessed it, explaining to a kid that a favorite adult has kicked the bucket. That embarrassment aside, Good Bad Not Evil is a hands down fave for 2007’s best rock record and Exhibit A for anyone still deluded enough to believe rock ’n’ roll is dead. Ethan Covey

Black Mountain In the Future Jagjaguwar CD

The spirit of the 1970s hard rock and the ambitions of progressive art rock hang heavily over the second record

by Vancouver’s Black Mountain.

Even the cover – a cube-like object, seemingly made out of bathroom tiles, superimposed on a red landscape – is the sort of album artwork that Emerson, Lake and Palmer fans used to copy with loving care in their high-school notebooks. Maybe “In the Past” would be a more apt title than “In the Future". But while Black Mountain clearly derives many of its ideas from old Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Traffic records, they still sound more original than Wolfmother or any number of other bands recycling the same classic-rock sources. Guitaristsongwriter Stephen McBean knows the power of a simple riff, repeated as necessary. These grooves bring to mind other realms of music far removed from arena rock, including the Velvet Underground and all of the countless bands they inspired.

Meanwhile, McBean’s laconic vocals make the lyrics about witches, angels and demons seem more like an everyman’s spiritual crises than a Dungeons & Dragons rock opera. The secret weapon is Amber Webber, who sings with an alluring combination of cool detachment and dramatic flourishes. She injects a spooky element to Black Mountain’s rock, sounding at times like P.J. Harvey or a freak-folk vocalist. Black Mountain’s self-titled 2005 debut had a goofy, oddball vibe on a few songs (especially the tracks with sax), but In the Future is serious stuff from start to finish. In true '70s style,

the album reaches its climax on the penultimate track, a 16-minute epic, “Bright Lights,” featuring a slow and spacey interlude flanked on either side by heavy guitar licks. And then the record finishes on a lovely, eerie coda, as Webber sings “Night Walks” over synth chords and an angelic chorus straight out of a David Lynch film. In the end, In the Future sounds like it belongs in a time all its own. Robert Loerzel

Carla Bley

The Lost Chords Find Paolo Fresu ECM CD

Expanded to a quintet, Carla Bley has aptly titled this new album, as she and her Lost Chords have become a cozy five fingered glove with the addition of trumpet player Paolo Fresu. Bley delights in writing for specific players, and this set positively luxuriates in the combined melodic lines of Fresu and her longtime saxophonist Andy Sheppard.

The opening, six-part piece, “The Banana Quintet,” introduces the full range of instrumental colors in an alluring, laidback manner. Bley and her rhythm section of Steve Swallow and Billy Drummond find the propulsion in a tempo that's as calm as a sleepy dog watching autumn leaves fall to the ground outside the window. And like that dog if he were to suddenly spot a cat traipsing across the lawn, a listener's ears will perk up when Bley slyly inserts a quote from The Beatles “I Want You” in the suite's fourth part. “Liver of Life” is another one of Bley's subtly complex melodies that manage to sound wistful and mathematical at the same time. “Death of Superman/Dream Sequence #1-Flying” was rescued from an uncompleted project that was based on, believe it or not, the life and death of actor Christopher Reeve. Closing out the disc is a new arrangement of “Ad Infinitum,” originally heard on Dinner Music and then revisited on Go Together. This version lands somewhere in the middle between the former's urban polish and the latter's duo intimacy, underscoring the sturdy beauty of the composition.

David Greenberger

Paul Bley

Solo in Mondsee ECM CD

This remarkable new solo recital recalls many facets of Paul Bley's musical personality: the boy who graduated from McGill Conservatory at the ripe old age of 11; the young man who played with Bird, Newk, Brew Moore and Allen Eager in the Montreal Jazz Workshop (which he founded), whose debut recording as a leader was with Charles Mingus and Art Blakey, who toured with Prez, Ben Webster and Roy Eldridge; who played with Ornette Coleman at LA's Hillcrest Club and with the Jimmy Giuffre 3, who freed the piano trio from its conventions in the 1960s with Gary Peacock and Paul Motian, and who recorded 1964's Barrage (featuring some of Marshall Allen's most excoriating work outside the Sun Ra Arkestra). Ghosts of all these Bleys are present when the now 75-

year-old pianist buffets the lower end of the pianoharp with an attentiongrabbing thunderclap opening at Mondsee. What follows is bereft of melodrama, leavened with sly humor and packed with rhythmic intensity without being overtly percussive.

Bley is the ultimate epigrammarian of the keyboard. Every note, every chord – no matter how quickly or slowly it is voiced – seems to be mulled over, weighed and tested, assayed for musical and emotional value before it materializes. At one point Bley memorably said that he was “trying to be the slowest piano player in the world.” That Bley is here too, the architect of ECM’s patented studio piano sound defined by long sustains, decay and overtones (Open, to Love from 1972.) A glittering schist of a CD, Solo in Mondsee is one of the finest releases of 2007. Bill Barton

Alexei Borisov & Anton Nikkila

Where Are They Now N&B Research Digest CD

Russian based composers Alexei Borisov and Anton Nikkila have been gaining notice for their divergent form of post-sampler/beat driven music in Eastern Europe. This latest addition to their catalogue secures them a leading pole position and is perhaps their most diverse and arguably enjoyable issue to date.

Deconstructing the outer rim of techno, fusing it with some almost free jazz arrangements and then hammering it out with some good old fashion cut-ups, the pair generate a potent basis on which various stories are told in Russian. The addition of vocal narratives from Borisov throughout some of the material is a curious manoeuvre and if not for the abstraction of hearing the deliveries in Russian (and the obvious lack of literal understanding on behalf of this reviewer – even if the texts are offered in the booklet) the record might come across as somewhat naïve. That said, with the words well delivered and assuming a strong sense of composition and lyrical flow one can’t help but speculate to a successful future collaboration between these two musicians and perhaps a Russian hip-hop emcee.

Lawrence English

Clarence Gatemouth Brown Bogaloosa Boogie Man Sunnyside CD

Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, who passed away at age 81 in 2005 just after losing everything in hurricane Katrina, was an American original.

Country, blues, western swing, jump swing, Cajun, swamp boogie -- you name it, he played it, on guitar, fiddle, mandolin, harmonica, whatever! Bogaloosa Boogie Man was recorded at Studio in the Country in Bogaloosa, Louisiana in 1975, and released on the Barclay label the following year. While some of the production qualities -- like the flat cardboard thud of the drums -and some of the decidedly ungritty stylistic inflections of the backing band will definitely sound dated to

today's ears, Brown's versatility and no-frills authenticity are unmistakable. The twelve songs on the original LP were written by Hoyt Garrick, David Craig and Danny Morrison, and they're mostly in a cowboycountry vein. There's a rendition of Little Feat's “Dixie Chicken” which Lowell George is reputed to have said was his favorite cover version of that tune, and there's also a kind of train-boogie composition called “Hurricane” which would carry greater poignancy if it weren't all hammed up with synth-generated wind sounds! Overall the material from this mid 70s session shows Brown to be reaching for a more mainstream and pop-oriented sound than he'd had up to that point -- in a way that's somewhat parallel to what Waylon Jennings was doing around that time -- but not always exactly hitting the mark.

What makes up for any middle of the road limitations on this disc, however, is the inclusion of five bonus tracks that were captured on an early portable Sony cassette recorder during down time in the studio lounge. The east Texas pistol toting multi-instrumentalist grabs his acoustic guitar and cranks out “Caldonia,” “Don't Get Around Much Anymore,” “Flyin Home,” “Someday,” and “Okie Dokie Stomp,” and all of a sudden, one glimpses the down and dirty Gatemouth who Frank Zappa once named as his favorite guitarist. The detailed and up to date companion booklet, which includes the original liner notes, also contains a number of very nice photos, one of Brown and his (then) young daughter Celeste sitting in a rowboat, and another showing him in a dapper, floral print suit perched atop a stump in the middle of a bayou, fiddle and bow in hand, black cowboy hat cocked back -- a perfect image of the Bogaloosa Boogie Man. Alan Waters

Buck 65 Situation

Strange Famous CD

Eminem made the idea of a white rapper plausible to millions, but what about a white Canadian rapper?

Actually, Buck 65 (aka Richard Terfry) has already become something of an indie-cult hero with his raspy Waitslike voice, junk-culture references and self-effacing sense of humor.

What's more, his between-song patter at live shows prove what a great, dry raconteur he is. He's even been on a country kick lately, touring with a steel guitar player. But now after going from self-released to major label and back to the world of indie labels, he's put together a time-warped capsule going back half a century to the mid-50's. Like David Lynch, Buck focuses on jarring sets of images instead of straight narratives and also looks for the underlying psychosis of middle America, drawing uncomfortable connections with the present. If his wit isn't as sharp as it used to be, it's because he's swimming in the neuroses of a media overload, spitting back enough information to fill a newspaper. And though he sweetens and hooks many of the songs with half-sung SIGNAL to NOISE #48 | 71

choruses to make them go down easier, most of his characters and heroes are outcasts, like the hobos he chronicles on the powerful “Outskirts,” the Beat tribute of “Ho-Boys” and the sad but not self-pitying “Mr. Nobody.” To round out the cultural figures of the time, he also plays both the noir cop ("Spread 'Em") and the conflicted outlaw character that Dean and Brando embodied ("The Rebel").

And though he also recreates the violent backlash of the civil rights movement ("1957") and the horrors of the Korean War ("Heatwave"), he ends with a nostalgic look-back on the appropriately-titled “White Bread.”

He's not exactly Arthur Miller (who he name-checks) but Buck's ambitions play out strongly enough to reward repeat listening. Jason Gross

Emergency Exit: Larry Goldings, Jack DeJohnette, John Scofield

Carol Bui

Everyone Wore White 54º40' or Fight! CD

Trio Beyond Saudades ECM CD

John Scofield This Meets That

Roberto Cifarelli / Phocus

EmArcy CD

Tony Williams' Lifetime Band was arguably one of the greatest fusion bands ever, matching Williams' incendiary drumming with the bristling guitar of John McLaughlin and the humming, soaring work of organist Larry Young. They burned out quickly, but their 1969 debut, Emergency! and its follow up (with Jack Bruce on board) Turn It Over, are essential listening. With the passing of both Young and Williams, a reunion is impossible, but that doesn't rule out a tribute group.

Enter drum phenom Jack DeJohnette and his cohorts, organist Larry Goldings and guitarist John Scofield, billing themselves as Trio Beyond. If you are anticipating some molten fusion brew in the vein of Emergency!, then you may be sorely disappointed. But if you are interested in hearing what these three brilliant players can do within the realm of Williams’ music, you're in for a treat. While lacking the raw intensity of the original group, the trio does manage to create a potent brew of their own. First things first, this is not a tribute to Lifetime per se but rather the trio looks to Williams’ compositions and to those associated with the original group, with an emphasis on straightahead jazz, fusion and funk. The concert, recorded in London during November 2004, begins with Joe Henderson’s "If", heard most stunningly on Young’s must-have Blue Note disc, Unity. The piece swings along nicely in its midtempo groove, with Scofield's punchy guitar jabbing against DeJohnette's jagged rhythms as Goldings demonstrates why he is the go-to guy when it comes to adventurous organ playing. They work at a steady pace on “Pee Wee,” glide through personal arrangements of Miles Davis’ “Seven Steps To Heaven” and Coltrane’s “Big Nick,” highlighted by DeJohnette’s timbral exploits during his solo ventures. The group specifically addresses two tracks from Lifetime's debut, McLaughlin’s “Spectrum” and Williams’ “Emergency!” with thrilling results that echo the original performances. The former is taken at an uptempo pace with Scofield’s solo being his most stunning in some time, though the 72 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

latter also yields explosive results. Scofield also turns in more excellent work on two group originals, the hard funk of “Saudades” (listen to DeJohnette’s backbeat!) and the ballad-romp, “Love In Blues.” While the ferocity of Williams' original group was certainly something very few (except for maybe Mahavishnu) ever lived up to, it's refreshing to see Trio Beyond’s take on the legacy that proves that they are worthy interpreters.

Scofield’s newest solo disc demonstrates that he's at his best when dealing with his core strengths (keep that Ray Charles tribute record hidden far from view). He reunites his own trio for This Meets That, with bassist Steve Stewart and drummer Bill Stewart abetted by a horn section that adds color and punch to the guitarist's arrangements. Like many of Sco’s outings, the compositions touch on a variety of genres, with the horn section broadening the reach and overall depth of the material, and it's a rare example on Scofield covering well-known “Classic Rock” tracks in addition to his own original material. Scofield has always been a groover and there are plenty of examples of his work in this vein, such as on the rockish beats of “The Low Road” with Scofield’s nasty guitar tone ringing through, the pulsing funk of "Heck Of A Job," and the swinging “Trio Blues” and multi-sectioned “Strangeness In The Night,” both with their horn charts snapping underneath with Swallow’s elastic bass lines and Stewart’s cracklepop drumming leading the charge. The session reflects the aforementioned mix of charged particles and loosely rhythmic flows, as evidenced by the countrified beauty of “Down D,” the shimmering balladry of Charlie’s Rich’s “Behind Closed Doors” (written

by Kenneth Gist) or the churning rhythms of “Pretty Out” (last recorded on Scofield’s Grace Under Pressure). But in the days where covers of rock tunes are becoming more prevalent, how do Sco and Co. do? Well, for starters, the Animals’ “House Of The Rising Sun” benefits from the additional guitar of Bill Frisell, with his delay-rich lyricism taking the thematic elements, with a solo from each of the guitarists on the emotive, yet bubbly rendition that maintains its dark side. As for “Satisfaction,” it drips in the sort of funky soul that Scofield has made his calling card, a toe-tapper for the good times. Scofield's been at it for a long time now, but he hasn’t lost his edge at all and it is especially great to see him back in the company of Swallow and Stewart, a perfect rhythm section of his true peers.

Jay Collins

Hooray for subtlety, shading, nuance and all the rest, but seriously: I’d take Carol Bui's This Is How I Recover over Everyone Wore White most days of the week. The old Bui rocked tough and loud and cared little for sweetness and glide; the new Bui drafted string players and seems to be a fan of Mary Timony and Liz Phair. Thus, the guitars do a lot more than just rage, the singer is less inclined to scream; there’s a running plotline about a doomed marriage that allows for extreme emotional expressions and exquisitely arranged instrumental passages that highlight the complexities and contradictions of commitment. Bui’s guitar playing is often strident, hard, rhythmic; like her tremoring, strong vocal, it calls enough attention to itself that you might remember it if you happened to hear her playing at a bar, but beyond that, this D.C. songwriter isn’t quite primed to knock ‘em dead nationally. Yet. Raymond Cummings

Vashti Bunyan

Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind (Singles and Demos 1964 to 1967) DiChristina / Spinney CD x 2

“I was not (and am not) a folk singer” - that’s Vashti Bunyan’s latest claim, justifying the surfacing of twentyfive precious songs from 1960s pop history’s dusty attic. It’s fair enough, really. Bunyan has been annexed by the freak-folk camp thanks to the patronage of Devendra Banhart and his peers, but she’s ultimately a pop singer, and the frailty and gentle candor of her Just Another Diamond Day album, upon which her legend rests, is closer to pop after the flood - pastoral and rustic with a touch of loneliness.

It’s traveller’s music, as is Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind, though these unearthed tunes document a different journey, from starry-eyed dreamer to grist for the girl-pop mill. The first two singles collected here, released

by Decca and Columbia in 1965 and ’66, connect vaguely to similar productions from Jackie DeShannon or Sandie Shaw, though Bunyan’s singing is far softer, and there’s none of the Francophile worldliness of Shaw’s greatest singles. The unreleased

Twice As Much & Vashti single, “Coldest Night of the Year”, is the greatest revelation: it crams so many dramatic soft-pop formulas into its three minutes, it’s a how-to text for the genre. The songs from Bunyan’s first studio recording in 1964 prove her quietly welcoming character was there from the start, but demos like the ghostly, fragile pop-baroque of 1966’s “Winter is Blue” are truly moving. Jon Dale

Greg Burk Ivy Trio

482 Music CD

Ivy Trio, pianist Greg Burk's sixth release as a leader, predates his relocation from Boston to Rome.

Recorded in a temporary studio set-up in a Harvard University study lounge, the set finds him reconfiguring four previously recorded compositions, offering up a pair of new ones and covering Charlie Parker's “Billie's Bounce.” “Look to the Neutrino,” built on layered figures, calls to mind Soft Machine's fourth and fifth albums. “Hupid Stumid” is a tour de force of trio interplay, with the tune's cubist bebop riff setting the scene, then unfolding into more liquid forms, only to reappear, like a fish, swimming towards shore, then transforming into a biped and strolling out onto the beach.

“Ducks and Gulls” spends its first minute enthralled by the organic sounds stoked by bassist Jonathan Robinson and drummer Luther Gray. Burk's elegant melody then emerges like a deer in a forest clearing. David Greenberger

By the End of Tonight / Tera Melos Complex Full of Phantoms Temporary Residence Ltd CD

Seven angry men with a penchant for LOUD guitar-driven rock populate this split release. Complex Full of Phantoms features mathy post-rock from Tera Melos and chthonic instrumental metal from By the End of Tonight. Tera Melos is the more versatile outfit, with dizzying polyrhythms and inexorable ostinati playing off of synthesized harmonies and cryptic vocals. After the hale of hammer blows wreaked by “When Worms Learn to Fly,” it's refreshing to hear the more intimate textural explorations of “Melody 9.”

“Last Smile for Jaron” is poetry in energetic motion, a fluid concoction that should be required listening for any math-rock aspirants. By the End of Tonight offer a Texan brand of metal that pits brash drumming against overlapping riffs that gradually shift the rhythmic focus through deft phrasing; while the prevailing dynamic is fff on cuts such as “Philthy Collins” and “Delaware is Depressing” (gotta' love those titles), this is anything but guileless music: subtle transitions abound. That said, I'm most fond of “Cold Hands,” which leaves some power in reserve and instead offers a darkly captivating soundscape. Christian Carey

John Cage

Complete Short Works for Prepared Piano, Volume 37

Mode CD

Mode’s mighty Cage survey precedes apace, this being the 37th volume. As the title makes clear, the two-disc set collects all of Cage’s brief works for prepared piano, written from 1940-1952.

Philip Vandree, the purveyor of this fine music, has also recorded the more expansive “Sonatas and Interludes” for prepared piano, an earlier volume in Mode’s complete Cage edition and the only solo works for the instrument not on this collection. It is astonishing to hear the music develop as Cage discovers the possibilities of his invention. James Pritchett’s illuminating notes state emphatically that 1944 was a pivotal year on that journey, marking his first duo collaboration with Merce Cunningham. Certainly, the difference in compositional approach between 1940’s “Bacchanale” and the monumental suite “The Perilous Night,” written four years later, bespeaks infinitely greater subtlety in timbre and texture.

While the earlier work examines the piano/percussion dichotomy in extremely traditional terms, “Perilous Night” is a study in microtones and orchestrational variance. The fourth movement hypnotizes as multitextured minimalism unfolds in soft focus. The final movement, in contrast, demonstrates the high level of syncopation and timbral rhythmicity that Cage had cultivated in the previous year. It is no wonder that the suite was the centerpiece of that first Cage/Cunningham collaborative concert in the spring of 1944, and it is certainly one of this set’s strongest statements. Apart from the afore-mentioned “Bacchanale,” every work on offer is a gem and the collection a feast for the ears.

“Primitive,” written in December of 1942, introduced the idea that each key could produce multiple notes, adding layers of counterpoint to the instrument’s growing timbral pallet.

Even if Pritchett had not given us “Valentine Out of Season”’s sad backstory, the wistful tone of its first part is quite evident from Vandree’s superb performance. Then, in a league and soundworld of its own, is the opening section of the rhapsodic “Daughters of the Lonesome Isle,” invoking the gamelan and sounding nothing like a piano as it flutters smoothly by. As with the other volumes, the recording and presentation are of an extremely high standard. Mode’s Cage edition has been moving from strength to strength, and this is one of the finest installments in this invaluable survey. Marc Medwin

C.C.C.C.

Early Works No Fun CD x 4

One of the great fallacies about noise is that it’s somehow inherently dynamic and confronting, an inescapable furnace blast that leaps from zero to 100 and fries your earplugs before you’ve even a chance to put them in place. But the best Japanese noise — Incapacitants, or Merzbow’s Batzoutai or A Day Of Seals, Incapacitants — offers just as much calm as storm: or, at the very least, it allows

the listener repose within the densely wrought textural onslaught, invalidating and over-riding your pre-learned cognitive responses by blowing your circuits and swamping your cerebellum. C.C.C.C. were always one of the most individual, benignly devastating of Japanese noise outfits, and Early Works compiles live recordings that track the outfit at their early peak. Beginning with a fairly rudely constructed duo performance from Hiroshi Hasegawa and Mayuko Hino, a one-time ‘pink movie’ actress whose abreactive squeal can be truly unsettling, the set starts firing when the full line-up is in place, with Hino’s voice and metals and Hasegawa’s electronics further pushed out into folds of eternity by Fumio Kosakai on drum machine and percussion, and Ryuichi Nagakubo on bass. Indeed, it’s Nagakubo’s presence that’s in many ways most important, as his playing works as centrifugal force for the other members to spin around, caught magnetically between attraction and repulsion, sending flames of electronics licking the walls of the various performance spaces. By disc three, which contains live sets from December 1991 and October 1992, things are so overwhelmingly, non-conventionally beautiful, you begin to wonder why all noise can’t be this charged and sensual.

Forced Exposure always used to say C.C.C.C. were among the most human of noise-related head-soaks around: Early Works gives plenty of reasons why. Jon Dale

Celebration

The Modern Tribe 4AD CD

Celebration almost sound like a different band on this, their second album. The Baltimore post-punks that established their sound with breathy moans, carnival-like calliope pumping and brushed, understated drums has transformed into a lush, indie-rock collective. This album is more like a war dance compared with the floating waltz of their selftitled 2005 debut; vocalist Katrina Ford sings more (wait, she has a high voice?), perhaps more confident from the two years she’s spent diving into audiences—something she’s built a reputation for—in cities worldwide. The keyboards, and the other, fuller aspects of the music in general, sound more lush on this album than before, actually overstating the melodies, and the drums keep more of a standard, if a little skittish, rhythm for Ford to pound her boots to. TV on the Radio’s David Sitek produced The Modern Tribe, as he did their previous release, but this album reveals more of his sensibilities than the past. Although he’s helped them craft punchier songs with more hooks, like the “wooo” chorus on the outro to “Tame the Savage” and the “wooo” verses on “Pressure,” it seems his production has also compromised some of the band’s more distinctive qualities. It’s a great album, sure, and its catchy, sensuous songs would be an achievement for any band, including this one, but for a band that had previously balanced even more daring musical proclivities than they do now, it just

seems to have done them somewhat of a disservice. Even so, songs like “Comets” and “Evergreen,” with their shimmering keyboards and Ford’s melodic vocals easily stand up to their label’s catalog and should hopefully inspire some other bands to take edgier approaches with their music. Kory Grow

Charalambides Likeness Kranky CD

Charalambides is not a band to repeat itself, so it's hardly a surprise that Likeness does not cover the same ground that it's predecessor A Vintage Burden did. Tom and Christina Carter may stick once more to a duo format, but they've replaced the latter record's spartan, unadorned guitar-and-voice arrangements with something much more atmospheric, even ethereal. It's not like you'd confuse this record with the Cocteau Twins, but the liberal use of effects, especially space echo, on guitars, keyboards, and voices gives it a feeling of spaciousness sensed but never completely revealed. On “Memory Takes Hold,” for example, a carousel keyboard orbits around an intricate weave of spiraling e-bow licks and brief sung phrases lifted from hundred-year-old songs about soldiers returning from war. Both meaning and music twist in flux, at once clear before you and out of your grasp. A dizzying swirl of reverbladen guitars spin hurricane-like around Christina's much more solid vocals on “Saddle Up My Pony,” like tattered clouds rushing past stark rocky peaks. The choice to draw most of the lyrics from old American songs in the public domain makes things even more ephemeral; filaments of meaning reach at your from an ungraspable past, like voice mails received from the Spanish-American war that you can't return but just can't erase either. Bill Meyer

Nels Cline Elliott Sharp Duo Milano Long Song CD

Franck Vigroux Elliott Sharp Hums 2 Terre Signature CD

Duo Milano is a wonderfully relaxed and companionable encounter between Nels Cline and Elliott Sharp, with five short acoustic guitar duets and five longer tracks featuring electric guitar. Listening to it is like eavesdropping on a conversation which flows easily from one favorite touchstone to another, from Derek Bailey to bottleneck blues, from melting rock balladry to aching Middle Eastern melismas. Though it’s freely improvised, the music always feels strongly grounded – often through persistent drones or the long, throbbing sustains created by Sharp’s eBow. On the acoustic tracks, phrases slide back and forth easily between the guitarists without a break – there’s a welcome absence of the jumpy musical ping-pong that ruins a lot of free improv. Snapping string-percussion gives the improSIGNAL to NOISE #48 | 73

Pinko Loudmouth? Pete Seeger

Various Artists Protest Songs Smithsonian Folkways CD

Movement Soul, Vol. 2 ESP-Disk' CD

Now that the disenchanted masses are once

again thinking about the manner and potential impact of protest movements, the politicallycharged musical leavings of bygone eras continue to both inspire and console. This pair of compilations come from Smithsonian Folkways and ESP-Disk, imprints associated with counterculture philosophy as well as international folk music and the avant garde respectively. The sequencing and editing on both sets make the obvious use of spoken word excerpts to send off, or bracket, the various musical performances. It is a compelling technique that is particularly appropriate for this type of collection, in some cases creating an almost cinematic effect.

With a photo of notorious pinko loudmouth Pete Seeger on the cover, the Folkways set is a pocket H-bomb. Many of the performances are essential listening, including Leadbelly's "The Bourgeois Blues" and Phil Ochs' "We Seek No Wider War." Cynics may try to sniff out lyrics that seem dated: good luck to them, as it is going to be a tough search. Many of the Ochs lines as well as the Bob Dylan poetry—"I saw knives and swords in the hands of young children"—are, unfortunately enough, perfectly appropriate to today and tomorrow. Dylan himself may be the yolk in this fried egg. There are not only cover versions of his songs but performances by Dylan himself (credited to Blind Boy Grunt due to contractual obligations). The wonderful Janis Ian pulls the same ruse with an early version of "Society's Child", titled "Baby I've Been Thinking" credited to the attractively-named Blind Girl Grunt. Ian's most famous song is a protest masterpiece with the sensual longing of a good doo-wop number.

Her youthful intensity could solve a lot of problems if it could have been bottled; despite her youth, she has the good sense to make use of the word "smirk" in a lyric. Seeger's take on "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" has advantages over the original stemming from his much lessmannered vocal performance. Utah Phillips and Woody Guthrie provide other hot spots, as does the duo of Reverend D.F. Kirkpatrick and Jim Collier with an amusingly threatening take on "Burn, Baby, Burn." Folk and country blues are the dominant styles for the Folkways collection, although the C.O.R.E. Freedom Singers 74 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

venture onto Ray Charles' turf for the amusing "Get Your Rights, Jack." "Guantanemera" is positioned well, near the end in case it tries anyone's patience, a distinct possibility since it is such a perfect example of strong source material dipped in powdered sugar. It ought to have made Seeger choke but didn't—maybe it remains lodged in his over-size Adam's Apple.

The ESP set is the second of three volumes in this series, the first one having been released circa 1965 under the aegis of producer Alan Ribback. Volume Two was produced by Michael D. Anderson, coming some four decades later as part of ESP's catalog of new productions.

The folkie element is really not a traceable part of the ESP program with its much more prominent use of spoken word segments. In fact it is really the spoken work segments that are framed by the musical performances. Some ten speakers are represented including S.N.C.C. organizer Fannie Lou Hamer and Thurgood Marshall. In addition there are excerpts from news and radio broadcasts chronicling events including a 1960 anti-segregation demonstration in Texas. Nearly a minute of eccentric DJ Dewey Phillips is worth the price of admission in itself.

A nine-minute performance of a poem by Eloise Wilson, recorded in a Chicago church during the mid '60s, opens the CD in an uncompromising manner typical of this label. We then move backwards to 1939 and a clip from Mary McLeod Bethune's Town Hall address. Thus we are nearly a quarter of an hour into this disc before a note of music is heard. Reverend C.L. Franklin, papa of Aretha, is subsequently first in song with the brief "Father, I Stretch Forth My Hands", the first of several nods to the gospel genre. The Mount Hope Baptist Church Choir helps bookend the gospel nature of the program with an interpretation of "The Lord's Prayer". Less obvious than the black church's strong political role are provocative tangents such as the recollections of a bombing run over Italy from a Tuskegee fighter pilot. Meanwhile the "Rough and Rocky Road" described vividly

by The Nightingale Jubilaires includes abductions, lynchings and much other heinous activity taking place up north as well as down south.

Country bluesman Joe Townsend's "Take Your Burdens to the Lord" and bebopper Babs Gonzales' "These New York Neighbors" are brilliant musical portions, articulately suitable to the subjects at hand as well as simple treasures in themselves. As a whole, the three volumes in this series are something of a museum which needs no further building other than that of your bookshelf. Eugene Chadbourne

visations a lively, irregular rhythm, though the guitarists at times dally to search out entire worlds of expression in the small bends and twists of a single note. The electric tracks are less intimate in feeling, more mediated and soundscaped: “Bludget”, for instance, is a grainy, distortiondrenched vista where slow melodies stick out like Olympian peaks; on “Acetylene Panorama”, by contrast, even melody gets sucked into a black hole. The best tracks, though, are the avant-blues epic “Mutha Blooter”, and “Fingernests,” where Sharp’s trademark fret-tapping at verges on mutant bluegrass.

Hums 2 Terre, which finds Sharp in the company of French guitarist Franck Vigroux, inhabits a very different sound-world, not least because Sharp’s multi-instrumentalism comes into play: that’s him playing in-thetradition tenor sax on “Hum de terre” while the sonic debris flies in all directions. The earthiness of Duo Milano is left behind for a swim in the delirious (if toxic) soup of sonic/ cultural information around us, a re-processing of already thoroughly processed materials where the (sampled) human voice becomes a disembodied burble or a shouter of disconnected phrases. Is this distorted hall of mirrors nightmarish or pleasurable? At its best it’s both, wrapping its tentacles around the listener like a hungry octopus – sample the mangled drum-and-bass loops of “Fatal Error”, for instance, or the harsh noise-layering of “Bang Sang Hang”. At times, though, the restless shapeshifting seems merely cartoonish. Nate Dorward

Loren Connors

The Hymn of the North Star Family Vineyard LP

As Roses Bow: Collected Airs 1992-2002 Family Vineyard CD x 2

For more than thirty years, the carefully chosen and expertly executed notes have issued forth from the guitar of Loren Connors have come like beams of light cutting swathes through the melancholic outposts of darkness. His laments and lullabies —deconstructions of the delta blues —have on more than one occasion brought tears to my eyes.

The Hymn of the North Star is the latest addition to that hauntingly evocative and highly personal canon.

Within its six parts is documented the atomization of absence, as every note hangs heavy alongside the dust motes, each a tiny beacon of hope.

Judging by the six parts which constitute this album, his playing has seemingly become even more pared down than on previous outings.

Whether this is a stylistic decision or one forced upon him by the deterioration in his dexterity, brought about by the Parkinson’s with which he has been diagnosed, it is impossible to gauge. But if it is, god forbid, a process of the latter then it is testament to Connors’ craft that he can make a virtue of something so harrowing – a fine analogy for his creations. Five of the six sections which make up this LP were recorded at Connors’ apartment in New York, and it says everything about his singular vision

that only the presence of a coughing audience member gives away that “Part Four” (a typically understated and sumptuous duet with long time collaborator Alan Licht) is of another time and place. Here an atmosphere of stillness is at first suggested, punctuated by nervous fidgets and fumbling and then dispersed by showers of glissandi that fall like cool spring rain. His improvisations are often abstracted, as if Connors is preparing a bed of ashes from which to raise the final melodic denouement of “Part Six”. It is moments such as these, full of tenderness and heartache, which mark out Loren Connors as nothing less than a primitive genius.

As Roses Bow: Collected Airs 1992-2002 is full of such moments.

On this heart-breaking retrospective collection of 43 richly melodic Irish airs, culled and collated from ten years' worth of mostly out of print releases on the Road Cone, Carbon, Item, Table of the Elements and Black Label imprints, Connors’ ghostly guitar ripples can be heard as some distant ancestral echo, the final throes of a rich tradition. On four occasions he is accompanied by his wife, Suzanne Langille, whose tremulous whispers provide the perfect foil for Connors’ languid tones, distinct without being intrusive, the pair seemingly battling alongside one another, taking the fight to all our existential demons. But, for the most part, this is the sound of one man and his trusty instrument’s uniquely emotive voice, captured in splendid isolation, drawing the listener towards silence.

Spencer Grady

Connie Crothers Quartet Music is a Place New Artists CD

The modern jazz that first strikes the imagination is both random and organized, chaotic but unified, the entrance to another world. It is the modern jazz that I long for, that I know I’ve heard, but it’s dimmed by too much knowledge of too many details, just as the current “mainstream” is murdered by its text book solutions, its pained historicism, or its ambitions to be “concert music,” yet another level of commodity.

By contrast, that mythical modern jazz would appear to the ear as continuously developing harmony rather than the reiteration of a popular song’s pattern. The modern jazz I want, which is almost entirely telepathic, still has codes beyond my reach, while it attains a kind of perfect abstraction and collectivism, voices independently creating lines that somehow entwine and comment on one another. One imagines the underlying pattern disappearing afterward, indivisible from the creation of the piece. Now that’s a music I hardly ever hope to hear because it repeats not a music but an innocence of ear that should be beyond me. But I hear it in the music of the Connie Crothers Quartet which manages to balance traditional patterns and free improvisation in a way that is mysterious, magical and brilliant, in a way that clearly advances the Tristano/ Konitz/ Marsh school of linear abstraction without in anyway

repeating it. Crothers is a stunning pianist, and the sudden traceries of “New York in the Blue Hour” would alone suffice to make her one of the most interesting pianists in jazz, her chordings a loose physical movement in which the fingers are part of a continuum rather than mere independent mechanism. A shared state of musical mind that unites Crothers with altoist Richard Tabnik (stunningly speech-like, like Coleman or Konitz; his upper-register chatter demands a hearing), bassist Ratzo Harris (a darting intelligence) and drummer Roger Mancuso (creating a streetscape of multiple exchanges), an intimacy so highly developed that you can turn to the back tray liner and expect a single composer only to find four, and vice versa. Music is a Place is work of continuous invention and dialogue, of shifting voices and sudden solo extrapolations; it’s music that always feels as organized as bop, but it also sounds as loose as the best free jazz. Stuart Broomer

Double Duo

Crossword Puzzle Libra CD

Double Duo is the brainchild of Dutch trumpeter Angelo Verploegen. He joins forces with the estimable pianist Misha Mengelberg, to whom he has referred as “the godfather of European improvised music.” They converse and dovetail with the amazingly prolific Japanese husband and wife team of trumpeter Natsuki Tamura and pianist Satoko Fujii in a uniquely textured and beautifully nuanced performance recorded live at Amsterdam's Bimhuis on September 22, 2005. Mengelberg and Fujii interact in some delightful ways throughout, most notably when the former is playing the keyboard and the latter is exploring the interior of her instrument, eliciting sounds both ethereal and earthy from the pianoharp. As “a butterfly, bee, mantis and grasshopper” progresses the two trumpeters gradually build the fervor to a fever pitch in a forceful dialogue that has an unbridled forward momentum.

Over a half-hour in length, this piece has fire and air, density and space, and moves through a panoply of moods. Although it's an extended performance, it's never verbose or aimless and there aren't any dead spots. In the CD age (wait, are we still in that era?) the average length of an “album” has ballooned, often at the expense of quality. At 43:31 this music would have fit on a single vinyl LP and it feels just right: long enough to be satisfying and short enough to leave you wanting more.

Crossword Puzzle is a polyportmanteu packed with creative, adventurous music. Bill Barton

Michael Dracula In the Red ZE CD

New York’s ZE Records, the label responsible for the most exciting and innovative dance music of the ‘80s, is steadily reissuing its back catalogue (Cristina, James Chance, Kid Creole, Lio et al.), but until now has been entirely inactive with respect

to representing new artists on the scene. It’s odd, then, that founder Michael Esteban would choose Emily MacLaren, alias Michael Dracula, to mark ZE’s return to the world of pop music. MacLaren, an American living in Glasgow, is a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist whose music can best be described as a kind of sensitive parlor rock, full of lilting melodies, safely placed guitar feedback, and drown-your-tearsin-a-bottle piano riffs. In the Red is her debut album and features the young expatriate playing each and every instrument heard, which were later edited together with digital software – no small feat, considering that In the Red sounds just as convincing and dynamic as any indie combo working today. The song that best captures the classic ZE aesthetic is the album’s closer, “Destroy Yourself” (perhaps a reference to Chance’s classic “Contort Yourself”?), which matches a slinky bassline to dissonant guitars and a repetitive synths. It certainly recalls the label’s “mutant disco,” a style that remains fresh even in today’s post-everything climate. Another highlight is the disc’s first cut, “Please Don’t Take This the Wrong Way,” a bluesy romp over which MacLaren’s voice swaggers with lyrics addressed to a failed suitor. “It’s too hard, it’s too bad / You’ve lost what you couldn’t have,” croons an unpretentious falsetto.

Most remarkable is the fact that the song’s barrelhouse piano and handclap rhythms actually sound sincere.

In between these two standouts, though, In the Red stumbles through eight more tracks of varying quality.

Something about “What Can I Do For You?,” with its multi-tracked backing vocals and overdubbed keyboard, sounds curiously awkward, while “Poppers” mimics vintage Sonic Youth and Raincoats only to sound like a hollow replica of both.

MacLaren is obviously a musician of considerable range and sensitivity who, along with others of her generation, are beginning to realize that formal novelty is little match for solid songwriting. Once she finishes running through the classics of the art-punk canon, one can reasonably expect great things from Michael Dracula in the future. Seth Watter

Nick Drake Fruit Tree

Universal / Fontana CD x 3 + DVD

English singer-songwriter Nick Drake was a genius, capable of capturing emotions that aren't describable in words. Everyone who’s Drake's three albums has a favorite (we’re going with Five Leaves Left because, well, we say so), and given folks’ posthumous fanaticism about him—including musicians as diverse as R.E.M. and Swedish death metal band Opeth—his pensive, contemplative ballads have become more vital than ever. When Drake died of a prescribed drug overdose in 1974, he received little fanfare, and his label even said the following year they had no plans to reissue his music. But four years later, Island’s new press manager, a fan of Drake’s, commissioned this box set, which has now been out of print for seven

years. Although the original contained Time of No Reply, a collection of outtakes, which is absent here, Fruit Tree remains a testament to Drake’s genius (especially if you don’t already own all of the three albums, which comprise the set’s body.)

This limited-edition reissue contains a DVD of Dutch director Jeroen Bervkens’s excellent documentary, A Skin To Few: The Days of Nick Drake, which focuses on the places where Drake spent time and interviews with producer Joe Boyd, Paul Weller and Drake’s sister, Gabrielle, who discusses his disappointment with himself, among others. The talks are candid, but the stunning English countryside could double as star in this film.

This redux also contains a 108-page book with illuminating song-by-song analyses from Boyd, engineer Joe Wood, arranger Robert Kirby and music journalist/Drakeologist Robin Frederick, and (most importantly) the lyrics. Utterly essential. Kory Grow

Efterklang Parades Leaf CD

Copenhagen collective Efterklang made a terrific first impression with their 2004 debut Tripper. A feather in the cap of the already well-plumed Leaf Records, the album was an exercise in “post-everything” musicmaking. Efterklang seemed to have perfected the alchemical process by which contemporary classical, electronic and pop forms can achieve tonal symbiosis. The group’s latest effort, Parades, follows the excellent mini-album Under Giant Trees, which was released back in April. Indeed, it’s been a banner year for appreciators of richly detailed, forward-looking composition. Among Efterklang’s core strengths is its chorale-style vocals, which fall somewhere between the ghostly flappings of Steve Reich’s Music For 18 Musicians and the majestic iciness of Eyvind Kang’s Virginal Co-Ordinates. The group’s range of instrumentation is likewise impressive: horns, violin, piano and sundry orchestral sounds are seamlessly interwoven with computer-assisted textures. I’m generally burned out on digitally-massaged percussion, but when used sparingly (as is the case here) it contributes character. Epic and enthralling as a song like “Caravan” is upon first listen, subsequent spins reveal an impressive latticework of melody, harmony and rhythm.

Handclaps, call-and-response vocals, symphony-worthy arrangements and a strong sense of motion make this cut, like so many others on the record, worth revisiting. Still, it’s enough to let the music gently pass by, like the procession implied in the album’s title. But the more attention paid, the more rewarding the result.

With its multi-hued array of sounds, Parade has the feeling of many fine fabrics fashioned together in a stunning composite that far exceeds the sum of its parts. Casey Rae-Hunter

Extra Golden Hera Ma Nono Thrill Jockey CD

The second album by this band of Kenyans and Americans is suffused SIGNAL to NOISE #48 | 75

with a sense of loss as well as one of triumph. Singer/guitarist Otieno Jagwasi died in 2005, before the band's debut album was released.

Reeling from the loss, founders Ian Eagleson and Alex Minoff (originally with the DC-based band Golden) and Onyango Wuod Omari (who, with Jagwasi had been a part of Kenya's Orchestra Extra Solar Africa) filled the void with Otieno's brother Onyango Jagwasi. Last year's OkOyot System felt like the cross cultural collaboration it was: the contrasts between their writing and singing was striking and the songs, for the most part, felt somehow separate from one another. This set flows like a real album. There's still different sets of influences that have informed the American and African composers, but the music is now looser, with individual voices and instruments freely claiming their own identity and dancing into new terrain. The songs themselves even change rhythm and density with ease. At times rhythmically hypnotic, other times plaintive and riveting, the eight tracks yield an emotionally viable soundworld.

David Greenberger

Robert Ashley, right, and scenes from Now Eleanor's idea

Faust / Nurse With Wound Disconnected

Robert Ashley Now Eleanor's Idea Lovely CD

Robert Ashley has come a long way from the gut-wrenching noise experiments of 1966's Wolfman. For the past few decades, the seventy-seven-year-old composer has been perfecting the art of the televised opera. Fans of Ashley’s previous work such as the classic Perfect Lives (1983) and Atlanta (Acts of God) (1985) will hardly be surprised by Now Eleanor’s Idea – though in its formal realization, this 90-minute recording may be Ashley’s most ambitious project yet. Originally conceived in 1993 but never previously released on CD, Now Eleanor’s Idea is the story of a woman named Now Eleanor and her self-realization through the most unlikely of media, the televised broadcast.

Though Ashley’s dense verbiage eludes easy summarization, a brief synopsis is helpful: After witnessing a mysterious robbery at her job as a bank teller, Now Eleanor is overwhelmed by what the narrator dubs “The Approach of the End of the World Feeling.” Finding a new job and a new direction at a local tv station, Now Eleanor travels to New Mexico to document the phenomenon of customized automobiles among the Spanish-speaking population, entranced by the lifestyle surrounding this specifically American fetish.

After the success of her program, Now Eleanor is commissioned for a questionand-answer series in which she offers advice to distressed callers. The opera concludes with a truly bizarre speech that, in allegorical form, describes everything from the birth of language to the idea of cultural memory. This is obviously a literary work. Nevertheless, I think it apt to refrain from any true textual exegesis in 76 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

favor of describing its style, because what we’re dealing with is first and foremost a piece of music. It is of course characterized by Ashley’s trademark drawl, so familiar from his prior narrations, but what makes Now Eleanor’s Idea so distinct is Joan La Barbara's baroque performance in the title role. Her range is enormous, and she lends even the most banal statements a divine rhythm. Ashley abandons the eerily innocuous lounge music of his older pieces for minimal ambient backdrops and an electronically distorted vocal effect that echoes his character’s dialogue, dogging their footsteps like a phantasm – as if to say that, despite appearances, there is never only one person speaking.

Sartre once suggested that a people’s theater would use a common language to express itself, but would lend to everyday speech the rhythm and meter appropriate to drama. Ashley does precisely this, molding American vernacular into polyphonic song. As the composer himself remarks, opera is only possible when a culture can see its own language from a distance. In her heteroglot speech, increasingly invaded by the words and syntax of Spanish, Now Eleanor comes to stand in for a nation fascinated by an art of the quotidian, the everyday, by popular culture, popular speech and the language of cars. Language, too, is a vehicle – and in the wandering voices vying for control of the stage, Ashley seems to tell us that to speak is at the same time to adorn and transform, in the same way that the inhabitants of Chimayo paint and refinish their lowriders. “In increase we are required to travel,” sings La Barbara, “To square the velocity of the moving information.”

The incredible momentum of Ashley’s dialogue literalizes the tension at the heart of each and every word we toss, helplessly, into the American void. Seth Watter

Art Errorist CD

For those unfamiliar with Faust’s seminal 1971-1974 recordings, Andy Wilson’s book-length study Faust Stretch Out Time and the Wumme Years box set on RER Megacorp will provide the necessary context.

Disconnected finds Faust defying simple expectations, yet again, about what it means to be Faust.

Certainly, familiar elements abound, especially on the opening track of this collaborative effort. “Las Mich” is a simultaneous glance at past and future through a deliciously liquid present; The beloved collage, ever present during the Wumme years, is tempered by crushingly distorted and tremoloed guitar vying with stuttered beats, tribal taps and folky pluckings, conjuring and updating images of the best Faust of the 1990s, particularly You Know Fa-USt. Far from mere nostalgia, Nurse With Wound's Steven Stapleton weaves an entire Faust history from the contributions of Jean Herve Peron, Zappi Diermaier and Amaury Cambuzat, all framed by the electrosonic complexities of 2007. The rest of the disc turns in on itself, sonic objects and methods from the first track lengthened, distorted and put under a microscope. It is the minimal side of Faust that is dissected as Disconnected unfolds, the dronier, dreamier and more “primitive” Faust, endlessly beautiful long-form swells and fades supporting some of SAPI’s customarily giant beats and Peron’s forthright bass declarations.

Most interesting of all are the voices, recurrent slabs of human speech disfigured, or disconnected. Phone conversations are one-sided and garbled and salutations go unacknowledged as technology seems to go awry. Repetitions signal some sort of decay, but the celestial drones speak against it, signaling cycles, rebirth, or at least a silver lining in entropy’s

cloud. Is Faust attempting flight, via collaboration, from its admittedly weighty legacy? The bonus track on the limited edition version of the CD, a blistering concert deconstruction of Dylan’s “Hard Rain,” is a possible refutation of this interpretation. It demonstrates that Faust alone can still rock out with the best, Peron’s screamed vocals as full of vitality as they ever were. NWW is an inspired choice for the project; obviously influenced by Wumme-era Faust, Stapleton and company confront history head-on, and repeated listening renders the whole greater than the sum of the halves. Marc Medwin

Simon H. Fell ZFP Quartet

Bruce's Fingers CD

This is the sophomore release from British contrabassist and composer Simon H. Fell’s ZFP Quartet, where he is joined by Carlos Zingaro (violin and electronics), Marcio Mattos (cello and electronics), and Mark Sanders (drums and percussion). Where their first release was a punningly titled reimagination of several key strands of twentieth century chamber music – from Bartok to Scelsi to Xenakis – this live recording (from a pair of Spring 2006 live dates in Germany and Austria) occupies that ground comfortably while leaning outward to survey more recognizable forms of free improvisation. It’s the kind of synthesis at which Fell has always excelled, and which he – this is the most difficult and admirable part – has made sound natural and wholly convincing. While much of the credit goes to Fell’s vision, the group succeeds in no small part due to the vast intelligence and sympathy of these players, and also to the warmth and intensity of the strings, ranging from pin-drop pizzicato to arco openings to the maw of Hell.

The styles combine frequently in moments of rich counterpoint, such as those heard frequently in the first improvisation from Ulrichsberg.

Sanders is especially restrained here, allowing Mattos and Zingaro to create most of the fireworks, layering the sound rather than inserting punctuations – here Sanders is marvelous, using bells and gentle strokes to integrate his sound with string overtones. The middle piece is a truly haunting performance from Munchen, which sounds like an IST improvisation played through a cranked Fender Twin. The final piece begins rougher, denser, more jagged, but it ends on lovely mutant glissing. Sometimes plodding and plumbing deep, elsewhere light and vivacious, flitting along on the breeze, ZFP’s music is compelling from the start. Jason Bivins

The Fiery Furnaces Widow City Thrill Jockey CD

Early on, Chicago's Fiery Furnaces— siblings Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger and friends— exuded the strut and swagger of the blues without really playing blues rock or sounding overtly rootsy in any way. By their second album, 2004’s Blueberry Boat, they had started to

compose shape-shifting tunes that threw people off balance. 2005's Rehearsing My Choir further confounded listeners: what sort of group puts together a concept album starring their grandmother as lead vocalist?

Following on the heels of last year's excellent Bitter Tea, Widow City captures a band that continues to evolve. The longer pieces are better integrated than the group’s earlier efforts at multi-part composition. The opener, “The Philadelphia Grand Jury,” is a seven-minute stunner. All the itchy little riffs and grand guitar parts are organically linked, no glue needed. And Eleanor dazzles. When she spits out, “More crooked sons of bitches you can’t ever have come across,” it’s thrilling. She possesses one of those rare voices that carry emotion in its very grain; she never has to strain to get a song across.

Matthew creates a world where any timbre or rhythm or word might appear. He’s thankfully free of the notion that only “cool” sounds work.

Here he employs vintage keyboards like the Chamberlin and the Mellotron to great affect. The instruments lend color and shape to the material rather than simply serving as rock history signifiers. The songs do tend to run into one another just like in a music theater revue, but who cares?

Widow City is one of 2007’s best albums. Fred Cisterna

Floratone Floratone Blue Note CD

Some players tell stories.; guitarist Bill Frisell paints pictures. I think of them as landscapes, and Edward Hopper comes to mind. While sounding completely rooted in American vernacular musics – and pretty much all of them, too – Frisell articulates the rootlessness and alienation of fin de siecle America.

But he never mythologizes this narrative, never makes a hero, or even an antihero, of the protagonist, or of himself as surrogate. For all his status as a guitar god, Frisell is less the freewheeling entrepreneur than an organization man. He has always done his best work from the inside of an ensemble, not above it. In that context, Floratone is less of a diversion than an articulation of what Frisell's career has been about to this point. It's a series of studio jams with drummer Matt Chamberlain to which producers Lee Townsend and Tucker Martine have added looped rhythms, layering, and bags of atmosphere and texture. This approach marks Floratone classic “producer's music,” yet it still sounds like a Bill Frisell record. Perhaps it's because Frisell has been using those same tools to build his own music – live as well as in the studio – for 30 years. It helps that he has fellow travelers Viktor Krauss (bass), violist Eyvind Kang and cornetist Ron Miles along for the ride. The latter two share Frisell's sweet/sad/wise worldview and add a spooky emotional depth to 11 vignettes that steer just this side of being film music – albeit superior film music. Place Floratone midway between the majesty and vision of 1993's Have a Little Faith and the sheer eccentric fascination of 2005's

experimental Richter 858 and call it another in a long series of sketches from a musical mind that refuses to sit still. John Chacona

Henry Flynt

Henry Flynt and Nova'Billy Locust CD

From 1974-75, New York based fiddler, philosopher and conceptual artist Henry Flynt had a full working rock band called Nova’Billy that cranked out a remarkable blend of country, soul, rock and blues jams mutated and abstracted in various ways through Flynt’s compositional techniques and ferocious improvisation. The band folded after a year due to lack of interest in the few gigs they played at downtown art venues like The Kitchen – and, according to Flynt, various members deciding to jump onto the punk bandwagon that was setting up shop at places like CBGB at that time. Several songs here first appeared on the excellent Flynt collection Graduation, but this stands as the fullest record of the existence of Nova’Billy, and for those new to Flynt’s music and inexplicably averse to 40 minute Coltrane-like free-fiddle and drone explorations, probably the most accessible and enjoyable disk yet issued of this American master. Quite simply, the disk rocks from beginning to end, and, despite Flynt’s aversion to punk, resonates with other marvels of 1975 such as the New York Dolls and early Pere Ubu, though frankly it also sounds at times like vintage Grateful Dead or Allman Brothers. And that is not a bad thing at all. Having said that, the strange, abstract compositional structures which Flynt uses, while working within recognizable country or soul idioms produce a ferociously complex, ecstatic groove that sounds like absolutely nothing else. The band, which includes Peter Gordon, who was later involved in the Love of Life Orchestra, and Don Christensen, who became drummer for James Chance’s Contortions, are terrific, as is Flynt’s scorching fiddle sound. If there’s a weakness, it’s Flynt’s voice, which sounds weak when he tries to hold a tune, but amazing when he begins to holler and howl, as on the stunning “Sky Turned Red”. It’s unfortunate that there were few or no takers when Nova’Billy were around, back in 1975. Flynt’s vision of what is valuable in music, set out in his 1980 essay “The Meaning of My Avant Garde Hillbilly and Blues Music” is increasingly vindicated by the turn of younger improvisers to “free folk” and other mutant idiomatic musics.

Still, Nova’Billy set out a blazing trail which few so far have been able to follow. Marcus Boon

For Barry Ray New Days Room40 CD

Tenniscoats

Totemo Aimasho Room40 CD

New Days is the first widely available release by the husband and wife team of Carina Thorén and John Chantler. Small-scale

amorphous instrumentals are the focus of these nine tracks. The coloration of tones and timbres is very pleasant, though hazy and muted, like dark pastels tempered with fog and water. “David” shifts from the soft layers of guitar-pedal drone on “Through Holes, Glass & Stone” to a concréte-like splice into sax sputter and percussive clatter.

Unfortunately that’s one of the only moments with any urgency on the disc; even the disparate elements on that track slowly meld together into a uniform mass of throbbing.

The last track is nine minutes worth of discreet piano plinks in space, with very occasional guitar plucks.

There's a lot of music that sounds like superficial melancholy being stretched over time these days, and I can’t find anything compelling about For Barry Ray’s perspective.

Tenniscoats have released a couple of EPs and a full length, but on Totemo Aimasho they are joined by both members of For Barry Ray, as well as Room 40 label proprietor Lawrence English. The most pronounced feature of their sound is the close-miked female voice of Saya mixed with vague incidental sounds into delicate, even frail pop.

There’s a faux naïve campfire jam quality to a lot of the dozen tunes on this disc, and I can’t tell if their ambition is to sound slight, like Chicago’s Pillow, or if that’s just the result. Compared to the strength of English’s own solo work, both of these releases seem like playful afterthoughts. Andrew Choate

Jamie Fox

When I Get Home Rare Cat CD

The first time I heard guitarist Fox was on bassist Stephan Crump’s exquisite recording Rosetta. Crump is on board here for this polished quintet session, joined by pianist Kenny Werner, saxophonist Dan Willis, and drummer Michael Sarin (along with multi-instrumentalist Peck Allmond on a couple tracks). But unlike Crump’s record, which had a distinct and identifiable feel, this is one of those all-sorts recordings which seems to lose its way on a quest for versatility. “Five One & A Half” is a gentle, unassuming, quasi-Latin track that reminds me of some mid-1960s Burrell. Sweet and satisfying, but a bit unmemorable. “Row After Row” is more like it, a harmonically suggestive nugget that recalls a fine Metheny trio, languorous and with just a hint of Americana. “Moniker” and “Childhood” hit similar notes, with fine, rhythmically staggered stuff from Fox. But the disc never seems to settle down, and – while the players give themselves a number of opportunities to stretch and cavort – it strikes me as curiously indistinct. “All in Time” is good fun, with shuffling funk, booming Crump lyricism, and a slightly angular theme; “Ognat” is a good tango vehicle (get it?) for Werner and Sarin; while all horns are on deck for the rump-rolling “Mine & Yours.” Fox’s playing has a lot of character – especially his incisive tone, his emphatic articulation, and his quirky rhythmic sense (heard again on “Leisure”) – but the tunes SIGNAL to NOISE #48 | 77

aren’t quite so distinctive. A bit frustrating of a listen, but Fox is still a player to watch. Jason Bivins

Backyard Batterie: Nathan Hubbard

Erik Friedlander

Block Ice & Propane Skipstone CD

John Zorn

Volac: Book of Angels Vol. 8 Tzadik CD

Nathan Hubbard

Compositions 1998-2005 Circumvention CD x 2

Blind Orchid Accretions CD

“The real force of composition is that it is something we do, not something we make," remarks Michael Dessen in his liner notes to percussionist/composer Nathan Hubbard’s Compositions 1998-2005. Well, it’s both, isn’t it? Whatever the case, there’s no doubt that Hubbard is a dab hand in creating pieces that give a sense of the “made” (in the sense of a well-thought-out formal structure or gameplan) while also leaving plenty of room for the, er, doings of many fine players from the littletrumpeted San Diego new-music/improv scene. This double-CD set offers a lot to absorb, and one could make the case that Hubbard might have been better served by a more selective single disc. Disc 1’s highlights include two pieces in homage to Morton Feldman and Leo Smith; the best piece, though, is “for DPH”, a memorial to Hubbard’s grandfather and his Encinitas contracting business, which was forced to move after 47 years when the city cancelled the company’s lease. It’s the most jazz-oriented track here, performed by the trio of Ward Baxter (saxes, flute and electronics), Justin Grinnell (bass) and Hubbard (drums, percussion and vibes); they play over a prerecorded track constructed out of sounds from the yard – machinery noise, tractors, back-up sirens, distant crows, people’s voices. At times the trio blasts through curtain-walls of industrial noise; on other occasions it locates a cockeyed swing in the machines’ offbeat rhythms. Ultimately every sound – whether ugly, prosaic or beautiful – acquires a talismanic force through repetition and accumulation.

Disc 2 is more consistently rewarding. “departing landscapes (holding on desperately to memories i’ll never keep”, and “sundials II” show Hubbard’s ability to construct elegaic soundscapes that pulse with longing and regret. The soprano-sax quartet piece “Spectrum/Zeitgeist II” is a somewhat predictable study in clashing 78 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

overtones and circular flutters, and “Song Cycle I” (something like a bored teenager channelling Cathy Berberian and Hugo Wolf) is probably an acquired taste, though I happened to enjoy it. The most impressive item is the half-hour-long “Painting on Glass (for Oscar Fischinger)”, a composition for two octets and tape. The first half experiments with overlap and echo effects: the crisscrossing pulses of vibes and marimba near the start suggest the motions of ripples and waves, as does a later nocturne for two pianos. This deliquescent atmosphere becomes firmer in a central section for percussion – Hubbard cites gamelan as an influence, though I suspect Harry Partch is equally relevant. At this point the second octet takes over, with a brass chorale that sinks into electronic quicksand – first maintaining a hapless dignity, then growing unhinged as it gets sucked under. Hubbard brings the track full circle by restating the chords underlying the piece – a superfluous formal gesture, I think, but it doesn’t cause any harm to a thoroughly absorbing halfhour of music.

Hubbard’s Blind Orchid is a solo CD, a clamorous brew of layered percussion, tape recordings, distressed CDs and electronic processing. His drumming is consistently stripped-down on these eight pieces, but it’s still too nervy for minimalism or pure texturalism; instead, he throws out jittery bundles of pulses that trouble the pieces’ slow, resonant atmospheres. The mood is consistently dark, tinged with obsessiveness and claustrophobia, and the soundworld is rich but harsh, full of low-pitched bumps and metallic grinding and ringing; repetition is a crucial device, but so too are moments where the music seems to stutter or twist back on itself. Prerecorded material is incorporated into several pieces, but it is rarely the kind of identifiable quotation that points you back at an outside world: instead, it is typically sourced from Hubbard’s recordings of his own earlier performances, and the result is a kind of homemade feedback loop. It’s an album that requires you not merely to listen attentively but to get lost in it – something that the programming encourages, as tracks often run straight on into the next without a pause.

Nate Dorward

Cellist Erik Friedlander is the only musician heard on these two CDs, but on each he engages with the passions of another artist. Block Ice & Propane is the more personal project, inspired by long summers during which his father, the renowned photographer Lee Friedlander, packed up the family and drove them around the continental USA in a rickety Chevrolet camper. The music is quite programmatic; slashing bow-strokes evoke the passing flash of shinier, more modern campers on “Airstream Envy,” the droning “Road Weary” sags like the fatigue that sits in your arms and burns your lower back after twelve hours behind the wheel, and “Rushmore” radiates prideful grandeur. There’s an unusually high percentage of plucking to bowing, generally applied to folksy ends; the title tune is as springy and jubilant as a payday jig danced on a riverboat quay. This is just the album to get your Americana-loving bud out of a guitar rut.

Volac, on the other hand, is pure Judaica from the pen of John Zorn, who has often retained Friedlander’s services over the years, and here turns him loose on the enormous (300+ tunes) Masada 2 book. In the main, this is a much darker record; the opener “Harhazial” is as beseeching and tragic as an exile’s prayer, and “Haseha” burns with unquenched yearning. But all is not lamentation. “Ylrng” veers precipitously between hushed pensiveness and slashing, unabashed melodrama, and is equally defiant in both modes; “Rachsiel” is a fetchingly sinuous pizzicato excursion that’ll stoke you for a night behind locked doors with the jug of wine of your choice. Volac benefits from a more resonant recording than Block Ice & Propane, but Friedlander plays Zorn’s tunes with as much commitment and invention as his own.

Bill Meyer

Robert Fripp

At the End of Time: Churchscapes — Live in England & Estonia, 2006 Discipline Global Mobile CD

In 1974, when Robert Fripp decided to retire the name King Crimson (and not for the last time, the guitarist famously declared that, thenceforth, he would operate as a “small, intelligent mobile unit” instead of band ringleader. Though Crimson has periodically re-emerged in the decades since, the guitarist's solo endeavors have carried on without interruption since the pioneering Frippertronics work of the ‘70s and his collaborations with Brian Eno, No Pussyfooting and Evening Star. Fripp’s latest solo release, At the End of Time, was recorded in churches in England and

Estonia during 2006, so the music’s intensely devotional character doesn’t come as a surprise. Throughout the seventy-four-minute collection, multiple guitar lines fold into one another, generating spacious masses of pealing counterpoint, and producing a drifting effect that grows especially hypnotic during the album’s quieter moments. The Fripp guitar sound has changed considerably since the first days of Frippertronics. Originally harder-edged, its tone is sometimes so pure and crystalline, it suggests a synthesizer more than guitar. His signature style still surfaces (the lead passages near the beginning of “Evensong: Tallinn,” for instance), though now dressed in slightly different garb. Often, the choir-like mass that’s generated is stirring in its rhapsodic beauty (“At the End of Time: Broad Chalke”), and the pairing of a swelling background mass and scalpel-sharp lead produces broad contrast. The tracks themselves are largely woven without interruption into celestial, slowly-evolving meditations whose keening clusters swoop heavenward, anchored by gently see-sawing, cello-like tones. “Threshold Bells: St. Paul’s” immediately establishes the album’s character with a gleaming, incandescent sound that’s like light illuminating a church’s stained glass window. The crepuscular “Evensong Coda: Viljandi” threatens to vanish altogether when it recedes to a whisper over its ten-minute duration, and the lustrous bell-like placidity of “Evensong Coda: Haapsalu” closes the collection as gracefully as it began. It's not the first album of its kind Fripp has released—many such works have appeared over the years (two sets from the ‘90s, A Blessing Of Tears, soundscapes in memory of his mother, and The Gates of Paradise, both deserve mention)—but it's a particularly beautiful one.

Ron Schepper

David Garland Noise in You

Family Vineyard CD

If David Garland's new CD had been released in 1968, you could imagine it fitting comfortably into the ESP-Disk catalog alongside singersongwriters like Erica Pomerance, Ed Askew, and the Godz' Jim McCarthy.

Like the works of many of the ESP artists, Noise In You demands to be taken on its own terms. Not all of it is “difficult"-- in fact, some of it is very lyrical and at times achingly beautiful indeed in that idiosyncratic, warpedAmericana manner of Skip Spence and Sufjan Stevens (who appears of six of the 16 tracks here). But where Stevens strives to achieve gestures on the orchestral scale of Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks, Garland is closer in essence to the recent music of ex-Incredible String Band-er Robin Williamson, or maybe a less blurry-sounding Jandek. With its elegant, quasi-baroque oboe, “Every Bird” is the kind of song the Left Banke might've made had they stuck around 'til this decade. Garland has a likeably lazy vocal style that recalls Spence and Everything But The Girl's Ben Watt--but if Spence sounded at times like a man disintegrating,

Garland sounds patently at peace with himself--the world is perplexing, but it's not gonna get him down. If the notions of art-rock played with acoustic instruments and folk-like directness or a more folk-ish take on Robert Wyatt's moody masterwork Rock Bottom, seek Noise in You. Mark Keresman

Lisa Germano

Lullaby for Liquid Pig Young God CD x 2

For Lisa Germano, music is a scrying mirror, a portal through which both performer and listener can disappear, reaching alternate states of existence. This may sound glib—another musico-magician trying to access some sublime uncanny—but rather than falling back on clichéd ‘magick’, Germano’s grasp of the ghostly qualities of music only enhances the (inter-)personal eviscerations of her starkly folksy songwriting. Listening to Germano, you engage in cryptanalysis, unpicking secret codes through careful analysis to reach the core of the songs. That’s never been clearer than on 2003’s Lullaby for Liquid Pig, her most consistently haunted record, where each song is a chimera, something floating around in your subconscious that surfaces for just a brief moment before disappearing back into the murky recesses. By wrapping her songs in audio gauze, she part-conceals lyrical concerns while amplifying disquiet through auditory channels. In a way, her take on songwriting is quite close to artists like Young Marble Giants and Broadcast: echoing nursery rhymes and music box melodies, they’re simplistic on the surface, but they carry great collective emotional weight while somehow remaining intensely privatized. Arranged mainly for piano, optigan and guitar, they hum and buzz off in the distance, submitting to shadowy dream logic.

This reissue is accompanied by Extra CD for Pig, which collects home recordings and some naked live performances where Germano’s sense of humour shines through in her between-song commentary: ‘I like dogs—people are… fine’. Jon Dale

Ghost

Overture: Live in Nippon Yusen Soko 2006 Drag City CD + DVD

Every salesman knows location isn’t everything; it just comes down to the right pitch for the right audience. When Tokyo-based free-psych improv monsters Ghost selected a 19th Century mailboat warehouse, since converted an art gallery, as the site for their October 9, 2006 concert, they nailed the location; judging from the DVD, it’s a sterile, concrete (and therefore “arty”) environment, quite conducive to focusing on one thing. It’s the pitch, though, that makes these good (or ambivalent?) vibes a great sell. First, the band separated themselves from the audience (which the band locked in!), who sat and watched curtains with dancing lights on it (don’t worry, the concert film shows the band). Second, they separated themselves into two factions of

three, arranged in a crescent and thus making it difficult to hear one another; their improvisations truly blind. And perhaps most importantly, they didn’t use monitors, instead placing a rotating speaker in the middle of the room. What we get is about two-and-a-half planes of musical understanding. Although this set contains a 56 minute CD and a 90 minute DVD of the same performance, the film is the way to go. Improv highlights lie in Taishi Takizawa’s saxophone playing, which he gets to too late after minute-upon-minute of sprightly flute playing. Because of its improvisational nature, it’s a more enjoyable listen than In Stormy Nights, which they released earlier this year 2007, but it may really only appeal to longtime fans. In that regard, it’s a hard sell, but those who buy it won’t regret it. Kory Grow

GDP

Involvement Division East CD

Why this 19 year old malcontent isn’t signed to Def Jux yet is beyond me; GDP’s got the same strained, forced, too-long-by-a-fewsyllables tone/style one finds on the records of Aesop Rock, Cage, and El-P. While the sincerity of this indignantly undie, spray-it-don’t-sayit approach to hip-hop is rarely in question, a little goes a long way – and a lot almost makes one long for the undisguised inanities of today’s commercial “snap” rap. What separates New Jersey’s GDP from his elders is the fact that – thus far anyhow, with Involvement as evidence – he doesn’t have anything to say, yet, or at least an interesting way to cover up the fact that he doesn’t have anything to say. These songs – capably if not stunningly produced, for the most part, by J. Stampy – aren’t about much besides living outside of the rat-race box, namedroppers sucking, groupies, and haters (who come in for a right drubbing, of course). This is a debut, so there’s no reason to expect that whatever GDP drops next won’t be an improvement; while there’s something admirable about this dude’s auto-biog forthrightness, nothing about it is any more interesting than any given 30 seconds of VH-1’s The White Rapper Show. In an mp3-driven world, skills that pay the bills just aren’t enough anymore.

Raymond Cummings

Brion Gysin

Live in London 1982 Sub Rosa CD

The few words of ‘control’ spoken to the crowd at the beginning of this session is but a brief moment of calm before what can only be summarized as a swift, measured dose of chaotic collisions of free music and spoken word. These meetings still go on, but in this recording there is a fire and an audible interest in the audience – an excitement that is reflected in the performance of both Gysin and his band. Documented in Brixton with Ramuntcho Matta (guitar, electronics), Tessa (of Slits fame on cello

and bass), Steve Noble (on drums) and Jail (percussion), this freely constructed performance holds within it an important reminder of Gysin’s ability as a connective figure.

Here, during this recording made in his mid-60s, Gysin collectively remodels his audience and links them to his varied past explorations into cut-ups, illusion and imagination. Gysin’s humour was of course one of his greatest charms and his readings collected here show off his ability to be as dry and black as his long time collaborator Burroughs ‘Shuffle like cards… piece together a masterpiece a week’ he reports during the first part of “Minutes To Go". His commentary on the nature of creation and mass production seem to take on even greater worth today than they did then. Throughout, we’re reminded of just what a gap minds like his have left behind – as we stumble to find meaningful social commentaries and assaults, documents like these indicate just how much cultures have shifted and eroded in the matter of some 20 years. Lawrence English

Mary Halvorson and Jessica Pavone On and Off Skirl CD

Jessica Pavone Quotidian Peacock CD

Aaron Siegel Ensemble Every Morning, A History Peacock CD

Violist and composer Jessica Pavone has been active in New York’s experimental music scene for close to a decade. She’s studied with the late, great violinist Leroy Jenkins and is known for her work with the formidable composer and saxophonist Anthony Braxton. On and Off finds Pavone collaborating with Mary Halvorson, an intriguing guitarist with a sweet voice, who has also played with Braxton. The duo mixes indie rock, improv, and New Music elements, and On and Off has an appealingly loose, folky quality, fusing edgy dissonance and gentle tonality. A handful of tracks that feature vocals nicely balance knotty instrumental writing and improvisation with warm vocal melodies.

Quotidian features Till By Turning, an ensemble made up of Oberlin College graduates, performing Pavone’s third album of chamber music. The CD’s single piece, a suite in four sections, is impressive. The lengthy first part, “Hypnopompic,” starts off sounding like an ambient work by Brian Eno, but assertive and less consonant tones are introduced, creating a layering effect that pricks up the ears. It’s striking how gracefully Pavone incorporates subtle pop and rock shadings throughout.

Pavone also contributes her viola playing to Every Morning, A History, an album by yet another Braxton associate, composer and percussionist Aaron Siegel. The CD features two compositions, “A Diminished Thing,” for solo piano; SIGNAL to NOISE #48 | 79

and the title track, a spiky chamber work for viola, clarinet, vibraphone, and flute. Both works bring Morton Feldman to mind, especially the piano piece. Siegel and Pavone are part of a Brooklyn experimental music scene embracing formal composition, improv, jazz and various pop elements, a real flowering of DIY chamber music in the borough and it will be interesting to see what directions it takes. Fred Cisterna

Lexie Mountain Boys

Mickey Hart Zakir Hussain

Global Drum Project Shout! Factory CD

Lexie Mountain Boys Sexy Fountain Noise Carpark CD

Woodgrain Manicure Lexie Mountain Boys CD-R

Venus Cleaner Sessions Lexie Mountain Boys CD-R

Lexie Mountain Boys

Liz Flyntz

Heresee CD

Listening to Baltimore’s Lexie Mountain Boys feels distinctly like eavesdropping. Being a musical group of sorts, of course, they understand that they’re being listened to, and presumably they don’t mind. But their records are rather more like overhearing neighbors who are not objectionable but rather odd. The apartment next door: some women live there (the Lexie Mountain Boys are all female), or one with friends who visit. It’s not quite clear. They might be a performance art ensemble workshopping material, but then they might be a Wiccan coven. Either way, they seem rather charming, and are probably harmless.There isn't an enormous amount of music on their CDs. There’s singing, sometimes rhythm made (we guess, our ear glued to the wall) by banging on buckets, and they seem to have some toys or other sorts of sound-makers. But other times there’s chanting and bits of what seem to be choreographed conversations. They speak over each other in metered ways, overlaying statements in ways that, if add up, do so mysteriously. Even the packaging seems to project that the recordings are not really anyone else’s business, though we’re free to listen. Masonic icons adorn the fronts of the nearly identical, photocopied cards that serve as covers; a handwritten title over a wood-grain pattern on the back, and a small card with band info inside. There’s little by way of song titles or credits, and one disc might be 40 minutes while the next is barely ten.

Sexy Fountain Noise is the broadest of the 80 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

records here, with 13 tracks and an enclosed mythology of the band and the origins of birds and language. The pieces range from their dance-talk and dance-talk with laughter to kitchen drum circles. Woodgrain Manicure is a quick four tracks that start with chant and become increasingly musical. Venus Cleaner Sessions is an even more introspective affair: another chant circle, building up into noisy primal scream and again with their own sense of pulse.

The piece was recorded and released twice (like all their self-released CD-Rs, it’s limited to 50 copies), dated and again ranging wildly in length. But with discs so limited and a group so unto itself, the actual sounds on the records are somehow not quite the point. They’re less like released records than notebooks found on the ground – inside jokes, little drawings, some clever observations and, perhaps, some literary merit. The discs are available at $5 a pop through myspace.com/mountainlex, and the discovery of what each contains is half the fun.

Boys is the solo album by bandleader Lexie Mountain, and while of a similar bent has a very different feel. While there’s a group consciousness at play with the band, the seven tracks on the digitally-released Boys is at once more personal and more extroverted. “The Way” is a heartbreaking multi-track vocal piece that leads into “Boo F’N Hoo,” which uses feedback and saturated vocals like a bad-dream coda.

And “Snapes” is a clever bit of nonsense jazz singing. But the hit here is “Dogs Hot,” another choreographed conversation, but more overtly funny – the voices of two adult sisters badgering their mother about hot dogs in a way that seems at once ad libbed and very staged. If there are gender politics at play here – the band name, the drawings of members with huge mountain man beards – it’s not the man-hating sort but of the independent, fish-without-a-bicycle variety. Lexie Mountain Boys are the spiritual goddaughters of The Slits and the great if little known Texas ’80s band Meat Joy (not to be confused with the ’90s DC punk band of the same name), which is to say they’re not about riot-grrl male anger sung in soprano. Biological boys are likely welcome in their estrogen-laced Appalachian cabin, but they aren’t needed.

Kurt Gottschalk

Mickey Hart has gathered the spirits once again, but they’re a little uneasy. 15 years after Hart joined with percussion masters from around the world to record the huge hit Planet Drum (and 36 years after Hart and Hussain collaborated on proto-world-music “Rolling Thunder”), the Planet Drum summit has reconvened to grapple with death and modernity. The CD’s most exuberant, earthy track is its opener, but the leading spirit is a dead man: Babatunde Olatunji, the African percussion master and Planet Drum collaborator who died in 2003. Olatunji’s laughter quickly dissolves into a series of drifting meditations on the rhythm of modern life, an ancient tree of consciousness now irradiated with innumerable traces of electronically delivered information. “Kaluli Groove” blends lazy, drugged-out percussion riffs, voices and forest sounds of Papua New Guinea and snippets of shortwave and AM radio: They’re rain forest reveries with a CNN-style news crawl. The ethereal “Funky Zena” drips slowly from an unchanging, gamelan-like eight-note scale. If there was funk here, it has floated to the astral plane. “Under One Groove” is another percussion channel-surf, punctuated by reverb-enhanced chants by Hussain. “Dances With Wood” offers a counterbalance to the gadgets, as Hart and friends drum a hunk of redwood and an ancient grapevine Hart rescued from the bulldozer at a Sonoma County vineyard. “Heartspace” is a melancholy ballad rippling with lovely vocals, strings and petal-soft drumming; “Tars” strips away the dream apparatus to a highly formalized framework of bare rhythm. The final track, “I Can Tell You More,” recedes again into a fog of mysticism and gadgetry, with Hart as New Age ringmaster, chanting spooky pronouncements about “where the music lives.” The disc is well mixed, cleanly delivering dense layers of information, and the tracks present an impressive variety, but the project is still beneath the talents of all concerned. Larry Cosentino

A Hawk and a Hacksaw and the Hun Hangår Ensemble A Hawk and a Hacksaw and the Hun Hangår Ensemble Leaf CD

Jeremy Barnes has always been an A1 friendly, from his days band-

hopping through the Elephant 6 collective and on into Bablicon, so it should be no surprise to see his Hawk and a Hacksaw project swelling again. Besides attaining awesome alliteration, on the Hawk and a Hacksaw and the Hun Hangår Ensemble EP, the Hungarian-bolstered band helps Barnes' music to sound less like a fantasy of European folk music and more like European folk itself. In places, this approach is less interesting than fantasy, like the “Romanian Hora and Bulgar,” which—while excellently executed —is a straight genre piece. But, in places, the music channels the same weird spark flashed by the gloriously endless Secret Museum of Mankind compilations hinted at on Barnes' 2002 debut. Here, it comes through Balåzs Unger's cymbalom, a hammered dulcimer that sounds like a beautifully detuned upright piano.

On “Vajdaszentivány"—"traditional Hungarian melodies,” per the liners -- the ideas turn over one another frantically, notes between notes creating haunting micro-melodies as animated as any concrète collage.

On Barnes' original “Zozobra,” Unger provides a textural gallop beneath Heather Trost's sinewy violin. For whatever debates one wants to have about cultural crosspollination, it seems, Barnes has included “Oriental Hora,” a circle dance with musical ideas borrowed or caricatured from the mystic east.

For good measure, he has drafted Zach Condon, frontman for fauxEuro-folkies Beirut, on trumpet.

Even if Barnes' compositional voice gets swallowed by the music, there seems little chance of that happening during his stage appearances, documented on the 20-minute Introduction to A Hawk and A Hacksaw DVD included with the EP, where he straps himself into a suit of bells, drumsticks, and accordion. All very traditional. Jesse Jarnow

Richard Hawley Lady's Bridge Mute CD

Everywhere you look, musicians are stuck in time warps: Young jazz fellows in nice suits zealously reclimbing Mount Prestige; rockabilly purists so stuck in 1954 they won't even talk to someone whose fashion sense doesn't come from that year. Brit Richard Hawley reprises the sophisticated, classy, somewhat melodramatic orchestrated pop music of 1964-1969, as defined

by Jimmy Webb, Lee Hazlewood, Roy Orbison, Bob Gaudio/Bob Crewe (the wizards behind the Four Seasons' masterworks), and Scott Walker. But what makes Hawley's past-blast so appealing is his beautifully understated, brooding, slightly arid crooning that doesn't lean too heavily on his models (Though I certainly detect a trace of Sinatra influence in Hawley's vocals).

The arrangements, too, don't go overboard attempting to replicate the booming grandeur of the era— they suggest and evoke rather than bludgeon. OK, the angelic choir and Spector-ian strings on “Tonight The Streets Are Ours” comes close, but in this case a lil' over-the-top

seems just-right. While Lady's Bridge doesn't quite hit the heights of Hawley's previous opus Coles Corner—there are a few too many predictable rhymes ("serious/delirious,” “long/wrong,” and “yearning/ returning")—it is well-worth the time and entertainment-dollar of dramapop fans. Mark Keresman

Jon Hemmersam / Dom Minasi Quartet Jon Hemmersam / Dom Minasi Quartet CDM CD

Guitarist Dom Minasi has had his share of triumphs and disappointments. After making his debut on Blue Note in 1974 with the critically acclaimed When Joanna Loved Me, Minasi soon became disillusioned with the music business, went back to school and played the occasional wedding gig, then re-emerged decades hence with his own label and a new interest in presenting his own work. His first release on CDM, Takin’ The Duke Out, displayed his own striking take on jazz guitar, with familiar themes stated and then delightfully pummeled by his ecstatic neck-runs and avoidance of cliché.

Eight records later comes The Jon Hemmersam/Dom Minasi Quartet, featuring Minasi in tandem with Danish guitarist Jon Hemmersam, with frequent collaborator Ken Filiano on bass and Danish drummer Kresten Osgood. Those familiar with Minasi’s style will rightly anticipate a session filled with technically miraculous playing and an urgent, busy atmosphere. Minasi and Hemmersam are perfectly in sync, both in terms of their expressions and delivery of the thematic elements of each cut, with a variety of settings to provide a welcome change of pace. The restless pieces provide evidence of the players’ abilities as vibrant instrumentalists, such as on Hemmersam’s Mahavishnu riffbased “Sprint.” Also in this vein are the jagged lines of “Conclusions” with its breakdown in the second half featuring Filiano’s arco on fire, while the quartet’s literal warm-up on “Sound Check” demonstrates that music can be created in even unexpected places. Balladry is a welcome extension of the quartet’s ethos, like Minasi’s pretty “Woman” and the pleasant waltz of “Nathalia’s Waltz” containing Minasi’s strongest solo on the record. Perhaps unexpectedly, Minasi and Hemmersam also play acoustic on Hemmersam’s lush “September” or the lovely 12-string work on the bossas of “Gentle” and “Latina Mio.” With latter pieces juxtaposed with the caffeinated runs of the electric cuts, Minasi offers another example of his exceptional skills within a variety of contexts. Hemmersam and the rest of the quartet perform magnificently and help draw out the multiple shades of Minasi’s personality.

Jay Collins

Holy Fuck LP

XL CD

Noticeable name that it is, this Toronto quartet is hardly the first band

to use an expletive as their calling card- there's Midwest punk band Holy Shit, and who could forget the lovable Reverb Motherfuckers?

But you have to admire their gall nonetheless- what chance do they have at being announced on a radio station or stocked at a megastore?

But what's really worthy of respect is their post-modern take on electronica- they try to recreate techno music as an instrumental band. That's kind of like writing a movie about a reality show but the difference is that these Fucks make compelling music instead of just some kind of wanky studio experiment. On their second album, you still miss some of the chaos and crossed wires of their live performances with their gadgets on full display (including film equipment) but their mad spirit is still intact with nine songs blasting past you in 37 minutes flat. While keyboardists Graham Welsh and Brian Borcherdt lead the group, it's drummer Glenn Milchem that powers them along, ready to take on any rhythm machine- listen to his high-speed pounding on the opener “Super Inuit” or his big beat slams on “Milkshake” and his martial rhythms on “Lovely Allen", all making them sound like an overcaffeinated version of krautrockers Neu! But Welsh and Borcherdt provide depth and context for these acidic outings, adding ghostly vocals and noises floating around everywhere (especially effective on the closer, “Chopper") and hilariously lo-fi synths (biting Devo on “Echo Sam” and Kraftwerk on “Safari").

Even without the laptops and loops that most techno artists employ, HF still manages to effectively recreate the experience of a wild-ass rave.

Holy fuck, indeed! Jason Gross

Home Blitz Home Blitz Gulcher CD

The (mostly solo) project of an earnest Jersey kid named Daniel DiMaggio, Home Blitz has thus far released a couple of great singles and a split cassette. Tapping into a rich vein of no-fi pop songcraft that mates the hooks and general dweeby vibe of Jonathan Richman's Modern Lovers with the hormonal, punk-primitive energy of early Half Japanese, DiMaggio's songs are instantly memorable, with the type of goopy melodies that can bind to the back of your brain for days at a time. And yet his casual recording techniques and ramshackle instrumentation give his tunes a jagged edge that make it far fiercer than any more traditional, airbrushed modern indie rock could ever be.

Combining the whole of his two self-released seven-inches, a split tape with Friends & Family, and tracks from his upcoming twelveinch on the essential Parts Unknown label, Gulcher's self-titled disc pulls together a neat little package of everything Home Blitz has thus far bequeathed. Though recorded over the course of a couple years, it's all pretty much of a piece, the nervous, trebly twitch and percussive clatter of “A.C. SS” (from DiMaggio's selftitled debut) blaring comfortably

next to the refigured Beefheartian stabs of “Little League” (from the still to come Weird Wings twelveinch). Elsewhere, DiMaggio narrates a strangely acerbic, street-corner, battery-powered performance in his hometown on “Stupid Street.” At times sounding like what might happen if the sloppiest, most energetic hardcore band you knew attempted power-pop, Home Blitz is an outstanding introduction to a kid we'll undoubtedly be hearing from a lot in the coming years.

Michael Crumsho

William Hooker & Sabir Mateen Dharma KMB CD

William Hooker with Eyvind Kang & Bill Horist The Seasons Fire Important CD

WIlliam Hooker is a boomer (born June 18, 1946 in New Britain, CT) but he remains sonically youthful. Collaborations with Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, DJ Olive and pioneering turntablist Christian Marclay over the past decade or so have touched a lot of stylistic bases.

A New Yorker since 1974, Hooker has existed on the periphery of the jazz avant-garde. Unable to find a record company interested in his music, he formed the non-profit Reality Unit Concepts and released his first recording in 1978. It should be recalled that Is Eternal Life was a supercharged series of hyperkinetic duos with David Murray and David S. Ware et al. Dharma is likewise an often-volcanic duet project, this time with Sabir Mateen on alto and tenor saxophones, flute and clarinet. The CD-R is obviously a DIY production, with handmade packaging in a limited edition of 250. It doesn't seem to be any easier to find a compatible label in 2007 than it was in 1978 when one is playing improvisational music that thumbs its nose at categories. Mateen has certainly honed his chops and lungpower to a fine edge with TEST and his other partnerships have produced some exciting music over the past few years. He and Hooker interact in a very organic way on these seven pieces. Hooker has a style and approach all his own when it comes to free drumming.

He tends to be heavier on the skins than the brass, with a kick at the low end driving much of the music here. He's not quite as bottomheavy as Lou Grassi but is decidedly more gut-shakingly resonant than the splash and sizzle pulse of many open-form percussionists. Mateen is mainly on tenor through the first four segments until the dialogues of “One Just Man” explore some very different sonic territory with clarinet.

There are plenty of interesting moments throughout the set's 40 minutes and this disc is recommended to fans of either player.

The Seasons Fire is a tiger of an entirely different stripe. This music doesn't seem to build or develop but just is. Recorded in October, 2001 at two Seattle performances, SIGNAL to NOISE #48 | 81

Fiery Passion & expressive lyricism: William Parker's Raining on the Moon Ensemble

William Parker Raining on the Moon Ensemble Corn Meal Dance AUM Fidelity CD

William Parker The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayfield Live in Rome

Steven Joerg / AUM Fidelity

Rai Trade CD

Over the last three-plus decades, William Parker has charted a course of self-determination as one of the preeminent bassist in free jazz: as a group member, band leader, large ensemble orchestrator, and musical community organizer. Throughout his career, while continually pushing his music along various threads of collective freedom, Parker has always kept a strong connection to song forms. One always hears undercurrents of soul and blues as one of the foundational pulses to his playing. These two recent recordings push song-form to the foreground; one project which sets his poems to music and another where he recontextualizes the music of a soul master.

Five years back, Parker pulled together a session which added vocalist Leena Conquest to one of his working quartets consisting of Rob Brown, Louis "Flip" Barnes, and Hamid Drake.

The blend of fiery passion and expressive lyricism introduced many listeners to Conquest’s keening voice and Raining on the Moon, issued as part of the Matthew Shipp-curated Blue Series on Thirsty Ear, earned critical acclaim. Corn Meal Dance reconvenes the group (now called the Raining on the Moon Ensemble) with the addition of pianist Eri Yamamoto. While the earlier CD married Conquest's vocals into the context of a free jazz quartet, this time out, Parker’s songs and Conquest’s vocals take center stage.

While Parker has a great ear for melody, his poetry can veer toward an overly-earnest blend of mysticism and politicizing. But Conquest has a killer voice and brings the music to life. Yamamoto’s piano is also prominently featured. She’s not a unique stylist, but her lush comping and rich harmonic sense fills out the group. Brown and Barnes are featured judiciously, mostly playing off of Conquest’s vocals. When they do step 82 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

out for solos, they ride the edge of lyricism and freedom. As may be expected, the bassist and drummer Hamid Drake lock in and drive the music along with a flowing sense of free pulse.

This may not be the unqualified winner that the Thirsty Ear release was, but it has many strong sections and makes a compelling showcase for Parker’s maturing sense of the song form.

In 2001, Parker was invited to the Banlieues Blues Festival in Paris to perform a project he had been working on centered around the music of Curtis Mayfield. His core group of Drake, Barnes, Conquest, pianist Dave Burrell, saxophonist Darryl Foster and poet Amiri Baraka was joined by a 90 piece choir and a drum ensemble. Parker recontextualized Mayfield classics like “People Get Ready,” We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue,” and “Freddie’s Dead,” and framed them in free jazz improvisations and commentaries in the form of chanted poems by Baraka. A scaled-back performance with the core ensemble was recorded

by RAI, the Italian radio network, and has been released on their fledgling label. Parker zeroes in on Mayfield’s urban commentary, nails the gospel-to-funk roots, and wraps it all in a celebratory collective freedom. Baraka’s politicized diatribes serve as a cutting foil for Conquest’s mellifluous incantations. She absorbs the keening spirit of Mayfield’s lyrics and delivers them with a poignant grace. Sabir Mateen and Daryl Foster pair off, moving from soul review to skirling freedom. Mateen, as always, digs in with charged potency. Barnes can play with a warm, muted growl or brassy bluster. Burrell is an often-overlooked piano master and his driving chords provide the harmonic foundation for the inside music while his percussive flurries churn up the energy of the outside sections.

Drake’s drumming is made for this kind of setting. He nails the backbeats while investing the pieces with an elastic groove. And Parker’s bass helms the entire ensemble, prodding the orchestrations with a dark, melodic pulse. The music veers a bit off track on the freer sections of “People Get Ready,” but by the time they get to the 20-minute ” We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue,” they are moving full tilt, from Conquest’s darting vocals to Baraka’s sermonizing; from the tight horn charts to searing free interludes. Not all the pieces work so well.

The final “Freddie’s Dead” suffers from Baraka’s histrionic rants as the band steamrolls the funky theme. But for much of the rest of the set, Parker’s fusion of Mayfield’s songs and freedom delivers a personal view of the bassist’s musical vision. Michael Rosenstein

it's the kind of soundscape you just sort of let wash over you: not a warm bath, rather more like a cold to lukewarm shower. Recorded in October, 2001 at two Seattle performances, it features two mainstays of the Puget Sound improv scene.

Guitarist Bill Horist builds up some rather dauntingly metallic edifices as Hooker churns away., and things really start to get interesting on the fourth piece, “Under the Hammer,” when Eyvind Kang's violin brings something of a quasi-Middle Eastern sonority to the proceedings and he takes a great solo. This piece is unfortunately marred by a very rude ending. Board fade endings are ubiquitous and they're pretty damned ham-fisted fades.

The idea of a beginning, middle and end to anything doesn't really come into play. These portions of live performances could certainly have been faded earlier – or probably later – with similar results, and the music was likely more successful when experienced in person.

“Baron” is really the only piece that hangs together as a discrete entity on the recording. Bill Barton

Norman Howard Joe Phillips Burn Baby Burn ESP-DIsk' CD

Recorded in Cleveland in November 1968 and originally slated for release as ESP-Disk' 1073, Burn Baby Burn has long been a sought after free jazz collectors' item, as much for the mystery surrounding its recording as for the obscurity of its performers. A couple of limited edition cassette releases on Roy Morris's Homeboy label appeared in 1989 and '93 respectively and promptly disappeared, along with trumpeter Norman Howard, who is apparently still alive and well in Cleveland (he's 66) but doesn't seem to have been involved in this release. Howard's principal claim to fame is his appearance on fellow Cleveland homeboy Albert Ayler's Spirits, recorded in New York in February 1964 for the Danish Debut label (and subsequently reissued

by Freedom as Witches and Devils, after the track of the same name, which is often credited to Ayler but was apparently penned by Howard himself). The trumpeter didn't stay long in the Big Apple though, and by 1966 was back gigging locally in Cleveland, dropping off the radar after this session, on which he was joined by altoist Joe Phillips (later Yusef Mamin), bassist Walter Cliff and drummer Cornelius Milsap.

Nothing is known of the whereabouts of Cliff and Milsap today, but Phillips is alive and kicking and has, along with musicologist Clifford Allen, provided liners for this release.

It takes a while to figure that out, though. Frustratingly, apart from the liners themselves, the disc contains no coherent information regarding the recording date, engineer or even the personnel. Cliff and Milsap are credited nowhere at all on the back tray, and you'd have to be a free jazz buff to know what instruments Howard and Phillips are playing. Far from neatly resolving

the story, this rather slapdash reissue only serves to confuse the issue further; Allen's liners have remained largely unedited since they appeared in the December 2005 issue of Paris Transatlantic Magazine, and much of his background information appears to have been gleaned from Morris's Homeboy cassettes.

For instance, he refers to a track called “Sadness Holiday” which is here entitled “Sad Miss Holiday” (according to Phillips, who wrote it, a homage to Lady Day), and there is no attempt to unravel the confusion about which tracks were originally intended for ESP 1073 and which weren't. For the record, Morris claims these were “NxJx” (which, to add to the confusion, he erroneously titles “Divine Tiding"!), “Sound From There", “Satan's Village", “Sadness Holiday” [sic], “Time and Units” and “Burn Baby Burn". With the exception of the latter, all of these were written by Phillips. Six other tracks, all Howard compositions, date from the same sessions: “Soul Brother Genius", a shorter take of “Burn Baby Burn", “Haunted", “Bug Out", “Deep Black Mystery” and “Soul Resurrection". These were released by Morris on Homeboy 001 under the title Signals. But three of them – “Bug Out", “Deep Black Mystery” and “Haunted” – appear on this new reissue. “Satan's Village” has disappeared (which makes Allen's reference to it in the liners all the more bizarre) and the new (definitive?) track order is “The Sound from There", “Bug Out", “Deep Black Mystery", “Time and Units", “Sad Miss Holiday", “NxJx", “Haunted” and “Burn Baby Burn". Joe Phillips's texts provide some interesting insights into his own background, including a rather harrowing tale of a false arrest and beating at the hands of the local cops in 1961, but sadly little information on the session itself, and even less on his enigmatic playing partners. The music has been cleaned up and remastered – though we aren't told by whom – and as a result many of the nuances that were previously buried in cassette hiss are now clearly audible. It's an odd but affecting collection of pieces, alternating wailing Ayleresque dirges with fiery freebop blowouts, saving the best until last with the furious upper register blasts of Howard's trumpet and the wild electric coils of Phillips' alto. Bassist Cliff is no slouch with the bow – Alan Silva's work often comes to mind – and Milsap steers a deft course between the two towering figures of free jazz percussion, Sunny Murray and Milford Graves, swinging free like the former and exploring timbre and space like the latter. The themes of the uptempo tracks, such as they are, are often little more than germs of ideas, brief signposts which the musicians drive by at speed to get to the solos. In stark contrast, the slower pieces are fragile, almost distressingly so, especially Howard's wavering vibrato on “Haunted” (here pitched a fourth higher than on Signals and, curiously, lacking its beginning – it fades in rather unsubtly). All in all, it's hardly a lost classic, but never-

theless an important chapter in the story of Cleveland's jazz scene at a particularly turbulent moment in its history. Very much, to quote Phillips, “a different songbook, tinged with pain and hurt.” Dan Warburton

Michael Hurley & Eugene Chadbourne Dr. Rake vs. Hurley Man House of Chadula CD-R

Michael Hurley

The Ancestral Swamp Gnomonsong CD

What happens when you have a summer clash of iconoclastic titans in upstate New York? When they're a pair of long-standing cult figures, maybe it's not too surprising that the end result is a home-brewed CD-R. This particular pairing isn't as strange as it seems at first. A folkie with a career stretching back to the 60's, Hurley doesn't struggle to recreate an old-timey feel of a pre-telecommunications world so much as he embodies it. While too many alt-country bands try too hard to sound “authentic,” Hurley does it naturally and easily, filled with a gentle sense of whimsy and wonder. Chadbourne's a wooly polymath who also has a long DIY tradition, and also trods the path of crazed folkie often in his multi-genre adventures. This self-proclaimed “experiment in strange lifestyles,” features Hurley on vocals and guitar and Chadbourne accompanying on banjo and vocals, and if it sounds like they're occasionally off-synch that just may be Chadbourne's avant tendencies creeping in. Nevertheless, Woodie Guthrie's mournful worker's anthem “Pastures of Plenty” and Lefty Frizzel's sentimental “Mom and Dad's Waltz” sound keen along Hurley's trio of originals including a playful doper's anthem ("National Weed Growers Association"), a celebration of food ("Slurf Song") and a traveling song ("Detour").

It's all much more fun and enjoyable that Hurley's own long-awaited recent solo album Ancestral Swamp.

While he used to have Jesse Colin Young and Loudon Wainwright III as his patrons, he's now signed up with freak-folk figurehead Devendra Banhart's label. And while he's always been laid back (think Mississippi John Hurt or Jimmy Reed), this mostly solo record gets a little lazy too often. When Tara Jane O'Neil chimes in with him on “El Dorado” and “Little Green Fellow” or when he picks up his fiddle now and then ("When I Get Back Home"), you sit up and take notice but all too often the music fades into the background.

And “Streets of Laredo” has been covered so often and so well by everyone from Johnny Cash to Tom Jones that you wonder why Hurley felt the need to add his own version.

Better places to start in his catalog are cute and kooky touchstones like 1971's Armchair Boogie or 1999's Weatherhole. Jason Gross

Jason Kao Hwang Sang Won Park Local Lingo Euonymous CD

Both the locale and the ling-go of Local Lingo come across as translocal and translingual when heard as the latest words of the tale composer-violinist Jason Kao Hwang’s been telling throughout his career. His 1994 Caverns (New World), one of two by the Far East Side Band (a trio adding percussionist Yukio Tsuji to this duo) was more elaborately arrayed with obviously Asian-ethnic folk-traditional sounds, instruments, inflections, effects— identity markers. His 2005 chamber opera The Floating Box (New World) showcased the opposite ends of the aesthetic-cultural spectrum— mastery of Western composition and performance conventions, joined with their high-cultural Chinese counterparts (in erhu and pipa, “silk and bamboo” more than folk percussion and winds). Most recently, his Edge (Asian Improv, 2006) highlights his music in the context of a more jazzrooted quartet. “Ethnicity, culture, and genre,” Hwang writes in Edge’s liner notes, are the three areas his work borders—and these CDs foregrounded each in turn. Local Lingo offers something new, though some of the same players and material reappear. Tell a musician to “just play” whatever he or she feels like, and the sounds his/her body puts behind linguistic meaning-matrix as tone of voice come forth, magnified.

Throw in the influence of a language that itself grafts those tones into that matrix—such as Asian languages do and Western ones do not—and the music “just played” magnifies them exponentially (check out John Szwed’s typically perspicacious liner notes about this). Then what you hear means as much as it feels. If, of course, you know its local lingo.

This new conversation is one stripped bare to the essence of the others, where the two musical voices embody fully and personally what the above arrays of markers only suggested, by comparison. Here speak the deep roots (in Park) to the sweet fruits (in Hwang) of the bowed and plucked string box’s tree’s growings through time and place.

The first notes set the tone of the whole CD: a relaxed float of thoughtful melody and melancholy (Hwang’s, his violin’s), roughed up by Park’s Korean zithers (6-string ajeng, bowed with a resined stick, and 12-string kayagum, plucked). Hwang visits the roughness, and Park the sweetness, in the give-and-take of rich textures and sliding pitches exchanged. Ari Rang—the one non-Hwang piece— is a traditional Korean folk song Park sings while plucking the kayagum like a highstrung bass with raised frets (to get those Asian bends), alongside Hwang’s American bluesycountry mirror of the same roots-rural spirit. Local Lingo lingers as you go about your business with it sounding, and after. Its presence soothes rather than irritates or bores; unlike much music, you want to carry, not shake, its echo. Mike Heffley

Jeph Jerman Precedence AARC CD-R

On Precedence sound recordist Jeph Jerman he catalogs the

seconds and minutes that fill the varied performance spaces he has enjoyed (and perhaps not enjoyed) over the past seven years. They’re revealing recordings and for anyone who has taken to the stage a curious experience with which to engage, as the performances themselves are neatly excised from the master recording, leaving what might be considered the ‘essence’ of the recording rejected and erased. Beyond conceptual apparatus, this choice to edit together only the time before performance, situates the ear of the listener in a curious way. Having all spoken, laughed and coughed in those few seconds before a concert begins it seems all too easy to ignore those discreet sonic phenomena when present at such events, but here in playback they are celebrated and relished. Small conversations are detected, voices float into and out of clarity, instruments are moved around and repositioned, birds and cars pass by and all the while these events are reshaped into a vibrant portrait of time and space.

Jerman's got a knack for perceiving the unheard and recalling the often forgotten sonic timelines of our common days and nights.

Lawrence English

Darren Johnston Fred Frith Larry Ochs Devin Hoff Ches Smith

Reasons for Moving Not Two CD

Jon Raskin Quartet

Rastascan CD

From Poland’s NotTwo imprint comes this delightful session featuring a quintet of superb Bay Area improvisers, trumpeter Darren Johnston, guitarist Fred Frith, saxophonist Larry Ochs, bassist Devin Hoff, and drummer Ches Smith. Any successful and provocative improv record has got to have textural range, and that’s why this one is so damn good.

There’s delightful polytonality and counterpoint on the opening “Passing Fields,” with always interesting textures from Frith. Amidst limber grooves or probing horn interplay, he’s always there with that howl of feedback or shriek of slide mangled strings. I wasn’t overly familiar with Johnston, but he’s fantastic here, with a big bell tone and a tart phrasing style that really cuts through – he and Frith interact really provocatively on “Dawn and the Flat Irons,” a great study in contrast. And his playing meshes well with the powerful Ochs, a criminally undersung saxophonist to me. The group sound is so intense and varied, ranging from the blend of high lonesome reverb and skronk on “Biocarbon Man” to the punchy, bouncy “QEW” and “Reasons for Moving.” Simply put, this is an excellent recording, filled with invention and complexity.

From the same scene and again from spring 2005 comes ROVA saxophonist Jon Raskin’s date with Liz Allbee (trumpet and percussion), George Cremaschi (bass and electronics), and Gino Robair (percusSIGNAL to NOISE #48 | 83

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sion and electronics). The overall sound isn’t quite as distinctive as the first session, but it’s an extremely vivid hour of music in the postSpontaneous Music Ensemble style.

Each track has a distinct character, and the performances are compositions rooted in plant material Raskin gathered on his regular walks in Oakland. The visual elements are translated into musical strategies and realized by this dexterous group of players. One expects to hear Raskin on baritone (as one the melancholy miniature “Bleckner”), but here he sticks mostly to his sharp alto playing, which blends well with Allbee’s furtive trumpet. Cremaschi plays some wonderfully eldritch arco on “Cracked Earth” to set off an awesome smear-fest (with Robair expertly using chimes and bows for lush contrast). And percussion-freaks should dial up the intense steel drum effect on “Sound Barometer Reading 1,” with jagged interplay between the horns, or the beautiful staggered groove on “African Tulip.” What really seems to make the group, though, is not just the textural variety (another good example of which is the scuffling, moaning “Post Card 2”) but the feel for contrast and the detail of their harmonic language. For the former, check out “Sound Barometer 2” (with extremes of register, and Raskin dog whistling effectively). For the latter, dig into “Kandinsky” and especially the wild “Post Card 1,” where Allbee in particular sounds like she’s playing a George Crumb vocal piece transcribed for trumpet.

Jason Bivins

Killick

Jumping Frenchmen of Maine Solponticello CD

Bull****

Solponticello CD

Zepubicle

Scientists Levitate Small Animals Solponticello CD

Full disclosure: I know and have made music with Georgia improviser Killick, a specialist in stringed instruments both familiar and arcane.

But despite partially compromised objectivity, I can say with conviction that this man’s music is excellent and deserves more attention.

Jumping Frenchmen of Maine is a solo guitar recording with a wee 33copy print run. It opens with subtle feedback blinking in and out like light sensors, with a broken signal quality that reminds me a bit of Darin Gray’s St. Louis Shuffle. The musical core is then hollowed out and leaves a reverberant, overtone-lush drone that cues up a tapping frenzy, with some nice altered dynamics courtesy of pickups, pedals, and so forth. Like most solo recordings, it’s a winding course – with a few doldrums but more highpoints. I especially like the latter portion of the piece, with many passages of interesting pointillism, staggered phrasing, and even some odd cat whines (or is that Killick mewling into the pickups?).

As the piece draws to a close there are some nice tarts lines that sound sort of like a tweaked Joe Morris, before everything is submerged in

sub-woofing tones and drawn into the aquatic depths.

Zepubicle finds Killick (here on H’arpeggione) in the company of longtime associates Jeff McLeod (guitar, electronics) and Marshall Marrotte (guitar), augmented by percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani on the lovely Scientists Levitate Small Animals. On the opening piece they wallow in lush drones and overtones, floating and oscillating with an insistent intervallic figure resounding inside the cloud of sound. Occasionally a restless ostinato will emerge in this music (as on the fine third track), provoking a small-scale incident with scrapes and clacks. The fourth track sounds the most idiomatic, with Marrotte and McLeod shifting between abstracted funk fragments, spacey lyricism, and jittery improv against a roiling background (things are usually more integrated and blended). And they close out their disc with some provocative moaning and detuning.

On bull****, Killick busts out Big Red, his 38-string harp guitar.

Comprised of twelve “guitaristic performances,” this disc may be the pick of the litter here. “Snort Butt Leap Jump” sounds like a prepared tympani, sitting atop a hellwagon on a bumpy ride through the Carpathians. I’m a sucker for the kind of tapping, string mangling tone variation on “You Would, Sting"—and this kind of restless string scuttle sounds great here (dry, detailed, hushed).

But if you haven’t heard Killick play this instrument before, proceed immediately to “Cork” and listen to him create a distinctive noise via body thumping and eldritch sympathetic strings. There’s a pleasing variety, even as Killick maintains his voice: nice detuning on “Lovely Galeria,” the mildly country-fried “The Flowers,” and some hyper-driven amalgam of Joes Morris and Sachse on “Crying Mad.” Jason Bivins

Akira Kosemura It's On Everything Someone Good CD

This full length debut from this Tokyo -based composer, graphic designer and proprietor of the Schole label combines the kind of string/piano/ minimal electronics proffered by fellow Japanese avant pop/IDM composer Takagi Masakatsu, and an austere quietude that recalls Carsten Nicolai and Ryuichi Sakamoto’s collaborations. With Masakatsu, Kosemura brings to bear his affinity for creating intimate, wistful, but ultimately pretty, piano melodies, cuddly enough to snuggle to, often interspersed with children’s voices, as on “A Park”, “Pause” and “Solace” or environmental sounds, like the babbling brook heard on “Perpetuity”. Kosemura’s nod to Nicolai/Sakamoto’s duet discs comes via his use of spare keyboard notes, pinpricks clicks and cuts, sine waves and discreet pulses on “Perpetuity#2”, “Unknown“, “Pause”, and “Pause #2”.

While these melancholy vignettes may seem too precious by half, they are far from glum. In fact, just when you thought these fragile ruminations might sink into pathos, Kosemura closes the album on an upbeat note: the piano/vibes/gentle- voiced

and break beat-backed “Coastline” stretches out as gloriously as the landscape it is meant to represent; its plangent notes hanging majestically at the end, and then drifting off with a sense of hope and optimism.

Richard Moule

Oliver Lake Trio Zaki

hatOLOGY CD

This is a reissue of a recording made at the Willisau Jazz Festival in Switzerland in September of 1979, featuring Oliver Lake on alto, tenor and soprano saxes, Michael Gregory Jackson on electric guitar, and Pheeron Aklaff on drums. Originally released in 1992, the concert captured here exemplifies the idea of spontaneous composition, with each player not only contributing fully to the 'now' moment, but also shaping the larger overall design of each piece. The instrumentation in itself creates some very exhilarating textures, especially in the several lengthy duet sections with guitar and drums. The opening title track is a twenty-five minute journey through an ever shifting soundscape, with Jackson's pointillist guitar darting in and around the churning tumult of drums and cymbals and Lake moving between fragmentary bites of melody and longer, fuller phrases on both alto and tenor. Throughout the entire concert the ensemble seems to advance and then recede in relation its own musical ideas, with Aklaff mostly hovering and fluttering just outside of any established pulse and guitar and saxes speaking to each other in coded splashes of sound. One composition, '5/1', is credited to Jackson, and the other four items are credited to Lake. The final track is a brief reprise of 'Zaki', and the whole set taken together delivers fifty-six minutes of delicate and challenging improvisation.

When an artist organizes and leads as many diverse projects,as Lake has done over the years, it is easy for one or another of them to become overlooked. This worthwhile reissue of a performance from nearly thirty years ago should help prevent that from happening to the work of this fine and subtle trio.

Alan Waters

Matt Lavelle

Cuica in the Third House KMB CD

Matt Lavelle and Barry Chabala I Like to Play Roeba CD-R

Less than two minutes into “The Legend of the Bass Clarinet,” the seventh track on Matt Lavelle’s new solo album Cuica in the Third House, the horn line’s volume ramps up in step with the rising cadence of Lavelle’s spoken tale: “As the sounds of the jungle rise to join in the symphony, the goddess cries out in screams of absolute spiritual ecstasy…” And--bam!—climax; the bass clarinet takes over from there, concluding the narration lyrically.

Such exchanges between Lavelle

and his own trumpet and bass clarinet (and occasionally African drums called cuicas) are accomplished through simple overdubs, but they are profound in the way they challenge the paradigm of solo CDs. Lavelle is tired of improvisers who obscure their meaning with abstraction and are afraid to, in his words, “get down". So his playing throughout, including all-instrumental songs such as the title cut and “Bullfrog Serenade,” never strays too far from the ongoing cadence of speech and everyday life, like hard bop solos stretched out to song lengths. And what can’t be said with his instruments alone, he narrates verbally, touching on the meanings of sex, the cosmos and identity in gruff beat-poet speak, with a dash of oldfashioned Dadaism thrown in.

Among the kindred spirits with whom Lavelle has pondered the bigger meaning of his music is acoustic guitarist Barry Chabala, who brings a Derek Bailey-ish sense of pointillism to the duet album I Like to Play. In just less than 70 minutes the duo poke their heads into twangy vistas (“Blues for BC”), wee-hours hazes (“Gently, We Land”) and, in “36th & 8th,” heart-racing vertigos, and manage to hang anticipatorily neck-to-neck all the while when not negotiating textural turns in total lockstep. On a pure chemistry basis the disc is solid as hell, but earns extra kudos for its commitment to forging a sense of swing from even the most disparate fragments of guitar, bass clarinet, flugelhorn, pocket trumpet and cuica lines. Echoes, in fact, of the great Lacy-Waldron duets pop up occasionally, which is never a bad thing. Nathan Turk

Rudi Mahall Axel Dörner Jan Roder Uli Jennessen

Die Enttauschung Intakt CD

Aki Takase Silke Eberhard

Ornette Coleman Anthology Intakt CD

It seems weird that this is the first Die Enttauschung (The Disappointment) record to feature exclusively the compositions of its members (bass clarinetist Rudi Mahall, trumpeter Axel Dörner, bassist Jan Roder, and drummer Uli Jennessen). After their Monk-heavy Grob date, and their “backing band” duties on Alex von Schlippenbach’s romp through the monastic corpus, this very distinct sounding band is really flexing its compositional muscles here. The interplay’s the thing, though, and while some of Mahall’s crusty tunes feature standout hummable melodies or hooks, it’s really the telepathic horn synergy and the crackling rhythm (almost like summoning jazz’s long-lost ghosts to make them dance with the living). Jennessen is in many ways the most interesting figure in this regard.

While Roder is limber and muscular, Jennessen is able to toggle between Roy Haynes-like whip cracks (“Oben mit”) and big washes of sound, a stylistic versatility that perfectly suits horn imps like Mahall and Dörner (who can smear texture all over your speakers, whinny like warhorses, or chirp in high counterpoint). It’s a bit overstuffed at nearly 70 minutes, but the band’s energy and invention are as lively as ever.

Pianist Aki Takase has long been fond of slicing and dicing “repertory” (consult her slept-on St. Louis Blues, for example). Even knowing this, though, you’ve still got to be impressed when a pianist dives into the harmolodic canon. Her duets (two discs’ worth!) with SIlke Eberhard (alto sax, clarinet, bass clarinet) will surely invite comparisons with the Lisle Ellis/Paul Plimley session on Hat. But I think in terms of approach, rather than instrumentation, there’s a kinship with Schlippenbach’s aforementioned Monk survey. You already know how great the tunes are (and the duo sticks mostly to early Ornette), and the playing is top-notch throughout, but what really makes this release so worthwhile are the wonderfully inventive arrangements, with radical reharmonizations that don’t get in the way (“Turnaround” and “Revolving Door,” now a

rhapsody), airy abstractions of some of Coleman’s most punchy numbers (“Humpty Dumpty”), or punishing splattercore (“Free” or the punk rock Jaki Byard heard on “The Disguise”).

Eberhard’s a great player, with a tonal range and mischievous streak similar to frequent Takase partner Rudi Mahall – but on the licorice stick he’s got the kind of facility of a Ben Goldberg (especially notable on his gorgeous solo reading of “Change of the Century”). He can also really calls the hogs on bass clarinet, as he does memorably on “Face of the Bass.”

Takase herself is anything but flashy here, which is a mild disappointment given what a fantastic player she is, really only stepping out on a few tunes (like “The Sphinx,” the abstract “Beauty is a Rare Thing,” or a barreling “Broadway Blues”).

But she’s absolutely key to conjuring up the varied feels of these pieces, which is really what matters most here. Perhaps nowhere is this better illustrated than on one of Ornette’s signature tunes, “Lonely Woman,” which is given a stunning pindrop reading, with inside piano work and real abjection in the feeling. And if you’re wondering if they ever just get down and swing, well you can rest easy that “The Blessing” and “W.R.U.” deliver the goods. Where many similar recordings can feel like too much before even a single disc is complete, this two-fer is over too fast. Jason Bivins

Bob Marley & the Wailers Another Dance: Rare Sides from Studio One Heartbeat CD

It's been twenty-six years since the passing of Bob Marley, and he still accounts for roughly half of all reggae sales. His influence can be felt and heard everywhere, throughout nearly all styles of popular music, and he continues to be the most well known Rastafarian in the world.

Another Dance—Rare Sides from Studio One is the latest installment in the flow of reissues, remixes and archival recordings from this one of a kind musical genius. The eighteen tracks gathered here, from

the period of 1964-66 when Marley worked for producer Clement Dodd at Studio One, are a mixture of ska tunes and pop ballads. And while this beginning phase of Marley's career has been mined numerous times before for other collections, this release includes alternate takes and restored mixes of “Lonesome Feeling” and “Let Him Go", as well as some seldom heard tunes such as “Guajara Ska,” “Left my Sins,” “Straight and Narrow Way,” and a hauntingly beautiful version of “Cry to Me". Most tracks feature the accompanying harmonies of Peter Tosh and Bunny Livingston, and some include one of Bob's earliest female vocal collaborators, Beverley Kelso. The backing musicians on most tracks include Lloyd Knibbs on drums, Lloyd Brevett on bass, Roland Alphonso on tenor sax, Jackie Mittoo on keys, with Ernest Ranglin on guitar and King Sporty delivering some wild vocal effects on a few cuts as well. I'm always reminded when studying this early, formative period of Marley's career what a long and winding road it was for him to get to that tough, militant and absolutely original sound that he achieved with the Wailers in the 1970s. A collection like this is a useful measure of the distance he traveled from covers of hits by Curtis Mayfield and Jr. Walker and the All Stars to the likes of Heathen, Trench Town Rock and Zion Train. If you're not familiar with the pre-reggae, pre-Rasta phase of Marley's music this disc would be a perfect place to start, and if you're already a devotee of Marley's whole life and work, well, can one ever have too much of his music?

Alan Waters

Albrecht Maurer Trio Works Movietalks

JazzHausMusik CD

I’m most familiar with violinist Albrecht Maurer from his work with Kent Carter’s String Trio, a group which has two excellent albums on the Emanem label to its credit.

Movietalks is a live recording from 1999 that features trombonist

SIGNAL to NOISE #48 | 85

Dec 15

CARLA KIHLSTEDT

Jan 12 ANTHONY COLEMAN

Jan 26 RASHIED ALI

at The Brecht Forum 451 West Street New York, NY

www.brechtforum.org www.myspace.com/ neueskabarett

212-242-4201 Neues Kabarett is made possible by the NYS Music Fund established by the NYS Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, and with public funds from the NYC Dept. of Cultural Affairs and NYS Council on the Arts.

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Wolter Wierbos and pianist Benoït Delbecq; which was previously available in only a tiny pressing. Like Carter’s group, this trio explores the gamut from fully composed pieces to free improvisation, with results that are airy, mercurial, and at times positively festive. (The distinction between composition and improvisation hardly matters here: the disc’s droll opener, for instance, sounds like it could easily be composed, yet it sprang out of nothing more than a verbal instruction: “play a fantasy that is like a character in Jacques Tati’s ‘Jour de fête’.”) The inspiration for the CD comes from Maurer’s fascination with Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run, a film which plays out the same scenario three times in a row; each time, small changes in Lola’s course of action have an enormous butterfly-effect difference on the eventual outcome. The film itself now seems – nine years after its release – rather slight, a classic example of style over substance, but its central conceit nonetheless serves Maurer as a useful metaphor for how improvisers discover new pathways within even the most well-worn jazz standard. He has even gone to the trouble of reimagining the film itself twice in a row, in two separate musical responses to it. “Cyberlola” is fairly straightforward, juxtaposing a gently pulsing theme with solo features for each player. The longer “Lola rennt ... nicht immer,” on the other hand, is a far twistier piece.

Fluid, urgent motion is interrupted by suspended passages that suggest a quasi-timelessness (there are hints of Messiaen’s piano music); musical continuums are meticulously established then punctured by a momentary crisis point, and at the end, the entire structure dissolves into manic laughter. Films also lie behind several other tracks on the CD: aside from the Tykwer and Tati pieces, there are pieces referencing Scorcese’s Kundun; Caro/Jeunet’s Delicatessen (a wonderfully mordant musical commentary), and Kaufman’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

Throughout, Maurer’s playing is deviously lyrical, full of feints and abrupt shifts of tone and mood – a cross between ballet and a rollercoaster ride.

He has ideal partners in Delbecq and Wierbos, players who enter fully into the music’s gently fantastical spirit.

Nate Dorward

Bill McHenry Roses

Sunnyside CD

Tenor saxophonist Bill McHenry brings a crack band along for his Sunnyside debut: guitarist Ben Monder, bassist Reid Anderson, and master drummer Paul Motian. It would tempting to compare this session to one of Motian’s, and indeed McHenry’s tone and phrasing do at least partly suggest the influence of Motian's frequent foil Joe Lovano.

But it would also be a bit churlish, since he’s a distinctive enough player and the band is singular enough to avoid such comparisons. Anderson’s muscular and heavily lyrical playing really cements this music, undergirding McHenry’s strong themes while Motian shimmers and exclaims,

Monder daubing and slashing. The title track opens the disc, managing to sound pensive and fractious at the same time, working via subtle gradations rather than obvious drama – perhaps that, more than anything else, sums up this band’s sound and method. This isn’t to say that they don’t go in for flash and sizzle – after all, “African Song” finds some wonderful counterpoint happening, while “The City” features gnarly distortion and frenzied glissing, all motors revving and glossolalia. But I find the most impressive tracks here to be on the more subdued side, as on “The Abyss Opens Up” (with powerful descending lines from Anderson and fine rattling snare work from Motian) and the fine, if unassuming lyricism on the shifting rhythms of “The New One” or “The Lizard,” where Monder and McHenry get into bentnote polytonality that moves from gauzy to intense. Jason Bivins.

Joe McPhee Soprano

Roaratorio LP

Joe McPhee confesses in Soprano's liner notes, “I was a bit unsure if the world really needed another solo soprano recording.” And if this was just another solo soprano saxophone record, I'd wonder too; the instrument has gotten too much play from the wrong guys, and certain of the right guys (Evan Parker, Steve Lacy) have presented their counterarguments so exhaustively that you might wonder what else is to be said. But you can count on McPhee to play the space and the moment as well as the instrument, and he does so with grace and acuity on this 1998 document of a concert at St. George's Church in Guelph, Ontario. The building's rich resonance could turn busy music to mud, so McPhee deliberate keeps things deliberate. Even so, it's never simple for long, no more so than the echo that laps the music in sometimes complementary, sometimes contrasting waves. The building is also, it seems, somewhat porous; traffic sounds and those of other less identifiable movements creep into the music, compelling McPhee to distill his lyricism further still. The first side of the LP is totally acoustic, and plays at times like an Evan Parker solo that refrains from the usual gravity-escaping velocity or ferociously systematic progression, but insists on taking side roads at a pace more purposeful than breakneck. On side two he adds some electronic reverb to the church's to create both a steady backdrop and some ghost voices that shadow his probing horn.

Some near-Gregorian sonorities seem a bit too expected, but that doesn't matter too much when they're cleaved by acoustic split notes that resolve into a gripping, marvelously paced finale that does the history of soprano saxophone no dishonor. Bill Meyer.

Mersault

Raymond and Marie Formed CD

Bassist Christian Weber, drummer Christian Wolfarth, and guitarist/ electronic musician Tomas Korber

are amongst today's most consistently intriguing improvisers. Korber has been establishing himself in richly nuanced collaborations with musicians like Günter Müller, ErikM, Jason Kahn, and Graham Halliwell.

Weber and Wolfarth work in settings as diverse as a piano trio with Michel Wintsch, a reed trio with Urs Leimgruber, and Weber’s ensemble 3 Suits & A Violin with Hans Koch, Michael Moser, and Martin Siewert.

All three also have strong solo recordings out. Listening to their trio Mersault is somewhat akin to listening to a great jazz trio working in the timbral space of electro acoustic improvisation. Raymond and Marie, their second release, builds off of their unique blend of sonorities.

Weber’s acoustic bass provides the resonant scaffolding for the long-form collective pieces, whether laying down waves of overtone-rich arco or plucking insistently repeated notes that pile up with tensile dynamism. His abstract placement of sound within the constructs of pulse, drone, and measured density has a stark elegance. Wolfarth stretches the use of wholly unamplified or electronically modified percussion into the realm of pure synthesized sound. He moves around the flow of the improvisations with carefully modulated craggy details. Without ever defining a pulse, he shapes trajectory with the whine of bowed cymbals, the gritty static of scuffed drum heads, and delicate pattering gestures. Korber places his scumbled electronic textures, feedback stabs, and frayed loops with a masterful sense of pace and transparency. The first, 30-minute piece floats on an unhurried current of kaleidoscopic layers. The second, 19-minute piece builds with a more purposeful intensity, goaded by Weber’s tolling of a repeated bass note which mounts a disquieting drama. The final piece starts with hushed organic clicks and hisses, like a field at night, and builds a dynamic fervor with dense bowed bass, rattling percussion, and piercing electronics that ebb, release, and then slowly build to a climactic burst of tattered textures and feedback.

This is one of the better releases of the year and well worth searching out. Michael Rosenstein

Messages

The Social Club nº 3 The Social Registry 7” / MP3

Psychic Ills I can do without, but keep these Messages a-comin’. NYC musician Tres Warren sings in the former quartet and plays an unspecified role as half of the latter, less derivative outfit. It helps that (a) Messages isn’t the unnecessary-if-pleasant hash of indie fanboy influences Ills is and (b) this debut single clocks in at less than ten minutes, allowing the listener to spend quality time living in the duo’s ominous-drone quonset huts. “Destination” lays out an Indian carpet of held synth notes then sets out some wares to distract: reverbed guitar jags that fade relatively quickly, half-asleep strums that eventually emerges as the track’s “percussive” element, burp-bustles in the hypnotic substrata. It’s over quickly, which is fine because it’s

essentially an appetizer for “Glades.”

Wavering dental-drill sounds surge in and out like the clampers of a pair of forceps being opened, then closed, then opened again as fingerpaint smears of detuned guitars anoint the air and the electronic equivalent of an earthquake rumble appears, then slowly but steadily intensifies.

After several delectable minutes of this, an electrical shorting sound emerges, swiftly becoming a pounding, insistent-if-not-innovative beat; a gelatinous, bouncing guitar figure that wouldn’t be out of place on a Gang Gang Dance record aside—it seems to materialize from nowhere, all of a blessed sudden—everything else drops out, and “Glade” has transitioned suddenly into a totally different, but no less enrapturing, song. Raymond Cummings

Modeselektor Happy Birthday!

BPitch Control CD

Modeselektor sold me on this one with their remake of Jones & Stephenson’s classic trance banger from waaaaaaay back in ’93, “The First Rebirth”. If you think that adjective can rightly apply to rave anthems, read on: The rest of Happy Birthday! gathers the finer bits of a variety of electronic music’s guilty pleasures into one thumping package. These include electro (“Sucker Pin”), IDM (“Edgar”), and shuffle-and-clap glitch hop (“The Wedding Toccato Theme”). Not-so-guilty pleasures, including a dynamite rap from TTC and a wistful song featuring Thom Yorke, round out the package, most

of which hangs on smart beats, a tendency toward the acid synth line, and a warm, heavy, and somewhat melancholy low end. By the nostalgia-steeped trance builds of “Hyper Hyper,” you’ll be calling shout-outs along with guest Otto Von Schirach as he toasts a summer festival’s worth of producers, from Carl Cox to Mark Spoon, as well as “all the DJs around the world”. Too eclectic to be a classic itself, this album nevertheless is a much better alternative to ironically rifling the bins at the local used record store as a way to bring the party back to your CD collection.

Eric Smillie

Steve Moore The Henge Relapse CD

Synth wizard and bassist Steve Moore's infatuation with vintage horror movie soundtracks has already borne fruit through his work in Zombi. That group's successful mating of prog instrumental prowess and blood red cinematic nods (think the scores of early John Carpenter, Lucio Fulci, or Dario Argento flicks) manages to salute near-kitsch without ever succumbing to the pitfalls of the ironic aside. Going it alone for his new disc The Henge, these five compositions don't stray terribly far from Zombi's well-established template.

And yet, removed from a full band context, these tracks bounce with a calm confidence that Zombi's relentlessly amped instrumental passages hardly ever attempt. Early on, “Infinite Resignation” hypnotizes with its steady percussion and clockwork

synth lines, a repetitive beat clocking careful keyboard segues as Moore builds to something that sounds like a more ferocious Tangerine Dream.

Distinctly more ominous, “The Henge/Ascension” relies on steadily rising drones that part for thumping percussion and a few guitar lines that sound as though they were pinched from the doom school of metallurgy.

And while it's far from lighthearted, Moore closes out his solo debut on a much less macabre note, giving his inner Jan Hammer free reign on “Cepheid,” in the process sounding like he's scoring one of the greatest, as-of-yet unfilmed chase scenes ever conceived by the human imagination. More than just a sidebar to tide the faithful over until the next Zombi epic, The Henge is a wholly satisfying spin on the sounds and styles that Moore has spent years honing.

Michael Crumsho

Lawrence D. “Butch” Morris Conduction®/Induction Rai Trade CD x 2

Over the last two decades, Butch Morris has built an impressive career around his approach to conducting collective group improvisation. Using the name “conduction®” (evidently now a registered trademark), Morris has codified a series of gestures and visual cues into a conductor’s vocabulary. While his theories around blending improvisation and composition into spontaneous forms are one aspect of his musical strategy, his approach to assembling ensembles has always been far more

intriguing. Over the years, Morris has built relationships with a core group of international musicians who he uses to seed constantly changing musical settings. He also creates pan-stylistic and pan-global mashups, mixing winds with string-heavy groups, acoustic jazz instrumentation with electronics and turntables, Western improvisers with traditional Turkish musicians, classical musicians with veteran free players. This twoCD set, culled from the RAI Italian radio network vaults, presents a live performance from the 2003 Biennale Musica di Venezia and another from the 2006 Angelica Festival in Bolgna.

The 2003 set, titled “Conduction® No. 135, Sheng Skyscraper” mixes New Yorkers J.A. Deane, Jason Kao Hwang, Okkyung Lee, Cooper Moore, Matt Moran, Jesse Murphy, Brandon Ross, and Tywhawn Sorey, with oud, balafon, kora, dizi, eerhu, and guzheng. Morris mixes strings against percussion; non-tempered, plaintive lines of Chinese dizi (a transverse flute) against brewing free pulse and shifting string layers; percolating kora or guzheng against electronics percussion and vibes. Contrasting textures, timbres, modalities, and densities within the ensemble are used to block out the form of the evolving piece. Asian pentatonics, pan-African modalities, and sheets of atonality are mixed and matched. The collage-like contrasts mostly build with an evolving logic, though at times the piece talks on a listless episodic feel. The Bologna session, titled “Induction No. 2/1, EMYOUESEYESEE.IT” features an all-Italian 18-piece group mixing

SIGNAL to NOISE #48 | 87

reeds, trumpet, strings, percussion, electric guitars, synths, and computers. (There is no indication given as to the difference between a conduction and an induction.) With the use Western reeds and trumpet, the piece focuses more on melodic line than the Venice piece. Here Morris often masses the instruments in ways that allude to the way he voiced instruments in David Murray’s big band though the glitch and stutter of electronics adds a disquieting edge.

Thematic kernels reappear across the long piece, and riffs are often hocketed around the group. While the piece is less episodic, it also lacks the constantly evolving dynamism of the Vienna piece. While not definitive sets of Morris’ oeuvre, these give a good snapshot of his constantly evolving strategies for conducting large ensemble improvisation.

Michael Rosenstein

Go Go Spread the Poison Ivy finds Iceland’s Mum without longtime vocalist Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir for the first time, but their musical playfulness—which has probably defined their sound up to this point as much as Valtýsdóttir's elfin-like coo— remains. The dozen tracks are full of bubbly textural chirrups, handclaplike beats and child-regressive titles a la “They Made Frogs Smoke ’Til They Exploded.” Gunnar Orn Tynes and Orvar Poreyjarson Smarason, the original two-thirds of the group, are joined by five past and new coconspirators on a host of chamberstring and percussion instruments, as well as trumpet courtesy of Eiriku Orri Olafsson, touring member of Sigur Ros’ brass section. (Guests Olof Arnalds, Hildur Gudnadottir and Sigurlaug Gisladottir lend the cooing, diminutive vocals.) As you’d expect, the arrangements are super busy: “Guilty Rocks” mashes up crashingamp dub echo and jittery synth with soaring strings, while the Morriconeesque “Dancing Behind My Eyelids” segues into sweeping, clip-clopping pockets of small percussion sounds.

Some of the mystery that lurked in the dark corners of early albums Yesterday Was Dramatic, Today is OK and Finally We Are No One is gone, but Mum are still peerless in terms of their indie-tronic Scandinavian dreamscapes. Their music’s just a little less melancholy and more adventurous this time around.

Nathan Turk

several live dates and reassembled with an incredible dynamic range and an unpredictable musical imagination. It opens with a harmonically rich dronescape that slowly evolves, with what I think is a distant minor third settling over a pedal point, all the while suspended amidst a sound like magnetic tape being sucked and mangled. But soon a pinwheel occurs (such shifts are frequent, but not flashy or demonstrative) and an entirely new image emerges, a dense and dry-sounding room with metal cans, bowed hubcaps, and soft wet noises. Machinery comes to life amidst detuned piano strings.

Whew. There’s a lot going on here, clearly, and each listen to these pieces yields a fascinating new detail or point of focus: the long cymbal and gong reverberation on “underneath a portrait” is fascinating, as are the soft echoes from a distant struck bell on “feet wrap around the chair” (after which it sounds like one is slowly entering a chatty cathedral before abruptly closing the door and exiting again). Seldom is music in this idiom so warm, personable, imaginative, and lively.

The duo between Tim Feeney (percussion and mixers) and Vic Rawlings (cello, preparations, open circuits) is even more intense. A December 2005 live date at New Haven’s Firehouse 12, this one opens up coiled, strained, pinched, with sound boring into you like a dental drill. Panned sine tones amidst crumbling metal and dying audiotape dominate the first piece, which closes with stacked feedback tones and broken circuits. This last bit is almost like an overture to the second piece, which opens up this same area more fully, with insistent industrial whining and big intervals pinwheeling in space. As the piece evolves it gets ever more dense, as huge metal shapes keep dragging themselves forward, like a ferrous man with injured legs clawing unabated towards some hidden goal.

Then all of a sudden, the third piece sounds like pure abjection, with an electronic wind swirling around strong hums that refuse to buckle.

Contact miked crumpled paper (or something that sounds like it) begins to stir on the fourth piece. And the next performance is an outright crackle-fest, with whalesongs into the mix along with some gorgeous scraped percussion. By the time we reach the ponderous drone of the closing piece, that metal fellow has dragged himself back and is submerged. Jason Bivins

Brendan Murray Seth Nehil

Michael Musillami Trio with Mark Feldman

Sedimental CD

Playscape CD + DVD

Tim Feeney Vic Rawlings

The guys at Playscape Recordings seem like a tight knit bunch. One can imagine them playing not just music together, but fantasy baseball and poker, too. Drummer George Schuller and bassist Joe Fonda all have extensive history with the label, which guitarist Michael Musillami founded, but this is violinist Mark Feldman's first Playscape session.

Even so, he sounds as though he's been there since the begin-

Mum

Go Go Spread the Poison Ivy FatCat CD

Sillage

In Six Parts Sedimental CD

Sillage comes from two of the most interesting sound sculptors in North America, whose contrasting styles (Brendan Murray’s rich and fulsome, Seth Nehil’s more spare and dry) make this a promising summit. It’s comprised of material culled from 88 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

The Treatment

ning. Of course, with a resume that stretches from Nashville sessions to the groups of John Zorn, Feldman has made a career of fitting into a ridiculous range of settings. But his wit, inventiveness and ability to dig into the rhythm mark him as an ideal Playscaper. Like Musillami, he likes to worry a little idea, hanging it Ornette-like in different keys or adding a swooping Indian-inflected curlicue on the end of a phrase. This makes him a good match for the leader, whose playing is always appropriate, but never predictable. Musillami plays an archtop hollow-bodied guitar and he extracts from it the classic jazz guitar tone: round, clean and singing. His lines nod toward the blues occasionally, but seem to have taken little from the prevailing guitar zeitgeist. He's just as original a writer; Musillami likes little melodic cells, each containing the rhythmic engine of its own development (Beethoven wrote like this) and he builds phrases, paragraphs and whole compositions from them. It's great fun to listen to, and on the evidence of a very nicely done companion DVD, great fun to play, too. John Chacona

MV & EE with the Golden Road Gettin' Gone Ecstatic Peace! CD

Everyone’s going to tell you Matt Valentine and Erika Elder’s Gettin’ Gone sups from Neil Young’s regal cup, and I guess there’s something in that: the guitar on “Speed Queen” and “Hammer” touches the tar-dipped worlds Young navigated on Zuma.

But reducing MV & EE’s latest record to a set of Crazy Horse coordinates is about as dumb-ass as music critics getting medieval on the duo’s posteriors for carving hermetic hieroglyphs into their own chunk of the universe.

It’s the MV & EE thing to bring consensus reality to the mountain, rather than vice versa, and if Gettin’ Gone is their most classicist gesture yet, well, that’s fine. Their compact with Thurston Moore’s regenerated Ecstatic Peace! imprint has given the duo the backing and space to stretch their world further than the immediate homestead zone, and though they might be trading in their low-fi Spectrasound cards, there’s a whole bunch of other good things happening here. Surprisingly, if *Gettin’ Gone* hits any mark, it’s the brain-melt soporifics of 1980s American punk psychedelia—the acid-fried early Meat Puppets, the sunblind country of Souled American or the languid daze of David Roback’s Opal. Those three groups tricked aesthetically conservative audiences into drinking deep from arch-trad roots and a record like Gettin’ Gone, with its hazed-out rock and acoustic Mandala folk, does the same thing for today’s ‘new weird’ tricksters. The question is, are you up to it?

Jon Dale

Nadja

Guilted By The Sun Elevation CD

Radiance of Shadow Alien8 CD

It’s possible that more readers will be familiar with noisesmith Aidan Baker

through his many solo records or his ARC project than through Nadja, his power sludge duo with Leah Buckareff, but for the last several years, the pair of multi-instrumentalists has been releasing some powerful records combining textural expansiveness with the dynamics of doom metal. Guilted by the Sun is an EP with four slightly ponderous and very heavy pieces. “Guilted” opens up like some Jesu piece, but slowly loosens its form, with blistered guitar multi-tracks peeling away, like tethers floating away on wind. Just in time comes the hellish stomp of “By,” like a lost Melvins track from Houdini.

Baker and Buckareff like to break up the riffs and stagger them in a glitchy fashion, though they never lose their momentum. The closing “Sun” is a big swirling mass of psychedelia, with hints of melody and harmony peeking through dense riffery. Satisfying but not memorable.

The sludgy monoliths of Radiance of Shadow are much more the thing, and play to the band’s strengths.

It consists of three very heavy and detailed tracks that show an affinity for noise and chaos, but without losing sight of the epic riff at the music's heart. Thankfully, they also have a decent sense of dynamics.

“Now I Am Become Death Destroyer of Worlds” staggers forward inexorably, its bottom end eventually encumbered with spiked feedback and guitars branching off from the trunk. “I Have Tasted the Fire Inside Your Mouth” moves away from the bowel-quivering rumble into a more spacious, almost ambient territory where Baker’s vocals resound like

the proverbial ghost in the machine.

Multi-instrumental shards dot the landscape, and density ebbs and flows. Particularly effective is the spooky but also bluesy piano on the howling title track that closes the disc. Jason Bivins

Toshimaru Nakamura Lucio Capece IJ

Formed CD

Reed player Lucio Capece has been appearing with increasing regularity in combination with improvisers like Axel Dörner, Mika Vainio, Mattin, and Franz Hautzinger. This CD captures a duo with Toshimaru Nakamura, a perfect collaborative setting for his prepared reeds and hyper-extended technique. Meticulously recorded at Steim Studios in Amsterdam, this is a study in the intersections and correlations of microscopically detailed timbres and dynamics. Nakamura always seems to bring out the best in the musicians he works with. While his no-input mixing board has a limited sonic spectrum, he is the consummate listener; able to lay down layers of fluttering buzz, crackling static, and warm hums shot through with pinpoint punctuating bursts.

The sonic extremes of soprano and bass clarinet are well explored areas by now. But Capece has carved out his own identity on the instrument, moving seamlessly from hushed nuances to biting scree. The set is divided into one 21-minute piece and another 31-minute piece; each long enough to develop an enveloping flow. Both pieces work mostly in

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the low volume range with oscillating electronic glitch intertwined with sputtering, breathy reed abstractions. But there is nothing rarified or restrained as the two cut through the pulsing currents with telegraphing percussive clicks, shredded drones, and jagged overtones. Rather than taking the quiet-to-crescendo-toquite arc, Nakamura and Capece build up whorls of activity with an organic sense of evolving sonic densities. This constant sense of collective discovery is what makes this release so engaging.

Michael Rosenstein

Nathamuni Brothers Madras 1974 Fire Museum CD

Do you ever wonder what world music from the third world really sounds like? Not the stuff NPR sells to its listeners, but the stuff the natives themselves play? Nowadays it would probably be some guy with an electronic keyboard playing the latest tune by Britney Spears, but Madras 1974 tucks an older example near the back of this CD, which renders palpable and procurable a field recording by ethnomusicologist Robert Garfias. It is the track “English “Note,”” on which a South Indian brass ensemble plays their version of English marching band music.

I’m not sure that the musical merit exceeds the what-the-fuck? factor, but who cares? It only lasts 1:43, which makes it a mere after-dinner mint compared to the near half hour of “Kriti Raga Mohanam,” which dominates the CD and is enchanting and exhausting in equal measures.

There was a time when bands like the Nathamuni Brothers proliferated in the bottom half of the subcontinent. They used clarinets, saxes, and trumpets, but their repertoire included traditional and rarely played ragas as well as the occasional stab at the sort of colonial music that inspired their instrumental choices.

Their playing isn’t as flashy as most professionally recorded Carnatic music, but it might be closer to what people actually heard in the street or at a wedding thirty years ago.

Bill Meyer

Banz Oester

Blosperment Suite Leo CD

Bassist Banz Oester has been a regular member of pianist Michel Wintsch's ensemble for his past several releases. Favoring settings that stand in the middle of jazz, classical and cinematic scoring, it's not surprising that Oester's solo debut Blosperment (Swiss-German for “double bass") embraces similar territory. Granted, it's just one man and his bass, but the breadth of his approach and the arrangement sensibilities he can convey on his own set this apart from what solo bass can often mean. His nine compositions mix of improvisation with a clear agenda of what the piece's mood and attitude are to be. There's everything from the organic landscape of “La Plage” or the sub-basement atmospherics of “Souleau” to the strutting contraption of “No For 90 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

Sale.” The disc's sole cover is Charlie Parker's “Donna Lee,” two minutes and forty seconds of jovial dexterity.

David Greenberger

OM

Pilgrimage Southern Lord CD

Blessed with a pedigree for which most metalheads would give, like, half their Hessian cred points, West Coast duo OM still debuted with the daunting challenge of staring down the legacy of Sleep, the band that originally sharpened the massively blunted talents of bassist Al Cisneros and drummer Chris Hakius. Now three records in, the pair has more than capably proved that Sleep's shadow wasn't nearly large enough to cover their prodigious talents.

Stripping doom back to its barest essentials of rhythm, thrust, and billowing drone, OM's simplified approach to the form nevertheless allows for a generous expansion of its basic tenets, incorporating mantric chants, near-ragas, and a dubwise appreciation for spatial density as much as it does heavy riffage. With engineering duties handled here by the alwaysestimable Steve Albini, Pilgrimage hardly stakes out any new territory.

Instead, it showcases a band at the natural apex of their powers, confidently holding court over thirty minutes of some of the most powerfully minimal metal this side of newfound labelmates Sunn O))).

Tracks like “United Knowledge of the Godhead” and “Bhimas' Theme” are immediately redolent of OM's previous efforts – all thick, bottomheavy grooves that temper simple bass distortion with Chris Hakius' insistent percussion. The record's title track, though, might very well be the most effective thing the band has ever laid to tape – a quiet bass figure matched with drums that barely break a whisper, effectively proving that metal's intensity doesn't always need to come couched in oppressive volumes. Michael Crumsho

Oregon

1000 Kilometers Cam Cline CD

Like the Paul Winter Consort from which it spawned years ago, Oregon traffics in a brand of jazz with any and all rough corners smoothed away.

Tempos never get to heated, and solos stay safely inside the comfort range of the chords, which is enough to make you forget how skillfully they fuse jazz with nonwestern music. Dig the way Ralph Towner’s flamencoish guitar lines flip and trill over the tiniest accents in Mark Walker’s swing rhythm in “Bayonne,” while Glen Moore works an entirely different counterpoint line on double-bass: It’s all like a hi-diver zeroing in on a mini trampoline amid gale-force winds.

Like the rest of Oregon’s two-dozenor-so albums, Towner handles most of the songwriting, but all members contribute including Walker (“Deep Six,” cut from classic ECM-style cloth, is the drummer’s first tune for the group). The variety of voices here never distracts from the disc’s low-key, fireworks-in-the-details vibe; meanwhile, the disc’s pan-cultural

savvy makes a convincing case for fusion being alive and well, even without the pomp associated with the bellbottoms-and-electric-violins era. Nathan Turk

Os Mutantes

Mutantes Live: Barbican Theater, London, 2006 Luaka Bop CD x 2

The reemergence of Brazil's legendary Os Mutantes for several British and American tours is certainly one of the feel-good stories of the past few years. The fact that the Mutantes were so damn likeable as perpetually teenaged moptops peering from out-of-print LP covers certainly didn't hurt the warm fuzziness of their return, either. Naturally, a double-live album—on David Byrne's Luaka Bop imprint that first introduced them to American audiences in 1999—has followed. Recorded at their first comeback gig, as part of a Barbican retrospective on the tropicalismo, the 2006 rendition of the band includes founding brothers Sergio Dias and Arnaldo Baptista, along with original touring drummer Dinho Leme, and a handful of auxiliary guitarists, keyboardists, and Zéila Duncan playing the part of Rita Lee Jones. Sergio Dias is in fine form, turning in sharp solos on “Balada do Louco” and elsewhere. Arnaldo, who decidedly failed the acid test and spent years in and out of mental institutions (including one failed escape that resulted in a coma), is less present. The band is certainly polished enough, recalling —maybe too much—the expanded group that has accompanied Brian

Wilson on his recent jaunts: reverent and warm, but lacking the innocence that made their songbooks so alluring to begin with. Still, with any love for Os Mutantes, Barbican Theater, London, 2006 is plenty diggable, especially on the airy bounce of “Virginia” and the cool swing of Caetano Veloso's “Baby,” where layers of harmonies emerge and cascade pleasantly. To their credit, the Mutantes are determined for the audience to appreciate them for who they are, not as any kind of exotic artifacts, thickening the sound for modern ears, and frequently singing in English. Some of their later material, from after they evolved into a much straighter guitar-rock act (see: “I Feel A Little Spaced Out” and “Cantor de Mambo") doesn't quite hold up, sadly. Of course, the band excels during signatures grooves like “Bat Macumba” and “Panis Et Circenses.” The former especially— for which they are joined by beardo tropicalismo-acolyte Devendra Banhart—is just as much a party starter now as it was 40 years ago, a lost psychedelic bar band classic. It's nice to have it back. Jesse Jarnow

The Pan-Asian Ensemble MOJOU Leo CD

Kaori Osawa Aluminum Leo CD

Offspring of the Middle Eastern oud by way of the Chinese pipa, the biwa was born into a time of warring factions in 8th-century Japan. The

defeat of the Heike clan by the Minamoto in a final naval battle gave rise to stories of a blind biwa player calling forth the spirits of the watery grave. This saga, told in the earliest music played on this instrument, forms the foundation of its traditional repertoire even today. The Pan-Asian Ensemble’s core comprises Russian players (Gyorgy Mnatsakanov, Dmitry Kalinin, Varvara Sidorova, Pyotr Nikulin) of East Asian and Australian traditional instruments (shakuhachi, biwa, koto, hichiriki. Chinese percussion, didjeridu) playing experimental and improvised music. On this CD, they are joined by two women from the Japanese world of traditional and contemporary biwa music. The results suggest a tale told as much by the instruments themselves than by their players. The first and title track captures the second part of a concert that Kakujo Nakagawa opened with her solo rendition of the Heike-Minamoto saga for classical biwa and voice. This subsequent ensemble improvisation (according to the liner notes) consciously reflected the mood of the tradition: roiling and pitching like the sea, sounding and swelling and sliding in ways suggesting wind and birds on water (the flutes), clanging ships bells in the splash and spray (the Chinese gongs and chimes), creaking wood strung together to soak up and navigate the brine (the biwas, the piece’s three central voices, played by Nakagawa and her student Misaka Mimuro, with Sidorova. Nikulin’s didjeridu adds the sound suggesting whalesong and modern foghorn, and a (traditional) bridge to the spirit world. Kalinin

composed the other two pieces (all three tracks are live performances, two in Moscow, one in Japan, each roughly 20 minutes). Mahakala features his pre-composed electronic piece to which the players improvise, and Kofuu (Wind of the Past) explores the noise aspects of the two separate traditions of biwa and shakuhachi (played by the composer, with Nakagawa and Mimuro). As a whole, the CD evokes the same sense of communion between ancient and modern, and of the voices of the instruments; unity and merger of differences, not dialectical sparks, define its flow.

Aluminum is malleable, ductile, trivalent; it conducts well both light and heat; it’s light, reflective, resistant to oxidation...and is the most abundant element in the earth’s crust, where it always occurs in combination with other elements. Kaori Osawa’s solo piano CD consists of eight “original tunes or instant compositions” (its left to the listener to speculate which are which), from 1:30 to 15:43 minutes long; and one mercurial interpretation of Monk’s “Well You Needn’t.”

I think I can tell which are which. The ones that sound most spontaneous are rhythmic motion machines of kaleidescoping chords and lines that ring like Morse code for the word “modern” (before the post- came along). Recorded in Berlin, they suggest something both avant-gardish and brash, informed by and reactive to high traditions. Here, left and right hands do dance between their unity and duality dialectically. The liner notes reference both Berlin’s

order direct from the author: www.HowardMandel.com

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Aki Takase (her teacher of jazz piano) and the traditional nagauta (the shamisen [3-stringed plucked lute]and-voice) music associated with kabuki theater. The former’s influence is certainly evident, but the latter is harder to detect here. Literally “long song,” nagauta is not as intense or perfunctory as most of these tracks.

“Winter in Berlin” is the longest, and the most lyrical and rhythmically floating. It and “Dr. Martin” seem to be among the group of original tunes, the latter showing Monk’s influence; the Monk warhorse is deconstructed artfully with most of the “instant composition” panache and imagination. “Temple of TendaiSummer” is surely a tune; southern summer to Berlin’s northern winter.

(The deep and recent history of the two countries joins them in ways too intricate and delicate to explore here, but they are resonant in this music.) The title track strikes me as one of the “instants.” There is an edge, a forward thrust not present in some of the other tunes.

These two CDs are fresh, new gestures from Leo's signature aesthetic mixing cultures, grassroots folk and refined, high-art improvisation, especially from the Eurasia’s various ranges. If the first is the musical evanescence (Mojou, in Japanese) of Russian and Japanese music traditions ancient and now, the second an alloy born of the very different Japan-Germany chemistry.

Mike Heffley

Pekos / Yoro Dallo Pekos / Yoro Dallo Yaala Yaala CD

Various Artists Bougouni Yaalali Yaala Yaala CD

Daouda Dembele Daouda Dembele Yaala Yaala CD

It's impossible to consider Yaala Yaala's three inaugural releases without mentioning the Sublime Frequencies label. Like most SF releases, the recording and performance quality of these three records has far more grit than anything aimed at the world music market, and there's none of the exhaustive documentation that accompanies more academically oriented ethnomusicological releases. These records want you to simply deal with the sounds on their own terms, without mediation. But that simply puts Yaala Yaala in the role of mediator and denies the listener some useful and potentially contextualization.

Consider this; one afternoon while I spun the CD by Pekos and Yoro Diallo, a kid asked me what language they were singing in. I couldn't tell her, and that's a shame. Anyone who does know much about Malian music is most likely to be aware that several different languages are used in different parts of the country, but can they tell 'em apart by ear? I can't. This paucity of information is all the more frustrating because with its stuttering n'goni (I think) melodies and unbridled dual male vocals, which sound like two guys either going into trance or calling the hogs, 92 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

the album rocks. I want to know more about where the music came from socially and stylistically, but all you get is an acknowledgement that Pekos / Yoro Diallo was scored from a cassette vendor.

The annotation on Daouda Dembele's set isn't quite as reticent —the notes tell you that he's a griot who plays the jelingoni, a spike lute —but the information about the epic story-song is blatantly speculative. If you're going to ask us to listen to an unbroken, 36-minute long narrative, at least tell us what Dembele is relating in such an animated fashion.

Bougouni Yaalali offers the least information; no credits, just the statement that its music was recorded seven years ago in two towns during some house parties where checkers was played and the mercury hit 115 degrees. Even so, it's the best place to start. It has the most musical variety, ranging from impassioned female singing over hand drums to solo n'goni strumming to some raucous percussion music that sounds startlingly close to Konono No. 1. The music is also much more immediate and rhythmic. Bill Meyer

Sandro Perri Tiny Mirrors Constellation CD

Unlike his largely instrumental Polmo Polpo project, Sandro Perri's first full length under his own name for Constellation puts vocals front and center, and he is a strong singer with a pleasing and supple voice. Overdubs are arranged chorally—against a delightfully boisterous euphonium part courtesy of John Jowett—on the traditionally pop-minded but quirkily orchestrated “Family Tree.”

On “City of Museums,” Perri accompanies his singing with folksy guitar, the odd kick drum thump, and even folksier whistling. “Everybody's talkin'” has a rustic quality as well; duet falsetto vocals are buoyed by acoustic guitar and Eric Chenaux's lap steel. Other tracks are more fleshed-out creations. Avant-rock fans' ears will undoubtedly perk up at “Double Suicide,” which features an off-kilter bossa nova punctuated by idiosyncratic percussion fills and guitar comping. Ryan Driver's flute digressions and Doug Tielli's chromatic trombone lines knock “The Mime's” arrangement out of the box, while “You're the One” veers from texture to texture in a delicious series of improvisational hairpin turns. All this demonstrates that is possible, indeed eminently profitable, for Perri to wed his experimental tendencies with a singer-songwriter alter ego.

Christian Carey

Jean-Michel Pilc New Dreams Dreyfus Jazz CD

Pianist Jean-Michel Pilc is one of a new breed of European hypervirtuosos who, not content to merely play over (or with) changes or melody, and who improvise on form. That's the source of his deconstructions of such thrice-familiar fare as “Straight,

No Chaser,” “Satin Doll” and “But Not For Me.” The presence of the latter tune, which opens the CD, suggests a bow in the direction of Ahmad Jamal, who has always loomed larger in Europe than at home.

When Pilc chirps a Basie-esque little curlicue and drummer Ari Hoenig answers with two thumps of his bass drum, the hommage is complete.

But Pilc is an equal-opportunity deconstructionist. He starts Robert Schumann's “Widmung” as a pop song (which, in the 1840s, I guess, it was) before shifting to a jittery Latin rhythm for the B section. It's Pilc at his best, simultaneously provocative and limpid. Elsewhere, there are chops galore from the leader, his solid and nimble bassist Thomas Bramerie and drummers Ari Hoenig and Mark Mondesir. The Monk tune launches at escape velocity (Pilc was trained as a rocket scientist) and races to a ring-a-ding-ding close. It's all very smart, very glittery and ever so slightly cool. The sound, close up and accurate, reveals every detail with dazzling clarity. John Chacona

Chris Potter 10 Song For Anyone Sunnyside CD

Chris Potter's Underground

Follow the Red Line: Live at the Village Vanguard Sunnyside CD

Antonio Sanchez Migration CamJazz CD

Jazz, like every other musical genre, has its leaders and its coasters, those ready to lock into their own space and dwell within it for their entire careers, and others who seek to always push their music in new directions.

Though Tenor Saxophonist/Bass Clarinetist Chris Potter seems always to be associated with mainstream jazz, he has expanded his compositional palette considerably to allow for both electric and larger ensemble writing. The change is natural for an artist like Potter, who really seems to be coming into his own as both an exceptional tenor saxophonist, but also project leader.

With Song For Anyone, Potter makes his major compositional aspirations known, composing and arranging a classically-influenced set for a tentet comprised of reeds, strings and rhythm that might remind one of Maria Schneider, Gil Evans, Gunther Schuller’s work with Joe Lovano or arguably, Eddie Sauter’s arrangements for Stan Getz’s Focus.

While Potter has released quite a few records focused on smaller groups, he has yet to score a set of compositions arranged and voiced for a larger ensemble. Muted terrains permeate the group work as a whole, with the suite’s greatest asset being the high-caliber musicians and their abilities to execute Potter’s tightly-arranged pieces. The ten selections unfold as tone poems with various tempo changes, with each piece featuring at least one soloist from the ensemble, with Potter taking his share of incandescent solos, some that offer a bold contrast to the euphonic waters underneath. While

certainly a child of the Post-Coltrane school of burning, furious arpeggios ala the Michael Brecker-Dave Liebman-Bob Berg axis, Potter does manage to recognize the importance of space to add drama. The result is an approach that favors careful construction, rather than a let’s-see-whatsticks approach, resulting in a carefully crafted mini-composition with its flair for the ebb and flow. That being said, pieces like the gently brimming “The Absence” is arguably the most memorable solo, though the peppy “Against The Wind” or the farewell Blues of “All By All” are also noteworthy. As for the ensemble soloists, most are provided with a spot, including bassoonist Michael Rabinowitz’ probing work on “Family Tree,” violinist Mark Feldman’s spirited jaunt on the funky “Chief Seattle” and Craig Tardy’s clarinet on “Song For Anyone.” Oh, and for those who are ready to write this off as a rather staid affair, two cuts in particular, the beautiful strings serenade meets fiery shores of “Closer To The Sun” and the record’s most intense moment featuring Adam Cruz’s resilient drumming, “The Arc Of A Day,” offer evidence of the contrary. For sure, this is Potter’s most ambitious project and while perhaps not pushing Potter into the pantheon, records like Song For Anyone, indicate that he will continue to go places.

Potter’s electric quartet, Underground, featuring keysmeister Craig Taborn, drummer Nate Smith and in a rare sideman appearance, guitarist Wayne Krantz, commenced their association on their excellent selftitled debut. With this project, Potter

placed his Jazz-Rock notions out in the open which while it may have been a shock to his followers, proved both exciting and vital as an excellent example of how fusion music can work in the right hands. Follow The Red Line presents this group, with frequent collaborator Adam Rogers filling in for Krantz, for a set of six new compositions worked out during the touring season that are classic Potter pieces with their shifting terrains, intersecting lines and vamps that take their lead from the worlds of jazz, rock, blues, funk and African musics. First things first: while Krantz is a remarkable player, this record demonstrates that Rogers really is a major-leaguer, creating an on-the-edge-of-your-seat solo at every turn, which will likely surprise those that only have heard Rogers’ Criss Cross records. For instance, “Train” is an absolutely riveting venture, with a sense of evolving drama and sass that must have made his Telecaster sweat, while his brilliant, space-filled skewers on the countryish “Pop Tune #1” and his soaring lead on “Viva Las Vilnius” are career-makers. Likewise, Potter is impressive throughout with his engrossing tenor work given plenty of room to move, though equally impressive are the two final cuts, particularly Ed Blackwell’s “Togo.” which features his expressive bass clarinet work. But don’t count out the others, of course, with Taborn’s oscillating Rhodes work proving indispensable, particularly during his left-of-center jaunts on “Arjuna” that reminds one of Keith Jarrett’s Cellar Door work or the sonorous breaks of

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“Togo.” Last but certainly not least, Smith’s drumming is the engine’s catalytic converter, cracking so many mountain-moving grooves, it’s just head-shaking. Underground is a hot working band that is jubilant, hardhitting and basically, they rock.

Potter-philes will also be pleased by drummer Antonio Sanchez' debut, Migration. Sanchez has garnered some impressive associations, including his skinswork with Pat Metheny's current group, saxophonist David Sanchez and countless sessions. On Migration, the focus is entirely on Sanchez and his impressive trapsmanship alongside a mighty cast of collaborators, including bassist Scott Colley, saxophonists Potter and Sanchez and guests Metheny and Chick Corea.

The record begins with the rousing snap of Corea's sole appearance and composition, “One For Antonio,” though the vigor continues to bubble on the uptempo swinging, two tenor saxophone romps of “Did You Get It?” and Joe Henderson's mighty “Inner Urge,” as well as the simmering Trane-like modal vamp of “Changes Within.” While this is a mostly vivacious program, Sanchez crafts a lovely ballad, “Challenge Within,” with Potter donning the soprano on a quartet piece. Metheny fanatics rejoice, your man is featured on two cuts, the moving rhapsodic “Arena (Sand)” and the exuberant, conclusory duet on the Bill Evans/ Miles Davis tour-de-force, “Solar.”

Jay Collins

Prince

Planet Earth NPG CD

Just because you're a genius several times over doesn't immunize you from unfortunate mistakes of judgment. Prince has a bad habit of presenting each of his records as though they are Life Changing Events for the True Believers. The triumph of Lovesexy over the Spookyelectric, the embracing of the Gold Experience – he’s a genius no doubt, but his savior complex can get in the way. Though few seemed to notice, Planet Earth comes on the heels of his strongest consecutive triumvirate of records to date. The Rainbow Children, Musicology and 3121 rank with his best. The press he so abhors, at least, didn’t seem to notice, but the Believers did; 3121 had the strongest first-week sales of his career. Unfortunately, Prince makes himself an easy target for ridicule, consistently adorning his records with silly bits of grandiose mythology. Planet Earth is no different. The holographic cover shows him rising above the Earth, hands posed as if the orb were his marionette to maneuver. The closest things he has to peers – Madonna, Michael Jackson, Paul McCartney – aren’t quite so bold as to claim the planet as their puppet. But Prince fans have long forgiven him his delusions (“rain is wet / sugar is sweet / clap your hands / stomp your feet”) because they know no one makes music like he does. And if Planet Earth doesn’t compare to the tripleplay that preceded it, it’s still stacked with great songs. “Guitar” kills, “The 94 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

One U Wanna C” is a great bit of toss-away bravado, and the closing track “Resolution” is actually a great bit of wide-eyed peace mongering.

Elsewhere is sweet soul songs and infectious beats. He’s certainly done worse. Besides being a great melodicist and a guitar phenom, Prince is a fantastic arranger, something not as often noted about his work. “Chelsea Rogers” is a complex, interwoven funk jam, working together the Pointer Sisters, Earth Wind & Fire and his own winking humor (Chelsea is a vegetarian with a butt like a leather seat). As an r’n’b elder, he’s claimed the turf of James Brown, P-Funk, The Stylistics and The Rolling Stones, opened the borders and played it back, yes, better than any of them. Despite the presentation, Planet Earth is far from another Life Changing Event. It’s really just a set of songs, something rare for him.

No fables, no morality tales, just 10 songs. In that respect, it’s closer to his pre–Purple Rain records, or his unfairly blasted (chiefly by himself) Chaos & Disorder from 1996. He might think he can pull the planet’s strings, but in this case he’s not really trying to. And that, True Believers, is a relief. Kurt Gottschalk

Prinzhorn Dance School

Prinzhorn Dance School DFA CD / LP

Carving great songs out of next-tonothing is tough: just ask Prinzhorn Dance School, the English duo of Tobin Prinz and Suzi Horn, who’ve pared their kit back to the point of emaciation. They rely on two voices, drums, guitar and bass, and when a distorted guitar overdub kicks in two minutes into “You are the Space Invader” it’s roughly equivalent to air raid sirens for World War Three.

Prinz and Horn write phrases for bass and guitar that are so precise and simple you wonder whether a bunch of monkeys with typewriters made the record on their off day.

The drums, God bless them, lack the space-filling tedium of hi-hat, which opens the sound up somewhat.

You’ll start hankering for The Fall at some point during the proceedings, and if Prinzhorn’s minimalist drama reminds you a little of the Gang Of Four’s alienation effect, then that’s okay, too. After all, the feedback break in “I Do Not Like Change” is pure “(Love Like) Anthrax”. While I wholeheartedly approve of the aesthetic, Prinzhorn Dance School feels unengaging - even the good songs (of which, admittedly, there are many) are easily reduced to signifiers, and the whole thing gets a bit tiring about half way through.

Initially interesting due to the limiting parameters the duo have prescribed for themselves, by focusing on binary systems and chiaroscuro settings, the album ultimately wears thin. And what’s with sounding like underrated ‘90s indie duo Guv’ner?

Jon Dale

Randall of Nazareth Randall of Nazareth Drag City CD

Don't get your hopes up for either

Biblical revelation or '70s power ballad cheese. Randall Huth of Nazareth, PA, best known for his membership in the power trio Pearls And Brass, exhibits here a solo acoustic guitar troubadour persona that I find infinitely preferable to PAB's sweaty boogie rock. He's a solid, if hardly transcendent finger-picker whose playing sounds more indebted to Nick Drake than anyone in the new Americana crew. But where Drake sounded uneasy playing the blues material that's surfaced on bootlegs and legitimized on the posthumous Family Tree, Randall at least has the accent right. And as behooves a guy who wasn't even a twinkle in his parents' eyes when Foghat made its first record, he doesn't sound too fussed about authenticity. If he wants to rattle away on a hammered dulcimer or overdub some shakers, he does.

His melodies have a light, propulsive quality that's more redolent of sneakers on pavement than work boots in the cotton fields. I won't claim this to be a record for the ages, but it sounds good every time I put it on, and at a half hour in length it never wears out its welcome. Bill Meyer

Rob Reddy's Small Town The Book of the Storm Reddy Music CD

New York reed player Rob Reddy has been somewhat of an underground phenomenon since breaking onto the scene almost two decades back. Reddy has built up a core team of players like John Carlson, Charles Burnham, Mark Taylor, Brandon Ross, Jef Lee Johnson,

Pheeraon akLaff, and Guillermo E. Brown and revolved them through a shifting series of mid-sized ensembles. In each of the groups a free exuberance has been keenly balanced with structural compositional forms full of odd subgroupings and interwoven antiphony. For Reddy’s newest effort, on his own Reddy Music label, he has extended his musical approach to a large ensemble. With five reeds, two trumpets, two French horns, trombone, two violins, viola, cello, two electric guitars, bass and two drums, he can arrange the ensemble voices or open things up for small group interplay. The four-part suite was inspired by a line from a poem by Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer where he describes someone reading from “the book of the storm” with closed eyes. The image of storms, from ancient mythology to the New Orleans floods made an impression on Reddy. But the music never dips into mere storytelling or allegorical orchestration. Reddy conducts the 19–piece ensemble, balancing the power of massed voicings with sections of intricate counterpoint and areas where he opens things up for nimble interactions within smaller sub-groupings.

The music can rock hard, bristle with syncopated swing, or float through areas of tonal abstraction. His regular players are used as key members of the group. AkLaff, Brown, and bassist Dom Richards steer things from the bottom up. Guitarist Brandon Ross brings an electric edge calling up the same raw spirit he’s displayed in groups led by Henry

Threadgill, Leroy Jenkins, and Oliver Lake. In fact, there are many shades of the way that Threadgill writes for ensemble, as sections are played off each other over churning dual-drum polyrhythms. Standout solo sections include features for John Carlson’s spirited trumpet, Charles Burnham’s bluesy violin and Mark Taylor’s plangent French horn. Reddy has already proved himself as a savvy small ensemble leader and reed player. With this release, he also shows a penchant for extending his music into potent large-ensemble settings. Michael Rosenstein

The Rempis Percussion Quartet Hunter-Gatherers 482 Music CDx2

Saxophonist Dave Rempis' group (featuring bassist Anton Hatwich and drummers Frank Rosaly and Tim Daisy) embodies much of what’s good about the current Chicago jazz scene. Perhaps much of this music could have been played in 1965, but they have learned the lessons of that era well, and they put their music across with youthful, punky energy and without the formality that has become too characteristic of modern acoustic jazz. Rempis’s goal is to present long-form improvisations that resemble composed pieces, and Hunter-Gatherers (a 2-CD set documenting a 2006 gig in Columbia, SC) captures a night when the flow came easily. Rempis has a fondness for insistent repeated motives that sometimes resemble Coltrane’s (and

the last few minutes of “More Green Than Giraffe” harken back to Coltrane in his preaching-through-thesax mode), but his effortless gush of ideas is more in the Sam Rivers vein. “The Bus And the Canyon” is a good 27-minute sample of this quartet’s music, developing from a ballad into a lumbering mid-tempo baritone sax statement, then quieting into a raga and finally bursting into uptempo swing. Hatwich, Rosaly and Daisy hook into Rempis’s ideas without fail, although my one criticism of this recording is that the near-mono mix lumps Rosaly and Daisy into one mega-drummer, making it difficult to identify their individual contributions. That’s how it goes with single-gig recordings, though, and for those who can’t catch this band in person, HunterGatherers captures an excellent night for posterity. Pat Buzby

Josh Roseman

New Constellations Accurate CD

Dedicated to Jamaican trombonist (and original Skatalite) Don Drummond, New Constellations touches on the moods and rhythms of ska, rocksteady, reggae and dub melded with elements of jazz-based improvisation and a potpourri of world beats. It's a joyously eclectic romp that could keep you sweating on the floor of the dancehall without shutting down your gray matter. In addition to Drummond, the influences of Rico Rodriguez, Augustus Pablo, Lee “Scratch” Perry and the “Godfather of Dub” King Tubby are

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obvious. The date kicks off with reggae's unofficial anthem, “Satta Massagana,” originally recorded

by The Abyssinians. “Greasy Feets Music” has the kind of funk plus complex structures feel of Prime Time or Ronald Shannon Jackson's Decoding Society. The nagging, repetitive rhythm and eerie electronics of “Thoroughfare” are pretty much straight-up dub with some organ work that's cool, but almost cheesy. “I Should Have Known Better” (a Lennon-McCartney tune) retains a sunny pop lilt but has a deep dub base and soulful trombone. “Olson Twins Subpoena” – one of the funnier titles in recent memory – has layers of electronics, a fascinating 'bone-keys dialogue, and a nice trumpet solo from Ambrose Akinmusire. It threatens to swing in a traditional way at several points but always pulls back to sort of an off-center lope. The title tune is a loopy ska thing that chugs away fetchingly and sports fine tenor playing from Peter Apfelbaum, who sounds great throughout the disc.

There's more good stuff here, including the fascinatingly structured “Confucious,” which starts off as a mellow piano ballad with eerie electronica dropping in here and there then gradually gets dubified with thwacks on three. Then accents on two and four alternate with the hard three feel and the chart bats its eyes at fusion jazz on occasion. What may at first seem to be repetitive patterns actually change subtly and slowly in this shape-shifter of a performance. This one will make you smile and shake your booty. Bill Barton

Rudder Rudder

Nineteen-Eight CD

This is the debut by New York City-based Rudder, a quartet with a name that fits them with a supple certainty, as they are indeed like the essential nautical component that guides a boat across the ever-undulating seas. The four members all have impressive pedigrees, having worked with a list of names so diverse that it's rendered superfluous and listening becomes the order of the day. The writing is distributed between saxophonist Chris Cheek, keyboardist Henry Hey and bassist Tim Lefevre, with a couple attributed to the whole ensemble. While some of their compositional settings can draw forth the dreaded F word (fusion, that is), it's important to remember that not everything grouped under that banner several decades ago was all that bad. Actually, Rudder is more like downtown groovers Medeski, Martin & Wood, drawing from jazz, but delighting in the power of rock, rare groove and hip-hip improvisational modes.

"Floater,” with its electric piano and propulsive vamps, is straight out of the Weather Report Tail Spinnin' bag. Elsewhere, “Sad Clown” shows them capable of atmospherics and moody, mid-tempo settings, which they then jump up and down upon, like that titular sad clown.

“Laurito” closes things out with a ballad that would be at home in 96 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

Wayne Shorter's house.

David Greenberger

Saralunden & Andrey Kirichenko There Was No End Nexsound PQP CD

Saralunden.Björkås.

Mijös Dubious

Nexsound PQP CD

Nexsound's Andrey Kirichenko says that his label’s PQP series is dedicated to music that's “more accessible” than he typically releases. Consider the series' rather bloody-looking logo, take the tail from the “Q” to make it an “O", and you've got the skewed sense of POP found on these two releases. A musician, filmmaker, and performance artist, Sara Lunden (her name merged together for performance purposes) sings the 11 songs over these two CD EPs in a breathy, wispy delivery that brings to mind Laurie Anderson (as do the various treatments for her voice). Kirichenko is a key presence on the first of these discs. “Come With Me” contains wiry little vocal squiggles and echoes, and sounds like raindrops hitting cold metal pipes before bouncing back into the sky. “Oh So Blue” features what sound like Kirichenko’s treated field recordings of rain and birds, and perfectly evokes the grey-day mood of artist Zhuzha’s lovely gatefold. When Lunden’s delicately swooning chorus enters, it’s as if the grey sky has momentarily opened into sunny, cloudless blue. The mix on “Don’t You Remember” is more aquatic, its dancing, insect-like percussion glitches mating with shimmering keyboard textures; Lunden’s lyrics attempt to prod memory with specific physical clues. “Erotic Dreams”is colored by electric piano and negative Techno space, and the instrumental treatments on “Tonight” are Matmos-like in their implication of deep bodily functions. At 24 minutes, There Was No End feels complete in its tantalizing textures, and is a thought-provoking collaboration.

Lunden’s alliance with instrumentalist Andreas Mijös, from Jaga Jazzist, and singer Kyrre Björkås, from Norwegian band Det är jag som är döden, is even briefer, at 16 minutes. The use of various acoustic instruments such as violin, vibes, piano, and recorder, plus more conventional rhythms, gives it a slightly more organic sound than the Kirichenko partnership, its five songs seeming to trace the course of a relationship. “Dubious” is a seductive samba, Björkås’s low voice turning Lunden’s material even darker.

Lines like “I so much want to be your double” and ” I volunteer for immediate addiction when we’re together” have ominous overtones that are developed further in “You Can Come”’s talk of breathing through the other’s skin, and the obsessive erotics of “Naked In My Bed.” “The Sound It Makes” dovetails on a treated 1960’s girl group riff, becoming darker and heavier as it goes, and closer “Murder” gets downright spooky, setting horror

movie soundtrack sounds over pulsing space synth. Also sporting a nicely done sleeve (by Lunden and artist Henrik Lundström), Dubious is a worthy companion to There Was No End; both make good use of the EP format for listeners desirous of a strong aperitif. Larry Nai

Sawako

Madoromi Anticipate CD

Over the course of her three major recorded projects Yours Gray, Hum, and now Madoromi, Sawako has carved away a personal sound space that’s equal parts distended melody (albeit heavily filtered), generous DSP, ‘broken’ instrumental passages and increasingly treated vocal excursions. This quadrant of sonic devices is certainly put to a full test on this latest edition, with Sawako determined to further define herself as one of the key ex-pat Japanese composers working with these tools.

There are a few shortcomings, the occasional digital clips and distortions of “August Neige” do detract from the considered shaping she achieves through the piece and some of the looped passages tend to drag out what might be a strong initial sonic relationship. These moments are however fleeting and the overall mood she creates is one that references the soft-focus, sentimental heart of much of the contemporary Japanese sound works being produced by a slew of young female composers. Where Sawako decidedly moves into her own is through the interjection of obscure sound sources, field recordings and ‘interruptions’ that litter many of the pieces ("It’s Not On Purpose” or the mumbled voices of “Appled Soapbox” for example). These sound devices create alter states of ‘hearing’ within her pieces and heighten awareness to what might otherwise become more distant ambient pieces. Lawrence English

Chris Schlarb

Twilight and Ghost Stories Asthmatic Kitty / Unusual Animals CD

In 2003, Chris Schlarb's life was beset by a string of terrible events: divorce, unemployment, and a court decision allowing only weekly visits with his children. Schlarb found solace in music-making; over the next four years, he made a host of field recordings and collaborated with a plethora of experimental, pop, jazz, and folk musicians. The fruit of these labors is found on Twilight and Ghost Stories, an eclectic and fetching 40-minute long composition. What Schlarb has created is the musical analog to a patchwork quilt; the various participants' tracks are woven together without their input, creating a series of short, overlapping musical episodes that accumulate into a diverse whole. Discontinuities abound: one moment the listener hears a minimalist piano piece only to be beset next by electronic oscillations overlaid with acoustic guitars -- this is succeeded by group vocals and then a sequence of burbling electronic ostinati. Schlarb's own guitar, electronics, and piano are augmented by star cameos: Sufjan Stevens and Mick Rossi (Philip Glass Ensemble) supply piano parts, Liz Jane sings, Ray Riposa (Castanets) plays guitar.

Along the way environmental recordings, spoken word monologues, overheard conversations, orchestral instruments, a recording of a Schlarb's son's heartbeat, and children at play infiltrate the proceedings. If all this sounds like a mishmash, indeed it is; but Schlarb is a talented arranger, producer, and all around master of ceremonies, and Twilight and Ghost Stories ends up being a cathartic, improbably organic, and engaging CD. Christian Carey

Maria Schneider Jazz Orchestra Sky Blue

Artist Share CD

Against all economic and aesthetic odds, an improbably large number of younger arrangers-cum-auteurs somehow maintain big bands as the medium of their art. Maria Schneider

is in many ways their model and certainly the most prominent of the bunch, but at this stage of her career, she's almost a genre unto herself.

That genre is defined by “The Pretty Road,” a 13-minute evocation of a Christmastime drive through a still winter landscape in Schneider's childhood home in rural Minnesota.

On churchy harmonies straight from a Lutheran hymnal, she builds a magic world seen through the eyes of a little girl, a never-neverland Lake Wobegon without Garrison Keillor's archness and condescension.

Precious? Probably, but also utterly, pitilessly honest. Like a very different recording by very different Midwesterner, Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville, you want to gasp at the Schneider's capacity for self-revelation. But because this is Maria Schneider, all this honesty doesn't come at the price of beauty. Really, who else but Messiaen could get away with the bird calls in the 21-minute-long “Cerulean Skies,” that forms the centerpiece of the CD? Schneider has fine soloists - I'm particularly impressed with trumpeter Ingrid Jensen, who seems as essential to Schneider's musical personality as Johnny Hodges was to Ellington's, and the fantastically named reedist Charles Pillow. But Schneider is clearly centerstage here.

Her music, technically complex, formally audacious and meticulously plotted, nonetheless emerges from your speakers as clouds emerge from blue skies in time-lapse photography, billowing into existence and disappearing, leaving you awed, moved and laughing with joy at impossible beauty of being alive. With Sky Blue, Maria Schneider seems to be headed into a territory that she alone must explore, an inexorable march beyond category. Even in a career as singular as Schneider's has been to this point it has the feeling of a landmark. John Chacona

Matthias Schubert Quartet Trappola

Red Toucan CD

On Trappola, German tenor

saxophonist Matthias Schubert assembles an impressive cast of co-conspirators, including tubaist Carl Ludwig Hübsch, clarinetist Claudio Puntin and drummer Tom Rainey, who revel in the unique instrumental paradigm forged by Schubert. It is this instrumentation that serves Schubert’s compositional aims for a mix of European echoes, free improv, Theatre inflections, Braxtonian (and Euro) marches, Trad Jazz and chamber realms. While the compositional axis is broad, the program is agreeable to ears of all shapes and sizes. Dense, genreshifting pieces like the opening cut, “Plus Minus” lay out the foundation well, a tightly-scripted jaunt where the horns play off one another with busy accentuations, with the highlight being the concluding groove laid down by the mighty Rainey.

Not to slight the leader or his other bandmates, but Rainey’s presence is surely the key to this outing’s success. For instance, on “Soldaten,” Rainey’s opening snare march drives the ensemble before his cymbal scrapes initiate the abstractions, with an ultimate mix of subdued skittishness and brilliant groove marches taking shape throughout.

Rainey also provides the ensemble a bit of Gotham-inspired buoyancy on “Trappola,” perhaps the record’s most bustling piece, also serving as a wonderful showcase for Hübsch’s remarkable grasp of such a difficult instrument. The ensemble really keeps the listener guessing, one of the strongest examples being “Statik and Penetranz,” a mix of introspection and forward momentum. Fans of Anthony Braxton’s nutty march reconstructions (really, who can resist?) will find themselves pleased by “Upgradeing,” with a subdued reverie giving way to a fiery ensemble blowout and eventually, a joyous Traditional Jazz/Old World (don’t call it Dixieland) stroll.

This effervescence also imbues Jelly Roll Morton’s lovely “Shreeveport Stomp” and the Italian waltz and floral improv of “Don Cordolone.”

To conclude, the ensemble focuses on their closely-arranged sound

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mixed with expressionism on the lively “Brettspiel,” that was obviously recorded at a different session than the rest of the program. It's a release that might not necessarily be revolutionary, but perks the ears up in all of the right places.

Jay Collins

Siouxie

Mantaray Decca CD

Since the disbandment of the Banshees, Siouxsie Sioux has been busy with the Creatures, her eclectic, percussive project with her husband (and drummer) Budgie.

However, outside of her guest spot on Basement Jaxx’s “Kish Kash,” the release of Mantaray marks the first time Sioux has released music solely under her own name.

Pop music is littered with musical disasters by former vocalists of iconic bands (Koo Koo, anyone?), so how does this goth/glam high priestess fare? Well, this post-punk veteran’s greatest asset has always been her strong, muscular voice. Paradoxically entrancing and seductive, imperious and cold, Sioux’s mesmerizing vocals have always been enough to draw the listener into a fantastical and macabre world, even when the music failed her, as could be argued of any Banshees albums, post 1984’s Hyaena. On Mantaray, her voice is still as rich and beguiling as ever, and fortunately, the music and the production by Steve Evans and Charlie Jones do her justice. The industrial strength rock and Garbage-like fuzz and feedback of “Into A Swan” serve as a bold declaration of Sioux’s renewed sense of purpose that she wastes no time in outlining in the song’s opening lyrics : “I’m on the verge of an awakening/A new kind of strength for me.” “Here Comes That Day’ trades in the guitar and raunch of the two previous songs for string/horn arrangements that highlight Sioux’s cool, retributive lyrics. “Loveless” is the disappointed twin of “Here Comes That Day”, featuring some lovely marimba work woven through. While the above tracks are grounded by a rhythmic stomp, none of them prepares the listener for the majestic, epic ballad “If It Doesn’t Kill You”, which is the closest Siouxsie comes to the swirling surrealism of Hyaena. The Bo Diddley polyrhythms of “One Mile Below” will have old skool Banshees fans reaching for their copies of Juju, while the jazzy shuffle and bleating sax loop of “Drone Zone”, with have them reminiscing about “A Kiss In The Dreamhouse”. However, just when you were waxing nostalgic about your post-punk days of Robert Smith haircuts and existential raincoats, Sioux changes the mood again, moving from teasing seductress to smooth crooner to joyful soul sister (believe it or not). While “Sea of Tranquility” and “Heaven and Alchemy” are both piano-driven tunes with a warmth rarely associated with the Ice Queen, it is “Alchemy” that is revelatory. The ‘60s Soulstyle number features a Sioux that is positively love-struck and giddy.

While there has always been a dark romance to her dreamy lyrics, rarely has she sounded so unadorned and 98 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

happy. What’s next, an album under her given name, Susan Dallion? Now that would be exotic. Richard Moule

Six Organs of Admittance Shelter From the Ash Drag City CD

West Coast experimental-folk-splatter guitarist Ben Chasny is among the greatest six-stringers alive. His knotty drone improvisations under the Six Organs of Admittance moniker have grown increasingly refined with each release, and his work with electric psychonauts Comets on Fire could peel the paint off a Volkswagen bus. Chasny’s latest Six Organs album, Shelter From the Ash, may very well be his finest outing to date.

Chasny’s acoustic work is typically based in alternate tunings, but on this record, he also employed guitar standard. Some may fear the loss of the pedal-tone drone that gives Six Organs an exotic edge, but rest assured, the songs on Shelter are entrancing as ever. Collaboration with David Tibet's Current 93 seems to have impacted Chasny’s overall style. Some of his Eastern influences have been supplanted by more Anglo-oriented structures. Chasny’s voice, both casual and bracing, bears something in common with that of Angels of Light mastermind Michael Gira — both men have a kind of tuneless tunefulness, with unvarnished melodies that are Quakeresque in their purity. Standout tracks include “Strangled Road,” whose faded elegance is furthered by guest vocalist Elisa Ambrogio’s wan phrasing. However, Chasny’s roughneck electric solo definitely bleeds red blood. “Coming to Get You” is another spectral charmer, fleshed out by foreboding guitar vamps and Chasny’s chilly baritone.

But the real showstopper is the second-to-last track, “Final Wing,” which drives its arpeggios home like stakes through some undead thing’s black, black heart. Whereas many of his free-folk contemporaries trade in sunshiney vibes, Chasny’s overcast hymns are the musical equivalent of a solar eclipse: strangely beautiful, and exceedingly rare.

Casey Rae-Hunter

Warren Smith

Natural Cultural Forces Engine CD

This new CD from master percussionist Warren Smith has the feeling of a multi-cultural ceremony. As he states on the package, “…Duke Ellington, animals free in their natural element and geographical locations are musically depicted.” Utilizing conceptual improvisation rather than notation, Smith and his associates create a richly varied series of impressionistic portraits in sound.

The opening “Pyramid” is a lengthy piece for the full quartet (Smith on drums, French hornist Mark Taylor, tenor saxophonist Andrew Lamb and bassist Tom Abbs.) Full of peaks and valleys, crescendos and decrescendos, radical mood changes, inspired dialogues and brilliant open-form drumming, it never loses focus over its nearly 20 minute duration. “American Flamingo” is a duo for Lamb and Smith at the

trap set. High tenor whistles and bustling drums lead to a portion where Lamb plays call-and-response with himself, setting off the falsetto register against the horn's midrange.

The pulse is infectious. “Taurus at Pasture” has busy marimba and relaxed, slow-moving French horn lines creating a crosshatched pulse before gradually meshing at a slower pace.

At points this performance sounds like a 78-rpm record of Gamelan music played at 33 1/3. “Epicenter” is aptly titled. Timpani and bass interact in a down-to-the-essence groove that is earthy yet occasionally abstract. “Royal Drums of Duke's Court” is a tour-de-force for solo timpani. Echoes of Ducal themes drift to the surface and then subside.

Smith is truly a master of tuned percussion. “El Yunque” is more solo tuned percussion, both metal and wood. It's hard to tell exactly what instruments are used but that's completely beside the point. This is an exotic aural painting evocative of imaginary landscapes. Beautifully packaged in a 100% recycled chipboard folding case with letterpress artwork by Anjali Grant of Seattle, Natural Cultural Forces is one of the finest independent releases of 2007.

Bill Barton

Songs Of Green Pheasant

and the odds-and-ends Aerial Days collection. The removal of that dusty shroud from Semper’s songs is a mixed blessing. His songwriting is as strong as before, though Gyllyng Street’s conceptual fortitude—it’s apparently written in tribute to time spent by Semper in a house on said street in Falmouth, Cornwall which attracted its share of driftwood and eccentrics—limits the frame somewhat. Furthermore, Semper’s desire to evoke the music he was listening to while in that house in the mid ‘90s gives the record a slightly uncomfortable demeanour, as though it’s trying that little bit too hard to fit into such relatively tight constraints. His voice is exquisite, as ever—a sweet, whispery falsetto that hovers in the air like the string of a sky-borne kite — and the expansion of Songs Of Green Pheasant from solo project to full group line-up gives Semper more dynamics to play with, something he deploys well to reinforce the melancholy of the opening “Boats”.

But the gentle drizzle of ticking delays combines with airy reverb to make everything rather precious and churchy, as though Semper’s building a sarcophagus in which to inter his previous life. Lovely in small doses, Gyllyng Street feels slightly too syrupy and silken when taken in full. Jon Dale

Fat Cat CD

Soft Machine Legacy

Gyllyng Street

With Gyllyng Street, Songs Of Green Pheasant’s Duncan Semper lifts the home recording veil that cast such a welcoming spell over his gorgeous, self-titled debut album

Steam

MoonJune CD

Numero D'Vol Numero D'Vol MoonJune CD

This pair of releases paint a portrait of the current musical inclinations of former Soft Machine bassist Hugh Hopper, who's present on both.

Interestingly, Soft Machine Legacy's explorations are more in keeping with the Soft Machine albums which followed the departures of first Hopper (1973) and then Mike Ratledge (1976). Erstwhile Softs Hopper, John Marshall (drums), and John Etheridge (guitar) are joined by saxophonist/flutist Theo Travis who was recruited after Elton Dean's passing last year. But it's Hopper's singular bass tones that really tie this group back to the band referred to in their name.

The updated version of Ratledge's “Chloe and the Pirates” shows the differences in stark contrast. The original version utilized the studio as a key component, while the new version is a crisp recording by a quartet of accomplished players.

It's a far less cerebral and more performance-based result.

Hopper's new band, Numero D'Vol with Steve Franklin on keyboards, actually sounds more like Soft Machine than does Soft Machine Legacy. Drummer Charles Hayward and saxophonist Simon Picard round out the quartet, and the focus is squarely on improvisation. Each of the pieces has a unique identity anchored with rhythmic underpinnings. There are passages of ferocious instrumental dialogue ("On the Spot"), monolithic parade grooves ("Earwigs Enter"), and atmospheric washes ("Straight Away"). “Shovelfeet” slivers time

with the hypnotic time shifting of windshield wipers in and out of sync with music on the car radio.

David Greenberger

Splatter 3 + N Clear the Club Rastascan CD

While personnel shift from track to track here, the fundamental Splatter 3 is a constant with Dave Barrett on saxophones, Myles Boisen playing double-neck guitar/bass and Gino Robair on drums and a collection of electric keyboards. Most tracks have the Splatter 3 + 3 with Michaelle Goerlitz on percussion, Len Paterson on guitar, and Dave Slusser on bass clarinet. A number of other musicians—saxophonist Sheldon Brown, J.A. Deane doing live sampling, trumpeter Chris Grady, “sona”-ist Mark Growden, bassist Jake Rivera, guitarist John Shiurba, and bassist Ellie Schoenwetter— add overdubs and there are a few short trio recordings added later.

The roots of the style are in Miles Davis’s electric period—the only official cover is “Selim,” from Live-Evil (though “Peter Herley Pt.III” is very near Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman”) . The overlay is central, whether there are overdubs or not.

The music thrives on its incongruity, on cool guitar noise and overheated saxophones, on sudden Latin beats and funk riffs, whether delivered by horns or synths, on blandly pretty guitar chords and sudden squeals, on the combination and separation of the acoustic and the electronic, on the groove and chaos. The band

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values equally the coming together and the coming apart, like the popping bass groove of “Selim” that seems utterly unattached to the rest of the band. Other highlights include “Butter Churner (3/4/5),” which feels like a ’70s TV anthem with highly distorted guitar, and the truly strange “Glitchfarben” which has just the core trio emulating the random grit of early electronic music.

Meanings arise here in the friction of compound methodologies, and it’s starting how often Splatter 3+ N can deliver its mixed messages in around two minutes. Stuart Broomer

Stevens, Siegel & Ferguson Trio Get Out Of Town Imaginary CD

The Fonda / Stevens Group Trio

Not Two CD

In Transit

Moving Stills Unit CD

Michael Jefry Stevens / Miles Griffith Quartet Songbook no label CD

Katie Bull

The Story, So Far Corn Hill Indie CD + DVD

Many musicians work in a variety of groupings, but there aren’t many who do it as effectively as pianist Michael Jefry Stevens. His skill-set covers a broad swath of contemporary performance and his imagination is at home in many different contexts.

These recent CDs present him as co-leader, collectivist and sideman, working through degrees of tradition and spontaneous interaction. Stevens’ trio with drummer Jeff “Siege” Siegel and bassist Tim Ferguson has long been his most “mainstream” outlet, a post-bop piano trio that draws much of its repertoire from standards, jazz and Broadway.

Together since circa 1990, the group rarely works together these days, but there’s still evident empathy. It shows in the concentrated drive and pointed dissonance of “Get out of Town” and the ballad interplay of “Crazy He Calls Me.” Siegel and Ferguson often emphasize density and power, but they’re just as adept at light ornamentation.

The Fonda/Stevens band plays a freer jazz, liberating Stevens’ expressionist intensity. It’s been a quintet and a quartet through various incarnations, usually including Herb Robertson, but also with Mark Whitecage, Paul Smoker and Daunik Lazro as guests. Here it’s a Trio, with regular drummer Harvey Sorgen, recorded in performance in Poland with emphasis on Stevens and Fonda’s compositions. “Andrea” has tremendous depth, perhaps Stevens’ ballad art at its most fully developed.

In Transit is utterly different again, a free-improvising quartet with Stevens joining Swiss saxophonist Jürg Solothurnmann, the two supported by bassist Daniel Studer and drummer Dieter Ulrich. The group has a gift for brevity (tracks range 100 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

from 2:12 to 5:57) and a talent for coloristic improvisation and pure sonic play, but “Canto Lunatico” is as intense as anything on any of the CDs here, Solothurnmann stretching towards energy music with Stevens' percussive furies in close pursuit.

I usually think of Stevens as a harmonic abstractionist, but he shows great flexibility in his work with singers. His band with vocalist Miles Griffith is a funky celebration, full of vital immediacy and expansive lyrics.

Stevens is responsible for lyrics and melodies, revealing a fresh facet of his talents, and Griffith contributes tremendous spirit, whether tender or manic. He’s always involved, a real improviser with a gritty voice that he will stretch to its limits, invoking Babs Gonzales and Dizzy Gillespie. There are terrific performances all around-by Stevens, saxophonist Sue Terry and guitarist Kevin McNeal as well as bassist Peter Herbert and drummer Rob Garcia. The release of the 2000 performance heralds the launch of a working quartet with Herbert and Dieter Ulrich, an entertaining unit that could give all involved deservedly higher profiles.

Katie Bull is (literally) octaves beyond most current jazz singers, both in her taste in sidemen—Stevens, Fonda, Sorgen and sometimes Frank Kimbrough and Matt Wilson— and her sometimes astonishing technique–e.g., the skittering scat at the end of “Topanga Canyon.”

At times she engages the band in contrapuntal improvising that makes the most of her talents and theirs.

Given that, though, The Story, So Far seems more ambitious than realized, from its bonus DVD (sort of “Mummers Take Manhattan”) to often over-active vocals., delivered with exaggerated affect. Stuart Broomer

Jeremy Strachan

The Heart of the Matter Standard Form CD

Toronto saxophonist Jeremy Strachan has build a sterling reputation as one half of Feuermusik and as a part of the vibes-driven, High Llamas-like ensemble, the Hylozoists, not to mention his previous membership in indie rock groups like Rockets Red Glare and the Sea Snakes. Strachan has also been the go-to-guy for groups like the Deadly Snakes, the Constantines and the Golden Dogs. However, knowing these associations won’t prepare you for The Heart of the Matter.

Conceived as an auditory response to four of Toronto artist Katie Bond Pretti’s abstract drawings, Strachan has referred to these solo pieces as uncollaborative collaborations in the sense that they are dialogues with silent works of visual art. However, Strachan believes he and Bond Pretti share an aesthetic commonality, as both his improvisations on alto and tenor saxophone as well as bass clarinet and her drawings of charcoal, oil stick, graphite and ball-point pen, are process-oriented. But while Bond Pretti’s drawings (like the ones on the CD's cover) explode with a profusion of tangled, emphatic lines underscored by a palpable kinetic energy, Strachan’s replies are more stark and linear, sustained, flowing patterns that fully exploited the large

reverberant and cavernous acoustic space of Toronto’s Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery. If Strachan’s approach is severe and unwavering, it is hardly monochromatic. On parts three and four of this suite, he employs glottal stops and tongue smacks that in their articulation come the closest to echoing Bond Pretti’s tangential pieces. Aside from those extended techniques, this disc is free of the usual technical trickery and showboating that befalls many solo sax discs, preferring instead to stick judiciously to the album’s theme.

With The Heart of the Matter, Strachan announces himself not only as a major talent in the Canadian improv scene, but one that should be taken seriously in a global context.

Richard Moule

Sunburned Hand of the Man Fire Escape

Smalltown Supersound CD

Sunburned Circle The Blaze Game Conspiracy CD

Sunburned Hand of the Man has always operated as a true collective, altering the membership of its touring and recording incarnations depending on individual musicians' availability. It should come as no surprise then that the group welcomes collaboration with other established artists with open arms.

Fire Escape, the band’s debut for Norway’s Smalltown Supersound imprint, finds Sunburned sharing the studio with electronic musician

Kieran Hebden. In his work, Hebden has consistently toyed with blurring genre lines, whether with the dubby post-rock of Fridge, the forwardlooking electronica of Four Tet or his recent free-jazz-and-electronics pairing with Steve Reid. It makes sense then that he would be a natural fit for Sunburned, a band built upon the foundation of free improvisation and for whom genre lines have always seemed more like launching pads for experimentation than parameters to be hemmed in by. There is no information included as to how the record was recorded, but the note that the disc was “envisioned, produced, mixed and edited” by Hebden lends credence to the theory that he assembled these sounds using a variety of Sunburned samples. As one would expect given Hebden's presence, Fire Excape is more taut and sculpted than Sunburned’s usual loosey-goosey epics. John Maloney’s drumming has been stacked into chunky bricks of percussion while the rest of the band’s freeform mind expansion is edited into chill slides and moody snarls of sound. Crinkled saxophone lines, alternately solemn and squalling guitar and keyboard and piano flavoring all coalesce to into a whole that should succeed in expanding the listening tastes of fans of both Hebden and Sunburned.

The Blaze Game is the title of Conspiracy Records’ release by Sunburned Circle, a meeting of the minds of Sunburned and Finland’s equally prolific and genre-hoping Circle. Beginning with the slow-burning experimentalism of “Majava,” the album quickly ups the freakiness

quotient with layers of clattering percussion, ominous bursts of keyboards and wordless chants. By the time the third track, “Vuoren Valloitus” rolls around a steady groove has been found, with both groups steaming along at top improvisational speed. Of the 11 players, six of them are credited with either drums or percussion and by far it’s rhythm that dominates this set of tunes.

Even when at their least grounded, both groups rely on percussion to propel the songs forward. Kraut, jazz, free-rock and no-hold-barred improv are all attempted and with equal levels of comfort. It’s a rare wonder to find two bands as well-suited to collaboration on such boundaryless music but Sunburned Circle have created the sound of a perfect oddball party where no one feels out of place. Ethan Covey

Supermayer Save the World Kompakt CD

Techno, like punk and hip hop, tends to be defined within extremely narrow parameters. Tinker with the formula and you’re in danger of committing stylistic heresy, becoming a sell-out or, more rarely, a part of a misunderstood visionary vanguard.

But so restrictive is each idiomatic box that it only takes a little musical muscle flexing to break the constraints. With Save The World boasting a few carefully positioned horns, the occasional chime of a glockenspiel and the odd Shalamar-esque schmoozer (“Cocktails For Two”), Michael Mayer and Superpitcher

a.k.a. Supermayer seem to have twisted the knickers of many within the beat loving fraternity, while others hail them as the caped crusaders depicted on the album’s artwork, rescuing us from the relentless pulse of four-to-the-floor. But, ironically, this album’s finest moments are when the dynamic duo adheres to the recipe upon which their deserved reputations are built. The euphoric bliss of “Please Sunshine” and the epic squelch and synth soar of “Two Of Us” (albeit with those chimes) push the techno template just far enough, without breaking the back of the beat; both wonderfully poised and structured creations. Less rewarding are the instances when Supermayer make a break for the border, embarking on ill-advised excursions to planet pop that become residencies in MOR. The Madness meets Kraftwerk, Carry-On-Computer of “Us And Them” and “The Art of Letting Go” in particular, with its robotic cod-reggae skank and titular refrain, verge on the inane. But there is no denying that Save The World has been put together with a great deal of love, care and enthusiasm and when it works its breathtakingly good (check out also “The Lonesome King” which sounds like a lazy day take on Coil’s moon musick).

Maybe the next time these two get together to save us they can temper the diversification programme just a little; for then they shall be invincible.

Spencer Grady

John Surman

The Spaces in Between ECM CD

SIGNAL to NOISE #48 | 101

photo: Linda Harris

SPECIAL EVENT!

LEROY JENKINS: a celebration with Thomas Buckner, Flux Quartet, Wadada Leo Smith, Myra Melford & others

sponsored by The Brecht Forum's Neues Kabarett, the Brooklyn Public Library, Meet the Composer & American Composers Orchestra

Saturday, February 9, 2007, 7pm $10 ($7 students & seniors) at the Brooklyn Public Library's new Dr. S. Stevan Dweck Center for Contemporary Culture Central Library, 10 Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn Tickets available at www.Smarttix.com or by phone at 212-868-4444 Made possible with the support of The New York State Music Fund, established by the New York State Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, and with public funds from the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs and NYSCA.

The Spaces In Between has all the hallmarks of a “typical” ECM release: a dark, shadowy, indistinct photo on the cover, non-American musicians (in this case, Brits), and unusual instrumentation (for most jazz albums, anyway) -- saxophone/bass clarinet, acoustic upright bass, and a string quartet. The first half of the program is a little on the dry, rather slow side, almost Euro-Gothic (except for the soulfully deep 'n' woody-toned, Vaughan Williams-like strings of “Wayfarers All"). But, after an achingly beautiful piece for solo violin (all music composed by John Surman, btw), things brighten considerably. “Now See” features Surman's graceful, full-toned, and terpsichorian soprano takes on an oboe-like hue, buoyed by the strings' trad-folk-derived rhythms.

“Mimosa” utilizes swirling, modal North African-type melodies, his baritone singing like someone calling the faithful to Prayer. Superficially, Spaces is in the Third Stream vein -- but unlike some Third Stream music from the '50s/'60s, the string players improvise, despite the fact that frequent Surman bassist Chris Laurence has a classical music pedigree. On the closer, “Leaving The Harrow,” this sextet manages to sound like a chamber orchestra.

As an album, Spaces takes a while to really take off, but like a good movie that starts slow but kicks in to high gear a third of the way through, it pays off in grand fashion. Mark Keresman

Territory Band 6 with Fred Anderson Collide

Okka Disc CD

This explosive outdoor concert, recorded at Chicago's Millennium Park on August 24, 2006, sets the keening tenor sax of Fred Anderson against Ken Vandermark’s raging 12-piece mob of improvisers. Although there are five tracks, composer Vandermark considers Collide a unified whole, and the architecture holds together and makes sense while sheltering a wild sense of freedom. Anderson is used sparingly, but that is perhaps just as well, as he hangs on extra tightly to his stock yodeling riffs in the tumult.

The timing of his solo entrance, after ominous thunderheads of ensemble passages and a long spasm of wild group improvisation, is a masterpiece of tension and release. An urgent, muscular chart for the entire band follows Anderson’s moment in the spotlight, pushing the momentum further and opening the way for a stack of inspired solos. At the navel of the piece is a tense episode featuring Lasse Marhaug’s electronics. A distant hum, like a janitor vacuuming a bank carpet at 2 a.m., expands into clouds of inky distortion and a flapping sound, like tape slapping off of a reel.

As percussive blats and blips flash within this inchoate cloud, a heavy charge begins to build. Suddenly, Jim Baker’s piano and Paul Lytton’s drums snap the band into acoustic lucidity — another dramatic stroke. Anderson returns near the piece’s climax to engage Vandermark in a two-tenor tussle that quickly sucks the remaining reeds and brass in an eel-like mass.

The fury coalesces into a suitably 102 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

declamatory melodic statement, then erupts in more spasms of coruscating free jazz. The bottom drops out as Anderson and Vandermark stroll and tolling chords back them up. If you’re not offended by Anderson’s added-attraction status, there’s a lot to appreciate here. You can follow the spiraling particle trails from this highenergy collision of post-bop big band jazz and the European avant-garde, or just enjoy a high-energy outdoor happening, captured superbly on CD. Lawrence Cosentino

David Torn Prezens ECM CD

Guitarist David Torn made his mark as a fusion player, known for his unique soundscapes, as well as considerable technical prowess. As his career has progressed, Torn has racked up an impressive list of guest appearances, collaborations (like PolyTown with Mick Karn and Terry Bozzio), solo records (like Cloud About Mercury and Door X) and soundtracks. Over the years, Torn’s experimental side has blossomed significantly, particularly under the guise of his alter ego, SPLaTTeRCeLL. Arguably, his most important non-solo work has been in league with saxophonist Tim Berne, in the guise of mastering engineer and producer. Specifically, Torn “produced, manipulated, processed and compiled” Science Friction, Berne’s 2002 master stroke. When word spread that Torn was to release his first record on ECM since Mercury and that it would have the same personnel as Science Friction, with Torn in for guitarist Marc Ducret, one had to wonder whether this would be anything more than a sequel. On the contrary, Prezens, while utilizing the creative minds of Berne, keyboardist Craig Taborn and drummer Tom Rainey, emerges solely from Torn’s wonderfully twisted blueprints, with the players serving as vital ingredients but not the locus of the movements.

One could argue that such relatively sparse use of their talents is a shame, but based on the overall dense sonic frontiers, their participation level works. To be sure, Prezens is a mixed success, one that thrives on its experimentalism, meticulous, oddball craftsmanship and generous studio manipulations (acoustic jazz purists go home) that refuses to stay in one place for too long. For instance, the nine-minute opening “Ak,” is a fitting representation of the evolving nature of the pieces, with swirling soundwaves commencing that move into patches of blues organ, groove-centricity, ominous guitar shrapnel riffage and a smooth landing. Yet arguably the record’s most memorable pieces are those that utilize the core group’s contributions, such as the hypnotic stomp of “Bulbs,” the absolutely hyperkinetic, super-processed, “Sink,” the dramatic “Neck Deep In The Harrow. . . ,” driven by Rainey’s pulsing beats, Berne’s staccato clusters, Taborn’s airy Rhodes and Torn’s distorted flag-waving and the record’s finale, “Transmit Regardless,” with Rainey’s paradiddles coaxing the parting dance. With all of the sonic journeys present, it is important to note that Torn’s guitar is just as es-

sential to the mix as any of is studio trickery. Torn throws down some impressive steel-string on the folk blues of “Rest & Unrest,” as well as the Indian-flavored “Miss Place, The Mist. . .,” or the tremolo-bar spaces of “Ring For Endless Travel.” What might be considered more or less “electronica” sound pieces for lack of better verbiage, Torn uses his guitar also as an orchestra on the fairly conventional “Them Buried Standing,” as well as the dirge of “Ever More Other,” driven by Rainey’s monstrous backbeat. Frankly, it is a surprise that something as eccentric and disjointed as this record would come out on ECM, as it seems more fitting for Berne’s Screwgun boutique or Thirsty Ear. But no matter, for a glimpse of more or less uncatagorizable, post-modern instrumental music that sounds like nothing else out there, Torn has provided another manifestation of his unique vision.

Jay Collins

Torngat

You Could Be Alien8 CD

Much has been made of the fact that Montreal's cinematic, chamber-pop trio Torngat includes the French horn of Pietro Amato, who along with being a member of post-rockers Bell Orchestre, has also toured and recorded with Arcade Fire. It begs the question of why the lush, rich sonorities of the French horn, which has had long history as a solo instrument in classical music, has not been used more often in pop music.

That’s not to single out Amato, who

also sings as well as playing trumpet and an assortment of keyboards, and ignore his colleagues, drummer Julien Poissant and keyboardist, Mathieu Charboneau, who also triple and quadruple on multiple other instruments, but it's hard to resist pointing out how this brass instrument’s wonderfully, majestic, higher-octave tonalities give Torngat’s impeccable compositions a sound that it is at once contemporary and yet from a bygone era.

Aside from the French horn, this has largely to do with Torngat’s calliopelike use of old school keyboards like the Wurlitzer and Hammond organ and the harpsichord, which infuses You Could Be with a lush, orchestral, expansive sound, evoking the playful joie de vivre of a 19th Century fair and the elegant formality of a classical chamber group. But before you accuse this mini-orchestra of having a precious, overwrought sense of gentility, Poissant’s hard hitting drums will quickly disabuse you of that notion.

In other words, this group still knows how to make some rowdy noise.

In the end, the underlining musical message of You Could Be is, as the title suggests, that of transformation.

With their deft musicianship and seemingly infinite sonic palette, this trio can be anything they want to be.

Richard Moule

Trio Derome Guilbeault Tanguay

Étymologie: Live L'off Festival de Jazz Montréal Ambiances Magnétiques DVD

Lately some members of Montreal’s

endlessly inventive Ambiances Magnétiques collective have been turning to songbooks written south of their border. Last year saw a tribute to Charles Mingus by bassist Normand Guilbeault and clarinetist Robert Marcel Lepage’s excellent Pee Wee Russell album, as well as the second CD by the trio of Guilbeault, Jean Derome and Pierre Tanguay, which included piece by Sonny Clark, Duke Ellington, Lee Konitz and Cole Porter. The latter's new release is a live DVD that captures a strong set featuring compositions by Ellington, Eric Dolphy, Lennie Tristano and Fats Waller, as well as a piece by pianist Misha Megelberg, who certainly deserves to be in such company.

Derome himself is no stranger to jazz standards – his longstanding Évidence trio (with Tanguay and bassist Pierre Cartier, who’s proven to be something of a crooner as well in the last couple years) is built from the Thelonious Monk repertoire.

The new trio started out performing original compositions (and two Derome pieces are included here), but it’s more than welcome to hear a band this strong taking on the classics. And if their The Feeling of Jazz lacked a little oomph, in front of an audience they are solid and graceful, and the set list is wellchosen. Derome takes on Ellington’s “Fleurette Africaine” and Waller’s “Jitterbug Waltz” (hands down two of the loveliest melodies of their era) on flute, and plays a confident saxophone on Dolphy’s “Miss Ann” and “245” (another nice choice) and Guilbeault is lyrical (if a bit under-miked) throughout. But the main reason to

watch (as opposed to simply listening) this set is Tanguay. Like New York’s Tom Rainey, he is subtle yet always pushing; his finesse is easy to miss on record, but watching him just affirms how on his toes he always is.

The video is well-shot, with multiple cameras, soft white lighting and very good sound, a standout release in the label’s ever-growing catalogue.

Kurt Gottschalk

Trio X

The Train and The River: A Musical Odyssey CIMPview DVD

With home theater on the rise and the continued emphasis in the music biz on downloads vs. physical media, some record labels have sought new ways to embrace a changing marketplace. Enhanced CDs with DVD content are becoming more prevalent, with even small jazz labels getting into the live-concerts-on-DVD game. The Cadence family is one of the great go-your-own-way labels, having fostered creative music for decades. Their relationship with the dynamic Trio X, the improvised music trio featuring tenor saxophonist/trumpeter Joe McPhee, bassist Dominic Duval and drummer Jay Rosen, runs deep, so it is only fitting that the first CIMP DVD release (on the appropriately titled CIMPview), would be a film focused on the trio. The hourlong presentation was filmed by Lithuanian director Dmitrij Veller and his crew, as they follow the trio around Vilnius and during a March, 2006 concert appearance. Taking its title from the Jimmy Giuffre composition,

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the package mixes concert footage with accompanying images of, you guessed it, railyards and a flowing river, supplemented by group interviews.

Despite that fact that this is a truly egalitarian musical partnership, the majority of the interview focuses on McPhee, with brief spots for Duval and Rosen. McPhee expounds on various subjects, but most importantly, the inspiration for his art. The commentary is quite pithy and revealing, with McPhee’s philosophy expressed in the form of his influences, his disdain for categorizations (like “Avant Garde” or “Free Jazz”), his love for music and playing it, as well as poetry and politics. For anyone looking to learn more about McPhee, it really is a must see and surely a way to gain a greater appreciation and understanding of this unique artist. As for the music, the majority of the pieces are soulful, spiritual ruminations on familiar themes like “My Funny Valentine” and Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman,” with a few moments of prickly improv to get the juices flowing. Unfortunately there is too much emphasis on artsy footage at the expense of the concert itself; while the performers are shown in action with excellent camera angles and close-ups, the focus rarely stays for long before an interview segment interrupts or pastoral visions of flowing water and a woman or cat walking over train tracks appear, with the music settling into an accompanying role. It certainly would have been better to see a full concert performance followed by interview segments. Perhaps this is sitting in the can, waiting for the special edition release? Minor quibbling aside, with so few examples of visual documentation of this amazing music, this DVD is a valuable document and a serious treat. Jay Collins

True West

Hollywood Holiday Revisited Atavistic CD

A northern California band lumped in with the Los Angeles' “paisley underground,” True West formed in the early '80s, released two LPs and an EP, and disbanded with the death of bassist Kevin Staydohar in 1987. Listening to Revisited -- a collection of their first two albums in their entirety, plus unreleased demos produced by Television's Tom Verlaine -- I've got to say (as someone who had their original albums back when): Ain't hindsight wonderful? True West's stuff has aged better than some of their contemporaries (naming no names), whose earliest recordings were great before heading downhill fast, quality-wise. While True West shared the 1965-67 psychedelicpop influences of their peers (Byrds, Barrett-era Pink Floyd, Moby Grape, etc.), the sound of mid/late-'70s underground guitar rock -- i.e., Television -- had as big an impact. While not imitators, guitarists Russ Tolman and Richard McGrath had a similarly ringing/chiming/clanging style descended from Verlaine and Lloyd (TV's six-stringers). In a way, True West remind me the most of San Francisco's Moby Grape -- moody, overcast melodies that stick with you; urgent, earnest vocals; striking guitar harmonies that synthesize aspects of folk, blues, country, what-ever; 104 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

conciseness, and a sense of vim and vigor. Alas, in the mid-'80s, True West didn't have a chance, great as they were -- too melodic & polished for punks, not cute-quirky enough for new wave pop, too lean 'n' mean for mainstream radio. But never mind, Hollywood Holiday Revisited is a dandy, 80-minute hunk of distinctive, potent, jangly guitar-rock, regardless of year-of-origin. Mark Keresman

McCoy Tyner Quartet

McCoy Tyner Music CD

A black-and-white portrait of a power-suited McCoy Tyner, face frozen in a defiant crease, clearly announces this CD’s no-bullshit contents. Deep into the Indian summer of an epic career, Tyner appears for the first time on his own label, McCoy Tyner Music, playing a set of his signature tunes with the superheavyweight support of Joe Lovano, Christian McBride and Jeff “Tain” Watts. At an age when many musicians settle into schtick, Tyner is still a mix of monumentality and wildfire. He can go off unpredictably, as he does in his Monkish intro to “Blues on the Corner” and obligatory solo finish, “For All We Know.” In the latter, he jumps from a tender invocation to frantic chords that rush after the melody like a farmer after a slaughtered chicken.

Mostly, though, he strides through these predominately mid-tempo strolls in epic mode, digging in with a deliberate, dogged energy. The group’s gravitas even infuses the saucy “Blues on the Corner” and a golden, relaxed “Search for Peace,” which makes eloquent allowances for weariness. “Walk Spirit Talk Spirit,” once Tyner’s most joyful paean to life, is now almost granitic. Lovano takes the center of gravity to low register, transposing the two-note intro of the tune’s sunburst chorus down to bedrock. On “Sama Layuca,” Tyner and Lovano throw themselves at Watts’ ticking, metronome-like groove like eagles into a blank window.

The group takes a quicker rush at “Passion Dance,” where the tandem of Lovano and Tyner really mesh.

Tuned in to each other’s technical mastery and deep reserves of soul, they’re like two huge steaks on one plate. McBride provides the purple pulse and stabbing solos the occasion demands, and Watts balances power and restraint to perfection.

Lawrence Cosentino

Gebhard Ullmann

New Basement Research Soul Note CD

With well over 30 records under his belt, reedist Gebhard Ullmann’s 50th year finds him as busy as ever, splitting his time between Berlin and New York. Ullmann’s discography includes numerous wonderful ensembles such as his Clarinet Trio, his big band project, the cooperative Conference Call and the intermittently active Basement Research group (check out the marvelous Kreuzberg Park East on Soul Note).

Ullmann’s fall 2005 meeting with a new quintet under the Basement Research banner, consisting of Ullmann, soprano/baritone saxophonist

Julian Argüelles, trombonist Steve Swell and the rhythm team of bassist John Hebert and drummer Gerald Cleaver provides is the opportunity to hear Ullmann’s continued development and refinement of various compositions from his extensive book, some on their third or forth recasting. The seven compositions highlight Ullmann’s stylistic aims, namely, a propulsive groove, polyphonic front-line interplay, shifting time signatures and strategies for haughty improvs.

Such is the case for the bluesy soul of “Gospel,” the highlight of which is Ullmann’s moving bass clarinet and Swell’s mutework, as well as the tango-tinged “D. Nee No,” with its intertwining low-tones of Argüelles’ bari and Ullmann’s bass clarinet giving the piece its nucleus.

The three-horn front line is splendid throughout, whether ping-ponging their way through a tricky Ullmann passage or taking it out on their own, though as usual, Swell’s presence serves as a lightening rod. Ullmann and Swell’s partnership is relatively recent, and their excellent Desert Songs and Other Landscapes (CIMP) is highlight of each man’s discography, with two cuts from that record appearing here. First, “Seven 9-8” presents its slippery elasticity and groove-making with Ullmann ripping it up on both tenor and bass clarinet, while “Desert … Bleue … East” is a lovely lament, highlighted by Argüelles’ soaring soprano and some of Ullmann and Swell’s most sensitive playing on record. But really, this is a group experience that skyrockets

during its blustery horn exchanges that butt heads with gnarly grooves, such as on the opening ramble of “Dreierlei” or the concluding stomp of “Almost Twenty-Eight,” lead by its jagged vamp and Ullmann’s lofty tenor. Though Ullmann’s greatest strength is as a writer and band leader, his performances on both bass clarinet and tenor saxophone are key aspects of this record’s potency and further establishes his credentials as an expressive improviser. Jay Collins

Various Artists

Black Mirror: Reflections in Global Musics Dust to Digital CD

The “black mirror” in the title of journalist and musician Ian Nagoski’s compilation of vintage recordings of musics from around the world is the stone, shellac and carbon surface of the 78 r.p.m. disks that were manufactured between the two world wars. If the premise of a anthology of music from around the world recorded between 1918 and 1955 seems initially like a broad or extravagant one, Nagoski takes responsibility for his own selections and orderings, seeing in them not some scientific or anthropological grouping of sounds that are “objectively” connected and ready to be analyzed, but rather a series of lateral, intimate, contingent connections produced by chance, pleasure, repetition and the marketplace. Thus a lovely bagpipe track by Scotts Guardman Henry Forsyth from the 1930s morphs into

a South Indian nagasvaram track into a West African rhumba from the 1950s into a Polish gypsy wedding music track. The listener is forced to confront the mix as a series of human sounds, all discovered

by Nagoski no more than a thirty minute drive from his hometown of Baltimore, and costing a total of $125. What is revealed then is Nagoski’s taste and imagination, both of which are rather exquisite, as well as a series of trajectories into a variety of musics that the listener may or may not be familiar with, for further investigation and enjoyment. The blueprint for this kind of activity, as Nagoski points out, are archivist/compilers like Harry Smith, who created historically definitive collections of music that are also highly personal montages of their own record collections. The difference here is that Nagoski presents a path through a whole world of sound rather than a particular region or culture. It’s a risky venture, but the intention here is not to sum up anything but to create a path, and the path of Black Mirror is a delightful one. Marcus Boon

Various Artists

Zanzibara, Volume 3: Ujaamaa, the 1960's Sound of Tanzania Buda CD

Bi Kidude

Zanzibara, Volume 4: The Diva of Zanzibari Buda CD

Volume's 3 and 4 of Paris-based

Buda Records' ongoing Zanzibara series offer two different takes on the music of the East African coast, the music emanating from Zanzibar, Mombasa, Dar es Salaam and other ports of call. Over 17 tracks, the five “jazz bands” on Vol. 3's The 1960s Sounds of Tanzania (all released between 1968 and 1973) offer fairly uniform but lovely, lilting Afro-pop.

Guitar, horn and percussion based, with lots of vocal give and take, the music of the Jamhuri Jazz Band, the Morogoro Jazz Band, and the others is mellow and extremely laid-back, a testament to the casual lifestyle of the coastal region. Chiming, twining electric guitars are the signature sound; it's a fairly short leap from here to King Sunny Ade's later, more complex recordings, (although he was across the continent in Nigeria), especially on tracks like the Atomic Jazz Band's “Salamu Zako Nimezipata,” where they almost mimic a steel guitar. Oddities occasionally emerge from the sun-soaked stew: the trumpet line from the Nuta Jazz Band's “Dada Nihurumie” suddenly takes on a mariachi flavor, while the guitars on other tracks sound vaguely Hawaiian.

In contrast, the 10 tracks from Bi Kidude on The Diva of Zanzibari Music (recorded between 1988 and 2006) are musically and spiritually akin to the music of North Africa.

Kidude, who is now 93 and the matriarch of taarab music, sings with great authority and suppleness, but always fully within the structure of the traditional musics that she is a living, vital link to. Traditional taarab songs, ritual songs for weddings and

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songs of initiation for young women (msondo) all flow from Kidude and the crack Zanzibari musicians she surrounds herself with. Instruments run from violin, accordion, percussion and 'ud to more regional instruments like the qanun, sanduku, kidumbak and rika; virtually everyone sings in chorus.

Diversity abounds: the manic percussion, hand-claps and trilling voices of “Msondo” sound worlds away from the stately Arabian classicism of “Kijiti,” performed with Afro Arab Grooves. Thanks to the folks at Buda, another couple of links in the musical mapping of the world now available, and we're all the richer for it.

Carl Hanni

Tom Verlaine and Jimmy Rip

Music for Experimental Film Kino DVD

Guitarists Tom Verlaine and Jimmy Rip have been taking this show on the road for the better part of a decade, accompanying experimental films from the 1920s with music that is decidedly anachronistic and not terribly experimental, but is also consistently engaging without distracting from the marvelous movies. The two men have been playing together off and on since 1981, when Rip appeared on Verlaine’s essential Dreamtime, but the music here sounds closer to Warm And Cool, an instrumental record that Tom made without Jimmy in the early 90s. They play bright, multifaceted melodies in tones that owe a lot to early 60s guitar groups like the Ventures and the Shadows. The music occasionally comments directly on the screen action, but more often sets a pace appropriate to the action and maintains it in a form of parallel play. Finger-ganderers take note – the guitarists are invisible throughout.

But the films more than compensate.

Whether it’s the eerie play of light and shadow in Watson and Webber’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” or the juxtaposition of mechanical and biological activity in Léger’s “Ballet Mécanique,” or the radical white and black patterns of Richter’s “Rhythmus 21,” they are infused with the sense of discovery that can only come about when a totally new medium first appears; you could play the DVD with the sound off and still come away amazed. It’s about time someone put this out, and I hope it does well enough that similar projects by the likes of Califone and Cul De Sac make it to market. Bill Meyer

Miroslav Vitous

Universal Syncopations II ECM CD

Eberhard Weber

Stages of a Long Journey ECM CD

In the sciences, it is not uncommon for different teams to pursue similar research and reach parallel conclusions. This season, two European bassists offer new ECM releases with a remarkable number of strengths and weaknesses in common.

Miroslav Vitous’ album is a followup to his first ECM recording in a decade. Unlike Universal Syncopations I, where none of the contributing per106 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

sonnel were ever in the same room together, II is more of a typical band recording. The Czech bassist's core trio features saxophonist Gary Campbell and drummer Gerald Cleaver, with Bob Mintzer (tenor sax, bass clarinet), Randy Brecker (trumpet), Daniele di Bonaventura (bandoneon), Vesna Vasko-Caceres (voice) and Adam Nussbaum (drums) appearing on occasion throughout the eight-track, 52-minute album. Vitous is credited for double bass but also l“orchestral and choral arrangements” effected through Vitous’ decades-long interest in computer music and sound patches. His tone and articulation on the bass are still remarkable and the songwriting is, though polished, not that far from his 1969 Infinite Search debut. Campbell, stepping into the role traditionally filled by Jan Garbarek, emulates that Norwegian’s tone but with splashes of Joe Farrell.

Cleaver meshes well with Vitous in the rhythm section, particularly since this is a more open context than he might prefer. The changing instrumentation relieves much of the possible tedium though it must be stressed that the fewer players involved, the better Vitous sounds (check out the three tracks with just Campbell and Cleaver or the trio cut with Vitous, Mintzer and Brecker). But there's one instrument that brings the album down repeatedly. Vitous’ liberal use of computerized strings and choral voices, and even the occasional audience chatter sample, barges into the pieces too often. The effect brings to mind Fred Astaire, through computer manipulation, dancing with a vacuum cleaner.

Eberhard Weber’s Stages of a Long Journey documents a concert staged for his 65th birthday in his hometown of Stuttgart. Weber is another unique voice on the instrument (and came up in Europe during the same early ‘60s period) and he too convenes an allstar band – vibraphonist Gary Burton, saxophonist Jan Garbarek, pianist Rainier Brüninghaus and percussionist Marilyn Mazur. Also participating in the concert is another orchestral element – the SWR Radio Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart. The edge has to be given to Weber for at least using live musicians in this capacity. But much like the Vitous album, the larger classical ensemble is frankly unnecessary, obscuring such Weber classics as “Silent Feet” and “The Colors of Chloë”; luckily the Symphony appears only sparingly throughout the almost 80-minute recording. And like Vitous, the fewer players Weber has around him, the better he sounds. The quintet pieces are solid but the two duets, one with Garbarek (“Seven Movements”, taken from Weber’s 1988 Orchestra album) and the other with guest pianist Wolfgang Dauner (Jerome Kern’s “Yesterdays”, played by the pair in Dauner’s ‘60s trio!) are the album’s highlights. And continuing that thought, perhaps the most poignant moment of the entire concert features the birthday boy in his birthday suit, solo for just over three minutes on “Air”. Andrey Henkin

Christian Vogel

Double Deux / Delicado Station 55 CD

While his former partner in Supercollider, Jamie Lidell, has been off becoming white soul brother number one, Vogel has scoring music for a dance floor of a different kind, namely for Swiss choreographer, Gilles Jobin. So far, Vogel has composed music for four of Jobin’s works, and this double-CD contains the scores for two of them, 2004’s “Delicado” and 2006’s “Double Deux”. The latter is a single, 33minute piece of minimal glitchtronics, packed with the usual percussive collection of digital clicks, blips, cuts, whirls, bass pulses and humid drones. The former possesses a similar sonic aesthetic, except that is divided into eight tracks and is double the length. So what differentiates these works from one another, or in fact, from the glut of microtonal techno out there?

Well, “Double Deux” finds Vogel useing the multiple tracks to create more of dynamic range of mood and sounds that flit between the foreboding and the playful, while “Delicado” has more a subdued, soothing tone to it. In terms of how they differ from the surfeit of other glitchtronica, Vogel’s ace up his sleeve is his sense of humour.

In spite of the austere nature of much of “Delicado” and “Double Deux”. there is an impish spirit that runs through these soundtracks that saves them from being too pofaced, particularly when Vogel slyly inserts briefs 4/4 house grooves amidst these insectarium-like soundscapes As with any compositions for modern dance, it is impossible know how well these soundtracks synchronize with the choreography until you see it live. However, on the basis of listening to these challenging sounds alone, it is easy to imagine how challenging Jobin’s choreography would be for his dancers. That said, these two works stand individually and together as not only inventive pieces of sound art, but also as important contributions to the world of modern dance.

Richard Moule

David Watson

Fingering an Idea XI CDx2

You can’t stop the drone. It will go on, with or without your approval.

It does not change, but remains suspended in time, resisting the flow of a world consumed by speed and

excess. The French philosopher Henri Bergson once wrote that true freedom perhaps lay in the ability to sustain perception, thereby removing it from the ordinary flow of time. Something similar seems to happen by way of the drone, in which so many thousands of oscillating waves are condensed by our ears into a single movement, static yet pregnant, tension without release. A drone, though, should not be seen as an end in itself. In fascinates in that it clears the ground for further excursions into the world of sound, slowly shedding layers as an onion does its skin. New Zealand-born and New York-based guitarist David Watson returns to activity this year with a double-disc collection of drone-based material titled Fingering an Idea, originally commissioned by Phill Niblock for XI Records. The album is divided into two instrument-specific suites, the first disc (“Dexter”) featuring the unusual choice of highland bagpipes and the second (“Sinister”) returning to Watson’s more time-honed guitar experiments. As others have noted, the “Dexter” selections are the most immediately ear-grabbing, using as many as six bagpipes at once to produce thick, headswirling drones of a previously unknown timbral quality. Watson follows Niblock’s use of primitive instruments like the didgeridoo to exploit the hypnotic, droning potential at their heart. In both live and multi-tracked settings, Watson and his cohorts make endlessly shimmering tones that, in their ascetic quality, recall the golden age of American minimalism. The disc’s most interesting moments occur when Watson indulges in the bagpipe’s more peculiar qualities, at times creating march-like rhythms that imperceptibly rise from the dense bed of sound (Track 2), at others experimenting with the effect of one’s breath swirling through the mouthpiece (Track 3). “Sinister” is based on an old tape of Watson’s dating from around 1987, reinterpreted and rerecorded in 2005.

Unfortunately, “Sinister” retains the first disc’s monotony but lacks the thrilling tonal colorings one had come to expect. Rather, many of its pieces begin with vaguely interesting acoustic passages of a line with John Fahey, only to be cut off by sparse, deeply resonant electric guitars that quash any hope of further progress. Each successive track seems

to approach this formula with little variation or energy. Throughout “Sinister,” the aimless wandering of Watson’s chords suggests that the idea has ceased to inspire him, not to mention us as listeners…

Seth Watter

Trevor Watts Jamie Harris Ancestry Entropy CD

Saxophonist Trevor Watts is a mainstay of the cutting-edge UK jazz/free improv sphere; Jamie Harris is a Brit percussionist (including congas, djembe, and darbouka) who's played with Watts since 1999.

Strangely, there are no credits listed on this release, but it sounds like Watts is playing alto & soprano saxophones. Ancestry presents a program of duets, but shelve the idea this is just another totally improvised free-for-all session. Here are 13 short (between two & seven minutes) Watts compositions, wherein Watts and Harris explore/craft an area where traditional African music, jazz, and, traditional British Isles music overlap. There are a lot of harmonious, swirling solos, propulsive rhythms, and fascinating grooves -- and despite their tidy conciseness, the compositions here seem longer than they really are, and I mean that in a positive way. Watts' tone is lithe, bright, with a bracing tartness, the aural equivalent to a glass of lemonade (without too much sugar and none of those artificial sweeteners) on a sweltering afternoon. Ancestry is top quality "world jazz," up there with the best stuff by Yusef Lateef, Adam Rudolph, and Don Cherry.

Mark Keresman

Ween

La Cucaracha Rounder CD

To call La Cucaracha a deranged album misses the point. Yes, it is totally fucking deranged, but after nine albums Dean and Gene Ween have developed the magical ability to transcend the normal, acceptable levels of weirdness and reach an entirely new realm of cognition. This is not weirdness for the sake of itself, but a new and enlightened mode of thought. These guys are dads now, and though they’re no longer hiding out in the basement, strapped-in to a Scotchgard®-powered bong

and drooling into the 4-Track, the long-term effects of said activities culminate here with ironic majesty.

It’s hard to get a grasp on the group’s reverse-Beatles transcendence. Dean and Gene are masters of any genre they choose to parody, be it country music, Jimmy Buffet-style dad rock, or raging Motorhead riffs. Nothing is sacred in the Ween canon, but rather than sink into the depths of mustached concentration and stonefaced virtuosity, they have mastered the art of waving their dicks in the wind (if you don’t get the reference, be sure to listen to Ween’s ’97 masterpiece, The Mollusk). What's more, they will sometimes sneak a truly great song into the silliness. The tunes on La Cucaracha are just as hilarious and bug-eyed as those on any of the group’s previous releases, but there is a subtly disturbing narrative lying just below the surface.

By way of simple impressionism, the album rides an emotional rollercoaster through the storms and stresses that bind any healthy relationship between a woman and a man. But this is no concept album. La Cucaracha’s songs scatter in every direction, swaying through such fertile terrain as the introductory ‘70s game show horn blasts of “Fiesta,” (courtesy of David Sanborn) or the country stomp of “Learnin’ to Love.” However, if you’re paying attention the album does tell a story and it is no coincidence that it is bookended by two party anthems, “Fiesta,” and the final, decadent cut, “Your Party.” Dean has gone on record to say that La Cucaracha is indeed a “party album.” But what exactly is being celebrated isn't clear.

The underlying subtext is as bold or disparate as you want it to be as songs, like “Sweetheart” and “Man and Woman” coalesce with impeccable songwriting and seemingly sincere sentiments... which can be more than a little suspect, coming from these guys. Other songs, like the cock rock war cry “With My Own Bare Hands,” and the slow and predatory ballad “Object” move at the pace of unapologetic male wish fulfillment. “Blue Balloon” is just good background music that’s crafted from the skewered pop sensibilities and drug-damaged glow of Ween’s musical vocabulary. At times La Cucaracha glides along, evoking the comfortable and glaringly bright production qualities of its predecessor, Quebec. But La Cucaracha is

SIGNAL to NOISE #48 | 107

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a much more ramped-up album that exemplifies this phase of the group’s career. Maturity is a factor in the group’s evolution, and Dean and Gene are definitely comfortable in their adult skins. Like the album’s title suggests, after 17 years, Ween just won’t go away. The group is going about its business, un-phased by the world, and that’s reason enough to celebrate. Chad Radford

Alan Wilkinson John Edwards Steve Noble Obliquity

Bo' Weavil CD

In the liner notes to this scorcher from this U.K. drum/bass/sax trio, critic Mike Gavin defines obliquity: “advancing obliquely, deviating from the straight; freedom from the humdrum constraints of time and place.” Without trying to linguistically spilt hairs with Gavin, there is little that's oblique about these mainly propulsive, high-energy workouts from these veterans of the British improv scene. In fact, this music's debt to freewheeling, free jazz touchstones from Albert Ayler and Charles Tyler to fellow European heavy hitters like Peter Brotzmann and Mats Gustafsson, is traceable and direct; a point duly noted by Gavin. And like those hard blowing antecedents, this trio shares the disposition of seeking an ecstatic state, unconstrained by time and place. That said, this trio doesn’t subscribe to the Borbetomagus school of bludgeoning sound. For example, the palatable swing of the title track breaks midway into some nice, cymbal on snare rubbing and then light, cymbal splashes from drummer Steve Noble, before Alan Wilkinson, switching between alto and baritone saxophone, chortles the track back to full flight. Unwittingly, the trio indulge in a similar breakdown on “Drag Head”. This time it comes in the form of Noble’s full-on exploration of kit, complete with hand percussion, while Wilkinson continues his relentless attack. The contemplative “South of 4”, featuring John Edwards' wonderful tambura-drone, nicely switches up the tone and mood, while setting the stage for the Ornette Colemanesque funk that the trio drops into in the latter half of “Cuttin’ the P Nut”.

Which, in turn, anticipates the Milfred Graves-like percussive opening to the rollicking “Kwakm’bababli Stomp”, wherein Wilkinson indulges in some glorious, staccato vocalizing, before the trio blasts the rest of the track into the outer limits. Obliquity is a bracing reminder that bold, declarative style of free jazz is still alive and well in the U.K. Richard Moule

Christopher Willits Plants and Hearts Room40 CD

Christopher Willits + Ryuichi Sakamoto Ocean Fire 12K CD

Precious few albums come with a warning against listening while operating a motor vehicle, but I have yet to experience dizziness or vertigo under the influence of the tonal 108 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

layers heard on Plants and Hearts that, at some point, shimmered their mesmerizing way from the strings of a guitar. The entire 21-minute composition bounces with low-key, vibrating energy, due to a mixing technique that pans left and right four times a second in time with 4hz isochronic pulses–all this with the intention of encouraging the brain waves associated with deep relaxation and lucid dreams. The post-packaging minimalism of the CD design is beautiful as well, and is that a cross section of a cabbage printed on the liner notes?

I can't seem to peel my eyes away from the wrinkled, repeating folds. ... Hmmm, yes, certainly not music one should to drive to, or could even properly enjoy while driving.

Rather than set Willits' poppier, rhythmic side against Sakamoto's piano, the two take an unexpected turn on the aptly titled Ocean Fire, submerging themselves in swells of ambient processing. Heavily treated

by Willits' trademark software, the seven songs on this album follow crests and dips of intensity, but on a much broader scale than one tends to hear from either musician. Most of the album features wet-sounding ambient noise, through which swim distorted echoes, deep rumblings, and the occasional group of notes. The collaboration is at its strongest when these more solid elements come closer to the surface, such as the rich melody and glimmering sound slices on “Sentience” and the harmonic tones and distorted bell of “Chi-Yu”.

Eric Smillie

Xasthur

Defective Epitaph Hydra Head CD

And now to Xasthur, the one-man, basement-dwelling, deepest black metal misanthrope. This subculture within a subculture is proudly defiant not simply of social convention (one encounters a lot of dime-store Nietzsche in this world) but also of recording convention. The so-called New Wave of American Black Metal favors low-fi, distorted recording, often using drum machines in addition to real (and usually rudimentary) drums, and heavily compacted walls of noise. It’s a sound hat fights against its own cramped confines, reaching for some kind of sonic cathedral (and there are occasional bells and elegiac strings, of course). But the heart of this record in particular is Xasthur’s own demented shrieking. The doom and black metal I think is most effective, which certainly includes this at times harrowing release, is in touch with its inner medievalist. The best moments on this disc exemplify this maxim: the clangor of “Purgatory Spiral,” the bleak arpeggios on “Cemetery of Shattered Masks,” or the funereal organ sounds on “Dehumanizing Progression.” Elsewhere things aren’t as rich, but you have to give it up for the singularity of this guy’s vision. The music is plodding, tenacious, even one-dimensional – but that’s sort of the point. Jason Bivins

Yellow Swans At All Ends Load CD

Dense and thoroughly intense, Oakland-by-way-of-Portland, Oregon duo Yellow Swans have spent the whole of their massive discography (which numbers around 70 or so releases and collaborative efforts in the past few years) injecting seismic noise blasts with a subtle psychedelic expansiveness. Though Pete Swanson and Gabriel Mindel Saloman's music blares comfortably alongside contemporaries like Wolf Eyes and Mouthus, theirs is a carefully nuanced beast, and one that ever so gently wrinkles the façade of the current sturm-und-klang school of noisicianship. While At All Ends is only the band's third official studiorecorded full-length, it still brings with it the culmination of years of formative experimentation, replacing percussive bleats with dense drones and thick, static-y gristle. No less jarring than any of the pair's previous releases, Yellow Swans' latest manages to opens up some luminous terrain, stretching near anthemic guitars to a bristling, hazy climax on the album opening title track, while the languorous “Stretch the Sands” gradually layers textured drones and sly oscillations to near beatific effect. But make no mistake – these two haven't fully given in to the temptations of the neo-new age just yet. Later pieces, like the ominously swelling “Mass Mirage” frustrate the gentle chords that lay within, burying them in a swirling mass of doomed out feedback and distant voices. Compelling in ways that few recent noise-oriented releases have been, At All Ends proves that restraint, no matter how difficult to execute, often brings with it the sweetest rewards.

Michael Crumsho

where — actually from the boogierock haven of Cardiff, Wales — and offered something utterly different.

They played quiet music, concise music, the antithesis of everything overblown and under-thought.

Singer Alison Statton sounded like she was singing to herself while she unpacked the groceries; Stuart Moxham’s organ playing might have escaped from the neighbor’s parlor. Stuart also played a crisp electric guitar that locked in with the metronomic drum machine to keep a clock-like beat while his brother Philip’s bass articulated stark, perfectly formed melodies.

The words, mostly about romance and early adult self-definition, were eloquently steeped in the mundane yet consciously untethered to it. It was all so right. And then, with just two singles for an epilogue, the band broke up. While everyone involved has made good music in the years since, none of them have come up with anything that could match Colossal Youth. The album still holds up now, and even the excess inherent in a three-CD deluxe version fails to overwhelm its apparently frail yet stout as a redwood charms. One disc presents Colossal Youth; another collects two 7” EPs, a compilation track, and sixteen more demos cut before Colossal Youth but not issued until the late 90s; the third reproduces a five-song Peel session made shortly after the album’s release.

Many songs appear two or three times and in each case the album track wins out, which just goes to show how perfectly calculated a statement it was, how much work it took to make something that seems off-hand and casual. Bill Meyer

Young Marble Giants

Zero Point

Collosal Youth & Collected Works Domino CD x 3

It’s hard to overstate the importance of Colossal Youth when it was released in 1980. Rock and roll had just gone through a decade of getting bigger and bigger, more and more remote from its fans; punk shaved the distance, but still saw fit to hit you over the head with whatever it had to say. The Young Marble Giants appeared from no-

Plays Albert Ayler Ayler MP3

Healing Force

The Songs of Albert Ayler Cuneiform CD

Almost 40 years after his death, the music of Albert Ayler continues to polarize listeners. While his ESP work is heralded as seminal in the world of free jazz, his final recordings are often written off as a misguided detour. These two releases

provide personal reassessments of Ayler’s work from opposite ends of his career.

The newest entry in Ayler Records’ “Download Only” series fits in perfectly with their aesthetic.

Here is a live free jazz recording capturing local firebrands playing a set of music by Albert Ayler. Of course, there are a number of twists here. First off, the recording was captured at Café Jazzorca in Mexico City. Second, the band consists of two Mexicans (reed player Germán Bringas and bassist Itzam Cano) and Swiss/Mexican drummer Gabriel Lauber. Third, this is not the usual set of Ayler tunes. Rather than tread through “Ghosts,” “Spirits,” or “Witches and Devils,” the trio picks some obscurities like “Tune Q,” “Vibrations,” or “Angels.” And finally, while these three logged many hours listening to the classic Ayler/Peacock/Murray trio, this is not simply a repertory group. Rather than use these tunes as a vehicle for an extended blowing session, the trio delivers impassioned, compact interpretations. Bringas plays with plenty of passion and energy while eschewing Ayler’s vibrato-rich tone and vocalized phrasing. Instead, he plays with a more clipped cadence, spitting out phrases with a fiery attack. Cano is an able partner, propelling the improvisations along while adding in a dark undertow.

Lauber’s drums aren’t particularly well served by the somewhat thin recording quality, but his churning polyrhythms float loosely around the free pulse of the music. While this one isn’t going to provide any revelations to listeners steeped in Ayler’s music, it provides an engaging beacon from a little-known outpost of free jazz.

Planning a concept album around the songs Ayler recorded on his last three albums (Love Cry, New Grass, and Music Is the Healing Force of the Universe) is either an act of dedication or an act of folly.

On this new release Guitarist Henry Kaiser and a genre-busting group of collaborators takes the challenge head-on, grappling with the uneasy blend of psychedelic/spiritual lyrics, R&B elements, squalling fervor, and collective freedom. One of the things that makes this all work so well is Kaiser’s choice of collabora-

tors. Kaisers’ guitar torrents are featured prominently but never overwhelm. Multi-reed player Vinny Golia chomps the themes, adding muscle without taking a reverential approach to Ayler’s sound. Joe Morris switches off between angular electric guitar lines and thrumming bass, adding to both the textural density and propulsive force of the music. Avant-rock musician Mike Keneally layers in blistering guitar, cascading piano lines, and vocals. Bassist Damon Smith drives things along with groaning arco and tumbling pizzicato. Drummer Weasel Walter’s free thrash drums fire the momentum, goading things along while buffeting the pulse with punk/thrash intensity. Bay Area vocalist Aurora Josephson’s operatic training and free improv chops are in full display as she intones Mary Maria’s lyrics against the torrid ebullience of the ensemble. Where Ayler’s take on these themes was a struggle to find the union between song form and freedom, this band uses them as the launching pad for full-on assaults. Josephson’s vocals surf their way across multi-guitar squall, Golia’s skirling reeds, and Smith and Walter’s vigorous drive.

The highlights are a boisterous, extended version of “Music Is the Healing Force of the Universe,” and a searing read of “Oh! Love of Life.” There’s even a free-shuffle take of “Thank God for Women” and a version of “New Generation” that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Sonic Youth record. The pieces sprawl a bit, but there is revelry in the earnest collective attack. Oddly enough, this rambling energy is exactly what makes this a fitting tribute to Ayler’s later work.

Michael Rosenstein

CORRECTIONS

Howard Mandel's tribute to Andrew Hill ("Point of Departure,” STN#47) referenced Nels Cline's New Monastery project and misidentified the group's accordionist Andrea Parkins as her cousin, harpist Zeena Parkins. In the same issue, a review of Michael Marcus' Magic Door created the misleading impression that Newman Taylor Baker played drums on all of the album's tracks ... in fact, Baker played on only one track, with Jay Rosen being the session's

SIGNAL to NOISE #48 | 109

REISSUE REDUX Bill Meyer surveys the season's key reissues

Pete Gershon

Rock and roll exile: Bobb Trimble in the early '80s

Given the season, you're probably pondering how to spend the record store gift certificates that your more clued-in loved ones gave you over the holidays. Perhaps you're eyeing some of those upgraded boxed sets? The four-CD Lady Day: The Master Takes And Singles (Sony Legacy) skims the cream from the great early period of Billie Holiday's career. You don't need me or anyone else to tell you that the music is lovely. The set's remastering lifts a few veils of 78 hiss, although it's not all gone — the varied provenance of the shellac sources has defied even the best efforts of a seven-man team to weed out all of the pops. The booklet tells a story you probably already know without so much as a fresh angle, so don't reach for it unless you need to know who's soloing — just listen instead. Like Lady Day, John Coltrane's five-disc Interplay (Prestige/Concord) spares you the succession of alternate takes that have made some previous Coltrane boxes as hard on your button-pushing hand as your first week of texting. Spared of the need to skip around or geek out on endless retakes, one is instead free to ponder the box's framing device. Arranged in the order they were recorded, these sessions from 1957 and 1958 envision Coltrane as a collaborator finding his way to leadership on his way out of Miles and Monk's. An equally interesting narrative unfolds in the reproduced original liner notes, which show that even then the critical establishment was already struggling to know what to make of Coltrane, although he was still basically a hard bop saxophonist. Each of the original LP covers is also reproduced, and it's so satisfying to be able to refer back to the original sleeves that one wonders why more box-makers don't do it.

Boxed sets are nice, but consider spending 110 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

some of your holiday credit on music that honors the man the season's supposed to be about.

The Staple Singers' The 25th Day of December (Riverside/Concord) will do the trick. Recorded in 1962, it applies their stark, inimitable sound to a dozen songs, some familiar, some written by Pops Staples himself. Or if you want more fervor and less restraint (or season-focused constraint) in your worship music, consider chasing down The Hilversum Session by the Albert Ayler Quartet (ESP). This is the penultimate session

by Ayler, Peacock, and Murray; with Don Cherry's cornet bolstering the melodic statements and a bright new mastering job bringing the bass right out front, it's a highly worthy addition to your Ayler shelf.

One wishes that ESP had done as good a job on Sunny Murray's self-titled 1966 recording.

The music sounds giddy and wild, and Alan Silva's bass is no-longer-subliminal presence in the surging ensemble sound. But whose idea was it to precede the music by over twenty minutes of interview? The same person who got all the track times wrong on the back sleeve?

Come on, people, you have an enduring cultural legacy in your hands — show it some respect and love. Atavistic certainly brought both to the Peter Brötzmann Octet's The Complete Machine Gun Sessions. Not only have the producers corrected the murky track identification that marred the FMP original, they've reordered the cuts so that the alternate versions come after the album proper. The sole live version of "Machine Gun," previously available on Fuck De Boere, has been added for comparison and glorious overkill. The sound is much deeper, more bassy and distinct, but the session's harsh, bouncing-off-concrete acoustic is ineradicable.

And that's how it should be—this music was

never meant to be pretty.

Should you prefer your large bands more controlled and less lethal, Count Basie's Basie At Birdland (Roulette/Blue Note) may be more your thing. It was recorded you know where in 1961, and it ably captures the brash sound and machine-like precision that Basie and band could still muster at the time, even though their music was already something of a museum piece. There are nine bonus tracks over the original vinyl pressing, but three are just alternate versions of tunes that are already on the original. Tenor saxophonist Ike Quebec's Bossa Nova Soul Samba (Blue Note) was recorded one year later, and it's very much a product of its time. Quebec had done A&R for Blue Note and knew a trend when he heard one — this is an attempt to jump on the samba craze in the wake of Stan Getz's fluky success. But that in no way diminishes a very fine record. The band, which includes guitarist Kenny Burrell making the most of limited space with satisfying, pithy solos, nicely cradles Quebec's drawer-droppingly intimate solos, and Rudy Van Gelder's remastering makes it sound even more up close and personal. The sultriness of Quebec's playing belies the horrible fact that he was three months away from dying of cancer and in terrible pain when he recorded it. Burrell also distinguishes himself on another new RVG, Paul Chambers' Bass On Top (Blue Note). This 1957 session opens with a lovely bowed passage that makes you wish for more of the same, but most of it is devoted to briskly swinging, straightforward versions of tunes that would have been very familiar to followers of his contemporaneous work with Miles Davis.

Chicago's Delmark Records is renowned for giving the city's avant-garde its first chance to be on vinyl, but that certainly wasn't the only thing the label did during the mid-60s. Consider Economy Hall Breakdown by Jim Robinson.

Robinson had gotten his start playing New Orleans jazz in the 20s, and he was already ensconced in the Preservation Hall Jazz Band when he made this record with a mixed crew of sexagenarian veterans and devoted young trad jazz fans. No one plays like they're in a hurry, but they linger in a nice way. Four bonus tracks, two of them alternate takes, bulk the record up from its original vinyl dimensions. On The Chicago Blues Scene represents a promise kept; when Delmark head Bob Koester heard country bluesman Sleepy John Estes sit in with members of Muddy Waters' band in a German club, he swore he'd record the Tennessean in such a setting someday. This 1968 release, which was originally entitled Electric Sleep, is the result. It's a very casual session — Koester's notes mention some issues with "country time," and there are places where the band sounds like it's having trouble keeping Estes' somewhat erratic pace, but fans of the Chicago blues sound may still find it diverting. The tracks have been reordered and sometimes retitled, but the original lucky 13 are still all there. The less said about the hideous new cover, though, the better.

The Madison, Wisconsin-based guitarist Scott Fields had a different Chicago sound in mind when he formed this double trio fellow string-bender Jeff Parker and drummers Michael

Zerang and Hamid Drake in 1997. If you need a bit of dirt in your guitar tones, this 72:0l-long album, which was originally self-released, could be a pretty exhausting listen. But if you dig chamber jazz with a bit of energy bubbling underneath, you could do far worse than to try and decode Dénouement's charms. The record has never been easy to come by, but this reissue by the Portuguese powerhouse Clean Feed (How do they keep up that release schedule? Should we ask?) might change that.

Sun Ra's time in Chicago was already well behind him when he recorded The Night of the Purple Moon (Atavistic). The album dates from 1970, just before he decamped from NYC for Philadelphia, and it captures the group at a transitional time musically as well. Sunny was breaking in a new keyboard, the RMI Rocksichord, and it's all over this small group date. He was also steering the Arkestra away from the total freak-outs of the past few years; this record is mainly given over to loose, sort-of funky lunar reimaginations of organ combo jazz. The original tapes are long gone, so Atavistic did the best they could with some slightly crunchy Saturn vinyl. For bonuses there are three previously unheard keyboard solos and a version of "Love In Outer Space" some may already know from that Blast First compilation that came out a decade ago. This record has never been on cd before, and I have to say it makes me feel better about the world knowing that someone is seeing to the task of keeping the Saturn catalog in an accessible orbit.

De Stijl Records is doing something similar for another breed of American eccentric, the sort who knows his rock and roll but doesn't stop there. People like Michael Yonkers, a Twin Cities legend who spent years sidelined by an industrial accident he suffered shortly after he made the detuned-garage masterpiece Microminiature Love (Sub Pop) in 1968.

Yonkers' long recovery probably explains why its follow-up Grimwood (De Stijl) sat on a shelf for half a decade before Yonkers pressed it up himself in 1974, but it sure doesn't explain how the man conceived of such a mind-boggling stylistic shift. Grimwood is straight-up stoned Renaissance Faire folk; think men in tights emitting squeaky laughs between bong hits. Also making the transition from private-press vinyl to micro-market CD is Solo 78/79 by Smegma's Ju Suk Reet Meat. From the opening shudders of colliding Beefhearty guitar riffs to vertiginous tape 'n' shortwave collages to Lurch does the lurch keyboard solos, it's a time capsule from an age before being weird for weirdness' sake lost its allure.

When the Sun City Girls retired after drummer Charles Gocher died earlier this year, they promised that the records wouldn't stop coming. As good as their word, the Girls' Abduction imprint has just released CD versions of three gone-in-a-minute LP releases from the mid-90s. All three are packaged in simple black and white, and each points in umpteen musical directions at once. Supposedly Dulce is a commissioned soundtrack for a film about New Mexico aliens financed by an associate of the Aum Shinrikyo cult. This film has never been seen, but you might have more fun imagining the flick that might accompany a mish-mosh of eerie acoustic picking, grimy amp buzz, and deranged eunuch soul posturing than you would seeing the real thing. Piasa Devourer Of Men is another soundtrack, this time for an Italian film about a giant flying reptile terrorizing Native Americans.

No one's seen that one either, but the premise offered an early excuse for the Girls to give their faux-ethnic fakery free reign. Jack's Creek is the sort of SCGs record that fills their haters with righteous indignation. The cover depicts a lynching victim and music often takes a back seat to faux-hick mugging fans of Alan Bishop's "don't need no teeth, never did" vocalizing will love it.

Bobb Trimble represents a different kind of oddball. While he wasn't necessarily unaware

of his marginal status — even in 1980, no one got to be a star by pressing up 300 LPs on their own — there's no evidence that he was playing to the margins. The Massachussetts-based pop auteur quite literally wore his Beatles worship on the sleeve in the form of a printed plea to be the fifth Beatle, and the influences of Pink Floyd, Queen, Bowie, and Satanic Majesty-era Stones fly by as big as jumbo jets coming in to land, but his quivering, ultra-androgynous vocals come across more like Prince with all the funk bleached out. Vinyl copies of Iron Curtain Innocence and Harvest Of Dreams routinely go for a grand on-line, but Secretly Canadian's CD versions come with extra demo tracks and colorful booklets that tell Trimble's story of suburban rock and roll exile.

Although Lee Hazlewood, who passed away this past August, was the consummate music industry insider with an impressive track of record recording and writing hits for others — Duane Eddy, Dean Martin Nancy Sinatra — his own albums were never big sellers. He ruefully acknowledges his status on Something Special's "Stone Cold Blues" when he sings about a restaurant where "they call the steak Sinatra and the hamburger Hazlewood." Not that he felt especially sorry for himself — self-pity just wasn't part of his urban-cowboy-in-a-convertible persona. In attitude, he was probably closer to Nancy's dad than the rock and roll kids who were buying records in 1966 and '67, when Something Special, The Very Special World Of, and Hazlewoodism, Its Cause And Cure (Water) first appeared. Ever the professional, he dealt with the milieu around him, but in a thoroughly mocking way; "In Our Time," from Hazlewoodism, is as hilarious a send-up of Dylan, the Beatles, and the Byrds as you'll ever find, and as mean as Dylan ever got. Something Special tends more towards a weird brand of slick blues — Lee even scats in a pseudo-Satchmo style, while Very Special World serves up his version of songs that others made into hits, including "These Boots Are Made For Walkin." Each record sounds unsullied by modern rejiggering but rich, and each comes with liner notes that shed a bit of light on some nearly forgotten albums.

Vinyl was always the thing for Mimir, the shifting collective that included Edward Ka-spel, Silverman, Andreas Martin, Christoph Heemann, Elke Skelter, and Jim O'Rourke; the larger package suited Heemann's collage artwork, and the length of a record side helped focus their manipulation of the way their juxtaposition of ambient, folk, and kraut-beat elements messed with a listener's sense of time. Their 1990 debut album Mimir (Streamline/Drag City) originally came out as a double LP; while its 1993 successor Mimiyriad (Streamline/Drag City) did appear on CD, the group preferred the shorter LP edit.

But with the preferred format now going for mortgage-busting prices on-line, Heemann has granted each album new life in the mass marketplace. Mimir is substantially revised from the original release, while Mimyriad presents a re-mastered version of the original LP that is much shorter and more concentrated that the mid-90s CD. Fifteen years ago Prazision LP inaugurated the Kranky label and the recorded timeline of Richmond, VA's Labradford. At the time their blend of guitar-plucking melancholy and postindustrial atmospherics stood outside any known scene, and Labradford can hardly be held responsible for the proliferation of drone-by-theyard soundscapes that turned up in their wake.

The album went out of print a couple of years ago, and now the label decided to upgrade it; this version comes in a cardboard folio instead of a jewel case, but the art is pretty much the same. The new mastering job is much sharper, brighter, and deeper; for gravy, they threw on an old 7" b-side, "Preserve The Sound Outside."

Wingtip Sloat also hailed from Virginia, but the trio's antecedents and aspirations couldn't have been more different. They wore their overt

adoration for the sounds of New Zealanders like the Tall Dwarfs and the Clean like tour t-shirts; their rough, DIY recordings, self-referential lyrics, and penchant for personalized packaging all defined them as card-carrying members of the International Pop Underground. Add This To Rhetoric (VHF) pulls together the tracks from their 7" EPs, throws in a heap of tunes from various artists compilations and a cassette, and wraps it all up in a nostalgia-bating package that will be deeply meaningful to the 300 people around the world who still keep their fanzines in a very special box in the basement, and might connect with you too if you think that the Swell Maps were swell, but a bit too professional and mature.

1977 was the year that reggae broke; Bob Marley and the Wailers already had an enormous international market and had adjusted their sound accordingly, but the music had a growing audience around the world that was increasingly ready to hear other voices. And my, did the Abyssinians have voices! Three of them, in fact, each ravishingly in tune to one the others, and collectively keyed in to a deep vein of spiritual longing. Satta Massagana was their masterpiece. The trio used creamy harmonies and crisp roots grooves to articulate themes of repatriation to Africa, devotion to God, and Black pride; this 30th anniversary deluxe version adds four bonus tracks to the quartet that were appended on a previous Heartbeat CD, and the sound is much more vivid, but it's still the title tune that stands as one of reggae's peak moments. Marley's Exodus has also been granted a 30th Anniversary Edition (Tuff Gong/Island) that bulks up on the bells and whistles. It comes in a sturdy SACD box stuck inside a bulky slipcase, although it doesn't seem to actually be an SACD. There are tons of new color pictures in the booklet, but no bonus tracks, and the sound is a bit beefier, the still-extant Tuff Gong version doesn't sound bad at all. So whether you really need this version depends on how badly you need the package.

Dusty Groove's first round of reissues cast a net wide enough to catch vintage Brazilian sounds, harp-swaddled cosmic soul, and eccentric Chicago funk; this time they've trolled one channel. La Clave's sole, self-titled LP for Verve matched up Latin funk grooves with horns straight out of 70s TV soundtracks; think War-meets-Mannix. The label wasn't able to dig up too much information about the session, but they've done right by the music with a faithful, non-revisionist mastering job. There's also a hint of mystery around Jungle Fever by the Belgian group Chakachas, but for decidedly non-mysterious reasons. The album's title track sports some soft-core cooing that made it a massive disco hit with an audience that might not have wanted to know that it had been made by pale-faced men from the Low Countries.

Or so Polydor thought, anyway. Dusty Groove tells their story, or at least enough of it to raise a chuckle, and gives you the rest of the album to skip through on your way to the moans and coos. Or maybe not; if you're in the mood for some lightweight Latin grooves, you could do worse than tracks 1-11.

It wouldn't be Christmastime without a greatest hits album around somewhere, would it?

Epic/Legacy has followed up its reissue of the whole Sly & The Family Stone catalog with Greatest Hits. They've replaced the original CD's skimpy sleeve, washed-out scan, and that ugly "Nice Price" button on the cover with a bright, nicely designed gatefold digipak. This album didn't really need to be redone — all they had to do was put the 7" track "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)" on one of the other albums. But no, you have to pick this disc up if you want the track. However, you can't argue with the song selection if you're looking for an instant party mix. And as you look out the window and watch the mail carrier slog through the acid rain to bring you the credit card bills, an instant party is what you're going to need. ✹ SIGNAL to NOISE #48 | 111

BASEMENT VALKYRIES

David Cotner scopes out 7” records, 3” CDs, cassettes and other odds and ends

"Um, can we have a little more reverb on those whitecaps?": Chris Watson recording the raw sounds of nature

After not having released a 7” in almost two decades, Touch Records beams itself back to 1988 with the Chris Watson Oceanus Pacificus 7” (Touch Seven TS 02). Where was Chris Watson twenty years ago? Most likely boarding attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion – while you stayed home and ate lard. Not that you haven’t come a long way, baby!

Here’s Watson at his usual aesthetically sartorial finest, backed on photographs by the traditionally impeccable Jon Wozencroft. What you’re hearing on this deathlessly worthwhile slice of vinyl life are “The voices and rhythms of the Humboldt current around the Galapagos Islands recorded April 2006 using a pair of Dolphin Ear Pro Hydrophones onto a 112 | SIGNAL to NOISE #48

NAGRA ARES-PII digital audio recorder.”

The crackling of the vinyl itself, however, is not the greatest of all possible delivery devices for Watson’s raw sounds of nature, creaking and gurgling and blooping as they tend to do on this disc. One tends to become spoiled by all those lovely spiral staircases of zeros-and-ones down which Watson’s sound collections trip with such graceful alacrity. Nice lockgrooves, though The run-out groove says “Transition” – just like those old Joy Division 7”s, of which Wozencroft and Co. are staunch and lifelong fans (having just reissued the Joy Division back catalogue in new remastered editions backed with a second CD of live Joy Division, but that’s a review for another time). The

whole global warming thing must just totally drive Chris Watson completely insane.

Slightly more earthbound now, with Dereck Higgins & Dino Felipe’s Properties / Ribbons 7” (Public Eyesore PE105) splayed across the splattered bubble-gum pink vinyl as it spins on the Newcomb. Not so much free improvisation as a childlike welter of assorted sounds which sound peripherally familiar: whispers both tinny and tiny, some kind of bowed instrument and a chorus of mumbling mice dancing from one side to the other. Felipe’s MySpace qualifies him as “visual / pop / glam,” while Higgins is “psychedelic / alternative / ambient.” None of these adjectives do this

release any justice; it’s a pleasant slice of puzzling nothing – and here we mean “nothing” in the Jerry Seinfeld sense of the word, not the Jean-Paul Sartre sense of “nothing.”

Mick Barr, on the other claw, is very definitely up to “something” with his Nalvt / Twelon 7” (The Social Registry TSR053). The sometime Orthrelm and Quix*O*Tic guitarist offers “the sound of musical entropy,” if we are to believe the press release. It was recorded by Cancer in the Paincave, which yes, makes the press release that much more believable.

Weedly weedly weedly in the extreme, it sounds as if someone has switched my regular records with the great taste of the RRR 100 lock-groove 7”. Let’s see if I can taste the difference. Side A: Some Tootsie Rolls? Gee, thanks! Ewww, these are dog turds! Side B: Aww, I’m sorry – here, wash that taste out of your mouth with some fresh lemonade. Gee, thanks!

Ewww! That was dog piss!! HA HA! FOOLED TWICE! Rocketing directly from the ridiculous to the golden banks of the sublime, Schneider TM und Lustfaust give us the The Girl Who Cried All The Tears From Her Body 7” (MirrorWorldMusic, MWM001), a prime contender for Best Title of Any Song of 2007. A welcome meeting of minds across the gulf of time that only the Information Superhighway can now bridge, it’s Schneider TM (now a duo of Michael Beckett and Dirk Dresselhaus) on their newly-established record label MirrorWorldMusic and Lustfaust, a “lost” Berlin band led by Peter Kruger (who lives in Omaha now; yeah, go figure) steeped in arch-strangeness from 1976-1981. The titular A-side is a strange but strangely comforting affair wrapped in a journey that’s over far too soon, with Kruger’s warmly keening vocals riding the bass pulse that just won’t quit. “Sweet Divorcee,” the B-side, is a joyous shuffle of jazzy riffs and fuzzy organ warbles that wouldn’t be out of place as an interstitial playing over a montage of lovable mistakes in a romantic comedy. One of the singles of the year, right up there with The Bloodhound Gang’s “Screwing You On The Beach At Night.” licht-ung – the Leverkusen-Buerrig (and if you’ve ever wanted to visit Leverkush-Buerrig in Germany – here’s your reason) duo of Keakiese Ernestinah and Milan Juun Sandbleistift – releases their fetching blue Kristall 7” (Drone Records DR-86). “Listen to the music playing in your head,” we are advised – and this evening’s headspace revolves at 33-1/3 and involves the whooshing whines of ambience, high pitches low and inside, and an overwhelming sense of floating over someplace nice. Like a slow, crystalline locomotive to Dreamland.

Possibly the highest-profile release in the history of venerable tape label Banned Production, Devin Sarno’s Full Dynamics Frequency Spectrum 3” CD (Banned Production bp133) features filmmaker Vincent Gallo on guitar, Wilco’s Nels Cline on another guitar, L.A.F.M.S. member Joseph Hammer on tape loops, Bobb Bruno from Polar Goldie Cats on keyboards and staunch bassist Sarno on,

erm, bass. Solo improvised bass, that is. Drone sonics. Texas tea in aural form.

Assembled from various tracks over 24 months, the musicians on this recording were given general overall hints as to what sounds to make, and none of them – save Sarno, presumably – had heard the sounds that came before. Flying blind, as it were. What results is almost fifteen minutes of relaxing drones from indeterminate objects, the visiting plucking of strings and an errant cooing as gentle as the flight of a bird – or a very odd duck, depending. Deeply contemplative, to say the absolutely least.

O, the nom de plume of composer Yann Hagimont, has a new 3” CD-R out with Moon named MoonOphonique Part II (Lona Records locd27r). There are at least a dozen bands in the lexicon with the name “O” – whether out of sheer simplicity or as a paean to Story of O author Pauline Réage, we know not which – and at least fifteen under the name Moon. And both sides of this particular release are as blue and full as that Moon up above – O’s selections are folkish and strummed, while Moon’s computer, Korg and Fender jazz bass weave a comforting quilt of gentle ambience under which one goes to peaceful slumber without worrying about whys and wherefores. It’s a shame that the record’s only an edition of 50 copies – more people should hear this lonely beauty.

Detroit Improvisation is a new label issuing improvisation from all around the world – not just the greater metropolitan Detroit area – and one of their two latest releases is the Hymns for New Fathers 3” CD-R (detimp9), a guitar/violin duet with Mike Khoury and Ernesto Diaz-Infante, respectively. Twelve tracks recorded in 2004 via correspondence, most running between one and two minutes in length, make this a prime primer for those wanting to dip a toe in the great sea of free improv without having it gnawed off by piranhas of boredom. Thoughtful and gently progressive, these are two burgeoning craftsmen at their level best, never tedious and it’s all over in just the right amount of time. Mike Khoury’s Etudes in Simultaneity 3” CD-R (detimp10) spouts up fifteen one-minute “studies in simultaneity,” which perhaps explains why iTunes identified these tracks as coming from the “Millennium Moments” collection of public service announcements from the Israeli Department of Tourism(!) Titles like “Jesus Coins,” “King Herod’s Bathtub,” and “The Task of a Slave” are infinitely more evocative than “Untitled,” so thank you black iTunes! Instruments are plucked, pianos are lovingly stroked, tambourines shatter, sounds shimmer, and fifteen minutes passes by so painlessly you’ll think the laser in the CD player was atomizing morphine as the disc spins. ✹ Send 3” CDs, vinyl measuring between 4” and 11”, and other assorted nonsense, to Box 1211, Ventura CA 93002.

As with most fair-and-balanced / overworked-and-underpaid journalists, no promises on coverage – but, I shall try.

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