Signal to Noise #58 - summer 2010

issue #58 summer 2010 $4.95 us / $5.95 can

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SIGNAL TO NOISE

THE JOURNAL OF IMPROVISED, EXPERIMENTAL & UNUSUAL MUSIC ISSUE #58 : SUMMER 2010 CONTACT 1128 Waverly Street, Houston Texas 77008 operations@signaltonoisemagazine.org PUBLISHER pete gershon COPY EDITOR nate dorward

CONTENTS #58

CONTRIBUTORS clifford allen ✹ bill barton ✹ caroline bell ✹ darren bergstein ✹ jason bivins ✹ marcus boon ✹ shawn brackbill ✹ stuart broomer ✹ pat buzby ✹ joel calahan ✹ christian carey ✹ john chacona ✹ mike chamberlain ✹ andrew choate ✹ fred cisterna ✹ jay collins ✹ larry cosentino ✹ david cotner ✹ ethan covey ✹ julian cowley ✹ raymond cummings ✹ jonathan dale ✹ christopher delaurenti ✹ tom djll ✹ nate dorward ✹ lawrence english ✹ phil freeman ✹ gerard futrick ✹ andrew gaerig ✹ michael galinsky ✹ david greenberger ✹ kurt gottschalk ✹ spencer grady ✹ jason gross ✹ kory grow ✹ james hale ✹ jennifer hale ✹ carl hanni ✹ ed hazell ✹ mike heffley ✹ andrey henkin ✹ jesse jarnow ✹ chris kelsey ✹ mark keresman ✹ steve kobak ✹ robert loerzel ✹ howard mandel ✹ peter margasak ✹ brian marley ✹ marc masters ✹ libby mclinn ✹ marc medwin ✹ bill meyer ✹ richard moule ✹ larry nai ✹ kyle oddson ✹ chad radford ✹ casey rae-hunter ✹ gino robair ✹ michael rosenstein ✹ elise ryerson ✹ ron schepper ✹ steve smith ✹ thomas stanley ✹ adam strohm ✹ john szwed ✹ nathan turk ✹ dan warburton ✹ alan waters ✹ ben watson ✹ seth watter ✹ charlie wilmoth

alessando bosetti 6 sightings 8 rosemary krust 10

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Henry Grimes in New York City, April 2010 by Brendan Bannon Cover artwork by David Wang

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ATTENTION SUBSCRIBERS! STN 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. Please apprise us of any address changes to avoid the inconvenience and extra expense of lost issues! 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 © 2010 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. 4 | SIGNAL to NOISE #58 WWW.SIGNALTONOISEMAGAZINE.COM

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ALESSANDRO BOSETTI

Tomi Slavmedak

Sound artist explores “music as a spoken language” through field recordings and sound collage.

By Kurt Gottschalk

It’s a Sunday afternoon in February, a rare matinee performance at Brooklyn’s Issue Project Room, and a rare performance itself for any venue or time of day. It’s an improvisation by musician Alessandro Bosetti and dancer Asimina Chremos, but the music could just as easily be described as spoken word, and the audience as videographers, via a camera Chremos has asked them to pass around during the set.

Bosetti’s spoken introduction blurs directly into the performance—talking about the piece becomes the piece itself.

As he relates something about a seaside tragedy, he fades in a percussive track from his laptop. The text is central to the piece, yet willfully obscured. The rumble of recordings of crashing waves gives way to a soft sine wave and spoken text from the computer. He continues the story, or starts a new one—at this point context is lost— singing “This is not the same as chanting,” something like a cantor. There are syllables, lots of syllables, something about a killing infused with Casio-like tones doubling the simple melody. More sounds are folded in. The textual repetitions continue “on the verge of finding a truth about a killing.” His tone is strangely foreboding yet matter-of-fact.

The concert is what Bosetti refers to as “music as a spoken language”: the phrase rolls off his tongue easily and often in conversation. It’s something like what Steve Reich explored in works like Different Trains and It’s Gonna Rain, but focusing even more narrowly on cadence and found melody. Bosetti himself cites the language studies of Robert Ashley and René Lussier as inspirations for his explorations into the overlaps of spoken word, meaning and musicality. In 2004 he journeyed through Western Africa, playing recordings for villagers (among them works by Ashley, Luciano Berio, John Cage, Steve Lacy, Alvin Lucier, and Otomo Yoshihide, as well as his own works) and recording their reactions in languages he didn’t understand. The results

were released as a book and sound-collage CD called African Feedback by Errant Bodies Press.

More recently, Bosetti has been creating a series of works for WDR radio, some of which are beginning to see their way to CD. The 2009 piece Children’s America examined the new political landscape in the United States by interviewing children about what they would do if they were president, discovering a fictional nation that is wide-eyed, utopian and ultimately, heart-breakingly, warlike. For Arcoparlante, also commissioned in 2009 by German radio, Bosetti took recorded fragments of radio broadcasts and transcribed them to be read by a radio announcer, then, as with Children’s America, created a sound collage from that recording.

“I am totally interested in this repetition but I also like it when it breaks down,” he says. “I recently saw that movie The Conversation. I loved that movie. It’s basically a loop piece.”

That film, directed by Francis Ford Coppola and released a year after Bosetti was born, is about a surveillance expert who thinks he hears discussion of a murder plot in a recording made on a noisy San Francisco street. Much of the plot is driven by the man (played by Gene Hackman) repeatedly listening to and filtering the tape.

Hackman’s character, curiously, is also a saxophonist.

Bosetti the saxophonist moved from his native Milan to Germany in 1996 to explore the minimalist improvisation scene developing there. But he soon found the younger generation there to be not entirely open to his ideas, just as—he says—the older generation of German improvisers associated with the FMP scene were dismissive of the new minimalism. As he focused more on text works, he found himself spending more time in the American northeast, working between Baltimore and New York and eventually pulling together a band and a repertoire.

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“The saxophone playing kind of faded out,” he says. “In a sense I sort of failed in that. I went to Berlin for the sort of reductivist language and I was very in that but I was also doing these text pieces and I couldn’t really merge them together. Now there may be a turning point. With Trophies and the work with the loops I think there’s something that sort of catalyzed the different techniques. It may go on for a while.

It’s like a new phase. And I’m working with other musicians, playing live. I had ten years of working alone. Now I have these pieces that can be played by other people.”

Trophies has had a somewhat fluctuating membership, but key to the group has been guitarist Kenta Nagai. They will be touring Europe this summer as a trio with drummer Tony Buck.

“Trophies’ texts come from conversations that I filter out,” Bosetti explains. “There is always a process of transformation through the copying. I have a recording, I type it, I find the pitches on the piano and then I learn it with Kenta, it kind of turns it around.

I don’t know how to describe this band. It is a trance band, but it’s also groovy. They are all pretty much texts that don’t have an agenda. Usually I like texts that have a very strong agenda, like African Feedback. But I also try to be a little bit free and less coherent. If you ask me if it matters, of course it matters, but if you ask me what’s the meaning, it’s just to listen to over and over.”

Trophies remains unrecorded, but Bosetti’s impressive, sweeping Zwölfzungen came out in March on Sedimental. Like African Feedback, the 12 compositions are based on languages the composer doesn’t understand. Passages spoken in such tongues as Cherokee, Dogo, Mandarin and Zulu provide the foundation for tape collage, processing, and other audio augmentations.

“I know for a lot of people it can be very confusing what I do,” he said. “It doesn’t really have a style. But to me there is a thread that goes through all of them, this spoken language as music.”✹ WWW.SIGNALTONOISEMAGAZINE.COM SIGNAL to NOISE #58 | 7

SIGHTINGS

courtesy Jagjaguwar

Brooklyn-based trio flies the industrial noise-punk banner. By Raymond Cummings When Mark Morgan’s impressionistic diatribes and sideswiping guitar spasms collide with Richard Hoffman’s upsetstomach basslines and Jon Lockie’s unorthodox brand of timekeeping (an approach the drummer describes as “a syncopated, electronic style that maybe isn’t that appealing”), you get Sightings, a Brooklyn-based band that’s been flying the industrial noise-punk banner since the waning days of the 20th century.

“I work with people from all over the world,” says Morgan, who by day works construction for “a company that does high-end residential shit” in New York City. “They want to hear my music. Then they do, and they think I’m a lunatic.

‘Man, you’ve got problems.’”

Given the unsparingly unsentimental nature of Sightings’ crude industrial grit, it’s no surprise that they don’t romanticize their craft, their cred, or their potential for growing an audience. Ask if there’s a method to their nomadic madness—leapfrogging from label to label, from producer to producer, from 4-track no-fi inferno to relatively coherent studio recording— and you’ll be informed in short order that it’s all a matter of expense, circumstance, and availability.

“When we started out, I cared a lot about what label we were on and who we were associated with; now I don’t give a shit,” Hoffman admits. “All that scenester bullshit doesn’t matter anymore. We don’t have mass appeal, but there’s always one crazy guy in every town who wants to book us.”

“I think some people have this idea that bands go into the studio with grand plans,” Morgan sneers. “There’s no grand plan; a lot of it is the set-up and the situ-

ation. You write some songs. You record them. You mix them.”

All three agree that their new album, City of Straw (Brah/Jagjaguwar) features some of their best performances to date, and Hoffman is quick to credit the support of No Neck Blues Band member Pat Murano with “adding another dimension, upping our game a little.” The album’s arresting artwork—a photograph of a deepening sunset reflecting on water shot through with dozens of cigaretteburn holes that diminish in size as the eye ascends—was chosen at the last second, because “we had no fucking idea what we wanted to do—we’re not very visually oriented,” as Morgan explains.

Co-produced by Oneida’s Kid Millions, City of Straw somehow combines the relative melodic clarity of 2007’s Through the Panama, the stripped-to-the-core pulsations of 2004’s Arrived in Gold, and enough viscera-strewn rivulets of feedback to clear a room—or maybe, for that matter, a car. Cranking Straw in a running clunker may benefit your mechanic more than you, or even your audiologist. It’s quintessentially Sightings, but more so: the sound of an overtaxed machine or system crapping out, falling apart.

Jumbled parts collapse atop one another on “Jabber Queens” but lock into step just when you believe there’s no governing logic; between busted-engine grumbles and wielder’s-torch strafes, “Hush” refuses to justify its title. “Saccharine Traps” throws a spotlight on Hoffman and Lockie, demonstrating how key they are to the Sightings sound; the latter’s clatter propels this squealing, panoramic freak-out while the former’s quick, efficient bass figures keep it on course. Likewise,

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each crisp, military drum tap on eggshelltreading “Weehawken” seems to act as a weathervane for noise-guitar lightning strikes.

“There can be a looseness in what Mark and Richard are playing, and over time I’ve gotten used to having to propel the sound and to give it a backbone and rhythm,” Lockie says.

Part of Sightings’ appeal has always been in trying to figure out what musician is generating which sound, and Straw doesn’t disappoint there. Opener “Tar and Pine”—all crackling, crispy hiss, sex-on-sharp-rusty-springs rhythms, sewing-machine morse code, and sickening, malevolent surges that give way to a string of false endings—hits like a mouthful of scorched earth; the cryptic click-click sound was created by Hoffman, while Lockie used a drum-pad synthesizer to brew up the low humming sound. And given that this band has always made a habit of sounding like the end of the world, it helps that this album draws inspiration from concepts that make the end of the world seem like a cakewalk. “[The title City of Straw] just came from this guy Mark Davis, who wrote this book called Planet of Slums: Urban Involution and the Informal Working Class. There’s literally a billion people on this planet living in inhuman conditions, in these giant shanty towns, basically,” Morgan explains. “As a kid, I thought by the time I was 40 I’d be taking trips to the moon. In the ’80s, there was this idea that we’d be moving forward, to this utopia. But there’s nothing to suggest that we won’t go in the other direction.” ✹ WWW.SIGNALTONOISEMAGAZINE.COM SIGNAL to NOISE #58 | 9

courtesy Rosemary Krust

Driving through the streets of Baltimore can give one a feeling of unease. The endless stream of boarded-up row homes and unwelcoming grimaces at red lights gives off the vibe of a very insular and hostile community. It makes you wonder how a band such as Rosemary Krust can create such fragile sounds in a town where you need to keep your guard up so constantly.

“We don’t get out much,” says Katherine Plummer, one half of the duo. Both she and the other half of the band— William Hardy—seem perfectly content to lock themselves away in their home making songs of dilapidated beauty while the town around them brims with contempt.

“We couldn’t say Baltimore is in any way an inspiration. We aren’t exactly familiar faces on the general music scene in Baltimore, and the venues, whether they be the real rock clubs or the DIY art spaces, seem very tight-knit about what they book, or it at least feels that way to us since they never get back to us. Certain rooms in the house we record in influence us more in the particular feelings they evoke than anything going on outside.”

It is this attitude of content desperation splayed upon various limited edition releases on seven-inch vinyl and CD-R that makes Rosemary Krust so alluring to those in the know.

The duo of Plummer and Hardy started off firstly as a loving relationship and then moved into a sonic rendezvous in early

2007. “Our first recording was around Valentine’s Day,” remembers Katherine.

“It had been snowing a lot, and I was staying at William’s place. We had a little cassette recorder, a violin, and an acoustic guitar that was falling apart. For fun, we improvised something where I played the guitar and did some vocals, and William played the violin and later manipulated it heavily on computer. Within a couple of days William found a four-track cassette recorder that he had been given, and I brought out a guitar and practice amp that had belonged to my father. The next paycheck I got I went out and bought a cheap Squier bass guitar.” These early Rosemary Krust sessions—documented on the self-released CD-R The First Two Weeks—show a unit wide-eyed to the concepts of discovery and destruction.

Huge clanging sounds, gray bursts of guitar roar and a cover of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks’ “Orphans” conjure up visions of a group of nihilistic youngsters, but deep down in the recording’s sludge is a disorienting pop sensibility that would grow upon further releases.

Quickly following the First Two Weeks disc was a self-titled seven-inch EP on the Baltimore-based Spleencoffin label. It is on this record that the duo’s primitively ethereal qualities start to shine, prompting comparisons to the lethargic beauty of Texas’ Charalambides or the early output from the K record label. A year later came the full-length CD-R Slow

Light, on the local MT6 label. It’s a shame that this disc was limited to 45 copies, as it perfectly encapsulates the duo’s magic and shambling beauty in its foggy song structures and cathartic abstraction. Their latest vinyl offering—Burnt Anker, a seven-inch EP released last fall

by Dull Knife—is a bite-sized gaze into the constantly sliding world of Rosemary Krust. While the opener “Fire” awkwardly confronts you with doom-damaged riffs and floating handclaps, the second-side starter “For Matthia” throws you for a loop with its twee, discombobulated world of accordion, jangly guitar and dreamy vocals. Some nights when I spin it this track brings to mind a brightly colored washing machine full of pink baby socks and bright white t-shirts, and that’s no bad thing at all.

Next for Rosemary Krust is a split cassette release on the Connecticut-based Goaty label with Banana Head, a oneman project of label CEO Zully Adler.

There is also supposed to be a cassette coming out on Spleencoffin that will be made up of—in the words of Katherine— “the more loose-ended experimental stuff we’ve recorded in the last two years.”

To listen to what Rosemary Krust have coughed up thus far and think there is something in the wings yet more looseended and experimental makes me both confused and extremely happy. And again, that’s no bad thing at all. ✹

ROSEMARY KRUST Baltimore home-taper duo combines a noise aesthetic with a disorienting pop sensibility.

By Tony Rettman

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PLAYING THE VIBRATIONS

Marc Medwin visits the legendary Henry Grimes, bassist of choice for Sonny Rollins, Albert Ayler and Cecil Taylor in the ’50s and ’60s, who's re-established his music career after decades in obscurity. Photos by Brendan Bannon

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With Marc Ribot at Rose Live, Brooklyn, NY, April 2010

Saturday, April 10th, 2010—The warm air is light and vibrant with spring’s newborn possibilities. The streets are filled as we walk slowly toward Grand Central Station.

Henry Grimes and his wife have been good enough to meet me at the bus, and Margaret is guiding me through the throng, Grimes positioned attentively on my other side. “You can really feel the energy here,” he says. His voice does not moderate with the environment; his speech is so soft and delicate it’s easy to miss in the buzz and thrum of midday New York, the place he’s called home since his 2003 return to public life.

Alive with voices of every culture and timbre, ablaze with hope, despair, and many shades in between, the city is a whirlpool of sensory data, a Gesammtkunstwerk in constant revision. The polyrhythms of stroller wheels and high-heeled shoes punctuate the drones of monotonous speech just on the peripheries of perception. The smells of exhaust and detergent mingle with wafting culinary diversities to make the traveler’s mouth water. Car horns, brakes, salsa, wailing babies, giddy laughter and earnest profanity vie for attention within the general polyphony. I’m reminded of Eric Dolphy’s quotation about music’s ephemerality, but even the ground itself seems mutable here. Rugged sidewalks that feel like they’ll crumble to dust rise and fall in shallow curbs until, without warning, there’s a sharp incline, a damaged curb sticking out like the broken teeth of a survivor.

We enter the cool and constantly morphing acoustics of Grand Central and descend a series of gentle slopes toward the oyster bar. “We love this place,” Margaret explains, “It has a great atmosphere.

Everybody should try this on a visit to the city.” There’s more space, more room to breathe and a chance to hear each sound as it unfolds against the sharp reverberations of the restaurant walls. “It’s relaxing in here, isn’t it?” Grimes says. I ask him if he’d been here in the early days, despite my fear of conjuring bad memories of the environs that saw the musician’s journey toward freedom and undoing. “I might have. I’m not really remembering right now.” There is something silky about his voice that manages to circumvent the room’s live acoustics, also something simultaneously enigmatic and direct that makes me anticipate the next statement that often doesn’t come.

We eat, Margaret and I maintaining conversation throughout. Grimes is silent. I don’t even hear his spoon touch his bowl, his breadknife scrape the plate. “What are you thinking about, Henry?” I ask him. “Oh,” he says, “you know, just listening, rising and falling, the patterns as they come and go, different layers and how they’re fitting…”

We have coffee and prepare to leave.

Grimes stops a waiter and asks directions to a telephone. The accented English is hurled brusquely back, “Down around the back and to the left.” “He didn’t have to answer like that,” says Grimes, and the tenderly 14 | SIGNAL to NOISE #58 WWW.SIGNALTONOISEMAGAZINE.COM

disappointed voice is one I’ve heard coming from me many times, overwhelmed by the uncertainties of a world that’s often large and unfriendly.

“Lots of puppies in this neighborhood,” Margaret remarks as we near the Grimes’ apartment a little later that evening. “It’s very nuclear in terms of family structure—can you hear the change?” Indeed, there’s a sense of calm all around, a very different energy as we climb the steps and enter their long living space. The door stutters closed with the certainty of age and experience, capped by a resounding thwunk. There’s barely room to walk, such are the accumulations of life in a Manhattan railroad apartment, everything lining the walls and forming a haphazard narrative of its own. Across the hall, dogs bark, phones ring, and somebody’s listening to the muted rage of a staticky Dinah Washington while a child cries.

“Oh, yes, he’s back, all right. Is he ever back!” exclaimed a clearly enraptured Cecil Taylor when he performed alongside Grimes at Iridium in 2006. Taylor knows the place Grimes goes when he plays, as he spends vast stretches of time in a similar space. “...And I looked out at him, and he was playing his violin, and Henry was gone, man—I mean, gone!”

Born in 1935 in Philadelphia, Grimes found his voice in the company of other up-and-coming jazz musicians from the City of Brotherly Love, such as Albert “Tootie” Heath, Lee Morgan, Bobby Timmons and Ted Curson. After a well-grounded highschool musical education, he was offered a scholarship to the Juilliard School of Music, but his primary interests brought him to the stimulating developments of late 1950s jazz, in which he quickly established himself as one of the finest bassists of his era. From 1957 to 1966, he amassed a discography encompassing an astonishing variety of contexts, from straight-ahead swing to the furthest reaches of what would eventually be called the “New Thing.” His virtuosity and invention graced recordings by Benny Goodman, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, Albert Ayler, Cecil Taylor, Don Cherry, Roy Haynes, Charles Mingus, Gerry Mulligan, Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp and McCoy Tyner, to mention only a few.

A moment symbolizing Grimes’s transition from postbop to free jazz can be heard on the July 1963 encounter of tenor giants Sonny Rollins and Coleman Hawkins, released on RCA as Sonny Meets Hawk. The band laid down a version of Gershwin’s “Summertime” on which Grimes adopts the dual role of melodist and percussionist, adding layers of intrigue to Paul Bley and Roy McCurdy’s swung rhythms as Sonny and Hawk create intricate webs of polyphony. Later in the track, Grimes’s solo finds him taking the bass out of its assumed role, his pizzicato full and punchy, his accents bold and decisive.

But in 1967, as legend has it, scheduled to meet the rest of Cecil Taylor’s band at the

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airport to launch a European tour, Grimes never arrived. He moved to California with a promise of work with the vocal group Lambert, Hendricks & Ross. Soon his bass fell into disrepair, and too destitute to get it fixed, he sold it. He worked odd jobs for years and shifted his creative energies to filling notebooks with poetry. He completely fell out of touch with the east coast jazz world and was widely presumed to have died sometime in the ’80s.

Fast forward to December of 2002 and the almost simultaneous publication in both Signal to Noise and The Wire of a shocking interview with the very much alive Grimes, conducted by a social worker from Athens, Georgia named Marshall Marrotte. A zealous fan of Grimes’s music, he’d searched various databases and turned up a Henry Grimes living in South Central Los Angeles. He proposed a meeting, and Grimes accepted.

The interview revealed exactly how far removed from the music world Grimes had become. Grimes expressed surprise when Marrotte informed him of Albert Ayler’s 1970 suicide; he was fascinated to examine a CD for the first time when the visitor took a stack of reissues from his bag.

Soon, though, news had spread, and free jazz advocate Margaret Davis launched an e-mail campaign to find Grimes an instrument. Bassist William Parker shipped Grimes a gorgeous yellow-green model named “Olive Oyl” and he played his first gigs since 1972 in March of 2003 with 17-year-old bassist Nick Rosen, a high school student who’d read the STN piece and tracked Grimes down at his hotel to ask about lessons. Soon, Grimes was joining Rosen for clinics and semi-private gigs with reedist Dan Clucas and drummer Alex Cline. Grimes was already on his way back.

At the Vision Festival in May 2003, Grimes played in New York for the first time in 35 years. He met Margaret Davis at the festival and they've been together since. She’s his wife as well as his business manager. “Now, I’d been involved in the music world for quite some time,” she told Flavorwire.com’s Eli Dworkin last year. “I was someone who saw the need to support some of the most brilliant musicians, people who were struggling to make it without anyone working for them.

What I didn’t realize is that I was in training for Henry, and when Henry came to me, I was ready.”

The man is as remarkable—and mysterious—as his music. Though parts of his life might resemble a screenplay—his disappearance at the height of his powers, the long absence, the triumphant return to performing, followed by leaps-and-bounds development of his art—he doesn’t approach any of it as being out of the ordinary. There’s a Blakean innocence about Grimes, innocence gained after everything’s been taken away and returned, innocence in the face of too much experience. There’s a strong sense of With the gifted bass, Olive Oyl, and drummer Chad Taylor.

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Grimes’s carpeted studio contrasts drastically with the rest of the apartment. It’s eerily quiet except for the traffic rumble coming through the open window. “There’s soundproofing in here,” he explains. It’s difficult to imagine the rest of the apartment, out there, in the enforced silence of the studio, perfect for contemplation and reflection. That’s what happens as Grimes and I sit on a couch, surrounded by the tools of his trade—bass, violin, an old half-broken piano, and books.

I express puzzlement over the shortage of press articles about him from his formative days. “Yeah, I think I was interviewed in a studio,” he muses. “I remember it was when I was with Sonny Rollins, and they brought me over to this studio, just me alone…”—but no details of the conversation are forthcoming.

It was, of course, a long time ago.

He is, however, surprisingly willing to traverse past landscapes. We speak of his earliest days in music. “My parents didn’t discourage me, but they didn’t encourage me either. They were musicians themselves, and they played a sort of gospel music, you know, what you might hear in a church service. It had a lot of blues in it.” He speaks of his own earliest musical experiences with tender bemusement. “It was like music was mine. It was all about invention for me.” He plays some rapid notes in the top register of the piano, a quick cascade that suggests 18 | SIGNAL to NOISE #58 WWW.SIGNALTONOISEMAGAZINE.COM

long association. “Did you play the piano?”

I ask, taken aback. “No,” he laughs, and his laughter bursts from him like the sun coming out. “My sister did that, but I used to, well, just sort of…” He touches the keyboard again, fondly.

He keeps no contact with family now; his sisters, twin brother and first wife have vanished, and Grimes speaks of them as if they were ghosts. “My first wife? She did something bureaucratic, I don’t know what it was, something chained to business, that system of rules.” I wonder aloud at how he met her. “She was interested. You know, she hung around the Philadelphia scene.” Was she trying to learn, to understand the music?

“She was trying to meet somebody,” Grimes laughs again.

We return to the subject of music, discussing his formative years of training at Mastbaum Technical High School, where he was required to learn five instruments. “I played violin, because I played that before, and I learned bass, tympani, English horn and tuba along with it. It was a spectacular education, really deep into the mystical elements of music.” After a pause, he volunteers, “I’d really like to play the English horn again. I love that sound.” I ask him: “In what context would you like to play it? With whom do you really enjoy playing?” The response is immediate.

“Cecil Taylor. That was some of the best music in my life, to this point anyway.” Again, I’m caught off-guard, as Grimes does not often make such statements. “Why? What about it is so attractive to you?” “It’s whirling pools of… I guess the word is happening, that’s the only way I can describe it.”

Grimes’s association with Cecil Taylor goes back to the Into the Hot recordings for Impulse, made in October, 1961, picking up again with Taylor’s two 1966 Blue Note dates, Unit Structures and Conquistador.

Grimes constitutes one-half of a killer bass team that also includes Alan Silva, who handled the high arco passages. Grimes holds down the lower registers in his inimitable way as Cecil’s highly structured compositions race and whirl past. “You really have to be careful,” Grimes recalls about those sessions.

“There’s a lot of ground to cover.”

Margaret checks to see that we have what we need, tea, information, whatever it might be. “Would you like to play?” she asks Grimes. “Yeah,” he says as if the idea hadn’t occurred to him before. I check my watch to see if it’s too late at night, but that seems not to matter. He stands up and takes the three steps necessary to get to his bass, then begins to play.

When you turn on a faucet, the water flows. When you turn it off again, the water stops. There’s nothing simpler than that, and it’s the first thing that comes to my mind when Grimes begins to play. There’s no preamble, no discernable instant of consideration; everything begins, as if the music had been there, a current which Grimes taps at will and out of which he steps to speak, eat and pursue daily activities. His 2009 solo album, a double CD on ILK, is a good point of comparison. His mind is a magnet for rhythms, proportional as they circle each other, interweave in celebratory dance, circle away. Multiple intertwined histories are palpable. I hear the flowing swing of his days with Benny Goodman juxtaposed with Monk’s sharp rhythmic shocks and electric

With Pharoah Sanders at the Five Spot in 1966, photo by Ray Ross.

Grimes at his Los Angeles apartment in 2003, photo by Marshall Marrotte.

Five Spot: © Raymond Ross Archives/CTSIMAGES.COM

pain and wonder in the way he speaks, in his interactions with people and places and, most important, in the way he approaches music. His speech is soft and often hesitant, the words getting lost in the constant noise so symptomatic of modern life. He does not initiate in the verbal realm; rather, he comments in brief staccato utterances.

His answers to even simple questions are confusing, illuminating and touching in turn; yet, for those willing to listen, his tenor voice bespeaks his knowledge of the inner deserts of the human soul depicted by Edgar Varese. Grimes’s voice suggests that inside is the space where he’s most comfortable, the place he’s inhabited the longest while all changed and crumbled around him.

Underpinning all the emotional contradictions is his sense of wonder, which often turns up when it’s least expected. You can certainly hear wonder at being alive and in the world as he approaches his 75th birthday this November 3rd, but it’s even there as we listen to the repetitive pop tune that blares from a radio in an open store. “It’s like they pile those patterns up so that each one sounds better than the one before,” he muses. He marvels at technological developments to which he’s had little exposure as he does at the taste of food, but always with a certain dignified reserve in his voice. Only when he discusses his art, his ever-changing never-changing refuge, does he relax control and allow the melody of his speech to rise and fall. He chooses not to speak of art as creation but as essence, an idée fixe for him.

He describes even seemingly trivial daily experiences as mystical, and indeed it’s the mystical—that which is beyond words—that is the central focus of his art. He often uses the word “fantastic,” with a sense of the word’s original connotations, involving those inexplicable, strange and wonderful elements that simply are, and of which we are privileged to partake.

dissonances as he and Grimes tapped into the rapidly changing excitement and innovation that was jazz at Newport in 1958.

Without warning, the velvety rich chords of Grimes’s solos on The Call, his sole 1960s date as leader, join the thickening brew, as history is laid bare before me in one long jagged sinewy line. There’s no space; this is not Coltrane’s atomistically motivic language, nor the deliberate modal musings of Charlie Haden, though all of that is present. It’s as if a breath has been drawn and then exhaled, the music unfolding in just that way and with that mixture of spontaneity and automatic response, but it’s pictorial. It’s all there before my ears—the crowds, the hot street’s lines and curves, the varied slopes, the morphing acoustic of Grand Central and the subway’s grinding clatter. Grimes evokes the birds with transparent bowed harmonics, and the polyrhythmic marchers with his purposeful, quickstepping staccato. He switches between textures with uncanny ease, his narrative a stream of consciousness as rich as Joyce’s.

Grimes stops playing. He takes a breath and asks, “Are you OK?” It’s as if he’s forgotten I’m there until that moment, though I can’t be certain. I look at my watch and realize it’s been 45 minutes. “Sure.” I also realize I’ve forgotten to breathe. Without a word, Grimes puts down the bass and switches to violin. Again, history’s retold, the outside is brought in and turned inside out. The violin playing has a scalar element not so evident in Grimes’s approach to the bass; he travels the scales as if they were roads, some wind-

ing, some straight, each one leading to different scenes before merging with the next.

There are also multi-registral trills and open fifths, moments of repose amidst the hectic forms and shades springing from his bow. I notice vaguely that pizzicato on the violin is not integral to his vocabulary, and then it’s over, and it’s been another 30 minutes.

“So what are you thinking about when you play?” I blurt, immediately regretting it.

A long pause. “I’m playing the vibrations,” Grimes says. “Out there?” “Yeah, all that out there,” he says, adding quickly a second later, “And everything else.” I’m reminded that he’s a poet in words as well. Our conversation turns to his writing. “I started doing that in 1970, just putting things in notebooks and studying.” The names pour forth from him: “I read Yeats, Auden, Williams—I had a library close to where I lived, and I was there almost every day.” I ask why he’s so often silent when he has such a store of words inside him. “It wasn’t always like that. I was beat out about words. I mean that everybody beat me, learned how to use them better than I did, so I felt like I couldn’t do it.” I anticipate that he’ll put his musical ability down to a lack of words, or a replacement for them, but when I suggest this, his voice is noncommittal. “Could be. When I was out west, I wrote when I wasn’t playing. Not really now though. It’s more like the poetry has entered the music.”

Sunday, April 11—In the evening, I watch Grimes reacting to his own musicmaking.

Margaret sets everything up for us with her usual efficiency and goes off to continue preparations for the upcoming tour. I have the honor of auditioning concert recordings Grimes made in the company of Andrew Cyrille and Paul Dunmall on tour in the U.K. last fall, some of which will become the next Profound Sound trio disc. Each player brings a wealth of timbres to the table, Dunmall playing his too rarely heard clarinet and contributing some of his more familiar bagpipe ruminations. The performances are stunningly diverse: many of the pieces stretch out to more than an hour, with plenty of dramatic developments and dynamic extremes. Luscious combinations of pipes and violin, clarinet and bass, violin and Cyrille’s unconventional drumming are there in abundance. Dunmall’s pipe playing conjures shades of Scotland, but also of the broadly stereotypical East; his soprano work can do the same, sometimes sounding like a shenai. Grimes joins him on these excursions, forgoing his usual melodic intricacies for long stretches of rhythmic repetitions on a note, or on an open-fifth double stop. The two instruments blend in a single voice, and Cyrille knows exactly how to complement each gesture with perfectly placed and expertly timed accents.

Grimes never asks my opinion; he comments throughout: “yes,” and “isn’t that fantastic.” Innocent, delighted by every gesture, he’s absolutely absorbed, sometimes only uttering closed-lipped monosyllabic assent as the improvisations travel from gentleness

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to volatility and back. At the end of one concert, the trio launches unceremoniously into what I can only describe as bebop. It isn’t even the pantonal descendant we’ve come to call “freebop”; it circles around F, though it’s not quite a blues, and Grimes’s solo conjures shades of his 1950s self.

“You’re playing bebop,” I can’t help exclaiming. Grimes laughs. “Lotta water under that bridge,” he says, and then adds: “Or maybe there’s a little left on top of it.” I ask whether he enjoys playing that sort of music now that his language is so far removed from it. “Sure, but I usually save it for the end of a concert, like we’re hearing now. I’m happy with it—it’s all music.”

Monday, April 12—We wander back and forth between inside tables and patio at Brooklyn’s Rose Live Music Club. Rehearsal begins late on yet another gorgeous New York afternoon. Marc Ribot runs the band through some charts, suggesting at one point that Coltrane’s “Sun Ship” might be fun to do. “We haven’t played that one with Henry, have we?” he asks Chad Taylor, and then adds, “but Henry will know just what to do.” His admiration for Grimes is deep, filling the pages of the foreword he penned for Grimes’s first published book of poetry, Signs Along the Road (Buddy’s Knife JazzEdition, Cologne, 2007). Ribot describes the experience of a young rocker experiencing that unique bass sound from a punk aesthetic. He formed the excellent Spiritual Unity to feature Grimes in a group performing Albert Ayler’s music, and their sole album does not do justice to their stunning performances. The trio runs through “Change Has Come” in rehearsal, and I am emboldened to ask Ribot if later on he’ll say a few words about Grimes for this article. “Always,” he beams, “I always have time for that.” The band proceeds through a diverse repertoire that only a Ribot project can pull off with conviction. Suddenly, at the end of a meditative piece, Ribot dives into a blues, and the others follow with gusto. Again, I’m somehow shocked at hearing Grimes play the blues, swinging easily and fluidly through the changes and taking a spacious two-chorus solo before they take it out. Hearing him speaking that language, conjuring the old forms again, just demonstrates how far he’s come. As we sit outside later, over a glass of red wine, I ask him about that aspect of his musical journey.

“Sure, I enjoy playing that sort of thing,” he says, and after a pause, “if the musicians are serious about it.”

Between rehearsal and concert, Ribot comes to talk about Grimes. We sit at one of the little tables for a few minutes, and it’s clear that his respect for the older musician has only grown during the past six years. “I feel like I’ve gotten to know him better, not just musically but as a person,” he explains.

“I love the fact that Henry challenges me.

He’s always ready to improvise at his best, always on. It’s never as if he comes in and plays at half strength; he just doesn’t work that way. He can play in any context—hey Henry, remember we did a few concerts of Django Reinhardt’s music? Remember that?”

Both laugh. I wonder if there’s any chance of bringing that back for Django’s centennial year. “Probably not,” Ribot states. “After that Woody Allen film, everybody’s doing it.”

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just before the concert starts. The little club is filling up, so a respite from the milling bodies is welcome. Two tourists from London come out for a smoke; they love Ribot but have not heard of Grimes, or at least they don’t believe they have. I hear the crowd now swelling to breaking point, an impression confirmed when I reenter to find there’s no room to move and barely enough to breathe. “Is this legal, to have so many people jammed in here?” asks one smothered victim near my right elbow. Excitement is building to fever pitch as the musicians take their places at 9:00.

Unfortunately, many of the pieces rehearsed don’t make it to the concert. The Ayler tune is cut, and they had also prepared a wildly avant-garde score of events, silence spread throughout them, interlaced with structures. Some of the tunes have no names. “I guess you could call this one ‘Blee’ and the other one ‘Blah,’” Ribot jokes.

“They’re working titles.” The trio does play “Sun Ship,” and it is astounding. One of Coltrane’s transitional compositions from the summer of 1965, the fractured head is a perfect vehicle for Grimes to dissect, examine and reassemble, Chad Taylor maneuvering in and around every pluck and bow with customary agility. The trio’s dynamic range is huge, from delicate pianissimo to fire-andbrimstone fortissimo, Ribot shredding over the thunder and fury that Grimes and Taylor unleash on the tiny room. The audience is pin-drop quiet, as respectful as it is possible for an audience to be. After the final high-volume torrent they demand an encore; the trio is willing, but in Ribot’s predictably non-predictable fashion, they launch headlong into a 1930s standard. There’s nothing kitschy about it, and Grimes is swinging along happily with the rest, nodding backwards through time, speaking a musical language whose final days he witnessed, one that is his and now also not his. As the band jumps abruptly into one final assault, it occurs to me that Grimes, like his younger bandmates, is a natural postmodernist. Rock, swing, modern classical composition—this trio does it all, with style and passion. I’m reminded of what Grimes said the day before, as we sat in his studio: “It’s all music.”

The last chord resounds and the audience explodes. “Henry Grimes,” Ribot yells. The applause gradually subsides, the beats return over the loudspeakers, as patrons struggle to move and to speak over the noise they’re making. There’s a tap on my shoulder.

“What’d you think?” I can barely make out Grimes’s voice over the din. “Great,” I shout, and Grimes laughs gently. “How’d you like playing all this modern music?” I half joke.

“Hasn’t it all come a long way since you were gone?” “Yeah,” he responds doubtfully, “But nothing gets by the ’60s.”

On the cab ride from Brooklyn back to Manhattan, Henry and Margaret discuss going-away matters. They’re leaving for the European tour in less than 48 hours, and there’s a lot to prepare, projects to finish and loose ends to deal with. The new Profound Sound album tracks have just been selected, and discs need to be sent out for mixing and mastering. Grimes’s second book of poetry has also recently been assembled from the huge cache of notebooks he’s kept since the early 1970s. I take the

opportunity to probe Grimes about future projects. “I’d really like to have a big band,” he says immediately. “I loved them growing up, used to listen to them on the radio at night, so I’d like to put one together. You know, two or three basses for accompaniment, right at the core, and then standard winds, brass and some percussion.”

At his present pace, a big band seems likely. There has been a wealth of new projects since Grimes’s return. His June 2004 concert appearance in Finland with David Murray and Hamid Drake produced his first disc as leader in nearly 40 years, the exemplary Live at the Kerava Jazz Festival on Ayler.

A year later, he formed Spaceship on the Highway with Marshall Allen, Fred Anderson and Avreeal Ra. There have also been concerts and recordings with Oluyemi Thomas, Jemeel Moondoc, Connie Crothers, Dave Burrell, Joe McPhee, and William Parker, to name only a few. Grimes speaks of them fondly, expressing interest in playing again with all of them. He is particularly interested in making more music with Bill Dixon, with whom he played a duo concert at The Stone in 2004. “Yeah, that was really something, a lot of freedom there.”

We don’t discuss it at that moment, but he’s been dealt a terrible blow by the death of Rashied Ali last summer. At the time, I was writing the liners for their new disc and attempted to ask Grimes about his feeling concerning Ali’s passing. “It’s unfortunate,” was the response, and a moment later: “I’ll miss him.” I changed the subject. They had a consistently productive relationship that produced a wonderful disc for Porter, and they played the 2007 Vision Festival in a trio with Marilyn Crispell. The second Grimes-Ali duo disc, called Spirits Aloft and again on Porter, is in post-production as of this writing.

As we near my hotel, it’s clear that Grimes’s mind is on the present. “I don’t like thinking too far ahead about these things,” he responds to my speculations. He’s in the process of choosing the poems he’ll read in solo performances on the tour, where he’ll also play bass and violin. “I’m just going to keep going.” It’s a logical statement from a man for whom that simple and courageous action has been a way of life. His perseverance is our good fortune.

I once asked Grimes, in a phone conversation, “How do you get from one note to the next with so many choices?” “You go forward,” he responded, and, after a silence, “It’s very natural.” This is what he does, quietly and with supreme dignity. We may never know what befell Grimes out west. Whatever it involved would have broken a weaker heart.

Grimes’s return is miraculous, but his continued strength and artistic vigor are heroic. He has developed his own language on violin when most people are settled into the clichés of their chosen instrument. His poetry continues to evolve, mirroring the non-periodic repetitions in his music. He is now active as a leader and as sideman, a luxury rarely afforded him in the 1960s, but a more humble man is hardly imaginable. Like Coltrane, Grimes bridged the gap between tradition and freedom, and like Coltrane, his greatness is borne with grace, humility and wonder. ✹ Marc Medwin also writes for All About Jazz, Dusted and elsewhere. This is his first feature for STN.

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THE ART OF NOISE

From photocopied gig flyers to limited edition silkscreens, here’s the poster art that’s represented live creative improvised music.

Featuring artwork by James Burpee, Steven Cerio, Dan Grzeca, Kiva Stimac, David Wang and more!

Tristan Honsinger Sextett Jazzgalerie, Nickelsdorf 12.07.1985 "Black New Wave" Earl Cross, Rashid al'Akbar, Muhammad Ali 100 Club, London UK 05.05.circa1975 Carla Bley Band The New Yorker, Toronto 01.15.1978 Kalaparusha and the Light Loeb Student Center, NYU, New York City 11.10.1978 background: Matthew Shipp Trio [detail] Barnevelder Movement/Dance Complex, Houston 12.14.2008 designed by David Wang

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In the liner notes to his new CD The Untarnished Dream, pianist Steve Colson recalls how a humble gig poster changed the course of his life. One day in the late sixties, he’d passed an advertisement for a Fred Anderson concert as he walked across the Northwestern University campus with saxophonist Chico Freeman. “We had no idea who he was,” Colson remembers, “but the poster looked interesting. So we went to see Fred. The group included Fred Hopkins on bass and Steve McCall on drums, and we’re getting gassed by the music. When I realized that this was the AACM, and that the AACM was in Chicago, I realized it was an opportunity to check out this big city nearby.

And when I did, I thought I should stay.”

Forty years later, the intrepid web surfer can find posters from the same fertile time and place with just a few mouse clicks. Jazz fan R. Howard Courtney presents his lovinglycurated collection of well over 1000 jazz posters at: friends.peoria.lib.il.us/community/ howardcourtney/jazzposters.html.

Though his collection spans the globe and a wide variety of jazz styles, some of the most compelling items trace the development of Chicago’s influential improvisers cooperative the AACM and reflect the dogged struggle of hometown greats like Anderson, Douglas Ewart, Kahil El’Zabar and Mwata Bowden as they worked on their music within a fluid landscape of venues: the Transition East, The Institute of Positive Education, Moming’s, Hot House, J’s Place, the Velvet Lounge.

There’s even a poster of an early Steve Colson gig, a December 8th, 1977 concert at the Columbia College Music Theater (admission, two dollars). “Finest in creative music!” it promises in jaunty script lettering; a pyramid, musical notes and a small photo of Colson and his wife and musical partner Iqua also decorate the black and white page.

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Reached by e-mail in New Jersey, where he now teaches at Montclair State University, Colson says he remembers the concert, but that, “yes, the poster is the surviving item.

It was a great event, but we don’t have a recording of it. Iqua and I usually designed our own posters at that time, as we still do; the photo was taken by Nancy Carter. Don’t remember who did the printing, but we and other AACM members did lots of distribution of flyers, etc., in and around Hyde Park, and then various spots from the South Side to the Loop, Old Town, etc."

Again, from Courtney’s collection: from the barely-remembered to the legendary: A simple letter-size black and white photocopy advertises John Coltrane’s final concert, an April 23, 1967 appearance at the Olatunji Center of African Culture on New York’s 125th Street. Coltrane is pictured in profile, serenely playing the flute, his portrait contained within the shape of the African continent. The type-written fine print offers a tantalizing invitation from across the decades: “Come join your host Babatunde.

Ask Mr. Coltrane questions about his music and sound."

The wildy psychedelic poster art of the mid-to-late 1960s, exemplified by the work of Stanley Mouse, Wes Wilson, Rick Griffin, Lee Conklin, Alton Kelley and others, has long since been welcomed into the holdings of established art museums and wellheeled collectors alike. Over the past three decades, the rock poster phenomenon has been documented in a series of attractive coffee table books. Devoted largely to Bay Area rock posters from the ’60s, Paul Grushkin’s lavish The Art of Rock, published in 1987, is the collector’s bible—the posters it contains are commonly referred to by AOR’s plate numbers by zealous hobbyists. Eric King’s Collectors Guide to Psychedelic Rock Posters is another key reference, cataloguing in minute detail the posters, postcards and handbills that advertised events at San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium and Avalon Ballroom, Detroit’s Grande Ballroom and Austin’s Vulcan Gas Company. In 2003, Minnesota millionaire Bill Sagan purchased the archives of Bill Graham Presents, including thousands of original posters, handbills, postcards and tickets, in mint condition and of impeccable provinance, and under the trade name Wolfgang’s Vault has made these artifacts easily available to a growing market for this kind of memorabilia (not to mention streaming broadcasts of historic and otherwise unavailable live concerts while you browse their website).

Successive generations of underground postermakers followed: Frank Kozik’s dayglo, debauched cartoonery, Art Chantry’s knowing retro-style, Emek Golan’s surreal fantasy scenes, Derek Hess’s fluid sketchwork, Raymond Pettibon’s distrurbing linedrawings ... There are Internet fan pages like gigposters.com (with digital reproductions of 117,649 posters as of May 7th.

Sample forum thread: “Wanted: WILCO Poster for 10/19/06 show at 9:30 club”) and annual conventions (most notably Flatstock, regularly held in Austin during the week of the tastemaking South By Southwest festival).

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Opposite: “Sound Unity Festival” Cuando Community Center, NYC 05.30-06.05.1984 Peter Brotzmann's Alarm Taller, NYC 06.07.1984 / Brotzmann, Kowald / Cyrille Trio Tin Pan Alley, NYC 06.06.1984

Above: The Music Ensemble The Anita Weschler Studio, NYC 06.14-16.1985 Big Moon Ensemble Third Street Music School, NYC 04.11.1986 Left: William Parker Sextet Kraine Gallery, NYC 04.11.1987

Right: Ensemble Muntu Environ, NYC 07.16.1976 Charles Gayle, William Parker, Milford Graves WeBo, NYC 06.07&08.1985

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Sun Ra and his Ominiverse Jet Set Arkestra Detroit Jazz Center, Detroit 12.26-31.1980 designed by Frank Bach

Air Detroit Jazz Center, detroit 11.14-16.1980 designed by Frank Bach

Jackie McLean The World Stage Cafe, Detroit 06.12-13.1980 designed by Frank Bach

detail, relatively little has been said about the posters and gig flyers that helped to advertise live events from the world of jazz, improvisation and the avant-garde, but of course they exist, and surely, there are those who’ve preserved them. Ed Hazell has presented and written about music in Boston for decades, and over time his professional archive has come to include numerous advertisements for otherwise forgotten

loft-era gigs.

“I’ve collected these flyers for different reasons,” he says. “I was at the Sound Unity Festival in 1984 and picked up the Festival flyer and the Brötzmann Alarm flyer then.

Sound Unity seemed like an historic event when I was there, and it seems so now. I wanted a souvenir. I couldn’t stay for Alarm, but whenever I was in New York, I picked up and saved flyers for cool sounding gigs.

Nothing systematic at all, just the habit of an obsessive fan.”

The densely-typewritten, yellow and black Sound Unity Festival handbill lists the names of every group participant for five nights’ worth of acts. Hazell says it’s the only place he’s found so far where a complete listing of participants appears. “Although the festival focused on the New York free jazz community, you can see early (al-

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though certainly not the first) alliances with European improvisers like Peter Brötzmann, Peter Kowald, Irene Schweitzer, and Fred van Hove. It’s interesting to see Geri Allen playing with Frank Lowe at the start of her career. I think the place of honor given Don Cherry as the closing act of the festival speaks volumes about the esteem in which he was held. His impact on so many players in the New York scene is way underestimated by writers. And you can see how Sound Unity laid the foundation for other community-oriented musician organizations in New York, like the Improvisors Collective of the mid 90s and, of course, the Vision Festival.”

These items take on a greater significance when the ardent fan becomes an intrepid researcher, looking into a period of the music from which only scraps of history remain. “The Muntu flyers come from Jemeel Moondoc, who kept pretty meticulous records of his activities during the loft era,” says Hazell. “I used these and other flyers to help me compile the sessionography that appears in the Muntu Recordings box set released by NoBusiness Records. Many of them are reproduced in the book that accompanies the CDs. The flyers of William Parker’s gigs come from William’s very extensive archives, and are useful in my ongoing research into his music and career.”

“With media coverage so spotty, these are really the only evidence we have of these gigs,” Hazell continues. “Out of philosophical preference as much as necessity, they were in fact meant to be grassroots end runs around the media.

They’re an indication of just how much on their own the loft musicians were and how determined they were to find an alternate, DIY method of getting out word about gigs. They are of a piece with the alternate, DIY culture of the lofts. Sometimes press-on letters were used, but they cost money on top of photocopy expenses. Money was an issue, because people were poor and the gigs didn’t pay squat. Hand lettering was cheaper and more artistic things could be done by hand anyway. The choice of imagery tells something about the music and the musicians’ attitudes as well. African-flavored images on the Muntu flyers are indicative of Moondoc’s attempts to create an African American art that incorporated elements of African music and culture in an American music.”

“In the 70s and early 80s,” Hazell points out, “there was no Internet, no email lists to promote gigs. Newspapers, radio, and television largely ignored avant-garde jazz.

These flyers say, ’Yeah, well, who needs you? We’ll do it ourselves.’ The musicians did it in poverty and obscurity, because these flyers were not going to reach a mass audience, no matter how many they printed up, and a mass audience wouldn’t be interested in the music anyway, but they did it with spirit and attitude and defiance and a lack of self-pity. And as much as circumstances and varying degrees of graphic talent allowed, I think they did it with great style.”

Around this time, Frank and Peggy Bach had opened a graphic design business from their home on the east side of Detroit, learning graphic design while working with organizer John Sinclair and several

others on music production and publication projects in Detroit and Ann Arbor starting in the late 1960s. Frank was the leader, lead singer, and lyricist for the Up rock n’ roll band from 1968 through 1973, while also helping to produce musical events, as well as editing and distributing the Ann Arbor and Detroit Sun alternative newspaper. He and Peggy watched and learned from the artists who worked on the publications, posters and other media for those projects, including Gary Grimshaw, Leni Sinclair, Barbara Weinberg-Barefield, as well as Sinclair himself as art director.

“Peggy and I became graphic designers for most of our collective activities around 1979,” remembers Frank Bach. “At the time, we were working with John Sinclair to operate the Detroit Jazz Center, a nonprofit that had a music cafe, provided music instruction, and helped jazz artists get funding for their own projects.”

The Bachs’ operation was perhaps even a bit more advanced than that of many of those creating posterwork for out-jazz and new music: “We set up a graphic design studio in one room of the Center with a small Compugraphic typesetter, an IBM Selectric typewriter, an Argyle copy camera for making photostats, a couple of drafting tables, a stock of Letraset press-on lettering, and a waxer for paste-up that was always plugged in. We used photos taken

by Leni Sinclair and others provided by the musicians or their agents, and sometimes illustrations by Shelby McPherson. We had the printing done at local offset printers and also ran off handbills on our leased copy machine.”

Jim Burpee’s expressive flyers advertised a series of now-historic late-’90s concerts at Amherst’s Unitarian Meetinghouse organized by Eremite Records’ impresario Michael Ehlers under the aegis of his own Conway New Music Society. Ehlers first met Burpee within jazz record collectors’ circles back home in Minnesota.

“He would sell his very high quality dupes at a Minneapolis record show held a couple times a year at a VFW hall off of Lake Street. I started going to his house regularly to buy records and get schooled.”

Burpee was also an accomplished painter and a professor at the Minneapolis College of Art & Design. When Ehlers presented his first concert in 1993, “I took a couple photos of the musicians by Jim’s place and over a drink he whipped off some very cool drawings I used for the flyer. In 1995 Jim did the poster for the first CNMS/ Eremite event, a Meetinghouse concert by the Jemeel Moondoc Trio and the Ellery Eskelin trio. It was an image of Babs Gonzales that I used as a logo for awhile.”

Of the collaborative process, Ehlers says, “typically I would call Jim on the phone and suggest a couple specific things I had in mind, such as Peter Brötzmann jumping out of a helicopter, Roy Campbell in the lotus position floating above pyramids, or Raphe Malik on horseback, exhausted and leading a pack mule loaded down with jazz instruments and Oskar from The Tin Drum out in front... He’s so skilled an illustrator he executed whatever crazy shit I asked for.”

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to loggerheads over a particular design.

“For example I once asked for a circus bear holding a sign with the concert info and Jim became pre-occupied with how to depict the bear’s genitals. He angrily rejected my suggestion that the bear wear a sign-board and we eventually settled on the image of a little circus strongman wearing a loin cloth.

What-the-fuck?!”

“For the most part,” says Ehlers, “these concerts and activities pre-date the Internet take-over (which I was late for anyway), so rather than getting the word out via email mailing lists and a MySpace page and then for instance having a small edition screenprinted poster for the audience and to post on Flickr, Eremite relied on all-out flyer bombing every telephone pole, lamp post

and bus stop in Amherst and Northampton.

Just 12-15 years later these grassroots practices seem hilariously quaint. Back then I lived a couple blocks from a 24-hour Kinkos that was typically slow at night. I was up all night anyway, so the day the poster arrived in the mail I’d run-off a couple hundred copies in the self-service machines, two-passes using different colored inks to create an off-register psychedelic quality, and hit the streets with masking tape and staple gun as only a true believer can.”

Ehlers recounts a time-honored musical tradition known to all musicians and would-be presenters: getting out there and flyering for your own gig. “Northampton had some kind of anti-flyer policy at the time,” he remembers. “so most of my work

was ripped down the following morning by free-jazz hating business owners and bike cops. To make the flyer more difficult to remove I would place it as high as possible (and totally out-of-sight for most people) and whack about twenty staples into it.

During these sorties it was not uncommon to get hassled by the man, for sure it didn’t help that it was two or three in the morning and I had a kind of free-jazz Big Lebowski personal presentation.”

Eventually Burpee moved on to other things (in a brief e-mail he confesses that “my involvement in my nature-based work made my sensibility much more lyrical and I did not feel I could fulfill Michael’s desires for a more pumped-up style.”) and Ehlers notes that he also commissioned “very Fire in the Valley '97 Bezanson Recital Hall, UMASS, Amherst MA 07.26.97 designed by James Burpee 8.5" x 11" photocopy William Parker's "In Order To Survive" Unitarian Meeting House, Amherst MA 02.24.1997 designed by James Burpee 8.5" x 11" photocopy

The Avant Garde All-Stars Nacul Center, Amherst MA 02.02.99 designed by James Burpee 11" x 14" photocopy

Loren Connors, San Agustin, Glenn Spearman/John Heward Duo Jemeel Moondoc Trio with Bern Nix Steve Swell 4tet featuring Roswell Rudd Narada Burton Green Unitarian Meeting House, Amherst MA 05.23 - 6.20.1997 designed by James Burpee 11" x 17" photocopy

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memorable CNMS/Eremite Meetinghouse posters by Chris Corsano, Conrad Capistran, Peter Brötzmann and Michael Hurley.”

The concert series wound down in 2000 when Ehlers grew more busy booking and managing tours, and when area universities began presenting some of what Ehlers calls “the mainstay Meetinghouse musicians.”

The posters had certainly been attentiongetting on the streets of Amherst, and I tucked away several of them, detached carefully from a bus stop or lamppost between the church and the parking lot after the gig, to decorate the walls of my apartment back in Burlington. But how many were there like me? Could many of these still survive?

“I have no idea how many of the old posters are still around.” says Ehlers. “Most all of my copies were destroyed when my basement flooded. The last Eremiteproduced Meetinghouse concert was a may 2008 Brötzmann/Bennink duo. As of a

Sunny Murray & Sabir Mateen Unitarian Meeting House, Amherst MA 06.27.1997 designed by James Burpee 11" x 14" photocopy

couple months ago there was still a flyer for that (by Brötzmann) hanging eight feet high on a telephone pole on the Northampton bike bath, disintegrating nicely from the New England elements.”

Over in Syracuse, a music fan named Mike Hentz, inspired partially by Ehlers’ efforts, launched a concert series of his own under the moniker New Thing Productions. Over time, he’d work with a number of poster artists to help get the word out about his gigs, including Tommy Lincoln, Marc Storrs, Keith Utech, and perhaps best-known among them, Steven Cerio.

Cerio, says Hentz, “was very active in the scene that I was putting shows on for.

He was a great supporter of the gigs, and it took a bit of courage on my part to ask him to do some of the posters. I met him at one of the New Thing Productions gigs and he told me his past resume of work and I went online and I was amazed by who he

has worked with and what his work looked like. Steve was very happy to help out ... he came back with some works that were different than what I saw on his website, and I was so happy because it was almost like he wanted to go into a different direction that he wanted to try out but didn’t have the right platform to try it out on. I mean, he was doing Residents and Les Claypool posters, but when I saw the ones he did for the Brötzmann/Drake show, they were so much darker and overlapping in a good way that it almost translated the music that Brötzmann and Drake were playing that night. Lots of black and complementary contrast. I couldn’t help it so I asked him to do more for me like Dave Burrell’s Full Blown Trio and Matthew Shipp’s Nu Quartet ([the latter concert] never happened because the band got stuck in a horrible blizzard on the way up here). They were used as promotional materials for the gigs, but then they started to look so nice that we started silk screening

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them though a friend and we started selling a couple here and there.”

“My tight ’germ-free’ work has been my trademark for quite a few years,” says Cerio of the teeming, candy-colored scenes populated with animated grotesques that he’s designed for posters for bands like King Crimson, Negativland and most prolifically, The Residents, in addition to non-music projects like the charming 1998 release Steven Cerio’s ABC Book: A Drug Primer.

“Strangely it was an aberration of my ’real’ everyday style that you’ll find on my prints for jazz and avant garde acts,” remarks Cerio. “That ’looser’ and more abstract style is how I’ve approached my gallery work, painting, ink work and sketchbooks since my late teens. My tighter ’germ-free’ approach found its way into mainstream media and clients because of its user friendly feel. Pieces of mine with a similar approach have been used by Nickelodeon for graphics and animation, Disney, Warner Brothers, A&M Records, Guitar World, Penguin Books etc. My initial intention was to create a benevolent feeling in the viewer, [and] that same approach seemed twee in conjunction with a jazz graphic which I feel needs a dense and flowing approach.

It needs landscapes where the image and space is open to interpretation, much like the music. I was sitting with William Parker after his performance with Full Blown Trio at The Unitarian Church in Syracuse having

him sign a few of my screen-prints. A film student approached him, pitching a ’free jazz’ film. After his pitch William looked up and said ’that’s not free jazz,’ then, pointing at my print, said ’this is free jazz.’ Needless to say, I felt I was on the right track.

Strangely, last week Comedy Central asked me for rights to that same print for a new show called ’Workaholics’—it will be on the main character’s bedroom wall. Parker ands Burrell get adopted by mainstream culture!

How great would this world be?”

“I don’t try to get in the musician’s head,” Cerio continues. “I’ll start with getting inside the music the best I can. I’ll play the music all through the sketches and finalizing. It’s important to me to work that way. It’s nothing mystical. I just know that the mood of the music will affect the piece, it will make it conform to its own will. Good music will give you its own visuals and good visuals create an interesting music in you.”

“The first art I was interested in were on album covers as a kid,” says Cerio. “Lee Conklin’s lion cover for Santana, Roger Dean’s Yes covers, and all of those early Brubeck covers. I started doing posters when I got to New York City in the late eighties. I was active in zines which turned to some posters for Monster Magnet, White Zombie, The Dust Devils and a few others.

I used those money-less gigs to land large paying gigs with Nickelodeon, Warner Brothers, Entertainment Weekly and others.

Before I knew it I went without a day job until this very day more than twenty years later.”

“Posters had their heyday in the 60’s,” says the 44-year-old Cerio of the changes he’s seen since he started making prints..

“It petered out in the 70’s. I worked at Psychedelic Solutions [a Greenwich Village poster gallery later absorbed by Wolfgang’s Vault} my first year in New York (1988) They were selling classic 60’s prints and no one was producing anything new.”

“As a musician myself,” says Cerio. “I’ve noticed that my intent and approach to my art and music are becoming identical. Just the tools are different and I hope that blurs one day too, somehow. I can remember exact moments where the music of The Residents, Captain Beefheart, Soft Machine, the Fripp & Eno albums, Coltrane, William Parker, Hafler Trio, changed the way I drew. Especially The Residents. I watched Mole Show on Night Flight as a kid and the entire way I saw art and listened to music changed before I went to bed. I was 13 or so. Within a week I was beginning to understand abstraction in both music and art. The Calder and David Smith sculptures began to have resonance with me as well as the abstract expressionists. My trips to the library became tough on my arms. It was a fruitful and exciting time. I was already deep into Prog—Holdsworth, Yes, King Crimson, Bruford and I started to lean into

the ECM guys like Garbarek, Abercrombie, Dave Holland, Weber, and that was the aural gateway drug into jazz, then I started digging deep into the Impulse catalog starting with Coltrane. Then I started trying to wrap my head around free jazz. Cecil Taylor, Ornette and Braxton. I’m still trying.

I can’t wear it out. That’s part of its beauty.”

Here, let a professional explain the difference between offset and screenprinting: “Almost every poster in that sixties heyday was printed on an offset press.

That’s printing from metal plates. The same process magazines and books are printed with, but with one major difference—magazines have the dollars to color separate from a painting or photograph—in the ’60s most of their privately owned presses demanded hand-separated color by the artist. If they had a 4-color poster, the artist had to bring 4 ’black’ drawings with matching registration marks so they could see where the colors would land in relation to each other. You chose your colors from a book of process color inks. Each color is etched into a separate metal plate. When the poster scene came back in the 90’s, it was all screen-printed posters. Screenprinting demands that the artist create a different drawing for each color and that color must be ’trapped’. Because of the inaccuracies of screen printing you must be sure that your colors end ’trapped’ under a line. A slightly mis-registered color

Opposite, counterclockwise from top left: The Residents Icky Flix Tour, various venues and cities 02.13 - 17.2001 designed by Steven Cerio 12" x 18" digital offset print The Residents Irving Plaza 04.05 - 07.1999 designed by Steven Cerio 12" x 18" digital offset print Negativland True/false tour 04 - 05.2000 designed by Steven Cerio 12" x 18" digital offset print King Crimson The Flats, Cleveland 06.08.1995 designed by Steven Cerio 12" x 18" digital offset print Right: New Thing Presents Full Blown Trio at May Memorial Unitarian Universalist Church, Syracuse NY 10.23.2004 designed by Steven Cerio, printed by Andrew Todd 17" x 13" screenprint New Thing Presents Peter BrӦtzmann / Hamid Drake Duo at Westcott Community Center, Syracuse NY 03.14.2004 designed by Steven Cerio, printed by Andrew Todd 12.5" x 19" screenprint 30 | SIGNAL to NOISE #58 WWW.SIGNALTONOISEMAGAZINE.COM

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Peter BrӦtzmann Chicago Tentet Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago 12.01.2007 designed by Dan Grzeca 19" x 25" screenprint

would leave white strips along your lines. You select your colors from a Pantone color chart, that’s a color standard for premixed inks.”

Nowadays, Cerio produces mostly screenprints: “I have a publisher that prints them in exchange for a half or a third of the run that we split with the musician. I have done digital offset prints that enable me to work in full color. The digital file of the image I provide is transferred with static electricity to metal plates. The price is much cheaper than typical offset printing because the plates are not destroyed in the process. The static simply dissipates when the print run is complete and a new image can be applied.”

“I’ve put down literally hundreds of thumbnail sketches for each poster,” says Cerio. ”I’m usually on my own with the concepts. With graphics and animations for The Residents I have Homer Flynn from Poreknow Graphics to lean on, which is wonderful for me. The films and animations we’ve done over the years were inducted into The Museum of Modern Art in NYC a few years ago. It was a big thrill.

Having the artist that designed the sets for the Mole Show to work with is a dream come true.

The man is a genius and I don’t use that word lightly. If it wasn’t for that set design, I may have done something less fun for a living.”

The Thing spring tour 2007 designed by Dan Grzeca 18" x 24" screenprint

The Thing spring tour 2009 designed by Dan Grzeca screenprint

Vandermark 5 Special Edition The Green Mill, Chicago, IL 06.19&20.2009 designed and printed by Dan Grzeca 19" x 25" screenprint Vandermark 5 The Green Mill, Chicago, IL 01.25&26.2008 designed by Dan Grzeca 15" x 22" screenprint

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“I’ve been making silkscreened prints and posters for about 15 years now and it all goes back to the improvised music scene in Chicago,” says artist Dan Grzeca (pronounced “Jet-sah”), who’s created an intricate body of work for his hometown’s rich network of grassroots venues and forward-thinking improvisers, as well as more rockish fare as Phish, Low, Jesus Lizard and the Black Keys. “When I really wanted to investigate screenprinting, I was advised by [fellow concert poster designer] Bob Hartzell to make posters. Under the encouragement of Ken Vandermark and John Corbett, who had me design the posters for the Empty Bottle Jazz Festival during its 9 year run, I really grew to love the process.”

(Reached by e-mail, writer-producer Corbett enthuses that Grzeca’s “neo surrealist mythopoetic mash-ups are integral to the Chicago creative music scene!”)

“I've made a lot of posters for Vandermark related projects including the Brötzmann Tentet,” Grzeca, 41, continues. “Working on posters for Peter Brötzmann has been a real feat for me especially with how much I admire him as a musician and visual artist. The poster I made for the 10th anniversary concert of the Tentet at the MCA in Chicago was a fun one as I incorporated subject matter that Peter uses in some of his artwork, so while it was not a collaboration per se, I felt a connection to his work intently.”

Grzeca’s work blends interests in mythology and automatic drawing with the influences of Picasso, Kurt Schwitters, Philip Guston and that of such fellow designers as Seripop and Tyler Stout.

A poster for the record-release gig for the Vandermark 5’s Burn The Incline depicts a trio of Molotov cocktails, each wearing expressions ranging from tranquil to slightly bemused.

The flames coming from the bottletops joins together in a mustard-colored billow, with the names of the featured acts (V5 and the duo of Joe Morris and Hamid Drake in support) and the legend “Scorch Yer Ears, Baby!” superimposed. The striking poster for The Thing's WWW.SIGNALTONOISEMAGAZINE.COM SIGNAL to NOISE #58 | 33

spring 2007 tour depicts an enormous, three-legged, gumdrop-shaped, horned monster in shades of aqua, a stubby sword hoisted in one hand, a small suitcase with the band members’ names in the other.

Long-necked birds are a common motif as are wooden houses and hand tools.

Grzeca’s another poster artist who conducts business directly with fans of both music and visual art through customized web pages linked to electronic payment processing. “Etsy and bigcartel sites make it super easy for an artist to quickly market and sell their work directly,” he says. “I’ve sold quite a bit through my etsy shop (jetsah.etsy.com) and it’s been great.”

Savvy venues like the Higher Ground Music Hall in South Burlington, Vermont are producing limited edition posters for marquee gigs. The Higher Ground recently compiled and published 1 of 1500, a slickly-designed volume that reproduces 121 posters prepared by members of the Iskra Print Collective at Burlington’s Jager DiPaola Kemp Design for various events at the club over the course of its first ten years.

This was my hometown venue at the turn of the century and I can fondly remember scoping out the floor of the club after the gig as the crowd began to dissipate, looking for whoever was giving them away. An autographed copy of a March 2003 poster for a Herbie Hancock concert at Higher Ground (a complicated circuit pattern in gold print on fluorescent green that reveals Hancock’s face when viewed at a distance) has hung in the Signal to Noise office since shortly after the gig.

Just across the border to the north, these kinds of posters are essential to the promotion of events at Montreal’s Casa Del Popolo and it’s sister venue, La Sala Rossa.

Established in 2000 and 2001, respectively, the venues are managed by Mauro Pezzente and his wife Kiva Stimac, who works with local graphic artist Todd Stewart on the design of posters, programs, ads and t-shirts for their events, in particular the annual month-long creative music blowout Suoni Per Il Popolo.

“Working with local talented printmakers was definitely a priority in terms of how we wanted to represent the Suoni,” says Stimac. “Not having a large budget created the need for us to make them ourselves in-house as well and to use the community of artists around us. Artists really stepped up and created some knock-out work for us. As a printmaker myself, I see the value in having a collectible hand-made limited edition work of art, but also the importance in representing the music graphically, with respect. It’s hard to get the general public to come see some of the music at our fest, but maybe they notice a bevy of colorful posters and want to check out what’s going on. That’s our hope at least.”

“Every year Todd and I get together and come up with a theme or feeling of how we want the Suoni represented,” says Stimac.

“Our festival is really all over the map and inclusive of a vast array of styles of music, but we see a connection there, a desire to experiment and test boundaries and create beauty. I think that’s what drew me and Mauro to Todd’s work. He’s a talented illustrator and designer and he tries out new

things. The posters really work as ads, but also as works of art. You notice them on the street. One year someone bought the entire poster collection from the Suoni!”

As usual, nobody can leave a good thing alone. “The street poster laws here are really against freedom of speech,” complains Stimac. “The city claims the posters make the city look dirty. It is actually illegal to poster on any public property, signposts, mailboxes, parking meters, but everyone does it. Or has done it ... recently there has been a real crackdown and a bunch of promoters and musicians have chosen to stop postering altogether. The only place postering is legal is on construction site fences, which are dominated by a large postering company who will poster over any other posters. The way things work here now, giant glossy corporate posters are everywhere on fences and construction sites and the small local music show or lost cat sign or church bake sale poster are illegal.”

Stivac says the climate is such that, “we get taken to court almost monthly over postering as our venue and festival names are on the posters. The fines are ridiculous, [but] for the most part we win these cases, since we are not the ones actually postering and the police have no way to prove we did it. Mauro is taking this issue to the supreme court with our latest case, for a small Haiti benefit someone had at the Sala. We’re going full force with our postering this year, as a protest of sorts against these inane laws.

How does a beautiful limited edition handmade poster sully the neighborhood?”

Here in Houston, the curious listener regularly encounters the work of designer David Wang, who prepares both colorphotocopied gig flyers as well as more ornate, short-run silkscreened work for the concerts administered by the Nameless Sound organization and for various other one-off events.

Like many, Wang came into screenprinting as a hobby. “I was working too much in my normal job as a graphic designer and I wanted to revisit something that I was passionate about which was music,” says Wang, who also hosts a portion of the Sunday afternoon jazz show on Rice University’s KTRU radio. “I was really finding music to be a huge release from the rigors and stress of my full-time job. I had taken screenprinting as a class during my time at the University of Houston but I kind of forgot about all that when I eventually graduated in 2001.

My regular job can be more conservative in nature so I cannot go ’all out’ . . . I learned this early on when my designs were deemed ‘too much’ or ‘excessive’. So working on prints and posters in my spare time was a nice way to balance my professional life with something that I really enjoy.”

Wang began to reacquaint himself with the craft in 2005 and began to offer work to friends and local promoters. “I was already volunteering for Dave Dove and his non-profit Nameless Sound (then called the Deep Listening Institute) as the graphic designer. I was already doing the programs and flyers for their events so I suggested doing actual screenprinted posters to sell at the events. My two favorite posters thus far would have to be the No Idea Festival poster and the Alan Licht/Loren Connors

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Braam DeJoode Vatcher Trio La Sala Rossa, Montreal 06.15.2009 designed and printed by popolo press (Kiva Tanya Stimac) letterpress and silkscreen

John Oswald La Sala Rossa, Montreal 06.19.2009 designed and printed by popolo press (Kiva Tanya Stimac) letterpress and silkscreen

“Suoni Per Il Popolo” Casa Del Popolo & La Sala Rossa 06.03-27.2004 designed by popolo press (Kiva Tanya Stimac) and printed by seriegraphie alphonse raymond silkscreen

Evan Parker & Ned Rothenberg Casa Del Popolo, Montreal 09.30.2009 designed and printed by popolo press (Kiva Tanya Stimac) letterpress and silkscreen

Magik Markers Casa Del Popolo, Montreal 03.27.2010 designed and printed by popolo press (Kiva Tanya Stimac) letterpress and silkscreen

Dave Burrell, William Parker & Mike Wimberly La Sala Rossa, Montreal 06.06.2009 designed and printed by popolo press (Kiva Tanya Stimac) letterpress and silkscreen

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print. The Licht/Connors poster was influenced by viewing a bootleg Japanese VHS copy of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo.

Nothing on the poster really relates to the artist, maybe the tone of their music is seen in the stark artwork but this was more just something that I was watching and it just creeped into existing workload.”

“The No Idea Festival poster has a better story,” Wang continues. “I am a big fan of Chuck Jones and his body of animation. My favorite besides the Looney Tunes work is the Now Hear This short where an old man picks up a new hearing aid horn and it amplifies the sound and perspective of the things around him. (http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=WiIO1qsO7W8).”

Wang also cites artist Egon Schiele and graphic designers Saul Bass and Erik Nitsche as influences, as well as his involvement in Sketch Club, “a local group of guys who meet and draw and create various forms of art. Like screenprinting, this group started as a hobby, an outlet for creativity and grew into something larger. A lot of what I do in screenprinting overlaps with my participation in this group since it allows me to experiment and create art spontaneously.

Drawing randomly or on-the-fly has always been my struggling point. “ Wang is modest about his achievements, but in fact he’s a perfect example of an artist who, influenced by the music, has produced original work that directly intersects with the world of creative and improvised music.

He confesses that, “I am still fascinated that you want to learn more about me considering that I work mostly at home or in limited capacity. I still use a board with hinges as my primary work station. Most people at least have some kind of vacuum table or small press. I would like to evolve to that kind of surroundings some day but space limits me for now.”

Han Bennink The Audley Society, Houston 01.24.2007 designed and printed by David Wang silkscreen Maggie Nicols / Fred Frith / Susan Alcorn DiverseWorks!, Houston 02.15.2009 designed and printed by David Wang silkscreen No Idea 2009 Blue Theatre, Austin 02.26-28.2009 Art League, Houston 03.01.2009 designed and printed by David Wang silkscreen Alan Licht & Loren Connors Live Oak Friends Meeting House, Houston 03.10.2007 designed and printed by David Wang silkscreen 36 | SIGNAL to NOISE #58 WWW.SIGNALTONOISEMAGAZINE.COM

Back to Steven Cerio, who’s been doing this long enought to be well-acquainted with the quirks and vascillations of the poster trade. “When posters boomed in the late 90’s, everyone expected a poster at every show. [Then] people started requesting smaller prints. People’s collections stacked up too high or they ran out of wall space and sales went down. Obviously with rock posters artists have a much wider audience to sell prints to. They will often choose a popular band to create a graphic for because their prints will sell fast.

“I support myself by selling originals and other projects which has afforded me the luxury of selecting the music I’m attracted to instead of hurrying through pop band graphics to make a buck. Those of us doing jazz, love jazz and the avant garde. I’ll spend more than a hundred hours preparing a William Parker print—and I have—when I have some conglomerate with a big check waiting for a design. That’s where my heart is. That’s what is important to me at the end of the day. They asked Captain Beefheart why he never tried to go mainstream, he said ’ I’m either too smart, or too dumb.’

Yeah!” ✹ Pete Gershon is the publisher of Signal to Noise. He wrote about Giuseppe Logan in STN#53.

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WORKING SOUNDS

Cleveland's art-punk history lives on through Matthew Wascovich and his veteran underground group Scarcity Of Tanks, who've ventured from abstract noise to free-form improv to hard hitting avant-rock in a city where wide-ranging art and economic struggle are traditions. Story by Marc Masters . Photos by Laura Webb .

we become ruined i am trying to live without assigning value i waved out to obedient skulls whirled with thoughtlessness you cannot change me look around, rearrange things “DEFENSE MECHANIC” from Bleed Now “I don’t think I’ll put a lyric sheet in this time,” says Ming Shank (aka Matthew Wascovich), sitting in his Cleveland apartment on a warm April evening. “Something about that seems to set the words apart from the music. Maybe it makes things a little too precious?” We’re listening to Bleed Now, the recently-completed second album by his band Scarcity Of Tanks. Forgoing a lyric sheet may seem odd for someone who published reams of poetry long before he joined a band. But even if his words sit at the center of the group, this isn’t some beatnik coffee-shop combo.

Wascovich’s voice and lyrics work more like instruments, alternately stabbing at, melding with, and bouncing off the guitar, bass, drums, and sax that swirl around him. “I have been writing words with intention since 1987, but always envisioned them going with music,” he explains. “I do not have any interest in some kind of spoken word thing. I never liked boppy jazz stuff with poetry on top. I always preferred Keith Morris or Dez Cadena letting it rip with the wholly felt energy of an electric, distorting, driving, repetitive sound behind their vocals.”

That’s actually a pretty good description of Bleed Now (released in the U.S. on Wascovich’s Total Life Society and in Europe on LTONOISEMAGAZINE.COM 38 | SIGNAL to NOISE #58 WWW.SIGNALTONOISEMAGAZINE.COM

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This band is no experiment—every member I talk to clearly takes it seriously. But I get the sense that Wascovich knows there is more than one answer to each artistic question.

And maybe SOT is an attempt to take all those answers—all the inspirations he’s found in words, music, friends, and life—and cram them into his own art.

I say “cram” because his work has a distinct urgency, created in part by a delayed entry into music-making. “I essentially didn’t start going public until I was 30, which is the opposite of what usually happens,” explains Wascovich, now 38. “There’s only so much time left. I feel like the clock’s ticking and I gotta get stuff done.” (It’s a recurring theme—later he’ll insist, “We’re older and we don’t have time to fuck around.”) Most people who play punk rock start before they can drive and flame out in their 20s, especially if their bands don’t make it big or give them some other reason to stick around.

The fact that Wascovich is living that story in reverse brings an interesting energy and tension to SOT. “Matt has this kind of bravado, but he has this introspective quality too,” says John Petkovic, an SOT member who founded Death of Samantha in the ’80s, and currently helms Cobra Verde and Sweet Apple (with Dinosaur Jr.’s J. Mascis). “He has the enthusiasm of an 18-year-old but also fears mortality and age. He’s totally spastic and energetic, but in the back of his mind there’s this pull of the first 30 years of his life, wondering if he should be doing it. There’s a bit of self-doubt that comes from his more regimented past.

I’ve always wondered, what was he doing the whole time before this? What was going on in his head?” i had a plan to resist my psychological caste i had a plan to concentrate it was strapped and attacked “RESENTMENT” from Bleed Now Scott Pickering, Ted Flynn, Matthew Wascovich, John Petkovic, and Dave Cintron, Cleveland, April 2010

France’s Textile Records). But while it blares from his stereo, Wascovich confesses that his biggest concern isn’t a lyric sheet, but how the music sounds. It’s sharp, raging rock, intended to be more straight-ahead than 2008’s sprawling No Endowments. But he fears it might be too sharp, and not fully representative of a group who roots lie in sound art, noise, and both improvised and composed avant-rock.

As Bleed Now’s 11 tracks to fly by, I can tell they were honed a bit before being committed to tape. Teeth-gritting opener “August” sounds like a weight-lifting session, with hard riffs pouring from the speakers like sweat.

Two motoring rockers, “Caravan Hooker” and “Dignity and Privacy,” recall Minutemen econo-jams. And a peak comes in the one-two punch of the 60-second “Melt Dove Miles”—“jump start me fast,” Wascovich belches—and the rolling “Cardboard,” both of which sound to me like classic punk rock.

But I don’t think Wascovich has anything to worry about. Sure, Bleed Now is tighter than No Endowments, but I don’t hear

the band holding back or coloring inside lines. Drummer Scott Pickering (veteran of Cleveland bands Spike in Vain and My Dad Is Dead), guitarist Theodore Wiggs Nulls Flynn the Younger (aka Ted Flynn), and bassist Sebastian Wagner all fill the sonic space until it overflows. The songs echo many of Wascovich’s influences: the authoritative heft of Saccharine Trust and Slovenly, the raucous blurt of Cleveland forefathers Electric Eels and Easter Monkeys, and the grit and pulse of Flipper and Suicide.

Bleed Now confirms Scarcity Of Tanks’ place in that patchwork lineage. Beholden to no scene, leery of the music biz, they’ve quietly become one of the best rock bands around. Their current work, a mix of classic punk with art and improv edges, feels like both a revival and a step forward. And Wascovich has surrounded himself with veteran musicians who are also painters, writers, and heavy thinkers—all in it for the long haul in a time and place that offer little outside incentive to stick to it. They do it because they have to, and Bleed Now sounds like it.

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Despite my reassurances, Wascovich still seems a bit spooked. “I got weirded out when we played these songs live and people went fucking crazy—I’m not used to that,” he explains. “I immediately thought, is this record not hard enough if they seem to be getting it?” Later he relates his concerns to Flynn: Wascovich: I think this sounds commercial.

Flynn: I think it sounds like a bunch of weirdos.

Wascovich: Does it sound too regular and fucking boring?

Flynn: I haven’t heard anybody playing songs like this. There are rock beats, but that doesn’t mean it’s not weird. The guitar and the lyrics are fucked up.

Maybe this self-analysis shouldn’t be surprising, considering the line that the album title comes from: “Bleed now for savage criticism.” But don’t mistake Wascovich’s concern for insecurity. It’s more an acknowledgment that his music is a work in progress.

Wascovich grew up in Elyria, Ohio, about 25 miles from Cleveland, near a GM plant where his grandfather worked for 35 years.

He discovered skateboarding and punk rock at an early age, buying records before he was a teenager. But his late start at making music is partially due to his parents using the little money they had to send him to Catholic school. “If I had gone to public school, maybe I would’ve wound up in jail,” he explains. “But you can end up with a jail cell in your brain because of the shackles of religion. One of the reasons I didn’t sing for a long time, even in the shower, is we had to sing these Christian songs, and the nun would stand over your shoulder and listen and make you feel self-conscious and fucked-up.”

He also found a more positive reason not to start a band: soccer. Once he realized how good he was at the sport, he devoted most of his time to it, using it to land a college scholarship and help his cash-strapped family. That ethic carried over into his approach to music. “That’s what I’ve never understood about musicians,” he says. “With athletes, even the weekend warrior puts in some time a couple times a week, whether they have a family, mortgage, shit job, whatever. How come for a certain type of musician it’s so

hard to practice three hours a week?”

After graduation, Wascovich became a social worker, dealing with the mentally challenged in some of Cleveland’s roughest neighborhoods. “I was in convicts’ homes, meeting their families,” he recalls as we drive through the city streets in his white van. “I worked at the corner building over there, helping mentally ill people make picture frames. We had table saws and we were working with schizophrenics with substance abuse problems.” Struggling to make ends meet, he went to grad school and landed a job at a bank. He did so well there that one year his bonus check totaled more than he had made in any 12-month period doing social work.

But it came at a price: “I worked 100 hours a week without a day off for two years. Each day I faked it, put the mask on, told myself not to be a pussy, just go in and do it. And finally at 30 I just could not take it anymore.

I couldn’t deny the creative side that was always there, burning me up. I was putting out little books the whole time but it was not enough. I drove to New York and went to John Coltrane’s grave. I didn't know what the fuck I was doing but I said to myself never again would I subjugate myself to false actions and ambitions. I was not going to turn back to the world I was living in no matter the consequences.”

Before this epiphany, Wascovich had started writing poems and publishing books via his Slow Toe imprint. But he claims to have never considered himself a poet, though he pores meticulously over his words to this day. “I’d see Matt around at shows, and a lot of times he would have a backpack of his poetry collections with him,” says SOT member Dave Cintron, also of Cleveland mainstays Terminal Lovers. “He would usually just hand me the latest stuff; that’s how I became aware of what he was up to.”

“If I saw a band I liked, or read an author that I enjoyed, I’d give them a book,” Wascovich says. “I’d send it to people like Mike Watt and Thurston Moore. Whoever I liked, I’d find a way to get it to them. I didn’t include letters; I just sent my books.”

Many wrote back, and Wascovich eventually included their work in his publications. The list became endless—along with Watt and Moore, he’s printed work by Byron Coley, Alan Licht, William Hooker, Devendra Banhart, Battles’ Ty Braxton, Saccharine Trust’s Jack Brewer, Tom Kryss, Alex Gildzen, Don Cauble, Michael Yonkers, The Dicks’ Gary Floyd, Big Boys’ Tim Kerr (who drew the Bleed Now cover art) and more, in a catalog that currently includes 75 different titles.

Petkovic is also on that list, and Wascovich credits him as a spark in the creation of SOT. When they met, Wascovich was already playing guitar and bass in bands (one early project bore the excellent name A Real Knife Head, taken from a poem), but Petkovic pressed him to incorporate his written words into music. “That whole spoken-word world can be so fucking depressing. Whereas at least music is a physical act,” says Petkovic.

“And spoken-word people are usually working on filling a page with words. Whereas someone like Matt is writing as he’s going, not staring at a blank page. He’s experiencing life and writing it on scraps of paper.” As Wascovich recalls, “John said, ‘You have all

these words, just be a vocalist. If you put this shit to music, it’ll be more interesting and more people will listen to you.’”

He also found inspiration while playing guitar for Jackie-O Motherfucker from 2003 to 2004. Founder Tom Greenwood’s ability to navigate a rotating lineup convinced Wascovich he could “keep together a band while changing members based on the situation.” So in 2004 he formed Scarcity Of Tanks (again taking the name from a poem).

He hoped to keep the lineup consistent but fluid, since he was recruiting people already weighed down with commitments. “I wanted a band of guys who were into rock, but also challenging shit, where I could just do words,” Wascovich explains. “I knew it was going to be my own thing, but I never wanted it to be a solo project. SOT cannot be actualized without these other people.” bleed now for savage criticism it’s a carbon record of alabama blowing it a freeway of words and working sounds here and there and somewhere in between “CARDBOARD” from Bleed Now SOT’s music began as abstract sound art with words, then slowly morphed into improvised rock around which Wascovich could shape his lyrics. “I already had words in my head. I would change the flow, pacing, or phrasing to fit the tunes. It wasn’t supposed to be one long jam; I wanted some breaks in it,” he explains. “We were consciously improvising, but within the parameters of ‘don’t wank, it’s vocal-driven, pay attention,’ that kind of stuff. I didn’t want to do a psych-rock band. Even the stuff that’s good, like Can or Hawkwind, the music is just too long for me.

I rarely get into it. I remember that being my only direction.”

Wascovich’s lack of formal training made playing with experienced colleagues helpful, but not mandatory. “I do think there’s something compelling about mixing up trained and untrained musicians,” he says. “The accidents that occur can be really sweet.

Perfection is why a lot of music sucks. I don’t want to hear something perfect. We fuck up when we talk; we fuck up when we do everything. Why would you make a perfect record?”

Petkovic adds, “Most musicians are creatures of habit and we have to oppose ourselves to break those habits. But what’s cool about Matt is he never has to break any habits because he hasn’t formed any.

So he might blurt out something off-key or inappropriate, but it’s interesting. And you couldn’t do that if you were someone who had been trained to do the ‘right’ things.”

Adds Cintron, “I thought that Matt was a great catalyst. He was good at bringing the right people together and allowing the music to unfold naturally.”

Wascovich’s anti-perfection attitude helped SOT attract an initial following among the Cleveland noise contingent.

“Those kids were the only people we did shows with early on,” Wascovich recalls.

“They were way more open than the rock people around here, and there were more interesting people in the crowd. You could go out and actually talk to them about something, as opposed to just talking about

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beer.” In fact, those crowds included future SOT members fluxmonkey (aka Bbob Drake) and Skin Graft (aka Wyatt Howland).

By early 2007, SOT’s lineup solidified around Wascovich, Flynn, and Pickering.

This coincided with the entrance of Andrew Klimek. Wascovich had known Klimek as just a guy who lived in his neighborhood, but it wasn’t until they began playing together that he discovered a lengthy rock resume. He played in Cleveland groups X-Blank-X (John Morton’s post-Electric Eels outfit) and Death on a Stick, and his group Red Dark Sweet opened the Minutemen’s first New York City show (put on by future Yo La Tengo guitarist Ira Kaplan).

Klimek was also an experienced improviser, and was attracted to Wascovich’s approach. “We discussed it very little at the time,” he says of first playing with SOT. “I can’t really recall a situation of ‘you shouldn’t do that’ or ‘let me start it and then you should come in here.’ He had just printed his words all out on looseleaf paper and put them on the bar floor. We would set something in motion and he’d flip through and pick something.” Pickering concurs: “The early stuff was pretty much rip and roll.

Someone would come up with a riff or Matt would come up with a phrase and off we went, like a car ripping down a bumpy road with no brakes.”

“I would tell the band the feel of the words to give them an idea,” Wascovich adds. “I’m not an orthodox musician, so I’m more into an emotional or visual way of describing how a song should develop. For example, I’ll say, ‘This song is about getting robbed on West 10th Street followed by being lied to by someone you really had trusted and then how you ended up sitting on the rocks along the shore of Lake Erie thinking about it while watching the sun go down,’ and out of that experience comes the song.”

Like Klimek, Flynn also had experience in improv, as well as many forms of rock, folk, and traditional music. (While in Cleveland, I watch him play a masterful solo set on banjo at an art gallery). “It was fun being able to play with people where you didn’t need to sit down and work stuff out, and have it actually gel,” he says. “A lot of times improv is just for the musician, but it doesn’t work for anyone else. It’s really just jacking off. To actually be able to do it so people are really moved by it, that’s a good feeling. You feel like you haven’t wasted all your life trying to learn how to play guitar.”

“Matt would sing a phrase and we’d just start playing,” Flynn continues. “There wasn’t any plan at all. It was ‘let’s just show up and do it.’ I’d come home after work and there would be a message on the machine— ‘Come to Crunk Island [a Cleveland bar], we’re playing a show.’” One such message came after only two practices with Klimek, when Wascovich landed a series of gigs at the aforementioned working-class watering hole. “Crunk’s space is super small,” Wascovich explains. “You’d walk into the bathroom and see someone crushing up adderall and sniffing it off of a piece of wood.

Or a guy’s taking a shit with the door open.”

To everyone’s shock, the Crunk Island crowd went crazy for SOT. “There was actually a roar,” Flynn recalls. “The music wasn’t the same every time, but there was this element of structure forming underneath all the 42 | SIGNAL to NOISE #58 WWW.SIGNALTONOISEMAGAZINE.COM

improv. And the more we did it, the more we locked into the same place. So the people there thought that we had songs.” “Teddy says it was like the Who playing live at Leeds,” Wascovich adds, laughing. “I started burning CDs of our past shows for people there. A lot of them worked at this linencleaning factory next door, and they claimed they were playing the CDs on the PA system there! It was so unexpected to be that well received, but it really affected me. It showed me difficult things can be still felt—to have some thinking behind your work but don’t forget the blood, sweat, and cum.”

Though the core SOT lineup had solidified, a wide range of musicians and recording situations created their debut album, No Endowments. Its cover features a black-andwhite drawing by Devendra Banhart (whom Wascovich met via writing and later toured with), and its title is meant as a statement of economic and mental independence. “I said to Jack Brewer, ‘If I could win the lottery, I’d give you $100,000 so that you could just work on your art for a few years,’” Wascovich recalls. “And he said, ‘I’m not really into getting grants because I might just still drink and hang out with my dog. Who knows if I’d even work on my poetry or Saccharine Trust or Jack Brewer Reunion Band?’ So I thought, ‘No Endowments,’ and Jack and I both say that we don’t want those kind of strings.’”

Sonically wide-ranging, No Endowments took a few of its tracks from the first practice with Klimek; others were enhanced by long-distance contributions from veteran composer and improviser Weasel Walter.

Other participants included Cintron, drummer Nate Scheible, and saxophonist Dan Wenninger, whose staccato blasts add echoes of free jazz and Stooges-style thrust to the proceedings. The diversity of personnel reflects Wascovich’s desire to play with “people who are into the kind of music that I want to create—people who put it on the line for years without any real acceptance, status, or financial gain, and are still willing to keep pushing forward.”

“We’re pretty much all lifers,” says Klimek.

“There are new bands coming out all the time and they may or may not be doing this their whole life. You can’t tell until someone’s done it for 20 or 30 years. That’s an indicator of commitment. And there’s a certain level of trust, because maybe we hadn’t played with each other before, but we’ve heard each other play. For example, I’ve known Pickering for almost 25 years.” Adds Wascovich, “These guys’ responsibilities are real-deal life things like rents, mortgages, and jobs that you can’t afford to leave to gig or tour. I understand this, and I like playing with them enough that I have to simply cut back on everything that SOT can take on, or I tour with different lineups if I really need to get out on the road.”

Not long after No Endowments was released, Wascovich did just that, booking a West Coast tour that only Petkovic could clear time for. So he recruited a rotating lineup of Walter, Brewer, Mike Watt, Ulrich Kreiger of Text of Light, Tom Watson of Slovenly and Red Krayola, Chris Grier of To Live and Shave in L.A., Raul Morales of Killer Dreamer, and Steve Touchton of XBXRX. At the Smell in L.A., an eight-man lineup performed, and as Wascovich puts it, “We barely fit on stage. Watt is yelling at us to WWW.SIGNALTONOISEMAGAZINE.COM SIGNAL to NOISE #58 | 43

hurry the fuck up with all our borrowed gear.

Weasel is feisty as ever. It was great.” An even better show came at the bar Harold’s Place in Watt’s hometown of San Pedro, where the crowd resembled the one back at Crunk Island. “It was people who had no idea what to expect,” recalls Petkovic. “At the Smell, the people looked so hip. They knew when to lean against the wall, when to look bored, and when to show three seconds of interest. The best kind of shows are when you think, these people are really gonna hate it—and yet they like it! Versus when you go to a place where you think, they look cool, they’re really gonna like it—and they act bored!” tell them proponent of wrong past what will last? what will be lost? my proponent of lasting weight for our wrong past “WRONG PAST (CLEVELAND)” from No Endowments Petkovic’s love-the-loser/hate-the-hipster mentality is, according to him, a proud Cleveland attitude. “Why keep up with the Joneses when you can bring them down to your level? That’s the sensibility here,” he says with a smirk. “People here play music for a longer period of time than in other cities, because you don’t have to work that hard to get by, and you don’t have as many things to get in the way, like a career. What else is there to do? There’s not some great job out there. Maybe it’s a bummer when you see no one walking around on the streets here like in New York, but you gotta see the good side of it—no traffic!”

Such blunt reality-acceptance has helped fuel much of the best Ohio underground rock. A few bands, such as Pere Ubu and Devo, have found themselves considered hip on an international scale. But they and many other Ohio legends—from the Mirrors and the Styrenes in the ’70s, to Guided by Voices and Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments in the ’80s, to Cobra Verde and Downside Special in the ’90s, to Keelhaul and This Moment in Black History today—share a gritty contrarianism born of living in a place that has never been the center of anything. Combine that with an appreciation for art movements like Fluxus and Dada—and an often-edgy

political climate (Dennis Kucinich was mayor of Cleveland in the ’70s)—and you get punk rock’s workingman concerns crossed with the free expression of jazz, improv, and performance art.

“Cleveland has the infrastructure of a large city, but it’s been economically decimated,” explains Petkovic, who works as a reporter for The Cleveland Plain Dealer. “It also has a cultural and intellectual tradition. So you can grow up experiencing intellectual things here, and you don’t have to work that hard to get by. How do you keep a band in NYC? You have to be super famous or wealthy to be playing at age 50 and living there. That’s not true here.” In other words, Cleveland produces bands that take their art as seriously as a job, yet see no reason to ever compromise it. That attitude is typified by a story in Simon Reynolds’ Rip It Up and Start Again: when Pere Ubu was told by a manager that if they refused to repeat themselves, they’d be stuck with cult status, the band replied “That sounds pretty good!”

SOT falls squarely in that “tradition,” working hard to make uncompromised art. There’s a reason Wascovich calls his record label Total Life Society.

“I understand why people ask about [the influence of Cleveland], because there’s been so much great shit that’s come out of here,” he says. “I’ll listen to my guys’ past musical output, like My Dad Is Dead, Terminal Lovers, Puff Tube [Pickering’s solo project], or Klimek’s first single from 1979, and that’s when it becomes very real and very inspiring.

But I’m not consciously trying to think about it. We’re in a big tree of all that music, but there’s no direct link.” “For me, it’s just about something inside that I gotta get out,” says Flynn. “At least here there are people that will listen. When I was younger, I came from the sticks where nothing was happening, and I went to see Death of Samantha or Spike in Vain and got blown away. It really affected the way I thought about how I would play music. Nowadays I’m more worried about survival and just expressing myself, and I don’t really think about it that much.”

Flynn’s point rings true: though Wascovich and company are influenced by great Cleveland music of the past, they are voracious aficionados of art from everywhere and all time periods. More influential is the city itself, and what it takes to survive here.

Cleveland has never been a boomtown, and by the time punk started its industrial status was already on decline. “Now it’s even worse economically,” says Wascovich. “At least Mike Hudson [of Cle-punk legends the Pagans] and those guys could work in a big steel plant, or in the GM plant in my hometown. All those plants are gone now, and we never recovered. We don’t have anything to substitute for lost auto and steel manufacturing jobs. We only have hospitals.”

“We do have the best hospitals, but that doesn’t create wealth,” concurs Petkovic.

“That depends on people getting sick, and you’re buying pharmaceuticals from somewhere else. Cleveland Clinic attracts wealthy people from all over the world, but you’re not creating something that’s sold elsewhere so that the wealth stays here.” Everyone in SOT deals with these realities daily. Throughout my visit, Wascovich tells me recent tales of job loss and family strife that have hit each member. As we drive around town, he simultaneously points out all the cultural landmarks that are now gone—not just moved or replaced, but literally gone. “That used to be Speak in Tongues,” he says, pointing to an empty building that once housed the legendary underground venue.

Such stress clearly affects band logistics, but whether it comes out in SOT’s music is a trickier question. Sometimes the city’s strife does echo through Wascovich’s lyrics. During Bleed Now’s opener, “August,” he spits out the lines “Existence feels tucked and fucked up / hanging from a rod with all my might” with palpable frustration. But his words are bigger than day-to-day specifics. “I really can’t write about one thing,” he says. “But the seeds of everything I write are all real things. It’s definitely not stream of consciousness shit—there’s a lot of rigor put into all these lyrics. For example, I started writing ‘August’ in 1998 and finished it for this new album.”

“This is a very observant type of band,” he continues. “Pickering and Dave Cintron are big-time painters, I write and I draw, Ted builds all kind of shit, Andrew and John write, Seb does visual art. And what do you observe? You observe your environment and what’s happening.” Adds Flynn, simply, “Life affects what you do, and how place affects life affects your music. It’s usually the shitty things that spark the fuel to get stuff going.

If it were all flowers and happiness, I’d be on my recliner watching TV. There’s shit about Cleveland that sucks and I hate it, but I was in California for a month a few years ago and I started to feel homesick.” Wascovich agrees: “I don’t need to move to do my part of this band. The artists I largely respect did not move from their hometowns either. There is something to be said for that.” i am anxious for that image out of checks what are you concentrating on? detours or projects?

“I AM WRIST” from No Endowments “I don’t think I’d ever been in any band where the goal for one practice was to write 11 songs,” Flynn chuckles. We’re back to discussing Bleed Now, whose more-practiced songs have just as idiosyncratic an origin as the mix of improvised and composed music on No Endowments. “I didn’t know how writing songs was done,” Wascovich admits.

“I thought ‘OK, we worked on one song— next.’ We got to song seven, song eight, all in the same practice, and I was like, ‘Let’s go, let’s keep writing songs!’ The first practice we pretty much got through all 11, didn’t we?”

“Yep,” Flynn replies. “We’d get one rough version together and then move on. I was used to working on one or two songs before you get them perfect, but we would work on all 11 at every practice.” “Which fits my work ethic,” Wascovich adds. “I have this background of playing soccer and training hard, training long. I wouldn’t train for ten minutes for a game—I’d train for 90 minutes. I wasn’t trying to be a taskmaster. I just thought that’s how you did it. Seb [who had joined on bass when Klimek had to reduce his time commitment] finally spoke up and said, ‘Dude, I can’t remember all this shit in one session.’”

Perhaps that urgency is what makes Bleed Now sound both sharp and loose, both honed and untamed. “We practiced maybe 12 times before recording, which for most bands is probably no big deal, but for us that’s a lot of time,” says Wascovich. “We’re really structured now compared to how we were, but thankfully we’re still a few notches below tight. Maybe we had 100 errors at this last gig, where we’re used to having 1000. When we recorded with Todd Tobias at Waterloo Sound [Circus Devils, Guided by Voices], if there was a clam blown, we would either start over or leave it, because it’s more human.”

There’s no denying the humanity on Bleed Now, or the effort that Scarcity Of Tanks put into it. Whether that effort will be rewarded financially seems beside the point.

“The small successes are what I focus on,” Wascovich insists. “The fact that I’m keeping this band together is a success. We’ve done 124 shows, and to me none of them have sucked. That’s a success.” Not long after I get back home from Cleveland, he sends me a simple text message: “We are going to release the album as you heard it.”

Wascovich may think of that as another small success, but to me it sounds like a pretty big victory. ✹

2 new ICP productions ICP 049 (cd/dvd)

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Marc Masters writes for The Wire, Pitchfork, The Village Voice and elsewhere. He wrote about Washington D.C.'s Sonic Circuits community in STN#51.

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LIVE REVIEWS

Top: Moscow Art Trio Bottom: JW Orchestra

Bergamo Jazz Bergamo, Italy 3.19–21.2010

The concert that starts this year’s Bergamo Jazz festival is a big band workout entitled ‘Ennio Morricone Go Jazz.’ Enterprises of this kind usually slide into tedium or kitsch within a few minutes, and while kitsch can be entertaining (and Morricone’s music often verges on kitsch), tedium is just plain tedious. But this set proves to be a very pleasant surprise. The arrangements by bandleader Marco Gotti are imaginative, and the way he breaks down sections within the JW Orchestra Association to produce a wide range of voicings, textures and colors is at times ingenious. This isn’t quite the radical approach that John Zorn took to Morricone’s music on The Big Gundown, but it’s more thought-through, a solid, craftsmanlike approach. Gotti takes the strongest solos on alto and soprano saxophones, but solos aren’t really the point; what counts are the tunes and how the solos are framed.

The first set at the Teatro Donizetti is a duo of piano-accordionist Richard Galliano and saxophonist John Surman. Despite having had only one rehearsal, they read each other’s tunes beautifully and are strongly empathetic. Their solos are brief and to the point, with Surman providing a dancing lyricism that Galliano undercuts with passionate flurries of notes, chopped-off percussive chords and a variety of grumbles and wheezy accents from the bellows of his instrument.

The second set, by the Ahmad Jamal Quartet, is a tougher nut. Over the decades, Jamal’s playing has become busier and, in controlled bursts, noisier; he tends to juxtapose sections of almost cocktail piano noodling with thunderous chords,

intricate high-speed runs to the extremes of the keyboard, and dissonant, Cecil Taylorish counter-rhythms. The set consists of standards and Jamal’s own tunes, including the much-recorded “Poinciana.” Hyperactive bassist James Cammack and drummer Herlin Riley provide solid underpinnings, and percussionist Manolo Badrena punctuates the music with splashes of color. Jamal occasionally walks over to the musicians, listening to them, giving little nods of approval. Warranted.

The following afternoon, The Plug play the Auditorium di Piazza della Libertà.

They’re a trio consisting of trombone, electric bass and drums, hampered by electronics and pre-recorded material, producing an inelegant variation on what Tim Berne, Hank Roberts and Joey Baron were doing so well in the late 1980s with Miniature.

Every time the group seem about to cut loose, the electronics send them off in another direction that proves as fruitless as the previous one.

In the Teatro Donizetti, the Moscow Art Trio play an entertaining set that draws on traditional Russian song, salon music, a bit of jazz, some avant-garde gestures and a sprinkling of circus/cabaret humor that seems worn through repetition. One suspects they’ve been doing this set, or variations thereof, for umpteen years. That said, there are lovely moments, mainly when Sergey Starostin sings. Arkady Shilkloper brings out his alphorn and gives it a virtuoso workout. The highlight of the set is Misha Alperin’s cumulatively complex piano solo, embellishment building on embellishment with iron logic. It’s a feat he tried to replicate the following day at the Ex Chiesa della Maddalena, but the music seemed strangely formal, reticent and bitty, refusing to flow no matter how hard Alperin tried.

After the Trio, the Enrico Rava New Quintet take to the stage. Expectations aren’t

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high for this set; Rava has spent quite a few years in the doldrums. But here he sounds like his old self, his tone burnished by the fire in the music. Giovanni Guidi (piano), Gabriele Evangelista (bass) and Fabrizio Sterra (drums) are a fabulous rhythm section, but Rava’s principal foil in the group is trombonist Gianluca Petrella, freed from his bout of hard labor in The Plug. Petrella evidently likes raw and dirty music, great smears and blurts of sound, and he comes roaring out of the heads, providing contrast with Rava’s more measured but no less energetic lines. They play a long set that never flags and never seems to repeat itself.

The final night starts badly with Omar Sosa’s “Afreecanos” Quintet who are, in a word, insufferable. They bludgeon the audience with mono-dimensional music at extreme volume that becomes tiresome after only a couple of numbers. Worse still, drummer Julio Barreto brings not an ounce of subtlety to his playing. Everything in his kit is hit as hard and as often as possible, demonstrating maximum technique without a hint of musicality.

The eight-strong SFJAZZ Collective close the festival with a set that, for all its strengths and the group’s stellar line-up, is underwhelming. Their program consists of reworkings of the compositions of Horace Silver, interspersed with a couple of originals by members of the Collective, drummer Eric Harland’s “Harlandia” and pianist Ed Simon’s “Collective Presence.” Silver’s tunes—“Cape Verdean Blues,” “Lonely Woman” and “Song for My Father”—have never sounded less than fully fleshed, but here they sounded bigger, richer, more complex. The solos by tenor saxophonist Mark Turner seem a little by-rote, but Stefon Harris’s vibes are mercurial and his comping is so inventive it often distracts attention from whoever is soloing at the time. Brian Marley

JW: Fabio Gamba | Moscow Art Trio: Luciano Rossetti

Caught in the act, significant concerts from around the globe.

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John Butcher and Joe McPhee in the West Texas desert

John Butcher Joe McPhee

Ryan Edwards

Cornudas, TX 04.17.2010

When most concert promoters look for a venue, they evaluate a few pragmatic factors: size, acoustics, convenience, amenities, and in some cases, reputation. Apart from the occasional historic concert hall, the less the audience thinks about the performance space, the better. Dave Dove, the director of the Houston-based non-profit Nameless Sound, has turned this logic on its head, selecting performance spaces without regard to practical concerns, instead seeking opportunities for the artists to engage in dialogue with the sites.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Houston is home to the Menil Collection, which has built a number of art spaces that fuse art and architecture to an extent rarely seen elsewhere. At one time or another, Nameless Sound has organized performances in almost all of them: Keiji Haino’s first performance in Texas was inside the Dan Flavin installation at Richmond Hall; Tetuzi Akiyama and Jozef van Wissem played together in the Byzantine Fresco Chapel; Keith Rowe and Loren Connors performed in the Rothko Chapel. Through all of these concerts and many others, Dove has insisted that it is essential to his project to “honor the space” as much as the performer.

In mid-April, Nameless Sound reached beyond Houston’s city limits to present saxophonists John Butcher and Joe McPhee in what has to be one of the most inconvenient venues ever used: an art complex called The Hill, which sits in the middle of the West Texas desert, more than 60 miles from El Paso.

Painstakingly built over the last three decades by enigmatic artist Jim Magee (and with two more decades till its completion), The Hill consists of four buildings constructed with cut

stone from the area, joined together by a cruciform walkway made of the same stone. The buildings, each about 800 square feet, house Magee’s artwork, which makes heavy use of steel and glass, as well as organic materials such as paprika, honey, sand, birdseed, and straw. Photography within the site is forbidden.

John Butcher is no stranger to playing in unusual environments. His album Cavern with Nightlife documents a 2002 solo performance in the enormous caverns within Oya Stone Mountain in Utsonomiya City, Japan. Since this performance, Butcher has appeared in a number of odd locales, often with acoustics that mainstream musicians would avoid like bed bugs in Brooklyn. Joe McPhee doesn’t have such an explicit history of confronting massively resonant spaces, but his sensitivity and range is well-known, and was on display throughout his performance at this singular event.

Butcher and McPhee had never shared a stage before their performance at The Hill, which ended up being a tentative collaboration, alternating solo performances throughout most of the show. The first part of the performance saw the two musicians divided into the two buildings on the north and south. The doors facing into the center of the complex, which extend seventeen feet from floor to ceiling, were left open. Thus, each audience member sat only a few feet from either Butcher or McPhee, but could also faintly hear the other musician playing about 200 feet away. The space I ended up in started off with Joe McPhee on alto saxophone, punctuating his fiery blasts with passages of faint squeaks and moments of silence. Only in these moments could I make out Butcher from across the complex, his sparse notes occasionally cutting through the thin desert air. The emotional urgency of McPhee’s playing was amplified by the harsh terrain as he moved from rough-hewn melodies to breathy whispers to ecstatic wailing.

After about twenty minutes, the perform-

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ers switched spaces. Watching John Butcher perform felt a bit like watching a scientist at work: using his tenor saxophone, he probed the air, the walls, the entire acoustic environment. Slight changes in tone reverberated and revealed the space in a way that looking with the eyes alone never could. (Butcher told me later that he could “almost see the sound going out and coming back.”) Because of the spacious nature of this exploration, McPhee’s occasional horn blasts, faint but distinct, wafted in and began to feel like a collaborative performance.

The second part of the concert was out on the cruciform walkway between the buildings. The walkway, elevated above the ground, formed a kind of stage with four seating areas on the raw desert soil.

The musicians took turns performing in the middle, and the buildings surrounding us, forty feet wide and seventeen feet tall, created a powerful open-air echo chamber. Butcher used the site initially to play a fascinating percussive piece formed of short pulsing notes and their echoes. As the musicians each took their turn in the center, they responded subtly to the textures and moods from the preceding piece, but avoided explicit responses. Finally, at the end, Butcher and McPhee faced off on opposing legs of the walkway, and performed for a few minutes together, fusing emotional density with open spaces. Both men put on powerful performances as they searched for common ground.

If, as seems very possible, the performance site itself suggested this saxophone duet, Dove’s pairing of Butcher and McPhee at The Hill could prove to be a visionary move. A momentary pause became a slightly awkward ending, leaving the sense of an incomplete performance, as each performer seemed to wait for the next sound, which never came. We can only hope that, like The Hill itself, this collaboration has another twenty years of work left in it. Ben Judson WWW.SIGNALTONOISEMAGAZINE.COM SIGNAL to NOISE #58 | 49

top: celebrating Pauline Oliveros in New York City bottom: this year's Art Ensemble in Philadelphia

Pauline Oliveros

New York City 03.27.2010

AECO: Micah Danges | Columbia: Diana Wong

Pauline Oliveros stood, rocking gently, a grin slowly growing across her face, on the stage of Miller Theater at Columbia University in New York City. The occasion was a celebration of her music and her career, but for the moment she was listening to the audience.

“I was always making mouth noises and getting scolded for it and doing it anyway,” she told the house a few minutes earlier, introducing her Sounds from Childhood: Sonic Meditation. With that, she asked the audience members to each choose three to five sounds they liked to make as a child.

Then, on cue, to take a deep breath and begin, listening for a space to make their sounds. The room filled with utterances, with something that could be likened to the bullfrog swamp seminal to Oliveros’s early electronic work. Oliveros stood taking it in and eventually ended the piece with a laugh.

Dressed in black running shoes and a down vest over a shimmering black pantsuit, she told the audience: “I hope you brought your sleeping bags, it’s going to be a long night.”

It was the third piece presented in what turned out to be a marathon tribute, performance, testimonial and, most importantly, listening session. But the first to take the stage was a Lafayette 99-5014 audio generator, projected on a screen on the back of the stage while a recording of Oliveros’s 1966 piece Fed Back II played over the PA. It was a fitting first act for a celebration of a composer who over 40 years has helped to define electronic music, contemporary composition and new ways of approaching staging, drone and the accordion.

The night celebrated Oliveros’s receipt of the University’s William Schuman Award for living composers whose works are “widely performed and recognized to be of lasting significance,” according to Carol Becker, Dean of the University’s School of the Arts.

It’s the first time since its inception in 1981 that the award has been given to a woman; a woman, as it happens, who has developed an interactive program that allows children with cerebral palsy to make music on laptops via head movements, who is a black belt in karate and who, in 1970, published a piece in the New York Times entitled “And Don’t Call Them Lady Composers.”

While a number of people took to the microphone to laud her accomplishments, it was the performances that spoke most highly of Oliveros’s contributions. She may be better known for electronic and drone experiments, and no doubt that’s where she’s broken the most ground, but the International Contemporary Ensemble gave a beautiful reading of her 1960 chamber piece Variations for Sextet for trumpet, clarinet, French horn, flute, cello and piano. Al Margolis (who performs under the name If, Bwana) presented her 1965 magnetic tape piece Bye Bye Butterfly via a turntable on the stage.

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formance of the 2009 piece Oracle Bones: Mirror Dreams with dancer Heloise Gold and video projection by Benton-C Bainbridge.

And to close the concert almost four hours after it began, Oliveros’s longstanding Deep Listening Band was joined by the ensemble Timeless Pulse for the New York premiere of DroniPhonia, a piece scored for acoustic and electronic instruments complemented by a half dozen iPhones playing drone applications developed by programmer and microtonal musician Henry Lowengard. It was not just a beautiful piece of music, but a testament to Oliveros’s longstanding interest in new technologies.

“Women in music are rare,” said Jenneth Webster, former director of Lincoln Center Out of Doors, who has commissioned several Oliveros performances and who introduced video excerpts of Oliveros’s staged performances Flowing Rock/Still Waters, Ghostdance, Ninja the Queen King: Return of a Warrior, and Lunar Opera: Deep Listening For_Tunes. “But more rare is an open mind.” Kurt Gottschalk

Art Ensemble of Chicago Philadelphia 03.06.2010

It’s been a long road for the Art Ensemble of Chicago, from being the toast of Paris as the Roscoe Mitchell Art Ensemble in the 1960s, to being on top of the jazz world in the ’70s, to the missteps and lost members of the ’90s and ’00s. It’s a shame to see the band quieter than ever, with concerts being about one per annum and new releases on their revamped AECO Records seeming to slip by with little notice. But hope springs eternal as this year’s model of the venerable ensemble walks onto the stage at Philadelphia's International House, facing East and resuming a ritual performance now in its fifth decade.

The lineup still includes Mitchell, the only original member of the band, and percussionist Famoudou Don Moye, who met up with the original quartet during their days in Paris. They’re joined by journeyman trumpeter Hugh Ragin and the ubiquitous William Parker, subbing for Chicagoan Harrison Bankhead, who’s filled the bass role since the death of founder Malachi Favors in 2004. For this concert, the group was joined at times by guest percussionist Mogauwane Mahloele (who was a part of the “Art Ensemble of Soweto” project of the early ’90s that saw the band augmented by South African drummers and male chorus). And while the two-horns, two-drummers plus bass lineup is new for the group, the quintet is a comfortable fit for them.

The quiet in the sold-out theater was gently filled by Parker’s kora, a light, meditative refrain. Mitchell soon joined, easing in on soprano sax, shortly followed by the drummers, Moye on a standard kit without the mass of gongs and bells from his “Sun Percussion” days, Mahloele on a set of congas. Mitchell pushed, forcing squeezed high notes into the string melody until he had cleared a wide enough area that there was room for the abundance of his soprano playing to come

forth. It was a classic AECO contrast, and in that sense rather different from the environments he often creates outside the ensemble. This was the type of organic tension that has long defined the band—like the street clothes and African costume, like the urban bushmen—at least until everything dropped from under him, leaving his unaccompanied volume and mass to fill the room. He started to sit even as he concluded, and after the briefest pause Ragin picked up where Mitchell left off, the group becoming a jazz trio with Parker on bass and Mahloele laying out. Like the late Lester Bowie, to whom he is inevitably compared in this context, Ragin is more given to jazz phrasing than Mitchell.

Without a third horn (saxophonist Joseph Jarman isn’t officially out of the group, but hasn’t been traveling with them for some time), this instance of AECO isn’t quite capable of the same horn web, and indeed, Mitchell and Ragin held off playing together for the first 20 minutes. But it felt much truer to form than other recent youngblood incarnations of the band.

More than 30 minutes later, the second piece opened with Mitchell’s beautiful three-note riff. Parker quickly picked up on it and the piece was soon swollen with congas and cymbals and a tasteful trumpet complement. Mitchell played it persistently, carrying on as the others dropped and returned, at length adding a B part to the Ayleresque repetition, to which Parker stated a new variation countered by Mahloele. As has always been their way, the band combined pieces into improvised suites, opening with Moye’s “Sidi Ifni” and playing through Mitchell’s “Zero (Alternate Version)” and “Chant” and then the Mahloele/Moye piece “Enemies.” The shorter third section began an hour in, starting with a cue; alto sax and pocket trumpet bore down equally, initially without percussion, building for about ten minutes then dissolving into “Odwalla,” the band’s closing theme. Including the cloud of dissonance and undulation that made up the encore, they played just under 90 minutes, perhaps the only hour and a half of Art Ensemble of Chicago in 2010—a grand way to mark the tenth anniversary of promoting organization Ars Nova, and their fifth year working with co-producer International House. But it’s too bad that such occasions have become so rare, for a band so important to the last half century of jazz. Asked backstage how much time the band had spent preparing for the gig, Moye said “fifteen minutes” at the same time as Ragin said “forty years.”

Seems about right.

Though the Art Ensemble was founded as a leaderless cooperative, it’s hard not to view the current group as a Roscoe Mitchell-led project. The passing of Bowie, then Favors, and the comings and goings of saxophonist Jarman, have made room for new members, including trumpeter Corey Wilkes, bassist Jaribu Shahid and drummer Tani Tabbal, as well as a surprising engagement with Mitchell’s AACM peer, Fred Anderson. Fact is, they’re not the same personality-driven band they once were, and they’re not going to be again. The mix of showman and shaman is in the past. Now they’re just a jazz band. A great jazz band. One of the best, really. And they’re led by one of the best saxophonists in the business. Kurt Gottschalk

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CD / DVD / LP / DL

Joanna Newsom

The season’s key releases and reissues from the world of creative music ...

Muhal Richard Abrams & Roscoe Mitchell Spectrum Mutable CD

Joanna Newsom Have One on Me Drag City CD x 3

Chris Tribble

Harpist-singer-composer Joanna Newsom doesn’t like it when people call her voice “childlike.” I don’t want to disappoint her, because after gorging on her overripe threedisc cornucopia Have One on Me, I’m now besotted with her. Maybe she was challenging lazy writers to be more specific, so I’ll put it this way. She starts many stanzas with a tiny squeak, sings in a breathy, high timbre, closes her r’s cutely (“who is thay-orr”), doesn’t aspirate her t’s, and has a lot of other vocal qualities I wouldn’t associate with, say, Louis Armstrong. Some of them are natural—she’s just got narrow pipes—and some are downright baby-talk affectations. But so what?

When she opens to a full-on vibrato, which she often does, that tiny voice flaps like a red dress on a Nebraska clothesline. It leaves no room for objection; it squeezes your heart

white. “What a beautiful day to catch my drift, or be caught up in it,” she beckons in “Ribbon Bows.” With her unlikely instrument—and I don’t mean the harp—Newsom is writing a new chapter in American balladry.

This three-disc set of translucent, haunting ballads has an almost suffocating intimacy, but it’s balanced by slowly revealed breadth of vision—it’s a miniature balloon ride over an intricate, tabletop universe. It feels like you’re lying on her bed, a whisper away, only you’re drifting through warm updrafts and winking stars, your worldly weight borne

by Newsom’s funky-sweet harp and husky helium voice.

Newsom has one foot firmly in the world of sad-angel pop epitomized by Sufjan Stevens, but she’s also got the muddy boots of a country balladeer. The template for most of these leisurely tracks is the American ballad, predictably rolling hills of repeated stanzas that get their drama from a singer’s stylistic and emotional range, or from skillful backing arrangements. The form ideally

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showcases Newsom’s ferocious, delicate vocal delivery and barely corseted passion. She doesn’t need a band at all—she puts out more energy alone than when she’s orchestrated—but three discs of solo Newsom would be like chewing raw ginger for a month. A delicate array of instrumental touches, from a barroom piano to string ensembles, sad cornets and ancient rebecs, dilute and drape her aggressively dulcet harp and vocals. Newsom would be compelling if she were singing from a Sears catalog, but her lyrics are an integral part of her mystery.

Most often, she seems to be addressing a lover, in teasingly precise, dreamlike imagery, about some misunderstanding or fugitive turn of passion. Allusions pile up so fast it’s impossible to process them all, yet they follow a fugitive emotional logic. In poetry or music, elusiveness often equals annoyance, but Newsom’s lyrics are so evocative, and are delivered so fetchingly, I was grateful for the chance to chase her soul with a butterfly net for three odd hours. Larry Cosentino

The first track on Spectrum, “Romu,” is a free improvisation that finds Muhal Richard Abrams’ elliptical, contemplative piano wrapping its tendrils around Roscoe Mitchell’s elegiac alto. The saxophonist’s beautifully extended horn lines are animated by his attention to the breath and spittle within every note; Abrams responds with jarring fingerings and a profound sense of negative space. The pianist’s clusters and flourishes accumulate throughout the piece then explode into high drama, capped midway by a throaty saxophone howl. But Mitchell’s composure keeps even the most abrasive of colorings from descending into naked emotion. The piece’s unfolding architecture and continuous momentum are a joy to listen to, and the track serves as a worthy successor to Streaming (2006), which joined these musicians with George Lewis.

The remaining 30 minutes are a different proposition entirely, offering two orchestral pieces performed by the Janáček Philharmonic. These pieces exist at the meeting-place between (as Lewis writes in the liner notes) “the two most influential musical cultures of the 20th century, the trans-European and the trans-African.” The somberness of Mitchell’s tripartite “Non-Cognitive Aspects of the City” is somewhat tiresome on first listen, particularly due to the severity of the strings and the operatic rendering of Joseph Jarman’s poem by the baritone Thomas Buckner. At its best, the composition resembles Shostakovich’s opera The Nose in its relentless counterpoint, which creates an uneasily shifting sea of clashing melodic lines. Abrams’ “Mergertone” fares better, its spirited winds and brass making merry against fiercely percussive, Antheillike passages. Both pieces bring the composers closer to their dream of the “bi-musical,” as they attempt to erase the stale aesthetic and cultural paradigms that are still with us today.

Seth Watter

Algernon

Ghost Surveillance Cuneiform CD

Maryland-based prog/jazz label Cuneiform has been dipping into Chicago’s talent pool lately—Jason Adasiewicz’s Rolldown joined the

roster after a strong previous release, and now Algernon has made the same jump. It’s a good fit, since the music of this five-piece unit suggests a post-Tortoise spin on the work of guitarist/composers like Zappa, Fripp and McLaughlin who flirted with major labels but were ultimately too adventurous to find a permanent home there. As on the previous album Familiar Espionage, guitarist and primary composer Dave Miller has crafted a set of music featuring oddly catchy melodies in the midst of a storm of double guitars and aggressive drumming, surrounded by a haze of loungy vibraphone.

The group is evidently attempting to diversify, experimenting with non-Miller compositions (bassist Tom Perona and former guitarist Nick Fryer each contribute a track) and long-form pieces, most successfully on the multi-part “Operative vs.

Opposition.” Nonetheless, the song remains the same, and it’s hard not to recall how so many of the great groups led by those older guitarists burned out after three albums. For the time being, though, Algernon has tapped into a rich current of electric music. Pat Buzby

Tony Allen

Secret Agent Nonesuch CD

Hardly ever has a style of music been so dominated by a single figure as with Fela Kuti and Afrobeat.

So who would have thought that Fela’s passing in 1997 would lead to an Afrobeat revival? A number of factors have contributed to the music’s endurance: the emergence of two of Fela’s sons, Femi and Seun, as important Afrobeat artists in their own right; a stream of reissue anthologies on various labels featuring West African funk from the ’60s and ’70s; newer, younger bands in the States and in Europe embracing the pulse and ethos of Fela’s music; and the continued output of Tony Allen, co-originator of the Afrobeat rhythm and musical director of Fela’s seminal Afrika ’70 band back in the day. Tony Allen is arguably the most famous drumset player to emerge from the African continent, and rightly so. His playing is fluid and measured, powerful but restrained, simple yet intricate, in ways that few other drummers from anywhere have attained. His approach to the drumset is a nearly perfect mixture of jazz and funk, and many drummers would give anything to

have his supple bass-drum foot or to cop his darting hi-hat patterns.

Whatever material he’s working with, he puts his indelible stamp on it, while always maintaining that militant protest pulse that defines the Afrobeat groove. Secret Agent is Allen’s first release on the Nonesuch label, and he’s surrounded himself with an impressive crew of singers and instrumentalists, including Rody Cereyon on bass, Claude Dibongue on guitar, and Orobyi Adunni aka AYO singing lead vocals. Each of the eleven tracks gives a variation on the basic musical idea that Allen has been driving since his early days with Fela—a minor-key vamp, utterly original and propulsive kit drumming, a kicking horn section, all simmering in a reggae-like vibe of defiance. What’s especially exciting about this release is that it seems to come at a time when Allen’s Afrobeat star is on the rise, with a recent feature in Wax Poetics and a current summer tour in the U.S. in support of Secret Agent. This disc will certainly be on many critics’ “best of...” lists come December, and it may well be Allen’s strongest release since his days with the Black President. Alan Waters

Oren Ambarchi Jim O’Rourke Keiji Haino Tima Formosa Black Truffle CD

Jim O’Rourke’s relocation to Japan a little over a year ago, ostensibly to focus on filmmaking, doesn’t seem to have slowed his music-making. He recorded The Visitor, another in his series of Nicolas Roeg-referencing pop records, in his apartment, multitracking the many instruments for the 40-minute piece when neighbors were away and even learning to play trombone for the effort. And Mego just released In Stereo, a trio with O’Rourke, Christian Fennesz and Peter Rehberg (aka Pita). Where The Visitor is an exquisitely conceived and structured piece, In Stereo and Tima Formosa, a trio recording with Oren Ambarchi and Keiji Haino, are both extended, ambient improvs, and of the two the Haino/Ambarchi meeting is the more satisfying.

Recorded live in Kitayushu, Japan, in January 2009, Tima Formosa is an hour of highly textured—tangible even—soundsculpting. It’s probably less acoustic than it seems, but O’Rourke’s close-miked piano dominates, sometimes feeding back into

the PA and giving a strongly visceral feel to the collaboration. Behind the slow scrapes and intonations of the piano lie deep-end rumbles from Ambarchi’s guitar and Haino’s electronics which build to speaker-shaking rhythms in the last quarter hour.

On top of it all floats Haino’s ethereal singing, like a sad angel adrift in heavy reverb. The disc could come as a surprise to those only familiar with Haino’s extreme guitar attacks of years past. But it works well as an extension of his more recent (and generally more subdued) voice-andelectronics work, while benefitting from the collaboration with two thoughtful and inventive abstract improvisers. Kurt Gottschalk

Fred Anderson

21st Century Chase Delmark DVD

Black Horn Long Gone Southport CD

21st Century Chase, the video record of a tenor encounter between Fred Anderson and Kidd Jordan in March 2009 during Anderson’s 80th birthday celebrations, is a study in contrasts right from the start. Jordan is on fire, engaged, challenging the band with rubbery facial expressions and pugilistic body English.

He squawks as relentlessly as a blue jay, hogging the air, while Anderson stays hunched, staring at the center of the earth. But after a minute, Anderson gingerly hops onto a branch, begins to emit his broken, mourning-dove coo, and we’re off. (On the DVD commentary, Anderson says he deliberately stayed in the low register to “deal with” Jordan’s high notes.) Gradually, the two free-jazz legends move closer and closer, to within a few branches of each other; then they’re side by side, way out on the same limb. The tree is storm-tossed by the crack young rhythm section of Jeff Parker on guitar, Harrison Bankhead on bass and Chad Taylor on drums, all of whom show superhuman sensitivity to the clash of titans taking place in their midst. (Taylor, replacing an airport-stranded Hamid Drake, brings the music to white heat without melting it down to goo.)

Before long, you’re ashamed of any doubts you may have had about this pairing. Of course it works— both Anderson and Jordan are wearing Eddie Harris T-shirts! There are many astounding moments, as when Jordan trades tiny, choppy blips on sax with an electrified

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The New Monuments: Don Dietrich, C. Spencer Yeh, Ben Hall

Bill Dixon Aaron Siegel Ben Hall

Weight/Counterweight Broken Research LP x 2

Joe Morris Chris Riggs Ben Hall Glass Key

You Are Your Only Machine LP

Don Dietrich C. SpencerYeh Ben Hall

The New Monuments Important LP

It’s hard to believe that Detroit-based percussionist and visual artist Ben Hall is still pigeonholed as a “noise” musician. The fact that the LPs he’s produced on his Broken Research label (often with cellist Hans Buetow) employ live electronics and sometimes (though not always) low-fidelity production values have earned his work such a moniker.

Yet bands like Graveyards, Hell & Bunny, and Melee have a facility far removed from the “basement scuzz” so often referenced in promo copy for the improv underground. To call this work free jazz or free improvisation is similarly incomplete—Hall is not a jazz drummer, though he’s very interested in specific sonic structure. Three recent LPs help define the area in which Hall works; as the presence of composers/improvisers Bill Dixon and Joe Morris suggests, these aren’t total free-for-alls.

Weight/Counterweight was recorded in 2008 and features Hall, Dixon and percussionist Aaron Siegel (a Braxton alum) on four compositions, each taking up one LP side.

These four pieces are very far from free music; however, they also stand in relief to recent Dixon recordings such as Tapestries for Small Orchestra. Siegel and Hall’s percussion arsenal (including trap kits, tympani and vibraphone) suggest a link with the Dixon/Tony Oxley Papyrus duos (Soul Note, 1999), but there’s an entirely different sense of space and pacing here, the drummers creating large, glacial areas with easy-breathing deliberateness. On “Atelier—Corbu’s Studio” Dixon’s long lines, shadowed with delay, ultimately seem calm and granular. As Hall and Siegel close the gaps between sections of cottony architecture into a tighter rustle, Dixon matches with staccato bursts and stomach-turning cries. Dixon’s breathy presence is strongly felt throughout the album, but the drummers’ rumbling detail, thin gong scrapes and woody patter are a huge part of the ensemble sound. As the drummers weave a soft, thumping web, Dixon accents with fluffs and terse daubs, building into a gash-like shriek that hangs in the air long after the canvas has returned to chalky, insistent dust. “Hirado” begins with a delayed brass dialogue, forming tart rows and half-buried clarions against vibes and brushes.

The long, low tones that follow are garish by comparison; Dixon takes smaller areas to work with from those large swaths, refining his smeared phrases atop fleet mallet and trap-set action, closing with crumpled asides.

Dixon says he “always works orchestrally,” and Weight/Counterweight is powerful evidence of this.

Glass Key is Hall’s second meeting with guitarist Joe Morris, following Cloud Atlas Quartet (with Buetow and trumpeter Nate Wooley). Guitarist Chris Riggs’ work has been documented on a series of now impossibleto-find cassettes on his Holy Cheever Church

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imprint, some of which also include Hall and Buetow. Again, “detail” is a word that comes to mind with respect to this music, because Morris and Riggs are two players equally oriented to specifics, despite differing approaches. They toy with a sense of the “micro,” small sounds futzed-with and arranged in such a way as to contribute to an overall architecture, but whereas Morris retains an attachment to tonality, Riggs revels in sheer sound and obstinate activity (a scuzzier Keith Rowe, perhaps?).

Comparing Morris’s rhythmic, cyclical scrapes and dense midrange eddies with Riggs’ alien taps and dirty feedback echo is folly, though they complement each other extraordinarily well. Hall’s dry, multidirectional surge swings forward while the guitarists hammer, dive and tease in parallel.

The New Monuments is the closest of these three LPs to a “noise” sensibility, featuring Hall alongside tenorman Don Dietrich (Borbetomagus) and violinist C. Spencer Yeh (Burning Star Core). But Hall’s tumbling, frenetic percussion pushes The New Monuments into territory occupied by Masayuki Takayanagi’s “Mass Projections,” or perhaps a righteous merger of Ray Russell’s Secret Asylum (Black Lion, 1973) and a particularly overdriven Peter Brötzmann unit.

Both saxophone and violin are slathered in gut-wrenching feedback or skronky electronics, while Hall’s loose, top-heavy accents and cymbal wash channel Beaver Harris’s work in the Blue Humans. “Ram Ventilators” begins with scrabbly violin glissandi and tenor purrs, quickly erupting into cuss and thrash. It’s hard to imagine extremity ratcheting any higher, but when Dietrich lays into a series of howls it’s not unlike Glenn Spearman rising from an orchestral mass. One often thinks of “noise” music as something harsh and post-human, but The New Monuments’ tenor preaching and maddening string scrape are an exception to the rule. Clifford Allen

Parker behind Taylor’s stickwork and Bankhead’s droll murmur, but what most people will remember are the full-on, two-tenor eruptions that surge, simmer, percolate and flow like magma. It’s all filmed with sparing visual effects and in-yourface immediacy at Anderson’s new Velvet Lounge digs, and topped off by the presence of bass legend Henry Grimes, first seen in the audience, then on the stage as he joins Bankhead for a two-bass, two-tenor finale. Larry Cosentino Black Horn Long Gone is a 1993 studio session at last seeing release on Chicago’s Southport record label. The trio on this date was an unusual one for Anderson, and sadly, 17 years later, he’s the last one standing. Bassist Malachi Favors Maghostut—a member of the Art Ensemble of Chicago and Kahil El’Zabar’s Ritual Trio, among other projects—died in 2004; and drummer Ajaramu (whose work included stints with Gene Ammons, Sun Ra and Nicole Mitchell) passed in 2006.

So the hour of music presented here will no doubt be of interest to dedicated followers of adventurous Southside jazz. Anderson is in an unusually bluesy mood here, presaging the subdued moods typical of his playing in recent years. The eight tracks are likely spontaneous improvisations, but Anderson states, repeats and revises themes with deliberation. Favors, a powerfully understated player, is right behind Anderson, echoing themes in nearunison and then falling into fast, free walking rhythms with the drums.

Ajaramu is propulsive, but focuses on cymbal work, maintaining a light frenzy. Hearing these three vital forces in Chicago jazz together, in a trio that might easily have been lost to history, is something to be thankful for. Kurt Gottschalk

Aidan Baker

Liminoid/Lifeforms Alien8 CD

Nadja

Numbness

Happy Prince / Nature Bliss CD

Guitarist Aidan Baker is best known for the art doom of Nadja, an improv-metal project which luxuriates in the swells of electric guitar and bass. With the use of multiple electronic effects (and an intrinsic sense of timing and simpatico) the duo creates loud, intense and orchestral drone pieces, building on heavy metal foundations while discarding such notions as meter and riff. Given that group’s approach, one has certain expectations about what Baker might do with an octet (strings, three guitars and two drummers), especially given the wavesof-sound records Nadja has made in enlarged double-band settings. But the results on Liminoid/Lifeforms follow a very different path. The first section of the 38-minute “Liminoid” starts off in similar territory to Nadja, but Baker soon proves that he’s ready to work the larger ensemble, as the piece goes on to discover sparser and more tightly composed rhythmic arrangements before culminating in a slow, epic song-and-

drum ritual. It’s not quite as harrowing as Nadja at its best, but that’s probably not what Baker was going for. It does, in any event, show him to have no shortage of ideas for creating more formal musical frameworks. The second half of the disc is a 30-minute quartet for violin, cello, “amplified metal works” and Baker’s guitar. It is, for the most part, an acoustic, maximalist monolith.

There are waves and undulations, and a slow progression, but for the most part it just exists, beautifully (and loudly if you let it).

As these compositions (as well as his work with his main band) show, Baker excels at extended works, which is what makes the odds’n’sods collection Numbness an unusual release for Nadja. The half dozen tracks are culled from splits and comps, plus a track from a 7” and one previously unreleased cut. It’s a bit scattered but at the same time is a more relaxed, easily digestible record. The first three tracks are a mere eight minutes each, and include a brutally lovely, bass-heavy rendering of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.” Intentionally or not, the pieces are ordered shortest to longest: the rockist “Long Dark Twenties” (at nearly 12 minutes, slightly longer than the previously released version) is followed by the druggy drudgery of “Alien in My Own Skin.” All of which ramps up to the 21-minute (near-)title track, which originally appeared on a 2007 ’net release. While the variety here serves as a good introduction to the band, the post-metal majesty of “Numb” underscores that what they do best isn’t done quickly.

Kurt Gottschalk

Pascal Battus Christine Sehnaoui Abdelnour Ichnites Potlatch CD

Ichnites pairs Christine Sehnaoui Abdelnour and Pascal Battus in five improvisatory duets. Both musicians are well in line with Potlatch’s aesthetic: Sehnaoui Abdelnour’s approach to the saxophone is all gristle, puff, and whistle, while Battus’ “rotating surfaces” (various everyday materials activated using the spinning guts of Walkmen) generate miniscule buzzes and whines. The musicians copy and complement each other to the point that it can be tricky to identify who (or what) is making each sound. Battus’ sputters (their pitch adjusted, one suspects, via changes of pressure and angle) can give the illusion of flying spittle; Sehnaoui Abdelnour’s squeaks, squeals and crinkling bursts are intensely tactile. When the two reach their highest levels of similitude, as near the end of “égrenages & pelage,” their ability to find common ground is stunning. Despite the music’s democracy, Sehnaoui Abdelnour sometimes steals the show with the seemingly endless arsenal of tricks up her sleeve. But Ichnites is best at those moments of intensity when one can practically sense the duo sweat as they concentrate on perilously delicate collaborative constructions. The dizzying chorus

of high-pitched peals in “fouilles & rongement” and the sonorous drones in the middle of “reliefs de repas” are prime examples of their close partnership, and one hopes that on this big rotating surface we call Earth, Battus and Sehnaoui Abdelnour can find a way to do this again sometime. Adam Strohm

Johannes Bauer Paal Nilssen-Love Thomas Lehn Ken Vandermark Artifact: iTi Live in St. Johann OkkaDisk CD

Over the course of an extended 36-minute salvo and two shorter improvisations, this ad hoc quartet throws it down old-style. Trombonist Johannes Bauer, drummer Paal Nilssen-Love, and multi-reed player Ken Vandermark have been working together for a while now as part of Peter Brötzmann’s Chicago Tentet and Vandermark’s Territory Band.

Analog synth player Thomas Lehn has been working these sorts of meetings since the early ’90s in settings like Gunter Christmann’s Vario projects. “Part One” begins with a collective burst before energies abate; Bauer and Vandermark parry back and forth, gradually building velocity until Lehn’s bursts of static and Nilssen-Love’s cascades break in and goose the intensity. The trombonist’s bluster goads Lehn into joyously raucous playing, and Vandermark plays off of the spirited fracas, honking, shredding, and diving with kinetic verve. Nilssen-Love is the perfect choice, stoking the improvisations with thunderous, caterwauling activity rather than pulse or groove. The 7-minute “Part Two” is a more open affair, a sound field of whispers and groans, while the brief closer concentrates on pingponged flurries. In lesser hands, this sort of improvisation could devolve into muscular posturing, but these four know how to listen no matter what the musical situation is.

Michael Rosenstein

Beat Circus

Boy from Black Mountain Cuneiform CD

This third offering from Beat Circus, the brainchild of singer/songwriter Brian Carpenter, is the almost perfect realization of its blend of circus music and Eastern European folk music. Dreamland, the group’s previous CD, drew upon the shadowy history of a Coney Island amusement park and was Volume I in what Carpenter called his “Weird American Gothic” trilogy. The amusement park story line was a little fuzzy, and instrumental interludes such as a version of the traditional Russian “Dark Eyes” blurred the “American Gothic” theme even further. By contrast, on Boy from Black Mountain, Carpenter’s voice and lyrics are more dominant, the instrumentals functioning primarily as mood enhancers. The ensemble’s use of harmonica, stringed instruments (including banjo) and brass (including Carpenter on tuba) convincingly invokes various American musical

traditions. Carpenter is also in excellent voice, his sonorous baritone resembling John Cale’s, with just the proper touch of mystery and Gothic gloom, and his guttural throatsinging contributes additional atmosphere. Carpenter’s songwriting draws heavily on his Southern Baptist roots, and his poetic visions of rural poverty, violence and religious mania have the affectionate understanding of an insider, frequently referencing the desperation and flawed passion of the characters in the writings of William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor. The title piece and “Saturn Song”—based upon Carpenter’s experiences with his autistic son—obviously come from a very deep place, and are written with great insight and poetic skill.

All in all, this CD is an impressive accomplishment, and whets the appetite for the final volume in the Weird American Gothic trilogy.

Bill Tilland

Marco Benevento

Between the Needles and Nightfall Royal Potato Family CD

A good album makes you forget that you’re listening to music at all; while it lasts, it becomes the soundtrack to your life, and you just go on living. Keyboardist Marco Benevento’s fourth album, Between the Needles and Nightfall, achieves this effect; when it’s spinning on your turntable, or coming through your headphones, for those sixty minutes or so, you’re inside that universe. On most tracks, Benevento— backed by the able duo of bassist Reed Mathis and drummer Andrew Barr—offers little in the way of melody, preferring to say his piece through vibe and atmosphere, and the natural uplift of the rock rhythm; his estimable skills as a instrumentalist are often downplayed, too, in favor of an ethereal wash of sound, or a catchy repeating figure. It’s not a jazz record, really, nor a rock record for that matter, but either way, one’s likely to be convinced of the album’s potency by the close of “Greenpoint,” the intoxicating opening track/ode to Brooklyn. Laid bare upon a two-note bass ostinato and a march-like drum pattern, Benevento’s ascending four-note melody is all that’s needed; a more verbose line would have been superfluous. The alternately tender and bruising “Between the Needles,” with its Beatlesque theme rendered by Mathis, is another winning composition, notable for its directness and exquisite simplicity.

If it’s an original spin on music you desire, replete with healthy doses of rock energy, minimalist attitude, and pop-jazz know-how, this might be a good match for your iPod. Brad Farberman

Jimmy Bennington / Perry Robinson Quartet The Spirits at Belle’s Cadence Jazz CD

Ohio-born, Texas-bred, and Chicago-based drummer Jimmy Bennington learned from the best, studying

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with Elvin Jones for several years and serving as Jones’ drum tech-guy and band manager from 2000 to 2002. Perry Robinson was one of the first clarinetists to embrace 1960s free/avant-garde jazz, working with the likes of Henry Grimes, Paul Motian, and Dave Brubeck. Together with bassists Daniel Thatcher and Matthew Golumbisky, Bennington and Robinson evoke the ESP glory days of fire music (without any irony or retro baggage) on The Spirits at Belle’s. Beginning with some low-volume bass vibrations, the title track is an expansive yawp. Robinson plays freely but with great lyricism, his clarinet’s woody, yearning tone occasionally evoking the N’awlinsrooted masters Jimmy Noone and Johnny Dodds. Bennington plays in a minimalist, almost impressionistic style à la Paul Motian—like T. Monk, JB lets the spaces do the talking for him. “Albert M” is a bit more “conventional” open-ended free-type jazz, with some judicious agitation, some inspired cymbal washes and noteworthy squawks. At times Bennington and the two bassists get a bit too minimal/reductive for this writer’s taste, but the closer “Walk On” finds this foursome really kicking up some dust—Bennington’s beats literally crackle and Robinson lets loose some thorny, twisty wailing (recalling Grimes’ The Call here and there). For the devoted, this’ll hit the spot. Mark Keresman

Savage Energy: Jeffrey Hayden Shurdut with Michael Ray and Marshall Allen Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix

Valleys of Neptune

Chuck Boyd / Authentic Hendrix LLC

Sony Legacy CD

It’s been a frustrating 40 years since Jimi Hendrix’s death for those of us who contemporaneously followed his artistic blossoming.

After the initial posthumous temptations of the handful of studio tracks contained on The Cry of Love, Rainbow Bridge and War Heroes, new studio material was either tampered with in post-production (Crash Landing and Midnight Lightning) or quickly pulled from the market due to infighting between factions of the guitarist’s estate (Nine to the Universe). The conclusion—reinforced by the book Jimi Hendrix Sessions, written by the estate’s official historian John McDermott— was that all the hours Hendrix devoted to the studio in early 1969 resulted in little beyond scattered jams and unfinished sonic experiments.

What a surprise, then, to discover that some sessions yielded fully realized gems like the handful mixed with some lesser takes on Valleys of Neptune, the first of a new series of releases on the Sony Legacy imprint. Several performances come from a February 16, 1969, London session that McDermott dismissed in his book, and two of the best discoveries come from a session the following day that McDermott didn’t even know existed.

The oldest piece here actually comes from a session that predates Hendrix’s triumphant return to the United States in June 1967, but contains new bass and drum parts overdubbed by Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell in 1987, under the supervision of Hendrix’s original producer, Chas

Chandler. “Mr. Bad Luck” was one of those songs that Hendrix continued to toy with, and it’s included here because it resurfaced in concert during the 1969 period as “Look Over Yonder”—a bridge between his early psychedelic excursions and the riff-powered electric soul of his final 18 months.

In February 1969, the Experience was slated to make a concert film at the Royal Albert Hall. There had been ill feelings between Hendrix and Redding following the lengthy sessions for Electric Ladyland in the fall of 1968, and Hendrix wanted to ensure the band was ready for the film. Although they are merely rehearsal takes, versions of “Fire” and “Red House” are focused and fierce. On the latter, while Redding smolders with a slow walking bass part, Hendrix plays exquisite lead lines and sings with rare precision. A third piece—a raucous instrumental version of Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love”—has surfaced before, and always pleases.

By April 1969, the wheels were coming off the Experience. Redding was on his way out, but the trio regrouped in New York in preparation for a spring tour of the U.S. Initial sessions yielded little, but after shifting to the Record Plant Hendrix quickly began making real artistic headway.

On April 7, along with the beginnings of an alternative version of the hard-rocking highway anthem “Stone Free,” the band churned through a burning take of “Hear My Train A-Comin’”—the cosmic blues that would become a concert standby. Also from April 7 is “Lullaby for the Summer,” an early instrumental attempt at the song that would surface as “Earth Blues” on Rainbow Bridge. While Hendrix snaps off the catchy rhythm part and intertwining lead lines,

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Mitchell fumbles his part in several places and seems unsure of what to contribute.

A week later, the Experience recorded in the studio for the last time, producing a take of “Ships Passing Through the Night,” which was re-recorded as “Night Bird Flying” for The Cry of Love. Hendrix experiments with feeding his guitar through a Leslie speaker, but while the core riff is in place, the melody isn’t fully developed and the lyrics are still in embryonic form. The highlight is a lead part that evolves into a gorgeous unaccompanied coda.

By April 24, Hendrix had recruited former bandmate Billy Cox to replace Redding (although Redding would continue to appear with the band until June 1969) and was back in the studio. “Bleeding Heart,” an uptempo version of an Elmore James song that had served as his in-concert blues favorite in the winter of ’68/’69, is little more than a rehearsal, although it illustrates how much drive Cox could contribute.

Little is truly odd in the Hendrix catalog, but it’s still strange that the album takes its name from the track that least fits. Started in September 1969, at a low point in Hendrix’s brief career as a leader, it was not finished until the following May. Both the lyrics and the guitar lines are derivative of some of his better pieces from this period, and the song remained unfinished at his death.

On measure, Valleys of Neptune is only marginally better than many of the posthumous studio pastiches pieced together in the past four decades, but the discovery of previously unknown sessions fills in some important gaps, and the care taken with this release signals a promising new direction for the Hendrix legacy under Sony’s control.

James Hale

Sean Bergin’s New Mob Chicken Feet Pingo CD

Andy Bruce & The Rigidly Righteous The Midge

Brokkenrecords CD

Ab Baars Meinrad Kneer Windfall Evil Rabbit CD

Bo van de Graaf Sold>Out! ICDisc CD

To American ears especially, jazz from the Netherlands tends to be characterized by the free-wheeling improv and slapstick humor of its leading exponents, the ICP Orchestra and the Willem Breuker Kollektief. But there’s much more to the New Dutch Swing. The influence of South African music on Dutch jazz is rarely mentioned, but the two countries’ historical connections have yielded a strong musical awareness.

Misha Mengelberg has composed pieces that show township influences (“Kwela P’ Kwana”) and he and Han Bennink recorded an ICP album with saxophonist Dudu Pukwana back in the early ’80s (Yi Yole). The influence is strongly evident in the music of saxophonist Sean Bergin, an occasional member of the ICP. A South African-born emigrant to Holland in the ’70s, he became an established member of the Dutch jazz scene.

Since the late ’80s, Bergin has led MOB (My Own Band), a band with a fluctuating personnel that draws on that township groove, spicing

it with a jazz improviser’s sensibility and an avant-gardist’s sense of the unpredictable. On his latest release, Chicken Feet, recorded live at the Bimhuis, all of this is evident as Bergin leads a somewhat smaller band (six pieces) called the New Mob, featuring Felicity Provan on trumpet, Anna Nijdam on harp (a nice touch), Ernst Glerum on bass, Alan “Gunga” Purves on drums and Una Bergin on vocals. They run through a buoyant set of eight compositions that narrate a loosely held-together tale about a dog that lost his bark, with brief between-song narration by Bergin. Each musician gets to speak his/ her piece and this roughly 50-minute program nicely ties together that South African/Dutch connection.

But how about the Scottish/Dutch connection? That’s being mined by trombonist Andy Bruce, a Scotsman who’s lived in Holland for the last 20 years, and who’s played in a number of Dutch bands including the Breuker Kollektief, the Beau Hunks and Raise the Roof. A burly trombonist with a strong lyrical bent and a penchant for energetic solos, Bruce formed the Rigidly Righteous to explore his Scottish roots. Joining him on The Midge are Hermine Deurloo (a frontline partner in the Kollektief) on chromatic harmonica and saxophones, fellow Scotsman Alan Purves on drums, Frans Cornelissen on tuba, Martin Frondse on keyboards and flute and Sander Hop on guitar. Bruce composed most of the tracks and arranged three Robert Burns songs for the band. To tie in the Dutch connection, one can hear the influence of nearly ten years with Breuker in some of the rhythms and quirky ensemble passages. But basically this is lively music which you can jig or clog to, or just sit back and enjoy with a goofy grin on your face.

Reed player Ab Baars is part of the second generation of Dutch free improvisers and has been a member of the ICP Orchestra for over 25 years. An accomplished tenor saxophonist and clarinetist (who has recently added the shakuhachi to his arsenal), he’s an improviser of intelligence who never takes the easy route. He’s as comfortable with free improvisation as he is with interpreting the music of Duke Ellington or John Carter. For Windfall he’s joined by bassist Meinrad Kneer, one of the younger players on the Dutch jazz scene (though German-born), in a series of improvised duets. In this format, one gets to hear Baars up close and personal and beautifully recorded. The tenor/bass pieces (6 out of 11 tracks) are standouts, but that’s not to minimize the remaining tracks. On the tenor duets, his horn blows with an Aylerian blend of intensity and pathos but the sound is uniquely Baars’. He’s well-matched

by Kneer, who plays all over his instrument, eliciting all manner of complementary sounds: scrapes, rumbling growls, high-end harmonics, deep resonant plucked strings.

This is a satisfying set of duets worth hearing by any follower of improvised music.

Saxophonist/composer Bo van de Graaf made his name as leader of I Compani, a group that started out interpreting the compositions Nino

Rota wrote for Fellini’s films. Eventually they morphed into an individual ensemble with a multi-faceted book.

Sold>Out!, subtitled “25 Soundtracks,” is mostly solo, with the occasional guest appearance. Van de Graaf has composed a series of pastiches of film music, giving them punny titles like “Ascenseur Pour Un Escargot,” “Lost Tanga in Paris,” and “Koyaanisqatsch.” If there is a problem with this disc it’s that van de Graaf has chosen to do too much by himself on keyboards: the electronically generated rhythms give the music an almost amateurish quality. And there isn’t enough of van de Graaf’s saxophone. However, some of the guests help raise the music to another level. The remarkable Hermine Deurloo graces a few tracks with her harmonica playing, giving “From Amsterdam with Love” a Morriconeesque flavor. Jeroen Doomernik’s muted trumpet smolders all over “The Bronx” (too bad about the backing rhythm though). Many of the tracks work, in a crafty, oneman-show sort of way, and they’re all brief enough (from one to four minutes) that if the listener doesn’t like the track, she/he doesn’t have to wait long before something else emerges. But with just a couple of alterations (using Fred van Duynhoven, I Compani’s drummer, for starters?) this could have been a great recording. Robert Iannapollo

Berry

Blue Sky, Raging Sun Joyful Noise LP / DL

The post-psych rock quartet Berry (vocalist/guitarist Joey Lemon, bassist Shane Bordeau, keyboardist Matt Aufrecht, and drummer Paul Goodenough) benefit from the warmth of vintage gear—they record at home on an 8-track reel-to-reel deck—and share the expansive ambitions of latterday space rockers such as Granddaddy and Super Furry Animals. Despite releasing four LPs and a handful of EPs in just five years, the Chicagoans’ brand of multi-layered psych-pop is still just glimmering at the periphery of indie awareness. But perhaps this will ultimately prove fruitful—they’ve had time to cultivate a special musical language, simultaneously evocative of artful pop constructions past while retaining a fresh outlook. Perhaps my impressions of the album will always be slightly skewed towards emphasizing the haziness the group is capable of (in songs such as “Desired Desire” and the title track).

A sonic artifact plays a role in this; my LP arrived banged-up, imparting a warped ‘wah’ to the proceedings.

Although working vinyl beats digital on an ordinary day, here a download from the label came to the rescue.

I’ve returned to the MP3s again and again, savoring the arrangements’ varied hues. One usually associates this level of shifting detail with long-form pieces, but Berry manage to fit a startling amount of subtle variation into the standard three- to four-minute format. The exception is “Beauty Is All,” a space-rocker with a touch of prog which takes the listener through seven minutes of rhythmically supple, metrically shift-

ing terrain. Christian Carey

Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy & The Cairo Gang The Wonder Show of the World Drag City CD

Singer-songwriter Will Oldham’s latest album is credited to Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy & the Cairo Gang. Of course, Oldham settled on the Bonnie Billy moniker some years back, and while the Cairo Gang sounds like the name of a band, it’s actually just Emmett Kelly, who’s been a regular member of Oldham’s touring group for the past few years. Kelly plays guitar in a loose, expressive style, and when he performs with Oldham in concert, it looks as if he’s making up a lot of what he does on the spot, taking cues from Oldham’s own performance. That sort of musical communication makes Kelly an ideal partner on these studio recordings. Unlike 2009’s Beware, which featured a full band adding colorful and sometimes strange flourishes to Oldham’s songs, this one is spare, with just a touch of understated percussion here and there. It’s yet another solid collection of idiosyncratic, personal songs from this prolific songwriter. Oldham has never sung better, gently catching all the nuances of his melodies. His lyrics read like poetry on the page, but somehow even his archaic turns of phrase feel natural when he sings them. With a little more gloss, “That’s What Our Love Is” could pass for an early-’70s folk-rock ballad

by Crosby, Stills & Nash or maybe even a soft-rock hit, but Oldham’s lyrics begin ominously: “Don’t go to bed if you know that something’s waiting to grab you in the night and throttle hope from your heart.” And then he finishes the song by crooning, “I believe these are end times.

Wouldn’t it be best to be together then? The smell of your box on my moustache or a crossword on our mind.” Oldham dares to let his mind take him to places other songwriters avoid. On the last track, the elegiac “Kids,” he sings from the perspective of an aging man who’s afraid of moving, fearful of losing his ability to sing. If anything, on this record, Oldham sounds more fearless than ever. Robert Loerzel

César Bolaños

Peruvian Electro-Acoustic and Experimental Music (1964-1970) Pogus CD

One wouldn’t easily guess that Bolaños is from Peru from the sounds found in this collection. However, the fact that the country, though largely rural—half of it is jungle—had an experimental music scene is of interest. Bolaños, born in 1931, came from one of the first generations to move from rural areas into Lima in the 1940s. Like fellow composers Edgar Valcarcel and Leopoldo La Rosa, he became a student at the National Conservatory of Music. The music on this collection, which spans his time as part of Peru’s avant-garde, was no doubt shaped by his studies with Belgian composer Andrés Sas, as well

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Jemeel Mondoc and Arthur Williams at Studio RivBea in 1976.

Jemeel Moondoc Muntu Recordings

Tom Marcello under CCL

No Business CD x 3 + book

While the flame of the free jazz loft movement of the ’70s continues to flicker, the stories of many of the musicians and much of their music have started to fade from memory. But the Lithuanian label No Business has made significant strides in documenting the era with this ambitious three-CD set and accompanying book. In his insightful writing, STN scribe Ed Hazell notes that the lifespan of Jemeel Moondoc’s Ensemble Muntu almost exactly coincided with the loft period in NY. While it is easy in hindsight to think of the era as a unified movement, Hazell’s book makes it clear that this was a loose aggregation defined as much by an allegiance to selfsufficiency and self-determination as it was by a confluence of musicians from across the U.S., economic conditions, and the tanked real estate values in Lower Manhattan. He does a great job at outlining the political, social, and artistic factors at play.

What brought these musicians together was “the idea of political and economic control of their art combined with the ability to control the definition of its aesthetic principles.” New York musicians, joined by a migration of improvisers from Chicago’s AACM (by way of Paris), St. Louis’s BAG, and LA’s UGMAA, found places to play in artistrun spaces like Sam Rivers’ Studio Rivbea, Rashied Ali’s Ali’s Alley, Joe Lee Wilson’s Ladies Fort, and clubs and community spaces like the Tin Palace, Lower Manhattan Ocean Club, and Studio Henry. The book is full of the stories of these spaces. But most importantly, via Hazell’s writing and a long essay by Moondoc, the book tells the story of the development of one of the archetypical

ensembles from the era.

Muntu had its roots in Cecil Taylor’s 19711973 residence at Antioch College. Moondoc, Mark Hennen, Raphe Malik, Karen Borca, and Jeff Hoyer were just some of the musicians who congregated there, auditing classes and participating in the workshop sessions that Taylor ran with Antioch students, the local musician community, and his working unit of Jimmy Lyons and Andrew Cyrille. When Moondoc and Hennen headed to NY in 1972, they hooked up with trumpeter Arthur Williams, whom they had met at Antioch, and recruited drummer Rashied Sinan (soon replaced by Rashied Bakr), and bassist William Parker to form Muntu (named after a book Moondoc had read, discussing the survival of African cultures in conflict with the modern world).

And that’s where the CDs come in. The set kicks off with First Feeding, a 1977 studio recording originally released on Moondoc’s Muntu Records label. On the pensive title tune Hennen’s spare piano notes set the stage for Williams’ dark trumpet playing, Parker’s earthy arco, Bakr’s percussion splashes, and the leader’s stabbing alto. “Flight (From the Yellow Dog)” and “Theme for Milford (Mr. Body & Soul)” are more expansive outings. Both show a debt to Taylor’s music, but Moondoc’s singular phrasing and ear for fractured, dancing melodic lines are evident throughout. Williams only recorded a handful of times, and his fiery attack and edgy sense of linear development provide an effective foil for Moondoc’s darting stabs and flurries.

Hennen’s tumultuous cascades ride the wave of Bakr and Parker’s driving pulse. Moondoc’s playing is particularly searing on this date, and it is great to hear the nascent dynamism of Parker’s bass in a roiling solo spot.

By 1979, when the live date The Evening of the Blue Men (disc 2) was recorded, per-

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sonal rifts had led to the parting of Williams and Hennen. The post-bop sensibility of new recruit Roy Campbell fits in perfectly, his accomplished technique and wide range sparking the energy even further. Moondoc spits fire on the two extended pieces, his lithe phrasing and angular leaps setting the pace. The title piece sprints out of the gate and gets stoked along by the full group, while the plaintive “Theme for Diane” elicits a particularly affecting solo from Campbell.

Parker gets a bit lost in the mix, but his tumbling bass lines still provide a palpable push and pull across Bakr’s surging drums.

The set is rounded out by a previously unreleased trio recording with Moondoc, Parker, and Bakr from a 1975 date at Ali’s Alley. Some of Moondoc’s greatest recordings have been in trio format (see if you can dig up Judy’s Bounce with Fred Hopkins and Ed Blackwell, or Fire in the Valley with John Voigt and Laurence Cook) and this one is a real find. The three offer another take on “Theme for Milford” and Moondoc revels in the freedom of the trio setting. He states the theme and then teases it out, parsing the motifs into circling lines that build intensity over the billowing pulse. Parker and Bakr get an extended duo section, and though they take a while to build up steam, there are clear signs of the masterly free playing they would go on to develop.

As the lofts began to close down, Parker and Bakr became busier after joining Cecil Taylor’s working unit, and after the early ’80s Muntu began to drift apart. Moondoc would go on to find strong collaborators, but Ensemble Muntu remains a testament to his vision as well as being an embodiment of the strong energies at play during a heady time in jazz history. This fine set is a fitting testament to Muntu and the loft era.

Michael Rosenstein

as time spent in New York and Argentina. It was his residency in Buenos Aires, as part of the US-funded Center for High Musical Studies (CLAEM), that yielded the recordings presented here. Ironically, the organization, started by John F. Kennedy in an attempt to squash communist revolutionaries like Che Guevara through the promotion of art and culture, attracted those, like Bolaños, who were influenced by the very thinkers Kennedy hoped to counter.

While Bolaños’s music doesn’t sound revolutionary 45 years later, it’s still a fascinating listen. Making use of a diverse array of resources— double pianos, mimes, electric guitar, trombone, tape, video projection, snippets of conversation set against percussion—he explored texture at the expense of traditional rhythms and harmonies. Much of his music is sparse and full of silences. “Sialoecibi” (1970), for example, scatters live recitation atop atonal piano pluckery and string raking, all of which finally collides and builds to destructive levels before retreating to the clipped gurgles and grunts of the track’s beginning. On “Cancion sin Palabras,” Bolaños shares piano duties with Valcarcel as a tape provides a sharp metallic whine. Perhaps the collection’s most radical track, however, is its last, “Nacachuasu.” Recorded in Bremen, it uses an orchestra, microphone amplification and recitations from Che Guevara’s diary of his Bolivian guerilla campaign. At times the band yells like an angry mob; at other moments things are shushed to a snake-like hiss. The music is deliberate, rigorous, and decidedly uncomfortable. After performances like these, and with the closing of CLAEM, Bolaños, now back in his native country, devoted himself to documenting and writing books on traditional Andean music. That Peru produced experimentalists during the 1960s is fascinating; that they had to work elsewhere to find commissions and audiences is telling. Bruce Miller

Ken Camden

Lethargy & Repercussion Kranky LP

With Lethargy & Repercussion, Chicago-based guitarist Ken Camden—currently a relatively unknown solo artist and apparent Terry Riley and Popul Vuh acolyte—presents an engaging, measured debut, if a bit sanitized. Each of the album’s six guitar-centric tracks was culled from multiple live takes, recorded in real time with no overdubs (the notable exception being the guitar duet “Jupiter”). Heavily processed guitar slowly shape-shifts through generous additive and subtractive processes, as Camden weaves the more controlled aspects of contemporary classical and minimalist composition with the spontaneity and error of live noise and drone performance.

Lethargy & Repercussion harvests from the music of the cosmos, from Tangerine Dream (cheerful, nimble opener “Birthday,” “New Space”) to Brian Eno (“Jupiter”) to Cluster (the metallic, flange-lite “Raagini Robot”) to Krankymate Tom Carter (the acidic psych-drone “Raga”), yet the album’s celestial kosmische scatter is strangely immobile. The exception is “Jupiter,”

which stands alone in its greatness.

Two extraterrestrial drones race on a parallel track and occasionally collide, and the resulting humming textures and sense of paranoia are unnerving.

I’m reminded of Ray Bradbury’s 1951 story “Kaleidoscope”: “Space began to weave its strange voices in and out, on a great dark loom, crossing, recrossing, making a final pattern.”

But despite its shimmering patina of retrograde textures, Lethargy & Repercussion is so carefully made it approaches a point of sterility. Unlike some of Camden’s sonically similar peers—Emeralds, Oneohtrix Point Never, Stellar OM Source and White Rainbow all come to mind—the album ultimately feels as though it was mapped out on graph paper. As Bradbury put it: “It was so very odd.

Space, thousands of miles of space, and these voices vibrating in the center of it. No one visible at all, and only the radio waves quivering and trying to quicken other men into emotion.”

Natasha Li Pickowitz

Carolina Chocolate Drops Genuine Negro Jig Nonesuch CD

For a trio whose bread and butter consists at least partially of 19thcentury fiddle breakdowns, it’s amazing how much acclaim this band has received. One suspects that at least some of this attention is because the Chocolate Drops are a group of African Americans playing music that’s long been considered Caucasian, even racist. And while old-time music is still kicking due to the efforts of younger generations raised on recordings and festivals, it’s become awfully homogenized as a result. Of course, one has to do nothing more than dig into a pile of 78-era recordings of southern American folk song to hear just how ethnically mixed up this stuff originally was. White fiddlers played tunes learned from black fiddlers, who obviously learned fiddle music from white people. The banjo, ultimately from Senegal, sounds as ancient and trance-inducing in the hands of white West Virginia player Dona Gum as a nyati recording from Nairobi, Kenya. There are albums devoted to black Sacred Harp singing, the white blues of Frank Hutchison.

And let’s not forget the red-headed, freckle-faced “founder of the Delta blues,” Charlie Patton. It’s this mutt that is Americana that the Drops effortlessly remind us of here. A West Virginia fiddle tune holds hands with a track by banjo songster Papa Charlie Jackson. A North Carolina stringband breakdown nudges alongside a banjo tune from Etta Baker, also an NC native.

Yet the Chocolate Drops branch out on this, their first release for the venerable Nonesuch label. Included is a cover of Blu Cantrell’s 2001 chart-topper, “Hit ’Em Up Style,” which is turned into a near ballad, with banjo and a beatbox standing in for Cantrell’s produced sheen.

“Trampled Rose,” on the other hand, is hardly changed from the Tom Waits original. Perhaps the best example of the band’s ability to show the multi-racial cross-pollination of American folk song is the title track.

Once believed to have been written

by Dan Emmett, who brought us, for better or worse, the song “Dixie,” it turns out to have originated in a black family living in Ohio, whose patriarch (surnamed Snowden) ultimately takes the credit for its inception. With its solo fiddle backed up by hand and foot percussion and bone-rattling, the track comes off as a lost piece of North American gypsy music from a tribe of people seemingly written out of history. It’s also easily the album’s high point. Like the best tracks on this CD, it offers a kind of implicit musical education. Bruce Miller

Elliott Carter

The Music of Elliott Carter, Volume 8: 16 Compositions (2002-2009) Bridge CD x 2

“‘What are years?’ asked the American poet Marianne Moore.

To which Elliott Carter might have responded, ‘What are centuries?’”

So begin Bayan Northcott’s incisive liner notes to the latest volume in Bridge’s superb Carter series, and the sentiment couldn’t be more apt.

Forget, for the moment, that the music on these two discs is wonderfully constructed and brimming with fancy and wisdom. The fact that it was composed as Carter neared his 100th birthday is simply incredible.

The excellence of these performances speaks eloquently to Bridge’s longterm commitment to Carter’s music.

The conventional wisdom has it that Carter’s first century on this planet saw him moving from neoclassicism, through European modernism, and then to a language that synthesized and focused previous developments.

While the final portion of this narrative is true, the path is not so straightforward; just listen to the adventurous piano sonata of 1945 and the neoclassical Minotaur ballet of 1947 to catch a glimpse of Carter’s diverse compositional development. Similarly, these recent pieces do not speak to a unified style, though their concision is Carter’s through and through. Rather, they address myriad influences, demonstrating his open ears and admirably exploratory nature while refining past accomplishments.

“Mad Regales” (2007) is a case in point. These are Carter’s first compositions for unaccompanied vocal group since 1947, and I can’t help but hear the humor of Ligeti’s “Nonsense Madrigals” in these three John Ashbery settings, in the way both composers make use of long tones, sudden tempo changes and gorgeously neo-romantic harmonies.

That said, these settings pack even more into each gesture than do the Ligeti pieces, thriving on wildly disparate simultaneities. “Sound Fields” (2007, for strings) and “Wind Rose” (2008, for winds) demonstrate similar allegiance to triad harmony while introducing some of Carter’s open-fifth Americanisms into the mix, and constitute some of the most achingly beautiful music he has ever composed. The long-breathed sonorities of his Piano Sonata are present, but they are amplified, extended into an infinity that the younger Carter could only glimpse.

Conversely, the Horn Concerto (2006)

exudes an extraverted vigor and vitality. Its colorful orchestration continues on from Symphonia: Sum Fluxae Pretium Spei (1998): the timbral shifts are equally fleet, the sonorities even more complex and packed into a smaller span of time.

There are too many fine moments in this album to catalog all of them here, including solo works and settings of poetry by Pound and Zukofsky. The playing and singing are splendid throughout, but special note must be made of Oliver Knussen’s conducting. As with his earlier recordings for Bridge and Deutsche Grammophon, he proves himself one of Carter’s finest advocates, rendering even the most challenging music accessible. If this CD were a career retrospective, it would bring justified plaudits to its composer. The fact that it comprises only the latest work of our longest-lived master is indeed cause for celebration.

Marc Medwin

Rhys Chatham The Bern Project Hinterzimmer CD

This magical disc, which often resembles a parade band being sucked through a black hole, is the result of a chance hookup with local Swiss musicians when Chatham’s Guitar Trio tour hit Bern in the summer of ’08.

So enthused was he about drummer Julian Sartorius and bassist Mago Flueck that he traveled back to Switzerland in order to work with them.

With Chatham himself on trumpet and guitars, and guest trombonist Beat Unternahrer, The Bern Project began taking shape. Producer Reto Mader deserves tremendous credit as well, for editing down 100 hours of tape into this masterpiece of drone and ecstasy. Like much of Chatham’s work, The Bern Project builds on the simplest of elements to reach a sustained climax. Opener “War in Heaven” grows out of silence into circular-breathing mumbles from the trombone; then the other instruments climb into the note and ride it while wooden wind chimes sound out. The music is too precise to be considered a squall, but the sound is all-engulfing. Ultimately this track, as well as “Is There Life After Guitar Trio?” which starts out not unlike Moondog’s single-note “Invocation” (1995), is cathartic rather than frightening, a kind of joyous levitation. Elsewhere, “A Rite for Samhain” brings the guitar to the forefront, as a repeated riff finally gets sent spinning backwards on itself. With its sonic density and attention to pulse, Chatham’s music is truly huge (in the rock sense of the word). Bruce Miller

Clogs

The Creatures in the Garden of Lady Walton Brassland CD

The human voice made only cameo appearances on the four previous records by composer Padma Newsome and his Clogs ensemble, but it’s at the center of their latest song cycle. Despite going vocal, Clogs still sound more like a classical chamber group than a rock band. These delicate compositions resemble

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Renaissance ballads or 19th-century art songs more than contemporary pop numbers, with a light, spacious quality shining through even in darker, more pensive passages.

Newsome wrote these songs during a residency at Giardini La Mortella, a botanical paradise created by Lady Susana Walton on Ischia, an island in the Bay of Naples. (Lady Walton, the widow of British composer Sir William Walton, died in March, just a few weeks after the Clogs released their musical tribute.) The record opens with stunning a cappella harmonies on the song “Cocodrillo.” Each voice chants the Italian name for a different animal or plant found in Lady Walton’s garden until they merge together—a meticulously plotted and executed polyphony. While Newsome sings at a few points on the album, the dominant voice belongs to guest vocalist Shara Worden (aka My Brightest Diamond). Worden is a classically trained singer, and it shows in her elegant, almost operatic delivery. Newsome’s lyrics are often striking, as when (on “The Owl of Love”) Worden sings, “I take in the souls of the minds of the world and sift out the weeds from the few.” Matt Berninger and Sufjan Stevens also make appearances on the disc. Like Stevens, who incorporates Philip Glass-style minimalism into the string arrangements for his folk-rock songs, Clogs are performing beguiling and sophisticated music that erases the lines between genres.

Robert Loerzel

Decoy

Vol. 1: Spirit

Bo'Weavil CD / download

Vol. 2: The Deep Bo'Weavil LP / download

The British trio Decoy picks up the gauntlet that dropped over thirty years ago with the death of Larry Young, the Hammond organ’s most forward-looking exponent. While the instrument hasn’t been entirely absent from improvised music since then, I can’t think of any of its partisans who have lived up to the transportational possibilities posited by records like Unity, Lawrence of Newark, and Love Cry Want. Enter Alexander Hawkins. Not yet 30 years old and known mainly as a pianist, he and confederates John Edwards (bass) and Steve Noble (drums) have finally made the great leap forward with these companion albums, which were recorded in a single day but have been released on different formats.

They combine the fire of free jazz and the textural imagination and interactive acuity of European free improvisation with a firm grasp of the organ trio idiom. For gravy, the albums are a pleasure to hold and play. No one loves vinyl more than Bo’Weavil, and no better-sounding pressing has crossed my threshold in recent months than The Deep’s.

Heavy and free of crackle, it’s the sort of LP that makes you want to slap the major-label production managers who nearly did the medium in with their shoddy products in the early ’80s across the face with their own semiflexible crappy pressings. But let’s not get totally hung up on format. Aside from some propulsive swinging on “Aces High,” the LP contains Decoy’s

more moody and meandering efforts; if you want maximum punch for your dollar, the CD is the one to get. The one-two opening sequence of “Outside In,” with its layers of scrapedmetal tonalities that give way to some shale-scattering drilling by Hawkins, and the gospelized steeplechase of “Who’s Who” can’t be beat, but the longer improvisations that follow try their best and come close. But why hate? Get both, but be mindful that only 300 copies of the LP were pressed. Bill Meyer

Jorrit Dijkstra Pillow Circles Clean Feed CD

It’s appropriate that Dutch-born alto saxophonist Jorrit Dijkstra now calls Chicago home, for along with a fertile scene of young creative improvisers Chicago has also been host to a number of forward-thinking underground rock bands. Dijkstra has long been interested in boundarycrossing; his work with French pianist and electronic artist Benoit Delbecq doesn’t fall under any particular rubric, and in Vancouver he collaborated with jazz-cum-indie rockers Peggy Lee and Dylan van der Schyff in Talking Pictures. On Pillow Circles, Dijkstra’s second disc on Clean Feed, he’s joined by Chicago scene regulars Jeb Bishop, Frank Rosaly and Jason Roebke as well as New York saxophonist Tony Malaby, Dutch violist Oene van Geel and guitarists Paul Pallesen and Raphael Vanoli.

“Pillow Circle 34” begins with a groove both flinty and round, guitars hanging in delicate opposition to one another as Rosaly and Roebke set a delicate bounce. The theme is densely voiced, the horns and viola piling up out of phase until tenor and trombone strike out in a dialogue of brass and steel wool. Dijkstra’s wideinterval leaps on the alto show affinities for John Tchicai, Roscoe Mitchell and Jemeel Moondoc, albeit slightly cooler. Bright Africanized guitar strokes contribute to the overall feeling of a playful tug. “Pillow Circle 18” channels a bit of post-rock, wineglass harmonics and muted taps recalling the most delicate moments of the Dirty Three or Pinetop Seven. As the ensemble spreads out into a psychedelic dustbowl, minimalist strum and rhythm washes suggest Slint and Tortoise, albeit with downy, expansive brass and woodwinds. The brief “Pillow Circle 55” begins in playful sputter and torqued quadrologue, the melody a gutbucket curlicue that would fit nicely in the Willem Breuker Kollektief pantheon (replete with a Waisvisz crackle-box). Pillow Circles cements Dijkstra’s place among modern genre-bending improvising composers. Clifford Allen

Axel Dörner & Erhard Hirt Black Box

Acheulian Handaxe CD

One of the fascinating vagaries within minimalist improvisation is how often the line is blurred between electro and acoustic. Through sampling and processing, and through the modification of instruments and playing techniques, new worlds between (or

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within) what we have come to think of as instrumental voices often emerge.

Axel Dörner is truly multi-lingual on the trumpet, and is more than fluent in musical abstraction. He is equally adept at jazz improvisation (having worked with George Lewis and Butch Morris), Euro improv (Alexander von Schlippenbach, Barry Guy) and sound art (Keith Rowe, Andrea Neumann).

He is joined on this session by electric guitarist Erhard Hirt, with whom he played in the King Ubu Orchestra.

Hirt’s varied career also includes work with Phil Minton, Lol Coxhill, John Butcher and many others. Over the course of 42 minutes, the pair creates varied and richly textured settings, sometimes nearing silence but more often shifting and layering structures of sound; sometimes sounding fully computer-generated, other times more like an aeolian harp and a pump organ left outside in a windstorm.

What might be most unusual here, given the field of electro-acoustic improvisation, is how quickly and how often they change course. The two tracks could just as easily have been edited into eight “songs,” which of course would serve no purpose other than masking how quickly they think on their feet. Kurt Gottschalk

Hamid Drake & Bindu Reggaeology Rogue Art CD

Reggaeology is another fantastic release from percussionist/composer Drake’s ever morphing Bindu project, which takes on various musical idioms and filters them through Drake’s instantly recognizable playing and his deep engagement with various religious traditions. Following his intense engagements with Daniel Carter and Sabir Mateen on 2005’s Bindu, 2008’s Blissful explored Drake’s evolving fascination with Kali, the feminine divine, and creative music. Here he explores another spiritual tradition with the help of many of his Chicago friends: guitarist Jeff Parker, trombonist/organist Jeff Albert, trombonist Jeb Bishop, bassist Josh Abrams (who also plays guimbri on the buoyant “Hymn of Solidarity”), and human beat box Napoleon Maddox on vocals. It’s a superb disc, creative, fun, and intense all at once.

The lengthy “Kali’s Children No Cry” opens the disc, with a terrific blend of outer leanings (including some memorable trombone dialogues and joyful free pulse raveups) to irresistible grooves (with a great wah-wah solo from Parker and really ace contributions from Maddox).

That’s more or less the standard mix throughout, and if you have any love of jazz and reggae it’s hard to imagine how you’d not fall for this one.

Sometimes the mood shades a bit to the lighter side, as on the savory “Kali Dub,” with more great work from Albert and Bishop, one raucous with the mute, the other mellifluous.

Elsewhere things get quite intense, as on the recitation dub “The Taste of Radha’s Love,” with frame drum, rolling lines from Abrams and Parker, and muttered devotional lyrics from Maddox. Make no mistake, this is the heart of the music and to dismiss (or strive to hear past) the lyrics would

be to mistake intentions somehow.

Drake’s commitment is total and, as you listen to his words on the moving “Take Us Home,” you can only be delighted that he’s making such music. Jason Bivins

Harris Eisenstadt Canada Day Clean Feed CD

Drummer and Toronto-expat Harris Eisenstadt has rather amusingly roped this bunch of New Yorkers together under the bandname Canada Day. (The disc even comes complete with a tweaked version of the standard national kitsch on the cover: Canada goose in flight, cherryred maple leaf.) It’s a great band: trumpeter Nate Wooley crosses Dorhamish melancholic droopiness with the kind of concentrated exploration of grainy micro-detail he contributes to improv situations, while saxophonist Matt Bauder’s lines are grey and gauzy and a little hoarse, their squashed leaps and climaxes suggesting a certain muffled ferocity.

Chris Dingman’s vibes have a nice slip-through-walls ghostliness—he’s at once there and not-there, licking at the edges of the music, and he persistently heightens the emotional atmosphere (check out the way he contributes to the mounting hysteria of “Every Day Is Canada Day”).

Eisenstadt and bassist Eivind Opsvik develop grooves with economy and striking linearity—as if they’re determined to show how unexpectedly placed regularities, marked off by decisive silences, can pack far more surprise than run-together irregularities. The compositions are a typically canny bunch—I particularly like how “Keep Casting Rods” circles around like a canon before Wooley steers things into a dense patch of fog, and the way the rather severe “After an Outdoor Bath” starts rocking back and forth violently behind Bauder’s sax solo. This is possibly the most mainstream of Eisenstadt’s projects—its funky/misterioso sound and trumpet-sax-vibes front line hark back to all those great 1960s Blue Note dates that had Bobby Hutcherson on hand—but it’s still the work of five distinctive, very contemporary personalities. Nate Dorward

Eleh

Location Momentum Touch CD

The identity of mysterious sound artist Eleh has been much debated.

After numerous limited edition vinyl releases, the popular Touch label has given Eleh a benediction of sorts with this big-time release. Recorded throughout 2009, and making specific reference to seasonal change, Eleh’s music is rooted in lengthy analog synthesizer drones which are then combined and assembled into unassuming but quite nuanced pieces that are clearly inspired by 1970s electronic composition in particular. The deep drones of “HeleneleH” recall La Monte Young especially, with their vast, expansive consonance in the middle register.

Despite the apparently static nature of the music, there’s considerable movement of register, even if there

aren’t any harmonic shifts necessarily.

The piece unfolds almost languorously until, after about 17 minutes of deep sea diving, there are some surprising pitch-bending movements. The remaining four pieces are similarly focused on precisely defined sound areas, with occasional surprises layered in. “Linear to Circular/Vertical Axis” is like a sonic articulation of helicopter blades, the sound of activated metal like an analogue of one of Jacques Dudon’s light or water instruments. From there, Eleh goes sub-guttural on “Circle One: Summer Transience,” whose slow thuds and chirps convey the sense of things growing beneath soil. It bumps along with the whining of overworked appliances until it climaxes in a chorus of roaring engines.

“Observation Wheel” contains the most unashamed exploration of intervals, accompanied by occasional train sounds as if Herbert Distel’s Die Reise were superimposed over an early Radigue piece. And the highend blips of “Rotational Change for Windmill” mark a nice variation of pace and tempo, the sound pared down steadily until there’s a thick low-end bed with faint sine tones and swells that could be processed cello. It’s not a record that will startle fans of electronic music but it’s well conceived and has its subtleties.

Jason Bivins

Ergo

Multitude, Solitude Cunieform CD

This trio features the free-floating ambience of Carl Maguire’s keyboards and Brett Sroka’s rich, legato trombone, which are periodically poked and prodded by drummer Shawn Baltazor’s interjections. On “Rana Sylvatica,” the most dynamic piece here, Maguire’s pensive Rhodes is joined by deep electronic drones, stuttering electronics, and Baltazor’s cymbal crashes and rolling drums. “Vessel” opens with limpid, melancholy trombone recalling J.J. Johnson; electronic drones and percussion delicately weave in and out of the mix, and there’s a feeling of quiet tension—of things percolating just beneath the surface or just beyond the field of vision. A few minutes before the piece ends, Maguire introduces a single percussive note on electric piano, Baltazor picks up the beat, and the music finally reaches its long-anticipated crescendo. The aptly named “She Haunts Me” is all about tone, timbre and texture: Sroka loops creamy trombone lines over Maguire’s ethereal synth washes, while Baltazor toys with the beat, occasionally locking in with ’bone and keyboards for a little rhythmic intensity but more often dipping in and out. “Endlessly (multitude, solitude)” teases the listener with leisurely stops and starts; a bouncy little electronic loop introduces the rhythmic sections, which alternate with freeform explorations.

Only in the last piece, “Actuator,” does the trio arrive at something a little more aggressive, even menacing; its minor keys and sinister electronic textures supply a touch of dread. Though it’s not ambient music exactly, Multitude, Solitude engages

you only to the extent that you are willing to engage it; it’s music that exists in its own curious and unpredictable little universe. Bill Tilland

Roky Erickson

True Love Cast Out All Evil Anti CD / LP / download

Roky Erickson’s return from the depths of mental illness is the ultimate feelgood story. After years spent living a life that is all too common for America’s chronically mentally ill, one marked by squalor, exploitation, inadequate treatment, and disastrous encounters with the law, the former Thirteenth Floor Elevators singer regained a measure of health after his brother Sumner became his guardian in 2001. In the past four years not only has he established a degree of psychiatric stability, he’s reconciled with his first wife and grown son and played a string of well-received gigs around the country. When I saw him at a festival date in Chicago a few years back he was a far cry from the bedheaded, terrified wraith of yore; he was engaged, in good voice, and able to play solid rhythm guitar on bluesy versions of old favorites from his back catalog.

But it’s one thing to be able to reanimate the hits and another to be able to come up with strong new material. Erickson made True Love Cast Out All Evil with Okkervil River instead of his usual pick-up band of Austin, TX veterans. Producer Will Sheff set out to avoid making a black suit and tie comeback affair.

Although he has succeeded in assembling a biographical statement that showcases Erickson’s still-potent pipes without binding him in a tux, the comfy shoes and jeans indie/ roots rock settings don’t fit that much better. But since Roky’s solo music has never been about the production, I can cut him some slack here, especially since a couple very rough home recordings and the found sounds recorded in Erickson’s homes over the decades that are woven into several tracks keep things from getting too smooth.

As has often been his wont, there are several re-recordings of older songs; others are previously unheard, culled from 50 tunes that Erickson had accumulated over the years and turned over to Sheff. Although Roky’s voice has gotten a bit more gravelly, he still has some range; the record’s most moving moment comes when he lets slip his falsetto for a moment at the end of the gospel-steeped title tune. In bygone times Erickson may have flirted with the devil, but not here. When he starts talking pentagrams on “Goodbye Sweet Dreams” he sounds badgered and bereft, and the record’s one dip into Roky’s old blood and gore bag is also the record’s biggest mistake. A remade “John Lawman” wallows in bloated drums and guitars, falling far short of its former rave-up status and sounding uncomfortably like GMC-era Bob Seger trying to go psychedelic. Elsewhere Roky is on God’s side, serving up gratitude and allegiance with inimitably wayward grammar. Production issues aside, it’s good to have him back and dealing

with what matters to him. Bill Meyer

The Fall

Your Future Our Clutter Domino CD / LP x 2 / download

It would be too easy and a bit misleading to say that The Fall have returned to form. The Manchester, UK-based combo, which has been helmed by the irascible pulverizer of words Mark E. Smith for going on 33 years, has made some pretty strong records in the past decade. The Real New Fall LP (Formerly Country on the Click) kicks some ass and Imperial Wax Solvent is impressively strange. But they’ve also perpetrated some duds, particularly Reformation Post T.L.C., on which seemed Smith seemed more concerned with keeping his latest band in line than exploiting their talents. Recent interviews suggest that the latest Fall is enjoying a rare degree of intra-band harmony for a group that has twice fallen apart on tour. At any rate MES seems willing to let the band sound good, and they reward him with performances that are not only committed and rocking, but surprising.

“Cowboy George” starts out channeling the garage fury of The Seeds and ends up spiraling down a drain carved by ray-gun electronics. Electro synths and lacerating feedback apply the lash to Wanda Jackson’s “Funnel of Love” as cruelly as those chariot racers in Ben Hur. And on “Weather Report 2,” throbbing bass smothers a fragile ballad, then Smith exits with a stage-whispered imprecation against all—“you don’t deserve rock and roll.” For as long as this record plays, it’s his to take and keep. Bill Meyer

Mark Feldman Sylvie Courvoisier Oblivia Tzadik CD

Sylvie Courvoisier / Mark Feldman Quartet To Fly To Steal Intakt CD

Husband and wife team Mark Feldman and Sylvie Courvoisier are a formidable pair, bringing together a wealth of musical experience and an appetite for participating in a broad range of improvisational settings.

Oblivia is their fourth recording as a duo (including two CDs exploring Zorn’s Masada songbook). This time out, the program is a mix of originals and short free improvisations.

Courvoisier’s polished technique and Feldman’s resonant, vibrato-rich violin give the music a sheen that’s often closer to early 20th-century modernism than jazz, but their passionate interaction makes this much more than a polite chamber recital. Courvoisier’s percussive attack and spiky phrasing provide a solid foundation for the pieces, and Feldman responds with soulful, soaring arco lines. Weaving their improvisations out of melodic and rhythmic kernels, they work in neartelepathic unison. The two don’t shy away from lyricism, but they contrast it with prickly free interludes, as Courvoisier’s prepared piano jangles

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against slashing violin.

On To Fly To Steal, the two are joined by bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Gerry Hemingway, which changes the dynamic significantly. The pieces have more of a jazz feel: Feldman in particular digs in with gritty, bluesy inflections and heated swing. The pianist subtly steers the proceedings, shaping the forms with splayed clusters and sprays of notes. Hemingway is, as always, the consummate ensemble player, favoring implied momentum rather than overt swing, whether on the three collective improvisations or on the co-leaders’ compositions.

Throughout, the four carve out a true ensemble sound, their finely honed interactions shaped by a strong sense of space and keen listening skills. Michael Rosenstein

Fenn O’Berg In Stereo

Editions Mego CD

When Fenn O’Berg (Christian Fennesz, Peter Rehberg and Jim O’Rourke) first came on the scene in the late 1990s, it was at a pivotal juncture for laptop musicians, who were becoming a fixture at electronic music events but often restricted themselves to a stiff, limited palette. Fenn O’Berg set about upending the serious musings of their chosen field, subverting caustic layers of noise with comedic provocations and casual improvisation that maintained a charming off-the-cuff quality. More than a decade later, Fenn O’Berg reunited in Japan for the first time in a great many years; In Stereo is the result.

But where unexpected turns and almost slapdash DSP ruled the roost on the first two albums, this session is more rooted in electro-acoustic traditions. “Part VII,” with its glistening sheets of electronics, glissando phrases and coiling filtered oscillations, feels very much in line with the laptop-driven improvisation we’ve heard throughout the decade. The most unexpected turns here come care of Jim O’Rourke (one can only assume) in “Part I,” where a trickle of piano bursts into an attacking bark of drums before being cut off. This introduction of less electronic elements pleasantly flips the sound spectrum on its head. The minimal overtones of “Part III” are also quite intoxicating, as Reich-like phrases slowly evolve and dissolve. There’s been a lot of water under the bridge for all three musicians here, and it shows in both expected and unexpected ways. Lawrence English

Fight the Big Bull All Is Gladness in the Kingdom Clean Feed CD

Fight the Big Bull is a “mid-size” band—from nine to twelve musicians—from Richmond, Virginia; they released their debut CD, Dying Will Be Easy, in 2008. That brief (31-minute) disc announced one of the more interesting bands mining specific elements of the jazz past, and the group returns here with a 76-minute effort. Led by composer-

guitarist Matt White, the band has a distinctly contemporary take on traditions, something like Mostly Other People Do the Killing but without the compulsive wit or MOPDTK’s flagrant rising star power. Fight the Big Bull picks up references from early jazz and blues: that debut title, for instance, is sourced from a Blind Willie Johnson song. The plungermuted trumpet and trombones may have their ultimate source in Bubber Miley and Tricky Sam Nanton in the ’20s Ellington band, but they’re far closer in actual effect to the kind of psychodrama that Quentin Jackson summoned up for Charles Mingus on such expressionist landmarks as The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady—most notably here on the potent “Mobile Tigers.” Mingus and Archie Shepp are key antecedents, both for the sense of roots and for the passion, as well as the populism that’s evident here in the blustery arrangement of The Band’s “Jemima Surrender”; but there’s irony as well (Carla Bley, perhaps) and a certain show-band quality that rubs up against passages of free improvisation. The band also does slow and moody well, with White developing complex textures from a limited array of horns, making creative use of percussionist Brian Jones. White shares the composer role here with mentor Steven Bernstein, who adds his trumpet and slide trumpet to the band as well as two notable compositions— the densely rhythmic “Mothra” (with overlapping patterns akin to some music by Steve Reich) and the evocative “Martin Denny.” It’s an important band and it’s unfortunate that solo credits aren’t given to sort out the three tenor players (Jason Scott, J.C. Kuhl and John Lilley) and two trombonists (Reggie Pace and Bryan Hooten). When White’s guitar comes to the foreground, it’s another striking presence, a weird electronic addition to “Gold Lions” and the concluding “Rockers.”

Stuart Broomer

Free Tallinn Trio A Tale Leo CD

This unclassifiable trio from Tallinn, Estonia (vocals, piano and guitar) is sometimes described as “free improv chamber opera,” sometimes as avant garde jazz; whatever you call it, it’s music of formidable virtuosity, intelligence and synergy. Anne-Liis Poll’s vocal gymnastics recall “new music” vocalists such as Joan LaBarbara and Meredith Monk, with lots of whoops, squeals, gurgling, gabbling and general glossolalia—as well as some occasionally gorgeous singing.

While this kind of extreme vocalese can quickly degenerate into mere novelty (i.e., “wow, I’ve never heard anyone do THAT with their voice before”), what saves Poll from such excess are the dynamic contributions of the other trio members.

Pianist Anto Pett has a nice touch but also supplies some real percussive muscle, competing with Poll as the dominant sonic force. Jaak Sooäär’s electric guitar is supportive and relatively unobtrusive on pieces such as “Contact” (rapid runs and trills, a few tremolo chords), but on others, such

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as “Fast Flowing,” he cuts loose with vigorous fretwork, using distortion and pedal effects. The tour de force of this live performance from the Moers Jazz Festival is the 21-minute “Fluss,” which covers an impressive amount of ground, from rhythmic group improvisation to Pett’s Cecil Taylorish keyboard attack, heavy metal riffing from Sooäär and maniacal laughter and muttering from Poll (which has the dramatic quality of opera recitative without making any objective sense). The 45-minute performance moves along briskly, and the trio never exhaust their creative resources or fall back on stock improvisational devices. Bill Tilland

Tord Gustavsen Ensemble

Restored, Returned ECM CD

Tord Gustavsen’s Restored, Returned marks a change of pace from his previous trio albums Changing Places, The Ground, and Being There, with saxophonist Tore Brunborg and vocalist Kristin Asbjørnsen expanding the group to a quintet. But despite the slightly beefed-up instrumental forces, Gustavsen’s music has lost none of its intimacy and spaciousness. Restored, Returned eases us in with a gently affecting lullaby (“The Child Within”) that pairs Gustavsen’s spare piano chords and Brunborg’s breathy soprano sax. Soon after, the slow bluesgospel of “Lay Your Sleeping Head, My Love” introduces Asbjørnsen’s raspy voice (all the lyrics are from poems by W.H. Auden). “Spiral Song” shows Gustavsen’s affinity for folk-like themes, and Brunborg’s robust tenor sax here recalls Jan Garbarek. The title track segues from a dirge-like opening featuring Asbjørnsen’s vulnerable singing into a gospel-tinged second half, highlighted by an even more emotional vocal. The mini-suite “Left Over Lullaby No. 1 / O Stand, Stand at the Window” opens with wordless vocals arcing in unison with the sax and piano; a voice-and-piano duet follows, before the opening theme returns. On “Your Crooked Heart” the trio revisits the mini-suite’s central song; the pulse gradually loosens until all three musicians— Gustavsen, bassist Mats Eilertsen, and drummer Jarle Vespestad—play freely, enabling the pianist to explore the song without restriction. Though Gustavsen chooses to nurture the collective sound on this session rather than push for solo space, it’s the kind of music where the players are in a sense always soloing, albeit with collective focus and purpose. That rapport is heard clearly during “Left Over Lullaby No. 2,” when its gently soaring melodies are caressed by each contributor in turn.

Ron Schepper

High Places

High Places vs. Mankind Thrill Jockey CD / LP / download

Can’t Feel Born Thrill Jockey 12" EP

The new album by High Places negotiates a pivotal career point without hitting the wall that often stops not-quite-young bands. Mary Pearson and Rob Barber, who started

playing together in Brooklyn in 2006 but are now based in Los Angeles, started out building their music from rhythmic loops of found sounds and instruments they couldn’t quite play, with Pearson’s voice often just another element in a busy but not terribly deep mix. But several rounds of vigorous touring have brought them to the point where they write songs based not only upon their idiosyncratic personal method but an awareness of what works before an audience in a club. They’ve given in to the temptation to push the vocals to the front of the mix, pump up the beats, and work with more conventional instrumentation, particularly electric guitars. But these changes have improved High Places’ music by clarifying their essential appeal without changing it. The duo’s guitars, stark and spidery, sharpen the melodies of “Constant Winter” and “She’s a Wild Horse” into the sort of pop hooks that lodge in your brain and won’t let go. Pearson’s girlish, conversational singing has gotten more confident, and she sounds more appealing kiting over a crisp beat than she did wafting through the whirring patchwork; “Canada” sounds like classic girl-group pop, only there’s a murky keyboard and echoed percussion where the horn section ought to be. Wisely, High Places have held onto their original appreciation for open spaces and fading repetitions; the way sounds throb and flicker brings to mind both the slippery maelstrom of ’70s dub and its first child, ’80s postpunk, as well as the hallucinatory backgrounds of ancient cartoons.

These qualities come to the fore on the Can’t Feel Born EP, which pairs two spooky-sounding songs with transformational remixes. Shorn of its snaky bassoon and stripped to echodrenched beats, “I Was Born” swaps eeriness for ethereality, while “Can’t Feel Nothing’s” remix forgets itself in the slipstream of a banging dance beat. Bill Meyer

The Incredible String Band The Incredible String Band Fledg'ling CD

The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion Fledg'ling CD

The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter Fledg'ling CD

Wee Tam & The Big House Fledg'ling CD x 2

By the time the Incredible String Band broke up in 1974, the world in which they made sense was so far gone that they’d gone from being a beacon of hope and joy to a bit of an embarrassment. Copies of their records went into the basement along with incense burners, beads, and flowing hippy robes, never to return. Or so it seemed. The ISB’s best work endures beyond its time partly because it takes you back to that time, but also because it is so madly creative. They took so many popular ’60s ideas—the folk revival, interest in other cultures and creeds, rejection of the workaday world, substance-assisted perception, Bob Dylan (because, you know,

everything about Bob was a good idea)—rolled it up, smoked it, and blew whimsically elaborate smoke rings with it.

This isn’t the first time that the ISB’s catalog has been reissued, but this round has a definitive air about it. The packaging compiles all the images and texts associated with the original albums, which sometimes differed between the US and UK versions, and original producer Joe Boyd and engineer John Wood have supervised the remastering. These versions roll back the harsh hotness of the Sepiatone versions from eight years back, and they have more warmth and depth than the original Hannibal CDs from the ’90s. And for completeness’ sake Wee Tam & The Big Huge, which was originally released as both a double AND two single albums and was left out of the original ’90s reissues, is back in the fold. Each album has additional liner notes by one of the key members Mike Heron, Robin Williamson, and Clive Palmer (who left after the first record), as well as Boyd and number one fan Robyn Hitchcock. Sonically and physically, you can’t slight these editions. Their collective reappearance invites a reconsideration of what the Incredible String Band’s music meant. Push past the nostalgia for what now seems like an impossibly naïve time and the promise of individual and species-wide improvement that Heron and Williamson imparted is a welcome tonic to the bitter spirits of our day.

The Incredible String Band pulled together a lot of ideas that were floating around at the time and brought them to a diamond point.

There were plenty of people already covering country blues, reviving fiddling jigs and banjo rags, and trying to write about themselves or write like Dylan. Maybe there weren’t too many people trying to work Hindustani note-bending into Celtic cadences, as Williamson did to startling effect on “Womankind,” but certainly interest in Indian music was in the air. But it fell to Williamson, Palmer, and Heron to cluster around a single microphone and pull it all together in a weekend. This record remains a highly accessible entrée to their work.

But The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion was where they started making their world. Palmer had left, and Williamson had gone on a trip to North Africa and come back with a heap of exotic instruments, which he and Heron used with little concern for technique but plenty of great ideas about how enhance the musical atmosphere. The duo’s vocals strained against conventional harmony, creating the impression that the music was taking you somewhere that wasn’t quite formed yet. Their songs, which took on love, drugs, death, and the fleeting nature of time and being, seemed confident, knowing, and joyous even in the face of mortality. The album was released in the summer of 1967, and it positioned the ISB at the forefront of a growing hippy community, articulating its absolute faith that things should, could, and would be better.

On The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter Heron and Williamson

laid claim to their world. The sleeve depicted them as dashing shamanic figures at the center of a multigenerational rural commune, and the music testified to their wizardry. The duo’s lyrics drew on ancient wisdom, but they used the newly available technology of multitrack recording to break song form and musical styles open and stretch out the parts like some epic tapestry depicting various gods, mythological beasts, and the elements at play. They weren’t celebrating exoticism anymore, they were exotic; they weren’t just depicting mysticism, they were making mystery. With unabashed self-confidence, Heron and Williamson realized a vision of a new life and a new world with their music. The inevitable double album Wee Tam & The Big Huge rode the momentum of its predecessor’s ambition. Musically it’s not quite so wild, shedding some of the old amateurish glee in getting sound out of anything at hand in favor of the seasoned performer’s awareness of what works before a crowd. But Heron and Williamson, with their girlfriends Rose Simpson and Christina “Licorice” McKechnie adding hand percussion, were even surer of where they wanted to go. Toning down the novelties and gathering inspiration from American folk and gospel, they fashioned an extended paean to love’s diverse carnal and spiritual permutations. Released at either end of 1968, these albums are the Incredible String Band’s finest moments.

Bill Meyer

Inhabitants A Vacant Lot Drip Audio CD

Tommy Babin’s Benzene

Your Body Is Your Prison Drip Audio CD

No More Shapes Creesus Crisis Drip Audio CD

With these three new recordings, violinist Jesse Zubot’s Vancouverbased Drip Audio continues to document up-and-coming Canadian musicians. Inhabitants (one of the groups that launched the label) offers its third release with A Vacant Lot. The quartet continues to offer a potent blend of jazz/rock that makes the most of droning, moody atmospherics and mischievous beats.

At the group’s core is trumpeter JP Carter’s heavily effected soundwaves, which are often quite haunting (“Threes”). His open horn bleats drive “Over It Begins,” while on the turbo-charged “Pacific Central” he creates swirling rhapsodies. Guitarist Dave Sikula brings his rock chops to the Godspeedish dirge “Far Away in Old Words,” offers monumental shadings on “Journey of the Loach” and scorches the high octane “Let Youth Be Served.” Whether mining dreamscapes or ragin’ full on, Inhabitants make exceptional music that draws together textured improvisation and striking melodies.

Also hailing from Vancouver is bassist Tommy Babin, who presents his first record as a leader on Your Body Is Your Prison, a nine-section

suite. The quartet, consisting of baritone saxophonist Chad Makela, guitarist Chad MacQuarrie and drummer Skye Brooks (also of Inhabitants), places Babin at the center of the proceedings, his muscular lines setting up each segment. Inspired by jazz and rock, the group thrives on the shifting, restless lines of the title track as well as the heady groove of “Damaged.” With a baritone saxophonist serving as the sole horn amidst stomping, vamp-heavy charts, a comparison with Ken Vandermark’s small-group work is unavoidable. MacQuarrie’s slashing guitar work is a dominant force throughout, such as the explosive “The Thing and I,” the vivid ballad “Les Trous du Ciel” or the heady punk shards of “The Sky Beneath My Feet.”

A thousand kilometers away in Calgary, No More Shapes is a bassless trio consisting of guitarist Jay Crocker, trombonist J.C. Jones and the leader, drummer Eric Hamelin.

Creesus Crisis demonstrates that this collective could be equally comfortable in a jazz club or in experimental rock circles, with a mix that is surprisingly chamberish and effervescent. The opening feedback collage of “White Chicks” segues into the finger-snapping “Fat Kid,” with Jones’ zesty trombone soaring over a peppery groove, before the dreamy “Say Chin” takes over. The trio is in a more reflective mood on “Invisible Glasses” and “If Only My Chin Had Eyes,” but their fiercer, more exploratory leanings are always bubbling beneath the surface, as on “New Years (Yves’)” and the fiery “Snake Legs.” Jay Collins

Jucifer

Throned in Blood Nomadic Fortress CD

The latest recording from peripatetic Southern duo Jucifer, Throned in Blood, is even more adventurous than its predecessor, which saw them moving beyond the crust and sludge influences of their early recordings into a more dynamic music focused on long forms and album-length concepts. This release expands even further, a well-paced but gritty as hell condemnation of war-making and empire. Amber Valentine shrieks more menacingly than ever, and I’d bet she’s been listening to some black metal lately. But while the narrative and progression is audible throughout these tightly constructed songs, it’s noisy and chaotic like a really rowdy live set (“Work Will Make Us Free” threatens to careen out of control). It’s nice to hear them wrap themselves in a theme to which they can truly commit, and it pays off royally on the howling “Return of the Native” (with its cries of “Geronimo!”), the churning doom of “Spoils to the Conqueror,” and even the banjo lament “Armageddon.” Jason Bivins

Omar Khorshid Guitar El Chark

Sublime Frequencies LP x 2

Pardon me for applying a blatant Americanism to music from another part of the world, but Sublime Frequencies really knocked this one out

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of the park. Of late they’ve rolled out certain titles as LPs before going ahead with a CD edition; the threedimensionally mastered sound that flies from Guitar El Chark’s two heavy, immaculately pressed slabs is exactly what vinyl partisans are talking about.

To handle and regard the colorful expanse of its gatefold sleeve, with notes that tell Khorshid’s story for the bulk of us who don’t already know it, is a pleasure that no laptop screen can impart. But all that would be for naught if the music sucked. Omar Khorshid’s music does not suck. Khorshid was an Egyptian-born electric guitarist whose genius was to take a sound that originated with American and British bands—the Shadows, the Ventures, Dick Dale—and adapt it to the ornamental requirements and melodic contours of Arabic popular music. This earned him places in the bands of most of Egypt’s great singers during the late ’60s. During the ’70s he moved into the film industry, recording soundtracks and acting, and also cut the sides from which this record was culled for the Lebanese Voice of the Orient label. His life was cut short in 1981 at age 36 by a car crash. The tunes on Guitar Al Chark sound instantly familiar, even though you’ve probably never heard them before unless you frequent the right falafel joint or already own Sir Richard Bishop’s Freak of Araby, which faithfully renders five of its eighteen tracks. No disrespect to Sir Richard’s most recent opus, which I quite enjoy, but Khorshid’s versions consistently beat his for atmosphere and sheer excitement. Like Duane Eddy and Hank Marvin at their best, Khorshid was a master of economy. Each reverb-soaked note contributes to the building drama, while squeezable Moog lines give the music a hallucinatory quality. Zingy hand drums and melodies that smell like they blew in off the eastern Mediterranean sea situate this music in the Middle East, but the twang reaches out to distant surf-lapped shores, desert sunsets, and screens flashing the entrances of bad-ass heroes and nasty villains all over the world. This music is for everyone—know it now. Bill Meyer

Kid606

Songs About Fucking Steve Albini Important CD

The music-geek in-joke here is that producer Steve Albini was once the leader of an abrasive punk group called Big Black, whose second recording was infamously titled Songs About Fucking and featured the sketched cartoon head of a woman writhing in the throes either of ecstasy or pain. Miguel De Pedro (otherwise known as Kid606) not only hijacks Albini’s title but also features a cover cartoon sketch of someone who looks remarkably like a young Steve Albini, with mouth open, apparently being violated and/or otherwise outraged by unseen forces. The Kid’s point here (if there is one) remains obscure and is probably no more or less significant than the nine song titles, all of which are three-word anagrams of his real name (“Odd Ripe Legumes,” “Eerie Gold Dump,” etc.)

De Pedro’s misdirection (or 64 | SIGNAL to NOISE #58 WWW.SIGNALTONOISEMAGAZINE.COM

capriciousness) is amplified by his description of this CD as “psychedelic love songs” created from analog source material. The music ranges far and wide, developing from the oldfashioned repetitive EM ambience of the first four tracks (which summon up the spirit of electronic music pioneers such as David Behrman and Stephen Montague) to something much darker and more industrial in the last third of the program, culminating with “Die Rumpled Ego,” which consists of atonal pulses and abrasive drones resembling shortwave radio noise.

Book-ended between these opposite poles of leisurely ambience and abrasive noise are two long pieces, the first of which, “Lou Reed Gimped,” with its extensive phase-shifting, looping and splicing, sounds remarkably like an early Carl Stone recording (perhaps Woo Lae Oak?), while the even longer successor, “Periled Emu God,” features a minimalist staccato pulse and is a dead ringer for Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians. Just a guess, but it’s almost as if De Pedro is sharing some of his early “student” work—and perhaps then the homage is not to Steve Albini and Big Black after all, but to various analog electronics influences, some of whom are more identifiable than others. Overall, Kid606’s vault-raiding is interesting and skillful, even if sometimes blatantly imitative. However, be warned that these pieces are definitely NOT love songs, psychedelic or otherwise, unless they were intended for an audience of androids. Bill Tilland

Kirk Knuffke Amnesia Brown Clean Feed CD

Jesse Stacken & Kirk Knuffke Mockingbird Steeplechase CD

Trumpeter Kirk Knuffke is one of the finest young brass instrumentalists around. He’s got a solid sense of pacing and dynamics, excellent control of the “quiet sounds,” and a clarion tone, and he slides effortlessly between the avant-garde and mainstream. But just as remarkable is his sense of risk. His debut as a leader (Big Wig, Clean Feed, 2008) featured the curious front-line partnership of trumpet and trombone supported by bass and drums. Ideal Bread, the cooperative he co-leads with baritone saxophonist Josh Sinton, bassist Reuben Radding and drummer Tomas Fujiwara, was convened to play the music of Steve Lacy. Now Amnesia Brown finds the trumpeter joined by drummer Kenny Wollesen and clarinetist/guitarist Doug Wieselman for a set of 13 brief vignettes.

Knuffke’s compositions are often playful, bouncy melodies, made more so by the airy, almost parched combo sound. “Leadbelly” is a shuffling blues solidified by wiry, hollow guitar twang; Knuffke’s tone is incredible— inquisitive and measured, with a hint of bravura—and the commingling of brass and strings recalls the laconic precision and steeliness of Art Farmer and Jim Hall (Interaction, Atlantic, 1963). Without a bassist, there’s real presence to the soloists, which Knuffke takes advantage of through

the thickness of his approach (witness the nuggets that open “Totem”).

Wieselman’s guitar skree and clarinet warble make for a gritty contrast to the leader (check out the toothy guitar and drum duet in “Hears It”).

Knuffke’s set of duets with pianist Jesse Stacken, like Steve Lacy’s Evidence (1961), is a program of Monk and Ellington tunes, and their pacing recalls the Lacy-Waldron duets of the late 1970s and early ’80s. The pair approaches the tunes with reverent looseness, but they ultimately make the songbooks their own, galumphing through “Light Blue” and blasting clean through “Teo.” Stacken isn’t particularly Monkish or Waldron-like: he’s fleet without being showy. Monk’s pieces can suffer damage from pianists who treat them with too much flash or detail, and Stacken basically doesn’t try to do anything with the pieces not already implicit in them (in other words, he approaches them honestly). On Ellington’s “Such Sweet Thunder,” his elemental stride recalls Dave Burrell; Knuffke’s breathy scribbles echo the work of Bill Dixon.

“Skippy” vacillates between the grand and impishly personal, the trumpet stammering and crackling across Stacken’s brazen canvas. Mockingbird displays an entirely personal approach to canonical material, one that also encompasses breathtaking technique. Knuffke and Stacken are two players worth keeping a bead on.

Clifford Allen

Yannis Kyriakides Antichamber

Unsounds CD x 2 / download

Yannis Kyriakides Andy Moor Rebetika

Unsounds CD / download

Folia

Unsounds CD / download

What a difference a letter makes.

By swapping an e for an i, Yannis Kyriakides has positioned himself in opposition to the chamber music tradition, even though the ten pieces on Antichamber draw quite freely from it. Evidently the Cyprus-born, Amsterdam-based composer doesn’t want to kill off chamber music, just reposition it in order to draw upon the much wider resources available to a composer in the 21st century. Why not incorporate samples, electronic instruments, and amplification as essential sonic elements? While we’re at it, why not use such devices to expose and explore how the music actually works? In the title composition Kyriakides imposes electronic enhancement and degradation upon a string quartet, drawing attention to the way that recording technology manipulates the sense of space. The sax and mallets on “Chaoids” pulse like a well-caffeinated Philip Glass only to be cleaved by scalpel-sharp electronic tones that reveal messy moving parts as well as structural integrity.

Conversely, on “Atopia” a flute, viola, and vibraphone are closely miked and their sounds so amplified and processed that the music’s structure disappears into a gorgeous blur.

Kyriakides stands completely apart from the classical sphere on two other albums recorded with The Ex’s

Andy Moor, with whom he runs the Unsounds label. Their first album Red V Green was an improvised affair, but these two work with—and sometimes work over—composed material.

Rebetika is an expanded reissue of a download-only release they did for the Seven Things label four years ago.

Each track (there are nine, two more than on the original release) is based on an old rebetika (or rembetica) song. Sometimes characterized as Greek blues, rebetika gave voice to the hundreds of thousands of ethnic Greeks who were violently displaced from Asia Minor and ended up in violent, drug-infested slums surrounding Piraeus and Athens shortly after WWI. If you want to hear this music straight, check out the Mortika compilation recently issued by Canary Records.

Moor and Kyriakides, who plays computer on both duo records, visit all manner of crookedness upon the tunes. The two men are well situated to reinterpret these songs for reasons that go beyond the latter’s ethnicity: both are exiles; Moor’s played some of them before in the late, lamented Kletka Red; and neither is ruled by sentiment. They pull the songs apart, run parts backwards, stretch them on a rack of electrified harmonics, batter them with sternum-vibrating bass tones, and insinuate fragments of the original recordings back into the tunes so that they grow through the cracks like saplings rising up through ruins.

But just as you have to plow over a field at the end of the season if you want to keep growing things there, Kyriakides and Moor’s rough handling gives these tunes new life.

Folia is also based on vintage material, this time a melody much used by composers like Bach and Vivaldi as well as in Portuguese and Scandinavian folk music. Familiarity with the melody’s history is not necessary to appreciate the record, though; the duo take the tune so far from home that they make it their own.

Kyriakides’ contributions are more upfront than on Rebetika. Rather than squeeze up through the cracks in Moor’s jagged playing, he introduces skipping clicks, shimmering sustained tones, and peg-legged beats that sound like techno for dancers with wooden knees. Moor’s playing, on the other hand, is quite reduced compared to what he usually does in such settings. He claws out skeletal variations on the theme, compressing the tension that he usually releases with savagely whacked chords into gnarled tonal distortions. “La Folia” is supposed to drive dancers mad, but this music is much less abandoned than Rebetika’s. Brooding and strange, it takes you to a place that’s already past the brink. Bill Meyer

Oliver Lake Paul Smoker Scott R. Looney Lisle Ellis

Urban Rumination Metaphysical CD

Scott Looney is perhaps best known as a prepared piano specialist and an electronicist using MAX/MSP, but on this recording he’s playing nothing but piano, prepared and unprepared. Urban Rumination is a free jazz recording, originating from

Oliver Lake’s brief visit to the West Coast in May 2005. Looney organized a gig for him and, the following day, a studio session, calling on familiar musicians—trumpeter Paul Smoker and bassist Lisle Ellis. Smoker, Lake and Ellis sit at various points on the jazz continuum and are seasoned players of this music. Looney stands somewhat apart from jazz but provides Urban Rumination with a wide range of alternative strategies. Lake is the player who best rises to the occasion, seeming unfazed by the angular rhythms, percussive clangs and slithery micro-tunings that emerge from Looney’s piano. Whereas Smoker and Ellis tread water at times, parping and plunking while deciding what to do next, Lake mostly keeps quiet until he sees a way of successfully getting back into play. Like nearly all improvised music, Urban Rumination has its less enthralling moments, but these are easily outweighed by the charged atmosphere of the fragmented “Subduction Zone,” the barbed duo of Lake and Looney on the title track, the elegiac “Glacis,” and the sectional “Metamorph.” The studio tracks are more tightly focused than the live tracks, but that’s to be expected. Of the latter, “Monad/ The Is Eye” starts off with a wonderful Ellis solo, before loping in a hobbled manner towards one of Lake’s poems and a closing bout of free abstraction.

Brian Marley

Brian Landus Forward Cadence CD

This world has bred legions of great alto and tenor players, but how many baritone sax specialists can you name offhand? There’s Gerry Mulligan, Hamiet Bluiett, Harry Carney, Nick Brignola, John Surman, Gary Smulyan… and now, Brian Landrus. Landrus also plays a mean bass clarinet and plenty of other reeds/woodwinds, but on Forward he concentrates on the deeper voices and alto flute. It’s one of the niftiest debuts this cranky writer’s heard in a while. Let me count the ways: This set, save for a beautiful version of Monk’s “Ask Me Now,” is all original music—there’s no coasting on done-to-death standards. What’s more, they’re solid originals with an engaging range of moods and modes, a bracing mix of uptempo, ballads, and free. Like Dave Douglas, Landrus may be too “straight-ahead” for the avant/free devotees and too “out” for the reboppers. But oy, such a tone he has—the presence of Mulligan and Surman with the warmth and breathy sensuousness of old (tenor) masters Ben Webster and Don Byas. His originals feature distinctive melodies yet there’s plenty of space— Landrus’s tunes feel elastic and open in a manner evoking Andrew Hill and Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath. Further, he doesn’t overplay.

(Overplay = noodling ’n’ doodling until an idea alights.) Contexts range from solo to quartet to septet, and it’s virtually a New England supersession: George Garzone (tenor), Michael Cain (piano… & Brandon U. in Manitoba has him now), Jason Palmer (trumpet) and the demigod drummer Rakalam Bob Moses. The only misstep on this basically boss platter is the free

closer “Destination”—which, while not awful, kind of meanders to a nonconclusion. Otherwise, Forward: aces back-to-back. Mark Keresman

Francisco López Machines

Elevator Bath CD x 2

Amarok

Glacial Movements CD

Francisco López is among the world’s most imaginative sound artists, structuring sound as a medium in ways that engage some of the structuring concepts of listening to music but largely avoid the mathematical ratios between pitches that might define the specifically musical. Instead López works with sounds that are initially incidental or inadvertent—“natural events” or by-products of some other human activity. In his constructions he manipulates field recordings, using both bits and long stretches of sound, then editing, overlaying and looping those sounds into large sonic compositions that are very different in kind in these recent works.

Machines is a two-CD set, beautifully and minimally packaged in a printed paper wrapper in a white paper sleeve; miniature photos of a clock and other machines are framed in the expanse of white. It declares its scale immediately, “153 minutes” appearing on the front cover. There are four pieces here, recorded and fabricated over the past decade, and each works with a different sound source or environment. The first two are devoted to singular types of machines: “Klokken” consists of clock sounds recorded in Dutch museums in 2003 and reworked in 2003-4; “Fahrstühle” was developed from recordings of elevators in Leipzig.

The second disc consists of pieces recorded in “Labs” in Barcelona and “Factories” in Latvia.

It is musique concrète and more, as if that early French school of electronic music has merged with Cage’s “silence,” the aesthetic contemplation of unmediated sound, to create another form. In López’s sonic world, there are also messages and associations inside and outside sounds, a drama acted out in the material world that includes long stretches of listening to (near-)silence in “Klokken” and the passage of air in elevator shafts in “Fahrstühle,” so that we are, in effect, listening to the machine’s architecture.

In each piece, there are also long stretches of highly developed percussion music created with the use of loops and overlays.

The source spectrum spreads on the second disc, “Labs” beginning with a sustained crescendo and percussive interruptions, eventually becoming a dense and subtly evolving electronic sound. “Factories” is the longest piece at 41’37” and also the most varied: a looming symphony of repeating percussion and sustained sounds that feel oddly akin to a string orchestra, with sudden washes of higher frequency bands. It may be the purest music I’ve heard from “industrial” sources. By the time it suddenly ends, it seems like it should go on forever in a mechanized reverie.

The psychological impact of these works (whether paranoia or tranquility) is more specific and sustained in

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Amarok, a piece that exchanges the insistent literalism of Machines for the evocation of the fantastic. It’s named for the enormous mythical wolf of Inuit culture (a name it shares with a Mike Oldfield record, a Spanish environmentalist band and a software audio player). Here there is only the single 64-minute piece, and there aren’t specific details about sound sources. It’s often very quiet and it sounds like winds (they’re sometimes multiple) crying across arctic wastes.

Animal howls and the sounds of wolves may be secreted within the sounds of the wind; perhaps tent flaps blow. The wind-sound increases in volume or suddenly ceases, revealing its electric heart. It is this merger of the indistinct and the mythic that gives Amarok its singular power, its abandoned near-silent landscape suffused with, and transformed by, the possibilities of both danger and meaning. Stuart Broomer

Lovedale

Coziness Kills ILK CD

Jacob Anderskov

Agnostic Revelations ILK CD

Lovedale finds Danish pianist Jacob Anderskov joined by tenor and soprano saxophonist Jesper Løvdal, bassist Jonas Westergaard and drummer Anders Mogensen. Coziness Kills, the group’s third album, also includes two guests—trumpeter Cuong Vu and Chris Speed on tenor saxophone and clarinet—although they don’t appear on the same tracks.

“Abdullah I (for Abdullah Ibrahim)” contains a lovely solo by Vu and inhabits a gentle, somewhat melancholy corner of Ibrahim’s musical world; there’s a nice sense of forward motion in this understated piece, with Løvdal’s pure-toned tenor also shining in his brief solo spot. “Cheers in Heaven” is a bit more aggressive and hinges on a Möbius strip tenor dialogue between Løvdal and Speed and some searchingly percussive pianism from Anderskov. Vu really digs in on “Pudsig Pigtraad,” his edgy, impassioned playing exploring a wide variety of tone colors. The title track is an “almost ballad” that grows grittier as it progresses and sports a stunningly beautiful solo by Vu. Anderskov’s Agnostic Revelations was recorded in NYC with Speed, bassist Michael Formanek, and drummer Gerald Cleaver. Ironically, it has more of an impressionistic Nordic ambiance than does Lovedale, at least through the first half of the CD. It’s more about intellect and air than viscera and earth, but that’s not to say that it is cold. The music is often harmonically adventurous but retains a laid-back ambiance that some listeners will find attractive and others may consider off-putting. Speed has rarely—if ever—recorded before in this type of setting, and as one might guess from the title, on “Pintxos for Varese” he cuts loose as Cleaver creates a stop-and-go, ebb-and-flow pulse, and Anderskov and Formanek layer in contrasting patterns. This is one of the most challenging and exciting pieces here. “Diamonds Are for Unreal People” nudges at the 66 | SIGNAL to NOISE #58 WWW.SIGNALTONOISEMAGAZINE.COM

borders of tonality and has a potent rhythmic tension. Bill Barton

Rudresh Mahanthappa & Steve Lehman Dual Identity Clean Feed CD

Anyone with an eye on the current jazz vanguard knows alto saxophonists Rudresh Mahanthappa and Steve Lehman. They share similar influences—Jackie McLean, Henry Threadgill, Anthony Braxton and the M-Base collective—and both of them record for Brooklyn’s Pi imprint, but Dual Identity is their recorded debut as collaborators, though they’ve been working together in this quintet since 2004. The eleven tracks here, recorded live with the group’s current lineup (guitarist Liberty Ellman, bassist Matt Brewer and drummer Damion Reid), initially come across as cerebral, rhythmically intricate exercises, but closer listening reveals how lyrical and flexible these constructs are. The pair strikes sparks immediately on the opening cut, “The General,” and while both saxophonists have their own approaches—Mahanthappa’s resonant edge, Lehman’s piquant abstractions—the spiraling intensity often leads their lines to almost merge. But Ellman is often the music’s real lynchpin: as an accompanist he’s the perfect catalyst, offering unique asides, and his solo work is consistently engaging. Dual Identity is an exemplary high energy set from two young leaders meshing their methodologies and energies.

Jay Collins

MAP

Fever Dream Taiga LP

MAP is a trio of guitarist Mary Halvorson, percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani and bassist Reuben Radding.

Devoted to free improvisation, it may be Halvorson’s longest-running, if intermittent, project. The group first recorded in 2004 with Clayton Thomas as the bassist, a brief CD-R with the literalist title Six Improvisations for Guitar, Bass and Drums. The group’s return is anything but retiring: It’s a three-sided two-LP set (the fourth side has a kind of spider’s web imprint) in a gatefold jacket that’s long on color graphics and relatively short on information (how long do the tracks last?), the gatefold opening to reveal two large, Victor Vasarelystyle mandalas (Holy psychedelia, Batman!). There are 13 tracks—some very short, none very long—and each derives its evocative title from a work by the science-fiction writer Ray Bradbury, though some titles are so evocative that Bradbury found them elsewhere (William Butler Yeats for “The Golden Apples of the Sun,” from his poem “The Song of Wandering Aengus”) and some have already enjoyed other uses as songtitles (there’s a 2004 CD of radical folk music compiled by Devendra Banhart called The Golden Apples... that also includes a song called “Fever Dream”). Like Bradbury’s fiction, this music is speculative.

Indeed, Fever Dream is a perfect (and also perfectly ironic) title for MAP’s music, which is fleeting,

evanescent, transparent work, pure group improvisation that moves from whim to necessity (and back again), whether it’s a field of bowed harmonics from the bass, a scrape of metal percussion or a sudden spray of notes from the guitar. Each piece belongs absolutely to the moment of its creation, and this is one of the very best settings for Halvorson, a remarkably resourceful musician who manages to sound unpredictable in a single track, e.g. moving from churning acoustic chords to hanging dissonances in “Sun and Shadow.”

In the longer “Golden Apples of the Sun,” there are echoes and resonances to which every member of the band seems to contribute and in which every sound is a fracture, the whole eventually coming together in a passage of beautifully sustained, spontaneous melody.

Here the LP is more than novelty.

Its sound has a tangible reality and a fidelity that feels authentic, more alive to the dynamics of the original recording space. It insists on the music’s immediate relationship to time, including the gingerly touch that we bring to the LP and the turntable. It is the LP’s relative vulnerability that makes it so valuable an experience, as it insistently transcribes its relationship to time in a way that is lost in an increasingly digital world. A single thrift-shop LP can reveal as many scratches and smudges as a substantial CD collection, and yet it will soldier on, still playing and evolving after a fashion. The LP assumes our abrasions and our dust, as intimately tied to time as the Great Pyramid of Giza or Nicole Brown Simpson’s melting ice cream. Stuart Broomer

Evgeny Masloboev Anastasia Masloboeva Russian Folksongs in the Key of Sadness Leo CD

A follow-up to the livelier Russian Folksongs in the Key of Rhythm, the latest CD from Siberian musical shaman Evgeny Masloboev and his daughter Anastasia is a similarly bewildering mixture of sampled and overdubbed percussion, ethnic

stringed instruments, found objects and synthesizers (no purist impulses here!), together with sounds of water and wind—and Anastasia’s haunting, untutored vocals. Stylistically, the elder Masloboev draws heavily from Siberian and other Russian sources.

Sampled voices, as well as looped and multi-tracked singing from both father and daughter, combine liturgical plainsong, aboriginal chanting and simple folk melodies, usually in a minor key. Occasionally, Masloboev’s penchant for eclectic sampling seems to get the better of him, as on “Mendunitsa,” where Anastasia’s chanting is first complemented by piano and then juxtaposed against a French horn fanfare, before taking a 180-degree turn into a potpourri of sampled bebop riffs, a short organ run, snippets of jazz drums, a bit of French horn again and some abstract piano tinkling. Though such sampladelic juxtapositions are often imaginative, their mood is at odds with the more traditional material which precedes them. Ideally, the radical experimentation might have been saved for a separate disk—or at least integrated more consistently into this one—but this CD still contains some lovely moments. Bill Tilland

Kouhei Matsunaga Self VA

Important CD

Like many other contemporary electronic musicians, Matsunaga has a cosmopolitan background and has been inspired by diverse musical forms from rap to hardcore techno.

He divides his time between Osaka and Berlin and has worked with veteran German electronic artists such as Asmus Tietchens and Conrad Schnitzler, as well as techno and noise practitioners such as Autechre, Mika Vainio and Merzbow. With such a broad background and restless spirit, it’s not surprising that Matsunaga’s music is hard to categorize. The opening track combines a metallic insect chorus, precise electronic beats and a greasy bass line that lies somewhere between a pulse and a smear.

It’s a foreboding, alien sound which is extended in the next track, where

the bass line eventually morphs into the buzz of a giant bumblebee. Track three adds a touch of largely unintelligible rap vocals, which are used for their sonic properties rather than as message carriers. Track four largely abandons the bass smear but replaces it with hardcore industrial drones and pulses—the sonic snapshot of a mad scientist’s lab. Continuing within the hardcore industrial genre, Matsunaga demonstrates considerable finesse and creativity as the CD continues. He leaves enough space in his compositions that individual timbres and textures can be savored, and it doesn’t hurt that the sonic clarity is almost preternaturally vivid.

Later tracks experiment with distortion, static, interrupted connections and a wide assortment of squeaks, squiggles, clicks, alarms, treated voices, and stuttering pulses. For the industrial/noise enthusiast, it’s an absolute feast. The last few tracks of the CD expand the sonic palette even further, with a sampled rap vocal on “solidfat,” and a drum ’n’ bass funk beat on “122108nhklivematerial.”

Oddest of all is a piece where a highpitched, wobbly but earnest voice declaims about being trapped in a “concrete maze” and hearing “a pink siren”—all over a bouncy electronic beat and dreamy but ominous organ chords. Bill Tilland

Ava Mendoza Shadow Stories Resipiscent CD

Calling all followers of cutting-edge outside/inside guitarists! Meet Ava Mendoza. She’s based in Oakland, California, and she’s been in the bands Bolivar Zoar, Doublespeak, and Mute Socialite. Shadow Stories is her solo debut (featuring layered effects but no overdubs) and none other than Nels Cline supplied its liner notes. Mendoza can be easygoing and jaunty (Skip James’ “I’m So Glad” with breezes ’n’ blessings from Joseph Spence), she can roar like Sonny Sharrock and seethe with sustain like Robert Fripp (“In My Dreams”). Her sparse, poised, and ever-so-slightly dissonant take on “Tennessee Waltz” is rich with the

old-school hick cool of the recently reissued Chester & Lester (by Chet Atkins and Les Paul, respectively).

Mendoza has a touch of the swaggering, jazz-laden twang of Les Paul but her sound has a cheerful, mildly distorted burr to it (think Link Wray and/or Johnny Burnette’s axe-guy Paul Burlison) with glimmers of bluesy sustain (think Clapton or Page at the top of their games). Aside from the nimble and inspired/inspiring guitar work, the coolest aspects of Stories are the diversity of styles she’s absorbed (and reflects), the genuine tunefulness, and a nearly homespun overall feel. No deadly earnestness or dirges here, Shadow Stories is spirited but not sloppy, good-humored but devoid of ain’t-Iso-darn-quirky jive. Mark Keresman

Sei Miguel

Esfingico: Suite for a Jazz Combo Clean Feed CD

You can’t always judge a record by its title. Portuguese pocket trumpeter Sei Miguel long ago passed through Chet Baker and Miles Davis on his way to something very much his own. He has a small circle of players—trombonist Mariam Fala, electronicist Rafael Toral, percussionist Cesár Burago and newcomer Pedro Lourenço on bass—who know his music inside out and subscribe not only to its sounds but its ethos. This is music mindful of the responsibility to not only improvise, but make something distinctive.

They’re not here to play a few nice choruses on “Autumn Leaves.” So while you have, ostensibly, a jazz combo—if you mistake Toral with his gesturally controlled electronics for an onstage mime, the band might look like one—they don’t really play like one. Instead of the lead and back-up relationship so common in jazz, there’s a sense of music being passed around here, the responsibility handed off like a relay.

Each player seems mindful of shaping silence with their sounds, rather than the more common reverse.

Each Cherry-esque brass blurt, stopstart groove, or electronic squiggle

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sounds absolutely necessary, its production as serious as your life.

Which, I guess, is as good a reason as any to call it jazz. Bill Meyer

Mushroom

Naked, Stoned, and Stabbed 4 Zero / Royal Potato Family CD

Sure, portions of Mushroom’s Naked, Stoned, and Stabbed might bring to mind your typical dorm room jam session. Both feature plenty of hand percussion and acoustic guitar, for example, and both favor extended riffing in major keys. But the members of Mushroom are seasoned players and improvisers, and they’re capable of a whole lot more than just entertaining that hippie girl from down the hall. The brainchild of Bay Area percussionist Pat Thomas, Mushroom has moved in various directions from release to release; where 2007’s Joint Happening was basically a jazz affair (featuring ex-Sun Ra trumpeter Eddie Gale!), Naked is a psychedelic hodgepodge of rock, folk, fusion, and Indian influences.

Whatever the album lacks in stylistic cohesion, it more than makes up for in sheer variety of ideas. “Infatuation,” the gorgeous, bluesy album opener, could have been an Allman Brothers outtake (if they’d been a flute and guitar duo). The focused “Take Off Your Face and Recover From That Trip You’ve Been On” is an organ-fueled rock/jazz excursion in the vein of the Doors, or even Phish. “Tariq Ali,” a showcase for Tim Plowman’s electric guitarisms and multi-instrumentalist Erik Pearson’s sitar work, closely approximates an Indian raga. And “Though You’re Where You Want to Be, You’re Not Where You Belong” is a fine piece of sentimental Americana, benefiting from Pearson’s heartfelt fiddling.

Having put in time with folks like John Cale, Acid Mothers Temple, Crazy Horse bassist Billy Talbot, and Fela Kuti guitarist Oghene Kologbo, the musicians in the band have a lot to say. And what better place to speak their minds than a wide-open, improvisation-oriented space like Mushroom? Brad Farberman

Paul Motian Trio Lost in a Dream ECM CD

Drummer Paul Motian may have retired from touring, but he still finds regular occasion to perform in New York. For one of his week-long runs at the Village Vanguard in 2009, he convened a trio with tenor player Chris Potter and pianist Jason Moran. Lost in a Dream, culled from that week, demonstrates what an inspired meeting it was. Potter has been playing with Motian since the early ’90s in the Electric Bebop Band and Trio 2000, and Potter and Moran have worked together with Dave Holland. So while the three had never played as a trio, they headed in fully synched. Motian is a master of floating time, and working sans bass player gives his open swing a lot of room. Potter’s warmtoned musings ride the inside/ outside edge, firmly rooted in the tunes’ lyrical themes while opening 68 | SIGNAL to NOISE #58 WWW.SIGNALTONOISEMAGAZINE.COM

up the harmonies and phrasing.

Moran plays with circumspect abstraction, fusing his characteristic angularities with Motian’s more flowing sensibility. The pieces (all Motian originals apart from an Irving Berlin tune) stick to a simmering slow to mid-tempo range, though “Drum Music” introduces a bit of welcome fire. It’s strong music from three distinctive but utterly in-tune personalities. Michael Rosenstein

Mouthus / Bulbs Mouthus / Bulbs Important split LP

Eskimo King / Afternoon Penis Eskimo King / Afternoon Penis Abandon Ship split LP

The recent infatuation with the less antagonistic side of electronic music among the noise titans associated with the No Fun axis of the early 2000s has been an intriguing thing to watch from afar. From the New Age gurgles of Oneohtrix Point Never to Prurient kingpin Dominick Fernows’ involvement in those Cold Wave revivalists Cold Cave, the kids are showing they might have had enough of fist pumping, evil posturing and chunky noise and might want to mellow out, smoke a doob and possibly get laid. Brooklyn’s Mouthus and San Francisco’s Bulbs may be easy to wedge into the No Fun camp, but they always had a loose grip on the more minimal side of things coming from German labels such as Kompakt or Basic Channel. On their split release, both duos deliver their most Euro-chic glitches to date while still maintaining that gritty sheen that showcases the purity of their actions. Mouthus’s sidelong sprawl, entitled “Where the Bridge Was Found,” starts off like a DJ Kose track recorded down the hall from his lab and then introduces great gray bursts of guitar-heavy sound resembling something off the first few Chrome albums before dipping back into a thumping ping pong that would make a black turtleneck-wearing baldie wince and weep. Bulbs’ three-song suite “Emerald Isle” is a bit more glitch-laden and electronically driven than Mouthus’s contribution, but the sounds that flow from it feel as warm and toasty as a tweed couch on a winter afternoon. The raw, choppy percussion and electronics call to mind Markus Popp making do with what he has, but there’s also something here that resembles the desperate ingenuity of some of the United Kingdom’s finest organic bedroom sailors such as Richard Youngs or Neil Campbell. All in all, a pretty flattening statement from two groups who aren’t afraid to both boogie and grab their crotches. Can you say the same? Tony Rettman On another new, self-titled split 12”, Brian Sullivan and Nate Nelson—the hardworking pair behind Mouthus—have splintered off into respective solo projects, and granted listeners a clearer glimpse into their murky, unknowable aesthetic. As the acoustic guitar-wielding Eskimo King, Sullivan—who also delves into

mysterious places as Chaw Mank and White Rock, alongside members of Sightings and Double Leopards— paints with a melancholy, subdued palette. The elegiac “Born Again” is Sullivan’s most convincingly song-like effort since Saw a Halo’s unexpectedly heartfelt core, “Your Far Church” (Load, 2007). As disintegrating, muffled vocals are buried by his subterranean guitar tunneling, this side’s centerpiece evokes the isolation and restraint that soaks early Eskimo King works like Tooth-Shaped Migration (Our Mouth, 2006). At his most cosmically ambient (opener “Gjoa”), Sullivan tangles toy pianos and wind chimes into a sparking, distended mass, while the closing piece, the looping, churning “Dry Strike,” is Mouthus-lite, a tumbling washing machine rusted into uncertainty.

Nelson’s current Afternoon Penis aesthetic couldn’t be more dissimilar.

Nelson—whose singular percussive attack laces both Religious Knives and White Rock, too—explores a single, maddeningly catchy melodic theme on the side-long track, “Jack of Hearts.” Disfigured, slurred vocals chant a simple refrain while accordion and percussion link limbs in an endless carnivalesque dance. It’s the fodder of sleep deprivation, but very good fun.

The LP illuminates as much as it exposes. Though the two sides couldn’t sound more different, listening to the record as a whole is a curious opportunity to see how the halves of Mouthus dovetail and intersect. Their strengths—Nelson’s

rhythmic intuition and sense of humor and play, and Sullivan’s surprisingly graceful passages of sonic beauty—are distilled into one brief side each. It’s not anything like the brute demolition of Mouthus, and it shouldn’t be. Natasha Li Pickowicz

Sainkho Namchylak Nick Sudnick Not Quite Songs Leo CD

Miya Masaoka Audrey Chen Hans Grüsel Kenta Nagai

Masaoka / Chen / Grüsel / Nagai Resipiscent CD

Sainkho’s pithy liner notes for her CD lead with a quote, presumably her own: “The new is the forgotten old.” The rest of her words summon up the heart of this sonic sketchbook: songs are stories, and when the music here isn’t quite a song or a story it’s because it’s evoking the world of moods and dreams. Sudnick is best known as the father of ZGA, a pioneering late-/post-Soviet Russian noise music group; that work grew out of his own electroacoustic “zgamoniums”—sound objects, mostly heavy metals, wired and processed to convey the breakdown and rust of the industrial state. Here, though, his palette suggests more organic objects—wood, horsehair, birdbone flutes, shaman frame drum sounds, an accordion: sounds

evoking the pre-industrial Russian/ Mongolian steppes and wilderness, a logical match to Sainkho’s voice.

That voice: it’s been out there for so long, surveying so much uncharted musical terrain, that its owner ought to declare its purview a new nation and set herself up as shaman First Lady. The 15 short tracks present the dozen or so vocal personae she’s fostered over the years: the scary-crazy guttural crone, the cosmopolitan classical lady, player of vocal cords as if they were some free-reed or percussion instrument, the shout heard round the steppes, the sophisticated jazz lady... now a Chinese matron, now a Russian maid, or her Mongol mate...

Native America’s Eurasian roots, on psychotropes and stimulants and with alternate-historical panache...

Gollum as munchkin, just born on a sinking tanker and pushed out by dying parents onto an oil spill in a lifeboat to live or die, chortling and cooing amidst the flames. Throw these and a thousand other images into the equally overgrown garden of Sudnick’s psychosonics—textures beefed up with healthy dollops of Russian- and Asian-inflected grooves, melodic riffs, drones and twangs and energies from the slowest no-time to the hottest ecstatic—and you have glossalalia sans religion, a world of all nature spawning/housing all culture, its material constructs sounding forth in one small woman’s voice as richly as in one inventive man’s rich array of sonic prosthetics.

Miya Masaoka treads a similar path-where-there-was-no-path of voice and persona, remembering forgotten olds in thickets of now’s news. Traditional koto meets with improvised electroacoustic and vocal tangles to much the same effect as Sainkho’s primal voice meets with Sudnick’s sound world, only doubled and halved: doubled in number of personnel, of electronics (Masaoka and Grüsel), of “vox” (Chen and Nagai); and halved in the time sense of Masaoka’s gagaku aesthetic of glacial-paced rubato lines, Zenfully spare. The doublings effect expansions: Chen and Nagai sound female and male voices, respectively; both convey the same ancient Asian-iconic sounds and now-world improv-tweaks that Sainkho does, and the male range is a rare and welcome one in that mostly female arena; and Masaoka and Grüsel lay down electronics that make for the fertile contrast of (Masaoka’s) avian/ insectoid/organic and (Grüsel’s) postEast German dystopian nightmare scratch, crackle and crapload of old radio tuners and industrial ghost towns. Masaoka’s soothing koto influence is reinforced by Chen’s cello and Nagai’s shamisen and hichiriki; their three instrumental voices stand up bravely to the spirit-vultures-asraptors sounding in Grüsel’s banshee Kränkenkabinet; indeed, when they chime in with their own human voices, they often match the grain and groan of the inhuman sounds as much as humanize them.

Both CDs present primal Asian-

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diasporic voices in dialogue with post-Soviet Russia/Eastern Europe.

Mike Heffley

The Necks Silverwater ReR CD

The three Australians in the Necks may look like a jazz trio, and they certainly know how to play the stuff.

But when you put percussionist Tony Buck, bassist Lloyd Swanton, and keyboardist Chris Abrahams together, you get something else, something founded upon a commitment to patient and exacting exploration of fragments that a jazz band might vamp on for a minute when they think a tune’s going to get faded out.

In concert this leads to hour-long performances that are barely perceptible in their evolution—sometimes lush, sometimes stinging. Silverwater finds the Necks trying to deal with the possibilities of the studio without betraying their essential character as an improvisational collective. It is their first record to be made using editing and overdubbing, methods that allow them to add instruments that rarely make it into the mix—in particular, Buck’s electric guitar—and to thicken the sound so that a drizzle of rattles and piano notes turns into a pummeling hail. The expanded palette and dynamics add interest, but the Necks embrace too completely the option to stretch things out. Silverwater actually benefits from inattention. Listen closely and individual elements go on too long, but if you play it and go about your business, you may look up with regret when the single 67-minute-long track ends.

Bill Meyer

NewYork Art Quartet Old Stuff Cuneiform CD

Burton Greene

Live at the Woodstock Playhouse Porter CD

The available historical record of mid1960s jazz and improvised music has markedly increased over the last decade and a half. At one time, all one could find on CD was the work of major progenitors like John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor and Eric Dolphy. Now, with countless reissues and archival performances coming to light, one can get a pretty good idea of the activities of the major and minor players in America and Europe during that tumultuous decade. In 1965, the year of Coltrane’s Ascension and Sun Ra’s Magic City, New York was teeming with musical activity. Though they left a scant recorded legacy, two of the most interesting bands of the time were the New York Art Quartet and the Burton Greene-Marion Brown group, both represented on these archival sessions from Cuneiform and Porter Records.

The NYAQ edition heard on Old Stuff is something of an odd variant; when Danish-born altoist John Tchicai lined up performances in Europe for the group, only trombonist Roswell Rudd was willing to make the trek. Tchicai was able 70 | SIGNAL to NOISE #58 WWW.SIGNALTONOISEMAGAZINE.COM

to hire more than just a stopgap rhythm section, however, in itinerant drummer Louis Moholo (replacing Milford Graves) and local Copenhagen bassist Finn Von Eyben (subbing for Lewis Worrell). This is the same quartet featured on the Hilversum concert released under Rudd’s name by the America label, but Old Stuff is the first authorized issue of any further material from the tour. Unlike their ESP-Disk’ and Fontana dates, the balance of tunes is shifted to include Tchicai’s material in equal measure, as well as a brief take on Monk’s “Pannonica.” At the outset, Moholo’s metric subdivisions are less apparent as he plays something more akin to highlife bop behind Rudd’s cutting blues cries, flecks and growls on “Rosmosis.” Tchicai’s acrid tone on record often has a self-directed quality, but his haranguing repetition brings out brash slide neighs in fierce, unified commentary as Moholo’s time blurs. There’s still a connection to meter behind the droning, bitter quacks of “Sweet Smells,” though the drummer’s dry, top-heavy waltz fits the ensuing caterwaul perfectly. Von Eyben’s warm precision and gritty rumble are ideal for this group; it’s unfortunate that so little of his playing exists on record. Old Stuff proves that the NYAQ’s approach to improvising could transcend the boundaries of Lower Manhattan.

Following the dissolution of the Free Form Improvisation Ensemble, pianist-composer Burton Greene convened a quartet in 1965 with alto saxophonist Marion Brown, bassist Reggie Johnson (sometimes replaced by Henry Grimes) and drummer Rashied Ali. The hour-long set on Live at the Woodstock Playhouse predates Greene’s ESP-Disk’ debut by five months (The Burton Greene Quartet, with Grimes and drummers Dave Grant and Tom Price), offering two compositions and one lengthy group improvisation.

As with the NYAQ, written themes are central to the music’s platform, whether based on atonal branches from a tonal center (“Tree Theme”) or jagged but Tristano-rooted rhythm clusters (“Cluster Quartet”).

“Tree Theme” is often wistful and romantic, an elegantly swinging Coltrane-cum-Bartók piece offering rhapsodic pointillism and spots of clattering immediacy. It’s interesting to hear Ali in the months before he officially joined Coltrane’s group; though criticism was leveled against him for his extraordinarily loose approach to time (often perceived as “scattered”), with Greene and Brown he channels Roy Haynes more than anything, a battery of accents and fills that constantly pulse and groove.

The rapport between the foursome cuts through any audio imperfections, Brown’s alternately sweet and hard-bitten tone and cascading ebullience merging with Greene’s dense arpeggios and acrobatic knocks and plucks. Forty-five years on, it’s hard to imagine how Amiri Baraka could have taken issue with the purity of this group’s music (see “The Burton Greene Affair” in Black Music), but clearly some aspects of history lose their clarity with time—thankfully the music doesn’t. Clifford Allen

Phill Niblock Touch Strings Touch CD x 2

There is a profound but often overlooked difference between drone and monotone, a difference not unlike that between tidal currents and still water. There’s no better place to explore that distinction than in the work of one of the modern masters of the form, Phill Niblock, whose most recent release Touch Strings contains a generous offering of music (130 minutes spread over two discs) and liner notes that underscore the complexity and (especially) intentionality that go into Niblock’s work.

The first CD is a single 59-minute piece for guitar and bass guitar, entitled “Stosspeng” and performed by Susan Stenger and Robert Poss (both of whom have worked with Niblock over the years, and who played together in Band of Susans), and consists primarily of the richly varying hums and low feedback generated by electric instruments. It is essentially a collage work, with source material recorded at Poss’s Manhattan studio and later edited together, and in a sense it can be seen as a more mature and subtle version of Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music. It is about electricity and the accidental sounds generated by amplification, making the incidental overt. But instead of the wonderfully rockist bombast of Reed’s work, Niblock’s electrical waves gently and beautifully undulate.

These amplified overtones might not do as much to sell the work’s formal rigor as the second half of the set, however. While one couldn’t

actually get the same music by simply leaving guitars leaning against amplifiers, it’s not absolutely inconceivable.

The second disc on Touch Strings is all acoustic string music, meaning sounds must be made to occur—they don’t simply transpire naturally, or at least not in the same way. The 24minute “Poure” was commissioned by cellist Arne Deforce, who has performed Niblock’s compositions “Harm” and “Summing II”. “Poure” works on the imprecision of musical instruments and their human players.

The player (in this case Deforce) is to match electronic tones (for this recording, A and D), and is given a visual cue if he falls flat or sharp. Thus there is a constantly wavering refinement as the player attempts to “fix” the tonality, and again source materials were edited and overlaid. As with “Stosspeng,” “Poure” makes use of the known sound of the instrument, and uses its machinations to create a field of vibration.

The remainder of the program is a 45-minute piece for strings (cello, violin, and strummed piano and acoustic bass guitar strings) entitled “One Large Rose” and performed

by Germany’s Nelly Boyd Ensemble, who have also worked with Christian Wolff and have performed pieces by Cage, Feldman, Lucier, Stockhausen and others. The notated piece was recorded four times by the group, and the recordings then overlaid, apparently with less editing than on the other two pieces. It is the most textured piece heard here— technically the densest although the word doesn’t seem quite right. It actually floats along with a unilateral

agility, and what is heard here is the uniformity of many rather than the variability of a few. This might simply be due to the self-cancelling nature of layering multiple strings on top of each other, but there seems to be something more than that going on, a sort of singular purpose that gives the piece its cohesion and (although it might seem odd for a drone piece) its momentum. It’s a beautiful realization of an ever so slightly varying theme.

Kurt Gottschalk

OM

Willisau Intakt CD

Ember

Aurona Arona Creative Sources CD

From 1972 to 1982, Switzerland’s OM (saxophonist Urs Leimgruber, guitarist Christy Doran, bassist Bobby Burri, and percussionist Fredy Studer) played a brand of jazz rock quite different from then-popular fusion models. On a bunch of fun (but not necessarily deep) records for Japo, they delivered thrills, folk song sincerity, and good group synergy.

After nearly 30 years, they return for a 70-minute festival set that boasts a sound that is somehow richer, more expansive, and still plain fun.

It starts off awkwardly, with a lengthy indulgence in vocal mutterings.

But then the music cranks up into a rousing free jazz tour with shifting rhythmic bases from polymaths Burri and Studer, and seriously hot dialogues between Doran and Leimgruber (they sound as good

here as they did on La Fourmi from a few years ago). The band sounds far better now that they’re no longer as invested in song forms, and they’ve all developed quite singular techniques: Leimgruber’s lovely birdsong, rubbed and bowed textures from Studer, big fat Tacuma-like lines from Burri, and Doran’s rabbits from a hat, high-strung bell noises or Galactus through the stomp box. They hint at genre here and there, play with pulse, and put it all in a blender.

Grooves emerge organically and there’s thankfully no mere jamming in group music that’s far more purposeful than that. Splendid fun.

Aurona Arona finds Leimgruber in an entirely different setting, with Alexander Schubert (electronics, violin), Oliver Schwerdt (piano, percussion, organ), and Christian Lillinger (drums, percussion) playing live at a 2008 festival in Leipzig.

It’s fairly chatty free improvisation, with some dirty electronics midway between Martin Tétreault and FURT. On the opening title track, caustic sounds shuttle back and forth, and Leimgruber howls away through his mouthpiece. The set moves from there into the sound of soft patters and glissing metal on “oud shhd aiier,” low-register spelunking on “begen bginn fllt” (with crisp woody sounds from Lillinger and avian cries from Leimgruber), while the final “etherlorbien” explores tranquility with a nicely singing drone. There’s a bit of a misfire on the ending, with a somewhat obvious contrast between slow-moving melancholia from the piano and harshness elsewhere.

Jason Bivins

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Pillars and Tongues Lay of Pilgrim Park Empty Cellar LP / download

On Lay of Pilgrim Park—recorded “surreptitiously” at AV-Aerie in Chicago—violinist Beth Remis, bassist Evan Hydzik, and percussionist Mark Trecka cast an ascetic yet passionate spell.

Their singing has a loose kinship to more traditional pop/folk and modern creative musics, but also to Eastern religious practice. The lyrics and musical forms are more carefully planned than on their previous album Protection, and the result is (to borrow a phrase from “Park Saint and Folly”) a kind of “sacral map.” The music’s aesthetic and independent spirit are akin to Kelly Reichardt’s beautifully restrained film Wendy and Lucy, and Pilgrim Park may provoke similar reactions in listeners—with some bemoaning that it’s too “slow” with nothing much “happening,” while others will feel an immediate kinship.

The richness of Remis’s and Hydzik’s strings and the long-toned fluidity of the voices suggest a pool stirred by faint sonic ripples. On “Root/Joy” and “Resolve” the singing conjures up a shadowy interstellar buzz: one thinks of wind whistling through an air-shaft, a ghostly vibrating string, or Tuvan throatsinging. Surprisingly, it’s not until track 3 that Trecka’s understated percussion makes its main entrance with a slow-motion clatter. Side B offers two longer pieces: “Park Saint” is an extended, minimalist post-pop meditation, while “Made Sheen” has the album’s most danceable and sustained groove, an avant-krishna, major-chord mantra. By pairing death-haunted lyrics with lively rhythms, the track shows Pillars and Tongues’ affinity for both darkness and the light. John Dworkin

PIMANIA

The Music of Mel Croucher and Automata U.K. Ltd. Feeding Tube LP

Pies? Pimania? Pimaniacs? Given all the utopian, down-with-tyranny rhetoric on The Music of Mel Croucher and Automata U.K. Ltd., one wonders whether PIMANIA is affiliated with the Biotic Baking Brigade. There’s a serious subversive streak to this twisted, mold-coated collage of an album that suggests a desire to ignite a movement, to fuck shit up. PIMANIA’s primary weapons are a priori in nature: ubiquitous pop songs you despise, monolithic historical audio samples, familiar musical genre conventions, a vocal cadence that falls somewhere between Mister Rogers and Mrs. Doubtfire. So there’s a pithy, bizarre ditty, set to the tune of “Leader of the Pack,” about falling in love with Pac-Man; an extended, icky dirge that sounds like Can and Neu! covering “I Want Candy” at gunpoint forever; interminable fake reggae vamps; hackneyed blues riffs shoved way beyond the point of cliché. The history of this project suggests that Music of Mel Croucher is a beardo period pastiche, a goof on early ’80s mores and manias sheathed in an uncomfortable homosexual hyper-randiness that reminded me of Pansy Division and The Frogs at their 72 | SIGNAL to NOISE #58 WWW.SIGNALTONOISEMAGAZINE.COM

most gleefully perverted. Oddly, that through-a-prism-darkly period vibe is what makes PIMANIA valuable, what lends it some redeeming value; it’s like a weird time-capsule from an era that too many overlook. And hey, Bmovie underground pop curios need love, too. Raymond Cummings

Radio Massacre International Time & Motion Cuneiform CD x 2

As proselytizers for the venerable electronic space music genre, Radio Massacre International (RMI) continues to honor and recreate the form—but the three members of this British EM group also find ways to keep everything fresh. This generous double-disc release provides RMI with the opportunity to stretch out with a number of moody, free-form tracks—particularly the two-part “Fission Ships,” 30 minutes of drifting cosmic ambience developing out of legato guitar, haunting synth drones, mysterious alarums, propulsive whooshes, electronic chirps and other slowly unfolding effects. Here, the collective real-time interaction of RMI’s three members adds energy and unpredictability to music which might otherwise come across as meandering. Elsewhere RMI delivers a healthy dose of churning up-tempo space music. Gary Houghton’s electric guitar soars above a foundation of bass guitar, drums and pulsating sequencers, recapitulating the work of guitarists Edgar Frose and Dave Gilmour in Tangerine Dream and Pink Floyd. RMI’s electronic textures also pay homage to vintage Klaus Schulze, though they never resort to mere imitation. Guest musician Martin Archer makes key additions to several tracks, whether it’s his jazz-inflected sax solos (sometimes on electronically enhanced soprano) or his very effective use of a bass clarinet as a drone instrument. Right now, RMI is really at the top of their game—and this CD is perhaps their crowning achievement to date. No one else today plays electronic space music with anywhere near their thoroughness, dedication and consummate quality. Bill Tilland

are consistently good, free of the sense of contrivance that sometimes comes with the technique and with the emphasis clearly on improvisation. The band includes drummers Tony Marsh and Javier Carmona, cellist Marcio Mattos (who also appeared on Ramanan’s quartet recordings) and bassist Dominic Lash, with three reeds and three brass. The five pieces develop clearly individual identities, and the group combines strong stylists who are willing to sublimate themselves in diverse ensemble situations. Trombonist Robert Jarvis brings lively bluster (on “Turning the Heel” there’s even New Orleans tailgate by way of Rudd and Rutherford), while trumpeter Ian Smith can match Ramanan in a shared, spiky lyricism. Saxophonists Simon Rose on alto and Ricardo Tejero on tenor contribute some coruscating work that would be right at home in Sun Ra’s conductions, and clarinetist Alex Ward turns in an unaccompanied solo on “Ever Made Go Cold” that moves fluidly between chirping woody warmth and metallic squawk. The band is highly cohesive, comfortably occupying a ground between free improvisation and free jazz. Stuart Broomer

Mike Reed’s People, Places & Things

Stories and Negotiations 482 Music CD

Drummer Mike Reed convened People, Places & Things to investigate and resuscitate forgotten compositions and musicians from Chicago’s “heyday,” including works by Wilbur

Campbell, Clifford Jordan, John Jenkins and pre-NYC Sun Ra. Stories and Negotiations is the group’s third release, recorded live in Millennium Park at the Chicago JazzFest in 2008.

In addition to bassist Jason Roebke, tenorman Tim Haldeman, altoist Greg Ward and trombonist Jeb Bishop, they’re joined by key Chicago veterans: tenor saxophonist Ira Sullivan and two Ra alums, trumpeter Art Hoyle and trombonist Julian Priester.

Stories falls somewhere between the punchy avant-garde swing of recent Chicago ensembles and classy large-ensemble hard bop. Reed’s dedication to Hoyle, “Third Option,” segues into Ra’s “El Is a Sound of Joy,” at the outset spotlighting Haldeman’s rough tenor, Ward’s slick, bubbling alto and the oil-and-water slides of Priester and Bishop. Ward and Haldeman know their hard bop inside-out without getting hung up on slick technique; their playing is wooly, jarring and full of spirited glee. The theme is taken at a loose swagger, the simple click-clack bustle falling away into collective improvisation before a rejoinder leads into Bishop’s crisp, gravelly tailgate and Priester’s cooler, more fragmented approach. The horns dig into Roebke and Reed’s rock-solid lope and raise a bluesy collective shout. The front line play the knotty head of “Wilbur’s Tune” crisply despite the frantic pace, and Hoyle is out of the gates in a glittering, cracked dialogue with Roebke’s surging pluck. Priester’s “Urnack” (dating back to Ra’s 1956 LP Angels and Demons at Play) begins with terse collective rumbling that opens into a head both rangy and

frantic. Sullivan is one of the unheralded Windy City tenor greats, and his easy rolling sections are brimming with wry reference. After a collective hen-peck, Priester follows in a solo packed with chattering statement, history and reflection. Records like this are exactly what contemporary jazz needs. Clifford Allen

Don Rendell / Ian Carr Quintet

Live at the Union 1966 Reel CD

In the States, there’s been a fairly large gap in addressing the history of British jazz; it didn’t move from Tubby Hayes to Evan Parker in one fell swoop. One of the most important cooperatives in mid-’60s London was a quintet co-led by saxophonist/flutist Don Rendell and trumpeter/flugelhornist Ian Carr, but it's only recently, with the reissue of their scarce back catalog, that Rendell and Carr have begun to be mentioned alongside more wellknown figures. Live at the Union 1966 is a previously unknown recording capturing them at the height of their powers, on a gig at the University College London’s student union bar.

In addition to Rendell and Carr, the group featured pianist-composer Michael Garrick, drummer Trevor Tompkins and bassist Dave Green (though on four tracks he’s replaced

by Tony Reeves, later of Colosseum).

The centerpiece of the set is two Garrick compositions, “Trane’s Mood” and “Webster’s Mood,” the former unrecorded in the studio. A poised rondo-like piano intro opens the piece, which soon weaves into a skim-

ming left-hand bass vamp, Tompkins splashing and chattering away as Garrick’s right hand ascends modal heights. The effect is somewhere between a Coltrane Eastern waltz and some of Max Roach or Booker Little’s vamp-waltzes of the early 1960s. Carr and Rendell improvise collectively in a tangled web before the tenorman stretches out in lean and condensed cadences, with Garrick’s comping both jubilant and piquant. Tart muted gulps and blats follow from Carr, a sardonic fat chomp at the composer’s architecture. Garrick’s penchant for old-world lyricism crops up in the outset of his solo, which quickly moves into a storming Tyner-like motivic ring. “Webster’s Mood,” which also appeared on Garrick’s Black Marigolds (Argo, 1968), is a softly lilting blues extrapolation that, were the composer better known, might have become a modern-jazz standard, perfectly capturing the quirk and grit of its subject. Carr, on flugelhorn, plays slowly with germs of phrases before turning them into complex, serpentine lines. Incredible detail and a penchant for slow-burning fire mark the Rendell-Carr Quintet, and hopefully Live at the Union 1966 will help cement their status among the leading lights of mid-60s small-group jazz. Clifford Allen

Martin Rev Stigmata

Blast First Petite CD

DIY keyboard/synthesizer fellow Martin Rev is one-half of the duo Suicide, with the other half being Kerouac/ Elvis-from-hell singer/raconteur Alan

Roland Ramanan Tentet London Leo CD

Roland Ramanan is a London-based trumpeter with deep roots in British free jazz—genetic, even: he’s the son of Shake Keane, who played trumpet on Joe Harriott’s ground-breaking recordings Free Form and Abstract.

Ramanan himself has played in bands with Peter Brötzmann, including the Chicago Tentet with which this group may draw comparison, and he’s also released two fine quartet CDs on Emanem. Ramanan is a member of the London Improvisers Orchestra, the large ensemble from which many of the musicians here are drawn. While Ramanan cites a number of compositional methods in his notes here—including a graphic score and musicians choosing from three different lines—there’s extensive use of conduction, using visual cues to partially frame and direct the improvisation. The results WWW.SIGNALTONOISEMAGAZINE.COM SIGNAL to NOISE #58 | 73

Vega. Since the early 1970s Suicide have been making lean, idiosyncratic hepcat sounds, and as with most long-lived ensembles there have been frequent side projects and/or solo albums. Stigmata is nothing like Suicide’s nightmarish electro-rock—it’s mostly a rather pretty and chilled-out set, though certainly not ambient or atmospheric. What Stigmata evokes is the series of albums by Wendy Carlos in the late ’60s/early ’70s wherein classical works (Bach, Beethoven, etc.) were rendered on the synthesizer.

On most tracks, Rev approximates orchestral woodwinds, string sections, harp, and percussion. Stylistically, most of Stigmata is very much in the stirring, powerfully rhythmic Germanic tradition of Beethoven and Brahms.

(Rev’s titles also carry old-school Eurobaggage: “Sanctus,” “Magnum Mysterium,” and “Dona Nobis Pacem.”)

On “Sinbad’s Voyage,” Rev has a go at the film dramatics of Hollywood composers Alex North, Miklos Rózsa, and Dimitri Tiomkin. The overall effect is that of nostalgia for melodrama, a stormy cinematic time-warp where purpose, conflict, good, and evil are clearing delineated. But in a world wherein irony and ambiguity (in life and art) are piled on in so many layers you need a scalpel and chainsaw to cut through, is that such a bad thing?

Mark Keresman

Roedelius Offen Türen Nepenthe CD

After co-leading ambient Krautrock pioneers Cluster through a decade of ground-breaking ’70s albums, Hans-Joachim Roedelius had enough. By the early ’80s, he had already released several solo albums, well on his way to carving his own path by the time Cluster took an extended hiatus. Unlike his early records, 1982’s Offen Türen is a truly solo work, returning to the highly personal style of the Selbstportrait series, with Roedelius handling keyboards and vocals all by himself.

Similar to the last Cluster album up to that point (1981’s Curiosum), Offen Türen carries on a theme of gothic martial music, which is a neat trick considering that Roedelius was working without a rhythm section (or even a drum machine), while also crafting his pieces into shorter 3- to 4-minute bits. In addition, Roedelius purposely confined himself to a Korg MS20 synthesizer (‘the poor man’s mini-Moog’), which only permitted one note to be played at a time and contained no stored sounds, so that each one had to be painstakingly programmed. This suited him just fine, as some of his best music has a wonderful child-like simplicity to it— the sparkling dream-like “Besucher Im Traum,” the Bach-meets-prototechno of “Mit Offenem Visier,” the minimalist soulful swing of “Von Osten Her” bear this out in the first half of the album. On the second half, he delves into darker, starker textures (“Spiegelung,” “Husche,” “Wende”) but always keeps a sweet innocence about the music. Other than his Cluster partner Moebius, few explored the synthesizer in a pop context as deeply as he did. Jason Gross

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Nels Cline Singers The Celestial Septet New World CD

Nels Cline Singers Initiate

Cryptogramophone CD x 2

Since he first appeared on the scene in the late ’70s, guitarist Nels Cline has appeared in a dizzying array of musical settings. His membership in Wilco may have slowed down his output under his own name a bit, but as these two new releases show, it hasn’t hampered his continued commitment to open-minded improvisation.

The Celestial Septet brings together the Nels Cline Singers, his long-standing trio with bassist Devin Hoff and drummer Scott Amendola, and the Rova Saxophone Quartet.

The members of the two groups have frequently crossed paths over the years, and they played a series of double bills back in 2006 (with collective improvisations at the end of the show), so this recording was a natural.

Like both of the core ensembles, the Celestial Septet is a democratic unit, with charts by members from both groups. Amendola’s opener, “Cesar Chávez,” leads the massed ensemble across a shifting flow of melody and timbres, while Steve Adams’ “Trouble Ticket” is a more pointillistic, conversational affair. Larry Ochs’ “Whose to Know (for Albert Ayler)” is an evolving structure that captures the heartfelt intensity of Ayler’s music by moving back and forth from fullout squall to focused areas for smaller groupings, particularly a strong solo section by Hoff. The piece’s climax is one of the high-points of the session.

On Ochs’ briefer “Headcount,” the ensemble struts through an off-kilter march as Cline skronks out over the top. The recording closes with Cline’s “The Buried Quilt,” which combines meditative harmonies, passages of dissonance and quavering electronics, and forceful bursts of energy.

Initiate is the Singers’ fourth release, and this double CD (one studio disc, one live) covers a lot of stylistic ground. Cline and crew are as comfortable scrabbling across fuzzdrenched rave-ups as they are looping electronic atmospherics, building on the traditional jazz trio sound, stomping out swampy funk grooves, or musing lyrically on Americana.

Cline is such a monster technician that at times the music threatens to devolve into guitar-geek showiness, such as the massed layers of “Divining” and “You Noticed.” But such moments are more than made up for by the lush beauty of “Grow Closer” or the electric guitar workouts on “Red Line to Greenland” and “King Queen” (shades of John Cipollina), with David Witham’s organ adding extra grit. The live disc benefits from rawer energy: “Raze” offers molten crunch, “Fly Fly” jumps into craggy abstraction, and “Thurston County” moves from textural interplay to infectious thunder. They also play a few more overtly jazz-based pieces, paying homage to Jim Hall on “Blues, Too” and delivering a considered reading of Carla Bley’s “And Now the Queen.” The most audacious move is the cover of Zawinul’s Weather Report hit “Boogie Woogie Waltz” in

the company of several members of Deerhoof. The Singers and co. lock in on the smoldering pulse and vamp on it for 14 minutes: it’s at once a bit of an indulgence and a lot of fun.

Though this sprawling two-CD set has less conceptual clarity than The Celestial Septet or Cline’s recent homage to Andrew Hill, there’s still plenty to enjoy. Michael Rosenstein

Giacinto Scelsi

Tre Canti Populari / Due Componimenti Impetuosi Sub Rosa CD

There is little in the world that sounds like the music of Giacinto Scelsi. The mysterious Italian composer (1905-88) seemed to be interested in a sound world that was at once tightly defined in resistance to outside reference while also sounding as if its constituent sounds were continually being absorbed by the universe. On this superb reissue of two previously released Sub Rosa volumes, we’re treated to mostly vocal and piano pieces that vividly exemplify the sonic eternal return that is Scelsi’s music, resonating endlessly in space. Those who know Scelsi’s mid- and late-period works, which so thoroughly developed his own spectral orientation to sound, would do well to proceed directly to “Sonate #4,” which opens the second disc. With a superb sense of dynamics, pianist Johan Bossers reveals how the Scelsi of the early 1940s was preoccupied not simply with the sounds which could be squeezed out of oddly grouped tones, but with clashing dissonances and even the occasional unexpected whiff of reflective romance. “Sonate #11” (1956) is complex as well, beginning with a frosty hush and developing through Bossers’ adept traversal of the space between dense flurries of sound and delicate ripples. It’s not Feldmanian in its preoccupation with the spaces between notes, but is nonetheless concerned with the relation between sounds as opposed to line or motive.

The brief piano piece “Aitsi”—a 1974 composition played by Jean-Luc Fafchamps—shows that Scelsi had found his way fully into the enigma of the instrument by this point, and it’s a piece that almost wants to hide itself from your ears. The remainder of the release—occupying the majority of the first disc—is far more the Scelsi one has come to expect and adore.

There’s a marvelous “Duo” for violin and cello, where the players realize something almost impossibly difficult: focusing your listening on the retreating, nearly absent overtones in the highest register. Most bewitching to me are the vocal pieces, where Scelsi returns to his musical source and explores intervals, vibrato, articulation and decay. There is an overwhelmingly powerful bass vocal solo “Wo Ma,” whose booming, ominous first section gives way improbably to playful acrobatics that have you marveling at Paul Gerimon’s voice. Indeed, all the vocal pieces—“Sauh” for two female voices and the much loved “Tre Canti Populari”—are performed exceptionally well; these are perhaps the best performances of these pieces I’ve heard, since they capture so vividly the rhythmic playfulness that’s essential to this music. They

sound like music sung in a monastery belonging to a tradition you’ve never heard of, and might be a little scared to be affiliated with. Jason Bivins

all manner of sonic adventure without shortchanging the songs themselves.

Bill Meyer

Skullflower

Abandoned Love

Strange Keys to Untune Gods’ Firmament Neurot CD x 2

This double CD, Matthew Bower’s ninth long-player since resurrecting the Skullflower name in ’03, doesn’t deviate an iota from the long-form drones he’s employed for over a quarter century. Yet anyone whose hearing emerged intact after altercations with Desire for a Holy War or last year’s Vile Veil knows that long, long gone is any hint of rock grounding. Instead, SF creates an all but impenetrable sonic miasma, daring listeners to stay with the recordings long enough to be engulfed, where tracks reveal multiple layers of guitar-induced trance and, ultimately, a kind of surrender.

Strange Keys to Untune Gods’ Firmament pushes this notion further still, and in the space of 12 tracks and nearly two hours, reveals itself to be Bower’s most punishing, and perhaps most rewarding album yet. Songs appear fully formed, and tracks crash into each other, sometimes sputtering and almost giving out before the next one swats its predecessor out of existence. A complete immersion in either of the two discs reveals the subtleties of each piece, though it requires repeated listens for this stuff to take any sort of discernable form.

Quite frankly, even many of the more sonically adventurous will find this album unlistenable, so harsh are its tones and so overwhelming are its layers. It seems as if Bower’s intention is to reduce the guitar to particles of notes, kick up dust storms of tones and spray them at all comers. But because of his allegiance to the electric six-string, there are organic pulses, ebbs and flows and underworlds of beauty that harsh noise artists with their pedals and other assorted gadgets don’t quite get. Bruce Miller

Sonoi Sonoi

Meno Mosso CD / DL

In 2003 the Chicago ensemble Manishevitz made City Life, which took the map charted by post-Eno Roxy Music, rolled it up, and used it to take swats at an urban life that already seemed shrunken before the war on terror and economic meltdown drowned dreams of progress in an acid rain of misery and disappointment. Sonoi, which shares two members with Manishevitz, embraces a broader range of vintage English art rock—Brian Eno, Robert Wyatt, even a touch of Tin Drum-era Japan—and seems quite happy to drift on clouds of textural reverie. Even a tune like “Framed,” with its lazy cadence and languid trombones wrapped around a lyric that implies imprisonment, lingers most longingly on the image of a woman’s body at one with the sun. Adam Busch’s croon has shed its old nervousness, the better to steer through soundscapes that toddle on relaxed beats and blink with the casual glimmer of electronic processing.

Sonoi use songs as opportunities for

Trembling Bells Honest Jon’s CD / LP / DL

Trembling Bells’ debut Carbeth wasn’t a bad record—its stirring reassertion of the virtues of classic British folk rock is really pretty swell—but upon release it felt like a disappointment.

Drummer-leader Alex Neilson was still finding his way as a singer, Lavinia Blackwall’s singing evoked grandeur even when that wasn’t what the songs needed, and the songs were more workmanlike than brilliant.

Abandoned Love is better. Blackwall hasn’t exactly toned down, but the rest of the band has stepped up, matching her grandeur with dramatic brass charts and heraldic fuzz guitar leads. Neilson’s singing is more confident, and his drumming swings without drawing attention to itself.

And his writing has turned a page, still steeped in Olde English imagery, but also tuned into American roots music in a big way. “Love Has Made an Outlaw of My Heart” cribs parts of its tune from Buck Owens’ “Together Again,” “Ravenna” rides a James Jamerson-worthy bass line, and “You Are On the Bottom (And the Bottle’s On My Mind)” sounds like it was dealt from the bottom of Bob Dylan’s deck of throwaway secular gospel rave-ups.

Most important, the Trembling Bells manage to sound totally in control of their material without losing an ounce of the passion that was Carbeth’s greatest virtue. This band might really be onto something. Bill Meyer

Triangulation Whirligigs Leo CD

John Wolf Brennan The Speed of Dark Leo CD

Triangulation features two Irish expats living in the land of the Swiss, namely John Wolf Brennan (piano and keyboards) and Christy Doran (acoustic and electric guitars, gizmos). Completing the quartet are Bruno Amstad (voice and loops) and Patrice Héral (voice, percussion and loops). I’m not familiar with the resumes of the latter two gents, but Brennan and Doran are known for excelling in a variety of contexts, including improv and folk-accented chamber jazz. That said, Whirligigs is a different thing entirely.

Aspects of jazz, folk, and out/free improvisation are present, but the context is more akin to trip-hop and dub.

The two vocalists don’t “sing” per se, functioning more as instrumentalists contributing (very) subdued raps, medieval-sounding moans and David Thomas-like glottal glories as part of the ensemble. Brennan and Doran get to shine occasionally (Doran’s Leo Kottke-like playing on “Magic Carpet Ride” is very nice indeed), but, as with most dub and trip-hop, there are few true “solos,” with the rhythmic underpinning handled by loops.

This set’s overall drift evokes Dome (Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis, albeit their more cadenced stuff), Pere Ubu’s Dub Housing, This Heat, and

the sampler/overview Macro Dub Infection—alternately chilled-out, soothing, unsettling, trippy, paranoiac, mischievous, creepy. Fans expecting “usual” fare from Doran and Brennan may be nonplussed, but the more flexible-minded are urged to dive in.

Mark Keresman Brennan covers a lot of ground on his solo album The Speed of Dark, a set of 23 brief tracks ranging from cheerfully tonal children’s pianopieces to a vigorous massage of the instrument’s strings with fishing line.

This isn’t quite program music, but instead a series of musical vignettes, inspired by the pianist’s affection for the Swiss landscape and for a kenspeckle pantheon of historical persons. One piece memorializes the astronomer Johannes Kepler (so poor that he “could never afford an adequate telescope of his own, so had to borrow one”) with a musical dialogue between slow-moving cosmic murk and a nervously running pulse; and there’s also a stormy set of piano/ melodica variations on a song by Mani Matter, the “Swiss Bob Dylan.”

On the “Divine Cosmody” Brennan even manages (with the assistance of the painter Samuel Walsh) to traverse the entirety of Dante’s Commedia in the space of 15 minutes, ranging from Sonatas and Interludes jangle to music-box delicacy. Various pieces, textures, landscapes and characters bob back up every so often in the disc’s multi-threaded narrative: repetitions of a tiny waltz, the bumpy rhythms of old mechanical devices (recordings of a 1929 manure pump and a 1930s railroad speedometer—Brennan’s witty piano responses are positively swinging), compact tone-poems inspired by Swiss rivers and mountains, even a return visit by Kepler in the company of Tycho Brahe. And like a book, the CD concludes with an “index,” an electronically compressed recap whooshing you back through the preceding 22 tracks in reverse order. Nate Dorward

Tuung

...And Then We Saw Land Thrill Jockey CD

During the four years since Tunng’s last CD, the English “folktronica” collective spent time hanging out with the nomadic guitarists of Mali’s Tinariwen. It’s hard to say exactly what rubbed off, since the band isn’t playing the sort of droning desert blues that Tinariwen specializes in, but the members of Tunng say that they learned to stop worrying about song structure. That sense of freedom isn’t really new for Tunng, who mashed together blips, samples, acoustic guitars and old-fashioned folk harmonies on three previous records, but maybe they’ve been emboldened to push even further. Tunng’s new songs still have the electronic touches heard on the earlier albums—that sensation of quirky noises pieced together on a computer, spooling out underneath the vocals and guitars—but they feel a bit more like live performances.

With the departure of founding member Sam Genders, Mike Lindsay and Becky Jacobs are handling most of the vocals. Whether they’re harmonizing on the perky electronic pop ditty “Santiago” or the lilting

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acoustic ballad “October,” they sing hummable melodies in a relaxed, confident manner. At times, the delightful ...And Then We Saw Land feels like a sing-along at someone’s house—except that this is one gathering where the folk singers brought along their laptops as well as their banjos. Robert Loerzel

The Ullmann Swell 4 News? No News!

Jazzwerkstatt CD

Scott DuBois

Black Hawk Dance Sunnyside CD

Reedist Gebhard Ullmann and trombonist Steve Swell have developed an urgent rapport over the past several years, forged mostly in Ullmann’s New Basement Research. Combining a love of joyful post-bop melody and raucous extended techniques, the pair play with fire and invention seemingly every time they pick up their horns. Joined here by veteran bassist Hilliard Greene and legendary drummer Barry Altschul, they whip up a session that sounds like a lost Sam Rivers loft date in places even as it’s quite contemporary. After the exuberant opener “More Hello,” Ullmann’s darting “New York 5:50” sounds like a band playing with sonic toy boxes, assembling shapes that appear and disappear between your ears. “Composite #1” moves even further into spaciousness, its occasional bouncy dance theme rearing up to clear room for pointillistic explorations. They return to form eagerly on “Kleine Figuren #2,” here given a kind of New Orleans street dirge feel, and “Berlin 9:35,” which gets deeply funky in its way. But to me this date is all about the fantastic players. It’s not just the Ullmann/ Swell axis—ranging from galloping bass clarinet alongside chortling ’bone to mellifluous brass and cooing tenor; it’s the expressive Greene (who’s got a great arco feature on “Planet Hopping for a Thursday Afternoon”) and Altschul, who solos memorably on “Composite #1,” deft and raucous all at once.

Ullmann shows up on guitarist Scott DuBois’ intense, searching new CD. The music opens urgently, with probing work from bassist Thomas Morgan and ace drummer Kresten Osgood. DuBois plays rippling arpeggios to complement Ullmann’s, but the feel is not one of just Ullmann and continuo. Rather, they seem as a group to focus on the conjuration of often dour moods followed by intense unisons and only modest soloing. DuBois—a tasteful, clean-toned guitarist who every so often switches on some boxes to sound like Ben Monder—is inspired by the Native American use of music in contacting ancestral spirits, as well as the transformative possibilities of improvisation itself. And when the title track gets going, with its coiling, intersecting, repeating phrases, I’m a believer too. Sometimes DuBois’ music sounds slightly ECM-ish in its pastoralism, but it’s mostly good, tough stuff, and emotionally very real. “Illinois Procession Rain” is heart-tuggingly melancholy in a way that recalls Paul Motian; “Dust

Celebration” is busy, and dissonant, while “River Life” is slightly boppish.

It’s a well played, nicely varied set.

Jason Bivins

Univers Zero Clivages Cuneiform CD

Univers Zero began their first creative arc in 1977 with the dark chamber rock of 1313, and after four more excellent recordings, ended it in 1986 with the uneven Heatwave. A reunion 13 years later generated a predictably uninspired souvenir (The Hard Quest), wherein group members demonstrated that they still had the chops to evoke a passable imitation of their younger selves. That should have closed the curtain, but new creative juices had apparently begun to percolate—and the band’s second career arc began three years later, in 2002, with two excellent studio recordings, an absolutely ferocious live disc, and now Clivages, which rivals anything else in the band’s catalog.

The secret of Univers Zero’s success has been their ability to remain true to their basic Goth chamber-rock concept while continually bringing new blood into the group and, conversely, welcoming back old bandmembers who have been on extended sabbatical. Percussionist Daniel Denis, the de facto group leader, has been the one constant (UZ broke up in 1986 because of his desire to chart a new musical course for himself). But his collaborators here include Michel Berckmans, whose bassoon and oboe had contributed so much to UZ’s elegant but sinister ambience, plus Andy Kirk, whose keyboards and compositions figured in some of UZ’s best earlier recordings.

This time around, Kirk is on guitar; he also composed “Warrior,” a 12minute piece that keeps exquisitely ratcheting up the musical tension, in a manner unique to UZ. New recruits Martin Lauwers and Pierre Chevalier (on violin and keyboards, respectively) bring fresh energy to the group sound, but the most important new member is perhaps saxophonist/clarinetist Kurt Bude. At times he displays an exquisite lyrical sensibility, but he also cuts loose with skronky bass clarinet and some very edgy alto sax His visceral energy provides a nice contrast to the more cerebral chamber music offered elsewhere on Clivages. However, there’s nothing wispy about even the most restrained pieces here: everything is sharp, clean and crisp, even when UZ holds its signature malevolence in check.

Bill Tilland

Various Artists

Dengue Fever Presents Electric Cambodia: 14 Rare Gems from Cambodia’s Past Minky CD

Los Angeles-based band Dengue Fever, who dabble in classic Cambodian pop thanks largely to the Khmer origins of their singer, Chhom Nimol, bring us this latest collection of tracks from a sadly doomed era of the SE Asian country’s past. And with it, the window into pre-genocide Cambodian psych, rock and balladry

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has been opened another few inches.

While 1996’s Cambodian Rocks (Parallel World) introduced many to the fact that rock and roll made its way into the region, it was the Sublime Frequencies release Cambodian Cassette Archives vol. 1—where is vol. 2?—that gave westerners a sense of the true variety of sounds coming from this time and place. Fortunately, Dengue Fever’s compilation is equally amazing. With the stars of the day—Sinn Sisamouth, Pan Ron and Ros Sereysothea—all making appearances, this disc is top-notch, reverb-drenched, non-dubbed, original Cambodian goodness. Though the collection claims to be filled with sounds never before released outside of the country of origin, it appears that at least one track (Pan Ron’s “Don’t Speak”) has seen the light of day, under a different title, on Defective/El Supremo’s Cambodia Psych-Out collection of a few years ago. But none of this matters when the music is this good.

Ros Sereysothea’s “I Will Starve Myself to Death” starts with an a cappella moan, which gives way to classic Cambodian jerk rhythm. The anonymous instrumental “Hope to Meet You” is fueled by organ and staccato guitar and only benefits from its low fidelity. Elsewhere a Pan Ron title is awash in cheap fuzz guitar. But this music isn’t kitsch. Though it relies heavily on pop from Europe and the States, it’s tied together with a feel that makes it absolutely Cambodian.

It’s as magnificent to hear this music as it is upsetting to know the grim fates of most of those artists who had the misfortune to be living during Pol Pot’s Year Zero. Considering the circumstances embroiling the country from the end of the 1960s to the late 1980s, it’s a wonder this music was created in the first place.

Bruce Miller

discs play as one engaging set, with a robust sense of variety, playfulness and adventure. David Greenberger

Various Artists

Nigeria Afrobeat Special Soundways CD

Nigeria Special Vol. 2 Soundways CD

Witch

Lazy Bones QDK CD

Amanaz Africa QDK CD

There was a time not too long ago, when stateside fans of vintage African pop had to settle for those few Fela LPs that turned up on Capitol or Celluloid, or perhaps the low-budget mystery of John Storm Roberts’ Original Music releases. These days, with the flood of releases on Soundway, Analogue Africa, Buda Musique and Honest Jon’s (not to mention the better “sharity” blogs lurking in the electronic mist) it’s open season on vintage releases from the cradle of civilization. It comes at a time when the records have been sadly forgotten in their countries of origin, and they are often scoured from musty warehouses and wiped clear of mummified insect carcasses in places where weather is unkind to vinyl and the local economies are in tatters. It’s the equivalent of the kind of excavation Joe Bussard, R. Crumb and other 78 fanatics did in the US Southeast multiplied exponentially, and it’s taken record collecting to

its more obsessive extremes, where rarity-value occasionally outstrips the quality of the music preserved on the plastic. Fortunately, at least in the case of Miles Cleret and his Soundway imprint, careful editing has been done on our behalf.

One could be forgiven for wondering if the label is simply putting out too much (there have been some ten releases in the past two years) but the quality hasn’t faltered, and despite the other reissues, as well as the blogs, the bulk of this stuff still hasn’t been heard this side of the Atlantic. Nigeria Afrobeat Special kicks off with the most obvious exponent of the form, Fela himself; however, the track, the single version of “Who Are You,” wastes no time digging deep into prime Afro-funk chug, with the band wading in a bog of pure groove while Kuti belches the title. It’s the kind of tune that need not end. But the rest of the collection matches it for sheer fire.

This is raw groove, cranked out live in the studio on instruments whose cheapness only makes the musicians who play them work that much harder to achieve explosive results. If the flood of Afrobeat reissues might seem to make this record’s release less significant, one listen to a cut as unpretentious as the Black Santiagos’ organ-driven stomp “Ole”—rescued from obscurity since Original Music’s entire back catalog, which once included this track, is sadly out of print—renders that notion moot.

Perhaps not quite as revelatory as the initial volume, Nigeria Special Vol. 2 chooses to spotlight not-so-readily-defined late 1960s/

early 1970s hybrids. It, along with volume 1, is the true Nigerian feather in Soundway’s West African cap.

Featuring absurdly obscure singles, bands that cut a tune or two and faded into oblivion, odd experiments and things that sound almost like highlife, funk, or any other form floating around the country at the time, the collection is a 70-odd-minute series of musical curve balls. Take Black’s Zenith’s “Shango Oba Onina” for example. Punchy horns of the type found on a thousand Nigerian and Ghanaian highlife recordings butt heads with choked guitar licks and a bass line that clearly wants to tug the entire tune into heavier territory. It’s the sound of the norm being shoved into new spaces, and nearly 40 years later, it holds its mystery. Elsewhere on the collection rural Yoruba rhythm marries urban pop song constrictions, single guitar lines sail over stacks of would-beJuju percussion and neglected, unrealized styles emerge once again.

The collections have as much to say about Cleret’s ear as they do about the sounds coming from this musically rich African country.

Thanks to recent reissues of LPs by bands such as Chrissy Zebby Tembo, The Ngozi Family and The Peace, it’s been made clear to Westerners that the southern African country of Zambia had something of a rock and roll scene in the mid-1970s. Dominated by cheaply distorted guitars, plodding bass lines and lyrics usually sung in English, this stuff had seemingly little to do with Zambia’s roots. And the low fidelity of it all is a testament to the newly

independent country’s poverty and consequent lack of decent recording facilities. Witch’s Lazy Bones, the band’s third album, is almost crude; the drummer barely makes it through fills and lead guitar skitters off in a variety of directions, cloaked in shoddy fuzz. The vocals of Emanyeo Jagari Chanda are at times almost painful. It’s as if early Grand Funk Railroad was the band’s only source of influence. But herein lies the record’s charm. It’s the naiveté, perhaps because the band is Zambian, that makes the better tracks—“Tooth Factory,” “October Night”—a blast to listen to 35 years later.

Like Witch (which apparently stood for “We Intend to Create Havoc”), Amanaz consisted of two guitarists, a kit drummer, a bassist and a vocalist who played hand percussion. And like Witch, they reveled in Iron Butterfly-like distorted guitar ugliness. But they also seemed to concern themselves a bit more with song form than Witch. Some of the slower tunes here sound like some garage version of Lynyrd Skynyrd playing nothing but their ballads. In fact, downtempo tracks dominate the first half of the album, at least until “History of Man’s” brutal riffage and highly mixed clave steers the band into darker territory. From there, the riffs churn like troubled waters and the messages sound like dire warnings. Sadly, this album was the band’s sole release.

Overall the quality of these recordings, like the Zambian landscape itself, runs from plateaus to flatlands to the occasional Victoria Falls-like dip. Bruce Miller

Various Artists

Intermediate Masterworks for Marimba Bridge CD x 2

Intermediate Masterworks for Marimba is a remarkable undertaking in every regard, with two discs featuring 24 new concert pieces, two-thirds of which were commissioned for this project. The remainder were winning entries in a contest held by the Zeltsman Marimba Festival, the organization behind this endeavor.

The music ranges from Carla Bley’s playfully wistful “Over There” to Gunther Schuller’s angular “Three Small Adventures” and J.K. Randall’s abstract “Through Lapland.” Sonically there is the full gamut from the rich bass notes in Steven Mackey’s “Beast” to the skittering upper register of Louis Andriessen’s “Mouse Running.” Other musical traditions are touched on occasionally, such as the African folk-music influences in Robert Aldridge’s “The Zebra” and the Oriental timbres of Chen Yi’s “Jing Marimba.” There’s also a surprise appearance in the form of a new piece by Paul Simon—he’d written it for guitar and Nancy Zeltsman adapted it to the marimba. Richly recorded, thoughtfully sequenced, and well-performed (by a rotating cast of eight marimbists) the two WWW.SIGNALTONOISEMAGAZINE.COM SIGNAL to NOISE #58 | 77

Fabula Suite Lugano ECM CD

Much like Christian Wallumrød’s previous ECM outing The Zoo Is Far, Fabula Suite Lugano finds the composer and pianist distancing himself from jazz: it’s a compositionally-oriented collection that takes its bearings from classical and Norwegian folk musics. The distinctive timbral interplay between Wallumrød’s piano (plus harmonium and toy piano), Tanja Orning’s cello, Giovanna Pessi’s baroque harp, Eivind Lønning’s trumpet, and Gjermund Larsen’s violin, Hardanger fiddle, and viola accounts for a major part of the recording’s appeal.

At times the music has a Baroque flavor, as on “Scarlatti Sonata” and the stately “Jumpa.” On “Quote funèbre,” Larsen adds improvised commentary to sparse piano chords drawn from the music of Olivier Messiaen and Morton Feldman. Some tracks are more programmatic: the landscape of “Pling,” sure enough, is dotted by sparse piano plinks, and “Snake” (with its slithering cello and harp) and “Solemn Mosquitoes” (with its fluttering ensemble trills) are accurately titled. “Blop,” on the other hand, hardly seems the optimal word to capture its elegant harp strums.

While he was swimming in Lugano, Wallumrød began thinking of Nina Simone’s rendering of “Nobody’s Fault but Mine,” and the result was “I Had a Mother Who Could Swim,” which brings a hint of gospel and slow blues to the recording. Though the 18 tracks are so varied that Fabula Suite Lugano may not be as cohesive as one might like, there’s still much to admire about the disc. Ron Schepper

David S. Ware Saturnian Aum Fidelity CD

Sabir Mateen Urdla XXX Rogue Art CD

David S. Ware and Sabir Mateen are both well-practiced solo saxophonists, but their practice has taken different forms. From the late ’80s until it disbanded in 2006, Ware rarely performed outside of his quartet with Matthew Shipp and William Parker and most of his solo playing has been at his New Jersey home, alone.

Mateen, on the other hand, has spent countless hours playing to passersby on streets and subway platforms, sometimes with partners but also frequently by himself.

Now in his 60s, Ware is on the comeback trail after a brief outing with a new piano-less quartet and an extended lay-off imposed by kidney disease and an organ transplant that necessitated a lengthy recovery period. He seems to be recovering parts of an older self; besides his usual horn, the tenor sax, he pulls out two more that he hasn’t used for twenty years, the saxello (a B-flat soprano sax) and the stritch (a straight alto sax).

What he does on each of Saturnian’s three pieces shows how pure Ware’s concept has been; on each he proceeds much as he would within his group, declaring melody and then 78 | SIGNAL to NOISE #58 WWW.SIGNALTONOISEMAGAZINE.COM

SOUNDWATCH

chasing it through permutations that often climax with coarse-toned but utterly controlled overblowing. Other musicians may have framed him and there’s no denying the passion and power of Ware’s accompanists over the years, but they were playing his music. You can strip away those layers, you can transform its tone, but it still moves in much the same way.

URDLA is an engraving workshop in Villeurbanne, France, which has hosted many creative music concerts, and Sabir Mateen made the trek from New York City to help the facility mark its thirtieth birthday. Thus the concert opens with a bit of ceremony, some chanting and rattling perhaps intended to establish Mateen as a shamanic presence. He does this more effectively with his horns—an alto clarinet and an alto sax. He works first with the smaller horn, tearing rippling figures in the air, then weaving and bobbing in more dynamic and vaguely boppish fashion. A brief poem asserting music’s essentiality divides the concert into clarinet and saxophone segments, but it’s his playing that proves his assertion.

“Jimmy Lyons” pays tribute to a fallen hero by concentrating the virtues of Lyons’ playing—pungent tone, elaborate motivic development, and a truly bluesy cry—into less than five minutes. “Sekasso Blues” doesn’t really reference Malian music the way its name might lead you to expect, but its fluid and diverse assertion of blues feeling without resort to the form is true to that music’s spirit. Mateen’s no panderer, but he falls back on essentials of tone and emotion to keep things human. Bill Meyer

Kurt Gottschalk turns on and tunes in for the season’s blockbuster video releases.

David Tudor and Bandoneon

@C

Music for Empty Rooms Baskaru CD

Porto-based duet @C are uncanny composers and sound crafters who take simple sound sources and radically reinvent them. Music for Empty Rooms is in some respects their homage to the road, many of the compositions using recordings gathered from various tours as a starting point. @C diffuse these audio polaroids into something disproportionate and irregular: seven dense, complex compositions in which momentary textures explode into vast soundscapes, while more extended sound phenomena are instead compressed.

Musical moments emerge from the clutter of field recordings and DSP: on “76.3,” for instance, one hears clicks and pops from wind instruments, rumbling piano lines, and echoing drums. Their presence curiously feels natural and ‘un-staged,’ as if the recordists simply happened upon them.

The entire disc is an elegantly flowing sound journey—with “76.5,” with its melancholic piano tune and wavering sine pattern, serving as the CD’s beautiful midpoint—and it would do the founding fathers of musique concrète proud. Lawrence English CORRECTIONS! Michael Chamberlain’s reviews of Chicago Underground Duo, Von Freeman and Bobby Previte in STN#57 were misattrubuted to Marc Medwin and James Hale. We regret the error, apologies to all parties!

courtesy Microcinema Int'l

Christian Wallumrød Ensemble

It’s hard to imagine how shockingly submersive the environment must have been in 1966, when David Tudor—with the assistance of thirty Bell Telephone specialists—presented his Bandoneon ! (a combine) as a part of “Nine Evenings: Theatre & Engineering,” a series of installations/concerts at a New York City armory that must have challenged many spectators’ ideas of music. Microcinema International has already released performances

by John Cage and Robert Rauschenberg from the series, and the Tudor is a welcome addition. The filmed performance is only 15 minutes, an intense attack involving the oversize accordion which gives the piece its name, amplified and played back through remote-controlled speakers moving around the huge brick building. It’s to Tudor’s credit that the piece, even through the limits of its documentation here, stands up to the work of today’s noise artists. The 40-minute DVD is fleshed out with contemporary interviews with Merce Cunningham, Pauline Oliveros and others talking about Tudor and, quite charmingly, his discovery of the bandoneon and tango music which led to the creation of the piece.

A video can only do so much to replicate the experience of an audiovisual installation, and watching Bandoneon likely will make most viewers wish they had been there. The same is true of Noise Forest (Aural Terrains), a filmed “environment” created by the KGB trio (Brendan Dougherty, Guido Henneböhl and Kim Cascone) with bassist Daniel Büttner and guitarist/percussionist Olivier Di Placido. The soundtrack was recorded live with projections of refracted light and a thicket of trees, presented here without a view of the musicians.

There’s a strange dichotomy between the stillness of the video and the slow, metallic abrasiveness of the score. The package doesn’t do much to let the home viewer know what the original project was, but as an audio recording with bonus pictures of trees it’s still pretty entertaining.

The A/V relationship is flipped on Flying Sutra

for Beginners, a self-released DVD by a band of the same name with video by Geoff T. Graham.

Here the nearly-narrative scenes steal the show, with rockish guitar and drums providing fitting, incidental accompaniment. The scenes (mostly animals, occasionally skateboarders) have a nice momentum, like the feeling of not really paying attention to a movie. The musicians, however, are paying attention, and play fittingly bombastic rock or passive ramblings as the video moves along.

The ears and eyes are on equal footing on Stained Radiance (Greenleaf Music), a collaboration between guitarist Nels Cline (Wilco, the Nels Cline Singers) and painter Norton Wisdom (who has supplied visuals for Beck, Mike Watt, and DJ Logic). It’s a great session for Cline, who hovers right on the electric edge of beauty and noise.

Wisdom applies exaggerated strokes of color applied to a backlit screen, seeming to use abstract art as a vehicle to reach mythical depictions: you don’t see the mermaid coming, it’s suddenly just there. They create two long pieces (although Wisdom creates numerous paintings, each one obliterating the last) at L.A.’s The Smell, making for one of Cline’s finest releases.

MVD’s releases of the Canadian Bravo TV series Solos continues with two more masters and one a generation younger, all filmed solo on a beautiful soundstage and with incidental videos. Following episodes featuring Bill Frisell, James “Blood” Ulmer, Greg Osby and others, the new run includes Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Andrew Hill and Lee Konitz. It’s a special pleasure to see the latter two masters—the late Hill, who died in 2007 at 75; the reclusive Konitz, who rarely grants interviews— given such treatment: a beautiful soundstage and a nicely put-together document. Brief interview segments separate the songs, adding emphasis without distracting from the beautifully recorded (both audio and video) solo performances. Icons Among Us: Jazz in the Present Tense takes a talkier approach. Michael Rivoira, Lars Larson and

Peter J. Vogt’s 90-minute documentary tackles the tired question of what jazz is. It’s nothing new to pit Bill Frisell against Wynton Marsalis in 2010: the questions of funding and propriety had teeth 15 years ago, but the forces have long since retreated to separate camps. In a sense, though, that’s what gives the film its strength. Put before a camera, Robert Glasper, Matthew Shipp and Marco Benevento are thoughtful people probably not looking to fight. It may be of more interest to fans new to the music than those who remember when the young lions were getting the lion’s share of the jazz pie, but the advent of the new empires of Vandermark and Zorn makes the question seem largely academic.

A more interesting question in the 21st century might be “What is metal?” With endless divisions and hybrids of black, death, stoner, doom, brutal, experimental and other such epithets, the genre has become a minefield of adjectives. Director Bill Zebub sets about answering some of those questions in two films, Death Metal: Are We Watching You Die? and Pagan Metal: A Documentary (both Bill Zebub Productions/MVD). Zebub clearly enjoys being behind the camera, and is the auteur behind such cheeky T&A slasher flicks as Assmonster and The Worst Horror Movie Ever Made (and, full disclosure, a fellow WFMU DJ). His approach as a documentarian is much like that of a fan with a camera: upbeat and informed interviews cut with concert footage. Death Metal covers ground trod before, with musicians and producers trying to distinguish, or refusing to distinguish, between black and death, pointing to riff and tempo changes (death more complex, black more monolithic) and the eternal debate about Cookie Monster vocals.

To its credit, the film doesn’t get hung up on the story of Mayhem and the first generation of Norwegian groups, instead letting Cannibal Corpse, Cradle of Filth and Septic Flesh live in the present.

It’s a fun movie, but Pagan Metal is far better. Here Zebub is dealing with a newer classification, so the boundaries are less defined and the musicians more invested in trying to define the terms. The music leans more toward folk and progressive rock, is sometimes acoustic and generally softer, though still with a metallic tinge. The subject matter is more pointedly about mythology and history, and the members of Finntroll, Ensiferum, and Turisas prove to be thoughtful, interesting people with considered global views and thoughts on preserving cultural identity in the face of Western and European Union expansion. These are the keepers of a long-lit flame, and with camera in hand and little funding in his wallet, Zebub does a great job of relaying an interesting tale about a new generation of myth-keepers and storytellers.

It’s fun to pretend Ulli Lommel’s 1980 film Blank Generation is also a documentary, and it almost is, with Richard Hell playing rising punk star Billy, whose band gigs at CBGB’s playing songs that had already been recorded by, er, Richard Hell. It’s a typical tale of a young musician struggling with the first taste of fame and sleeping with beautiful foreign journalists, made notable by the actual live footage of Hell and his band, the Voidoids (featuring Robert Quine) and a hilarious table-turning interview with Andy Warhol playing himself. At only 78 minutes, it’s still pretty rough, but the scenes of the old East Village and its artists make up for it.✹

WWW.SIGNALTONOISEMAGAZINE.COM SIGNAL to NOISE #58 | 79

BURNERS AND BACK FLIPS

Joel Calahan samples the season’s finest underground hip-hop releases.

IN ‘N’ OUT

LA-based producer Benjamin Wynn (aka Deru) makes what I hesitate to call hip-hop, only because past records with Neo-Ouija and Merck have been so electronic, and a collaboration with British composer Talbot was a confluence of the digital and the orchestral. In short, Wynn makes ART music. But Say Goodbye to Useless (Mush) is both an expansion of those excursions and a firmly hip-hop production in its appropriative aesthetic and predominantly regularizedbeat arrangements. And “arrangement” is not too exquisite a term to lavish on these instrumental pieces. The album opening captures his moves aptly. “I Would Like’s” haunting repro of the Singing Nun leads into “I Want,” based on the verse vocal sample from the prior track—set together, the two form an elegant suite of dissonant and dark themes in complex byplay with the rhythmic backcloth.

A couple of loops of signature brighter-thanbright levels is enough to tag North Carolina’s Little Brother. Their much-hyped final group collection LeftBack (Hall of Justus)—or as the slyly pedantic Big Pooh calls it in an interview, their “dénouement”—is emblematic of the dazzling electronic sound they cultivated in the wake of original producer 9th Wonder’s departure.

“Curtain Call” is a first single that plays to their strengths: tinny drums shuffle in loping style, and a sunny horn-and-vocals chop pushes up under Phonte’s high-register delivery. “Before the Night Is Over” keeps its shift keyboard licks warm and subdued, like the best of Count Bass D; “So Cold” has a Black Milk-electro jam backing. In other words, producer Khrysis keeps it fresh with the Joneses. But he too often let beats sit untended over long stretches.

Six songs sit at four-point-five minutes. The eccentric loops can seem arbitrary (the repetitive vocal cut in “Revenge” gets irritating in a hurry). These flaws are a group effort: in short, they do keep on. One might speculate that the tenuous nature of their collaboration over the past five years has made it difficult to conceive of albums as manicured collections; and one hears of internal squabbles over beats and the like. But LeftBack is as disappointing in the end as their pre-hyped Getback was three years ago.

It’s entirely possible Little Brother only had one great album in them.

Is Drrrty Midwest the Next Big Thing? St. Louis natives Earthworms bring back the posse, an endangered species in post-millennium rhyme culture. Their sophomore wax, Midnight at the Capricorn (Indyground), parades a boulevard full of golden boom-bap, with “Boombox,” “Circles” and “Fire on the Floor” particularly fine. Warm horns, anyone? The heart-on-sleeve debut of Tanya Morgan MC Donwill—an Ohioan from Cincy—is Don Cusack in High Fidelity (Interdependent). The record is a conceptual homage to the self-pitying ’90s film, but it’s clear that Donwill indulges confessional monologues on tracks like the single “Laura’s Song” because he means them—the insistent deictic plea of the chorus (“It’s about you / It’s about YOU”) has the tone of passionate speech down cold.

“December 27th” is a real eulogy for his father, and an overlay of the bursting praise “God bless your life” and “I’m gonna see you again” is

For the first jazz salvo of summer, you can’t get bigger than Bobby Previte’s drums. They sound as huge as the Guns of Navarone in the aptly named Big Guns (Avant), an arresting trio disc from Previte, trombonist Gianluca Petrella, and keyboardist Antonella Salis. Contrast is the guiding principle.

Previte’s furious polyrhythms are locked in eternal battle against oozing blobs of trombone fatness from Petrella, whose chops sound strong enough to inflate the Hindenburg. This trio must have snagged an NSF grant for subjecting ditties to extreme stress. “Twilight Zone” suggests a phalanx of teens from West Side Story sauntering along the bottom of the Marianas Trench, struggling to snap their fingers as the nitrogen bubbles in their blood. In the title track, a gamelan orchestra sounds like it’s pinned down at Omaha Beach. “Control Freak” is (of course) a total freakout, and “Battle of Cannae” sounds like a bear chased by hornets into a nursing home. Keyboard man Salis tries to keep up with these rampages, but more often than not, he ends up sounding like a cute moll hanging out with two sonic gangsters.

As liaisons go, “the leader’s wife sings” is among the four most dreaded words in jazz, but New Jersey-based pianist Adegoke Steve Colson and his wife, vocalist Iqua Colson, have a beautiful thing going on. The Untarnished Dream (Silver Sphinx) is a generous, rewarding sampler of their work together, with four tart, smart vocal tracks interspersed among five probing, meaty instrumentals. Steve Colson was a member of the AACM in the early ’70s, and since then he has deepened and broadened his blend of free jazz, post-bop, relaxed lyricism, obsessive tension and 12-tone art song. Songs like “Triumph of the Outcasts, Coming” (Cole Porter meets Alban Berg meets Ahmad Jamal) bristle with spikes but have a cactus flower heart; the urbane sarcasm of “Digression” plays delightfully against the Colsons’ natural warmth. The ten-minute closer, “And It Was Set in Ivory,” is a heavy-lidded opium dream. Two legends—drummer Andrew Cyrille and bassist Reggie Workman—provide perfect support.

Jazz artists who freely move “in and out” risk losing half their audience half the time, but isn’t it great when they don’t care? Pianist Satoko Fujii is both a container and a fluid, and she knows how to shake order and chaos into an elusive, life-encompassing drink. Rocks disintegrate into vapor and wisps build into mountains in Fujii’s bracing, protean Ma-do/ Desert Ship (Not Two). Tolling chords ascend toward trumpeter Natsuki Tamura’s atmospheric improvisations like suspension-bridge cables in fog. Anybody might take the lead here; drummer Akira Korikoshi fries your pate with a ferocious, close-miked solo in “Sunset in the Desert.” On the dirge-like “Ripple Mark,” bassist Norikatsu Koreyasu floods the scene with arco scratches, like marks on the floor after a sarcophagus has been dragged across. There’s an overall feel of loss and crisis, and not just in the brief, all-out freakouts. With no saxophones to smooth out or wrinkle the mood, the trumpet’s natural-seeming affinity for alarm and mourning takes over.

The bass clarinet can be deployed as an exotic backup weapon, a la Eric Dolphy, or quarantined for strange and wondrous solo experiments, a la Jeremy Stein, but it’s rarely given the same status routinely given to tenor sax—as the lead voice of a full-length, red-meat trio disc. Thomas Savy’s French Suite (Plus Loin) slams that gap shut. Savy

again effective for its effusive vulnerability. One typically doesn’t dwell on lack of eloquence as an admirable trait; but when interspersed with an obvious talent on verse lyrics, these types of choruses stand out to effect.

DJ Erik Nava, aka Egadz, aka Matterhorn on his latest release Deathstare (Kid Without Radio), constructs straight four-four rock beats with arena-filling kicks and a full ensemble of cymbal accents. He layers sample lines like a full band, too, heavy basslines underneath melodic keyboard and guitar riffs. The aesthetic project is animated and vital, though it seems destined to cul-de-sac into typical instrumental niches, like video game tracks and pre-concert PA mixes.

Hipster rap for hipsters: On Art School Girls (Green Owl), Ninjasonik goes where Spank Rock and The Cool Kids have gone before, but the emphasis on the electronic dance-beat production over self-important rhymes puts Ninjasonik in the long tail of the bell curve. The MC noms de plume are calculated and hamfisted (Reverend McFly, Telli “Bathroomsexxx” Gramz and DJ Teenwolf); they’re pretentious on tracks declaiming the virtues of “Art School Girls”; and some inexplicable punk rock chords rear up on “No No No.” But “Picture Party” and “Somebody’s Gonna Get Pregnant” are right-on club dance—in my book, you’d have argue pretty hard to claim these guys aren’t as legit as a Billboard success like Ke$ha.

Though he faces legions of unsanctioned followers, Oxnard, California native Madlib is the official torchbearer of the J Dilla legacy. 2010 has seen an early onslaught of new material, from an internet mixtape collaboration with Dilla partner Guilty Simpson to a 12-volume, onedisc-per-month beat tape series titled Medicine Show (meant to evoke hucksterism or the liberal tune-mining of early circuit performers?). The Guilty Simpson collaboration predictably wanders with interludes of eclectic spoken samples like camp stand-up comedy bits and movie dialogue, and flickering, filtered and slo-mo’ed soul breaks. But they keep all the balls in the air for magic if rare moments when Simpson breaks in with his deliberate enunciation—tip-toeing across a wicked Double Diamond sample on “Back on the Road Again,” tag-teaming with Frank on the constantly-modulating “Scratch Warning.” The Medicine Show discs mine deep in obscure locales for source material organized thematically. Beat Konducta in Africa is the March entry, and like the entire series, it’s for collectors only: minimal reworking means the album relies on curatorial interest and capacious crate knowledge rather than true production.

MURS drops another joint with NC producer 9th Wonder, Fornever (SMC), bringing their grand total to four. The collection is competent, but unremarkable. But blind misogynist sensibility is what grates, and primarily because Murs is obviously a smart guy and should know better.

“Asian Girls” not only rehearses the offensive (and clichéd!) “yellow fever” trope, but Murs has the audacity to suggest he’s doing Asian women a favor (“Nobody be showing you Asian girls no love!”). The jilted love tale “Vikki Veil” has a more complex subject matter—dating an adult film star—that Murs just can’t handle. Does he

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really want sympathy that she won’t quit her job after he calls her his personal sex toy?

Ruste Juxx circles elliptically in the Boot Camp Clik orbit, and his occasional presence on Duck Down releases proves that people in Sean Price’s Rolodex can be counted on for quality if not consistency. The Exxecution (Duck Down) is the first main stage he’s played and he takes the chance for lots of barking and jersey-popping.

The solid boom-bap behind is governed by Canadian transplant Marco Polo. “Take Money” (with Freddie Foxxx, who has even one more X than Ruste!) and “Death Penalty” are highlights on a record that veers uncomfortably at times into the same spectrum as 7L & Esoteric.

Truthlive (aka Evan Phillips) recruits prime veteran Jake One (coming off a minor masterpiece in The Stimulus Package) for his debut, Patience (Interdependent). Jake One is on point once again, and “It’s Easy” is a good example of his method: he takes slow, methodical beats and builds verse-chorus hills and valleys with isolated loops added and subtracted to the mix. Part of the album’s pleasure is songwriting commonsense—little details like the proper drum fills at the end of sixteen-bar lines make it clear that Jake nails total production rather than just looking for a clever beat and loop.

Like his Usual Suspects character namesake, Chicago MC Verbal Kent sports a close-cropped coif and an aquiline profile—as well as evident skill for casual colloquy. The low-key affair Save Your Friends (Gravel/Molemen) reminds one how hidden Kent’s kept himself over the last six years on the scene. “Monologue” features his typical gift for chorus: “There’s no telling where my verses might lead / Sorta like the scene that a person might read / In a monologue / Over a bottle of / Something you have bottled up / Some things you are not above.” The varying line length offers nice rhythmic counterpoint under the minor-key aspirations of Marco Polo and Oddisee on production.

Activist B. Dolan is the brainchild of corporate power knowledge-base Knowmore.org—and as an emcee, songs like “Fifty Ways to Bleed Your Customer” and “The Reptilian Agenda” (Fallen House Sunken City, Strangefamous) make no bones about his partisan stance against commercial culture. In persona, Dolan is a brusque character with a confrontational style of singlerhymed verses and industrial beats by ALIAS. But does a diss track work confronting a faceless enemy? Complaint is more like it, and if you can stomach ’em, Dolan serves them steaming hot and mile high.

Devin the Dude takes the weed-loving and the ho-magnet clichés to a whole ’nother level, but that’s not what makes his work appealing.

That would be its utter simplicity, both on the level of basic keyboard lines and the slow jam style over hand-clap beats. And then there’s Devin’s inimitable sing-song vocal style. You can just hear him: “I gotta ho that doesn’t like hugs and kisses / She doesn’t do the dishes / She fusses and she bitches / But suckin’ on this dick is what she does the best” and so on. But Suite 420 (E1) is distant even for Devin, with a smattering of illuminating moments and not the memorable chorus hooks that he relies on to wedge his genius in the auditory meatus. ✹

Larry Cosentino examines modern-day manifestations of bop and beyond.

seems to have mastered his instrument the same way Steve Lacy nailed the soprano (and nailed himself to it). He can make a standard bop line percolate like tomorrow’s coffee, slither around the nimblest figures produced by drummer Bill Stewart and bassist Scott Colley, or dig in and strangle a note until it squeals. It’s not a virtuoso display. From the earthy morning invocation of “Ouverture” to the loping, ostinato-based “Stones” to the insinuating shuffle of “Atlantique Nord,” I can’t see a crack of daylight between Savy’s monster technique and absorbing ideas. He’s disciplined—he’s got his growling bear of an instrument on a tight chain— but he can surprise. He opens the cell-like melody of “Nord” with a blue-sky middle section that takes your breath away.

A mellow blend of nostalgia and irony, aged to a smooth finish, is what you get on bassist Steve Swallow’s trio disc Playing in Traffic (Auand), with Ohad Talmor on tenor sax and Adam Nussbaum on drums. The inviting bicycles on the CD cover convey the idea. Swallow is 70, which is not really that old, but there’s a serenity, frankness and openness to fun in this music that only a mature musician could manage. Despite the perpetual-motion hustle of the disc’s title track, smoky reveries like the nicely titled “Undress Under Duress” dominate. The jewel here is “Days of Old,” a quiet, spacious rumination with profound beauty and just the right emotional distance—a dry white wine to savor. The humor is dry, too—Swallow and Nussbaum stagger through an odd duo track called “Adam and Steve.” Density and busy-ness are not on this group’s plate, but everyone gives so much energy there isn’t a dead moment. From the standpoint of timbre, you get two trios for one here—Talmor’s lucid, plaintive tenor lines, laid over Swallow’s gently percussive attack and sustained, chord-building tones on electric bass, drift frequently into trumpet-piano world.

For a bumpier take on the piano trio, the Swedish trio Correction stays off-road in Two Nights in April (Ayler). A typical track (not that there is one) moves from aggressive, arrhythmic probing into a tight three-way clinch, then tumbles into a hard-swinging, lopsided groove, unlubricated by melodic or harmonic grease. In “Gyllene Tigern” and parts of other tracks, the trio swings as hard as the triumvirate of Ellington, Roach, and Mingus on Money Jungle, only without Duke’s harmonic cushion. It’s an instrumental disc with a verbal, declamatory quality. Pianist Sebastian Bergstrom likes to obsess over short phrases, but he doesn’t mutter them, like Mal Waldron, so much as declaim them, with an orator’s verve for anaphora. Elsewhere, he bangs away as if he’s locked in a motel room, typing the Great American Novel on short deadline, with bassist Joacim Nyberg and loose-cannon drummer Emil Astrand-Melin. Nervous pacing with outbursts of aural profanity is about as relaxed as it gets.

(Nyberg’s solos sound unprintable.)

There are introspective moments in the Claudia Quintet’s Royal Toast (Cuneiform), but this, too, is restless music, blending the jittery grandeur of Frank Zappa, the giddy swirls of minimalism, and the harmonic attention span of both. But Ted Reichman’s accordion and Matt Moran’s vibes emit a nitrous oxide blend that relaxes you in the dentist’s chair.

Reedman Chris Speed and percussive bandmates Hollenbeck, Moran and pianist Gary Versace vie with one another in intricacy and dynamism.

The longer tracks are interspersed with brief, overdubbed “solo duets” assembled by trickery: Hollenbeck asked each band member to play two improvised solos, then combined them without revealing his intent. The results find each soloist surprisingly semi-congruent with himself.

Daydreamers who forget to move on a green light probably have the temperament to enjoy 3ology with Ron Miles (Tapestry). Those who flip the bird at such daydreamers might not, but they could use the lesson laid out here. The hiccup-like, syncopated groove of “Back in Hotchitakee” plows a happy furrow in your mind—it’s just irritating enough to salt the meat. “Flight of the NeoCerebral Peace Iguana” is a model of searching, in-the-groove balladry. On several tracks they cut the rhythmic motor, let the vessel drift and choose the most satisfying moment to fire the beat back up again. The group fights jam-disc boredom by juggling “energy music” a la Elvin Jones, as in “Jimmyin’ the Bakin’ Shack,” with small surprises like “For Don,” scored for cornet and handclaps alone.

The jazz bazaar is heaped with East-West fusions of all sorts, but there’s a special kick to Armenian pianist/keyboardist Tigran Hamasyan’s triplecaffeinated Red Hail (Plus Loin). Hamasyan took first prize in the Thelonious Monk competition in 2006, but he’s not in thrall to the tradition, except maybe to swing on the wrecking ball of high-fusion-era Hancock-Shorter-Zawinul-McLaughlin. The title track is a holy hail of bassoon, drums and electronics meant to depict a rain of pomegranate seeds pummeling the Earth. Supple Eastern melodies and sinuous wordless vocals slide over molten fires of fusion and post-bop improv like tectonic plates. It’s a crowded tapestry, but Hamasyan keeps it heavily framed with rock drumming and low-end piano grooves that recall the Bad Plus.

Stubborn marketing realities have pushed New York post-bop mainstay Marc Cary in the inevitable trough of oblivion between “hot new artist” and “living legend,” but Focus Trio—Live 2009 (Motéma) suggests a third category, “cream center.” The disc catches Cary’s longtime trio riding high on the arc of a summer tour of the U.S. and Europe, keeping the post-Coltrane jazz spectrum of power, lyricism, and social consciousness lit. Cary moves from Erik Satie delicacy to Tyner-esque left-hand bombs, romps through one standard (“Just in Time”), and leads the trio through a blistering specialty, Jackie McLean’s “Minor March.” Drummer Sameer Gupta is a full partner, especially when he pulls out his tabla and spurs Cary to stretch into zones beyond the beyond. On “KC_Bismillah,” Cary and Gupta all but trade places: Gupta’s tone-rich tabla fans out to pianistic proportions, while Cary’s percussive solo mirrors Gupta’s polyrhythmic pops to perfection.

With this trio, confidence breeds courage, not complacence. In “My Love Is You,” Cary eases into ballad mode, but Gupta and bassist David Ewell back him up with a strange, elephants-upstairsfucking pulsations that make you rethink the whole notion of a ballad. In mid-career or not, Cary is the unsung man in the trenches, keeping the music going, gently opening up its range, without angst or pretension. He closes with a virtuosic run through several changes of mood and tempo that another artist might have dubbed “Resolution Suite,” or at least something with “Journey” in it. Cary just calls it “CD Changer” and lets it stop in mid-phrase. ✹

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CONTINENTAL RIFFS Peter Margasak travels the world in search of subversive sounds.

Argentine pianist and composer Fernando Otero sounds more and more like the obvious heir to the Nuevo Tango mantle of Astor Piazzolla, but with his superb new album Vital (World Village) he continues to prove that his music is bigger than that. It’s a wonderfully austere, dramatic recording indebted as much to contemporary classical music as tango.

Most of the pieces are spare duets between Otero and violinist Nick Danielson—only the pieces “Siderata” and “Reforma Mental” feature a larger ensemble, with Hector del Curto on the bandoneon— shot through with the drama, and, less emphatically, the rhythms of the Argentinean style, but Otero’s sense of harmony and counterpoint is boundless.

The music on Cuba Libre (Far Out) was cut by the powerhouse Cuban Latin jazz fusion band Irakere back in 1980 during a tour in Japan, and—released only in Japan—it represents one of the group’s rarest efforts. While there’s no denying the band’s technical brilliance and imagination, I think there’s a reason why this outing is so obscure. All of the pieces were written and arranged by Japanese producer Chikara Ueda, and there’s a certain remove from the band’s Caribbean roots that doesn’t translate. On a track like “Encuentro” the band almost rises above the weak material, but despite the presence of founding members like keyboardist Chucho Valdes and trumpeter Arturo Sandoval, this lost document sinks into the bog of overly slick fusion.

The music on Album D’Or de la Biguine (Frémeaux & Associés) was recorded in 1966 by the Orchestre Traditionnel de la Guadeloupe, but these stellar musicians were revisiting a much earlier era, magically summoning the buoyant spirit of French Caribbean music from four and five decades in the past, in particular the work of Fairness’s Jazz.

This was not an academic exercise, as the star reedist here, Robert Mavounzy, was a member of the original ensemble, and his playing here freely acknowledges swing-era jazz figures, while pianist Alain Jean-Maire references ideas from bebop.

For all of the top-flight improvisation, the music is fiercely, joyfully dance-oriented with unstoppable rhythms, and the array of guest singers bring it on every track. There are also four killer tracks by Ensemble de Quadrille Guadeloupéen with wild violin playing by Élie Cologer and hectoring vocals from Ambroise Gouala.

Brazilian singer and songwriter Karina Buhr made her mark as a co-leader of Recife’s wonderful twisted roots ensemble Comadre Fulozinha along with singer Isaar França—who’s worked with DJ Dolores and released several solo albums herself— pushing rhythms like ciranda and coco into the multi-kulti present. She steps out on her own with the bold Eu Menti Pra Você (Tratore), a beguiling and richly varied pop record that veers in and out of Brazilian traditions, but largely ditches the Pernambuco folk traditions that have guided her career until this point. Her easygoing vocals sometimes struggle with the more sophisticated melodies she’s created here, but her exuberance and the sharpness of the arrangements make up for such faults.

There’s bubbly tropical pop, groove-heavy rock, jacked-up electro, robotic new wave, arty funk and more. Her band is both tight and agile, and Sao Paulo uber-guitarist Fernando Catatau brings his signature twang as a complement to a few tunes.

Even as the globe continues shrinking there remains a place for ancient traditions to reach new

ears. On the stunning South India: Flowers and Ashes, Hymns to Shiva (Ocora) ethnomusicologist William Tallotte shares gorgeous Hindu ritual vocal music affiliated with the upper castes in the state of Tamil Nadu that he recorded in 2003-4. These vocalists, known as oduvar cantors, sing at daily rituals and annual feasts, sitting cross-legged on the perimeter of the temple’s altar, elucidating specific texts and hymns. The purer manifestation of the tradition captured here features nothing but a single voice, a quiet drone, and tiny handheld cymbals, and despite its austerity these performances are deeply powerful: short vignettes, most around two minutes, distinguished by tightly coiled recitations of arresting emotional beauty.

The sounds on Vadhya Sunadha Pravaham (Felmay) may be more familiar when it comes to Indian classical music, but this stunning recital of Carnatic music distinguishes itself in two ways. All three frontline musicians are women in a discipline where females have rarely achieved top billing, and the rich timbral construction features an uncommon instrumental combination. Violinist Lalgudi Vijayalakshmi, flutist Mala Chandrashekar, and veena player Jaishree Jairaj weave gorgeous, hypnotic unison lines and unfurl lyric improvisations over intensely bubbling rhythms sculpted on the mridangam.

The Aga Khan Trust for Culture continues to finance and direct an essential series of traditional music from the Silk Road. In the Shrine of the Heart: Popular Classics from Bukhara and Beyond (Smithsonian Folkways) is the latest volume, and like all of the recent titles, it also includes an illuminating DVD. A variety of stellar musicians from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan perform bracing versions of popular folk classics passed down from generation to generation, and (reflecting the region’s history) there’s a gorgeous blend of Indian and Chinese sonorities—well, that’s the way it sounds to an outsider, anyway. Central Asia possesses ancient and rich musical traditions, and the handful of artists presented here bring a mix of virtuosity and fire to these performances, from Nodira Pirmatova, who plays the dutar, a long-necked, two-string lute, and sings with sorrowful beauty, to Dilbarjan Bekturdyeva, who plays the saz (a small accordion favored by females in the Khorezm region of Uzbekistan) and who sings with a tightly clenched soulfulness, to the mind-bending a cappella singing of Mahmudjon Tojibaev, representing a tradition called katta ashula, which sounds religious, but only is in its fervor.

Across the spectrum there’s a hardscrabble directness mixed with a kind of rustic poetry that’s never less than devastating.

In the Footsteps of Babur: Musical Encounters from the Lands of the Mughals (Smithsonian Folkways) is a bit more proactive in shaping the performances, examining the traditional flow of ideas between the regions, a kind of “modern-day encore of Mughal artistic synthesis.” The Californiabased Afghani musician Homayun Sakhi (who plays the three-stringed, double-barreled lute called the rubab), Indian santur master Rahul Sharma, Tajik dutar player Sirojiddin Juraev, and Badakhshani Mukhtor Muborakqadomov (who plays the setar, a long-necked lute with three steel strings) tackle a variety of pieces from the various homelands in shifting instrumental combinations, and while the results aren’t exactly modern, such blends are definitively

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new. But in all cases the musicians easily discover their shared language, unleashing hauntingly lyric improvisation amid simmering rhythms.

Over the last couple of years I’ve wondered how much more great music producer Francis Falceto could dig up for his marvelous Ethiopiques series.

Not only does Volume 24: Golden Years of Modern Ethiopian Music 1969-1975 (Buda) deliver big-time, but the liner notes also promise “another dozen or so” installments. The present collection digs deeper into the peerless vaults of Ahma Eshete’s Ahma label, delivering the kind of tough pentatonic soul and funk the series first put on the global radar back in the late ’90s. Many of the featured artists have turned up on earlier comps, and the stuff here is equally scintillating, from the forceful Tamrat Molla to the deliriously high-pitched cry of Wubshèt Fisseha and the screaming guitar of Tamru Wèldèab of the Exception Band. There are a couple of beguiling Mulatu Astatke tunes, too, including a calypso, as well as a pair of funky tracks by the Ashantis, a Kenyan group who worked in Addis Ababa and made two singles for Eshete.

Normally Kenya was a destination for visiting musicians, particularly Congolese soukous players.

But loads of great players from below the southern border with Tanzania also emigrated, created a knockout adaptation of Congolese music with Swahili lyrics, and after Arusha Jazz mutated into Simba Wanyika Original in the ’70s the name Wanyika became a veritable touchstone of Tanzanian music.

Few singers affiliated with that name were better than Issa Juma, who first worked with Les Wanyika in the late ’70s, and the excellent new World Defeats the Grandfathers (Sterns) collects nine extended tracks cut with his Super Wanyika Stars between 1982 and 1986. The music jumps, with its light but active hi-hat patter, crisp kit drumming, interlocking liquid guitar riffs, and fat, space-filling bass lines, but Juma’s raspy, commanding baritone is just as exciting as the guitar solos. It’s fascinating, energizing stuff and it’s endlessly thrilling to hear how Tanzanians took the music of Franco and made it their own—in another country no less.

The latest from New York’s Academy Records puts the focus on a rarely exposed African phenomenon: straight-up disco and funk. Lagos Disco Inferno was compiled by Frank Gossner, the crate-digger behind the blog voodoofunk.com, and some of his finds would elude geographic identification. A stone cold jam like “Everybody Get Down” by Asiko Rock Group sounds like it could’ve been released on Casablanca, between singles

by Cameo and the Ohio Players, but there’s a wonderful roughness to the production that almost sounds like avant-funk from New York in the early ’80s. While some of the tracks are only interesting because they happen to be from Nigeria, others are compelling either because of weird production, amateurish performances, or the novel combination of West African sounds with disco. Apart from Geraldo Pino, BLO, and the aforementioned Asiko Rock Band, most of the artists were new to me.

Lisbon’s Ana Moura is one of the strongest figures in the ongoing fado revival and her latest album Leva-Me Aos Fados (World Village) reinforces the fact that her power comes largely from sticking with fundamentals, eschewing the pumped-up drama of Mariza and the impressive envelope-pushing of Cristina Branco. On the other hand, she focuses

WORD MUSIC

Fred Cisterna reviews recent spoken word recordings.

Artists from just about every genre have set pre-existing poems to music. In jazz and pop, there are typically two approaches to doing this: musicians back up recitation, or poems simply function as lyrics for a song. On two recent releases that combine elements of jazz, New Music, and experimental pop—Sam Sadigursky’s Words Project III: Miniatures and Denman Maroney’s Music for Words, Perhaps—poetry plays a central role.

Both composers meld words and music in subtle, thoughtful ways. Sadigursky, a saxophonist/multiinstrumentalist who has played with Brad Mehldau, the Mingus Orchestra, and Darcy James Argue, has released two previous poetry-and-music albums in the Words Project series. In contrast to the earlier discs, III’s tracks are relatively short: the longest clocks in at around four minutes. It’s stylistically quite diverse, with nine vocalists and a number of instrumentalists making appearances. Michael Leonhart and Sadigursky both play a slew of instruments and serve as co-producers.

David Ignatow’s poem “Content” provides lyrics for the striking opener. Monika Heidemann’s multitracked vocals stack up like a canon, and the effect is riveting. At times the listener is hypnotized by the sound of the repeating phrases, but at key moments the words’ meaning dramatically cuts through the vocal layers. Heidemann’s voice also graces “Swirl” by Carl Sandburg, where an Indianflavored melody is intoned over lightly thumping percussion. Zany jazz is the soundtrack for William Carlos Williams’ “Danse Russe”; Sadigursky sings the herky-jerky melody, a line that brings out the poem’s humor. The voices of Sunny Kim and Leonhart nicely mesh on proto-beat Kenneth Patchen’s “Do Me That Love,” which features

acoustic guitar, vibes, cello, and keyboard. Maxim Gorky’s “O Muzyke Tolstykh” is a funny, grotesque portrayal of a musical performance. Singer Christine Correa brings to mind the stirring vocals of Dagmar Krause, and the music evokes the avant-rock of Henry Cow, an outfit that counted Krause among its members. The album closes on a low-key note with Emily Dickinson’s “Light.” Heather Masse recites the words against acoustic guitar parts that hint at classical, jazz, and pop. She repeats the poem’s lines three times as her words quietly echo in the background. The performance is delicately erotic but also comes off like a prayer.

Denman Maroney is known for his work as a “hyperpianist”—a word he employs to describe his use of post-Cagean extended technique.

At times he excites the piano strings by direct plucking or bowing; he also plays them using a variety of objects, creating different timbres in the process. Maroney is a member of the new music group Gamelan Son of Lion, and has played with a number of jazz and new music artists such as Leroy Jenkins, Dave Douglas, and Robert Dick.

Music for Words, Perhaps contains two suites: the title piece, which adapts 10 poems from W.B. Yeats’ Words for Music Perhaps; and “A Thought Revolved,” which interprets four Wallace Stevens works. (The Yeats title sounds like an invitation to composers, and others have adapted poems from that volume.) “I’m Yours,” a shorter piece with music and lyrics by Maroney, rounds out the disc.

The Yeats songs are performed by Maroney and the distinctive German singer Theo Bleckmann, another musician who has traveled between the worlds of jazz and new music. On the first section of “The Song of the Happy Shepherd,” driving piano

patterns back Bleckmann’s fine vocals. The piece moves on to a dissonant passage, before shifting gears again; it’s clear that Maroney has very specific ideas for these chiseled words. Bleckmann’s dramatic speech-singing and Maroney’s manipulation of the piano strings during the first section of “The Second Coming” evoke the sound world of Harry Partch. Later, bowed strings and slowly enunciated words create an entirely different effect.

Iota Jot Yod, a group that performed in the early 1980s and reformed for this recording, performs “A Thought Revolved.” The band comprises Maroney, singer Shelley Hirsch, trumpeter Herb Robertson, bassist Arthur Kell, percussionist David Simons, and special guest Sheila Schonbrun on vocals. The first of the Stevens songs, “The Mechanical Optimist,” sports motoric piano, a rhythm section that swings in unusual ways, and Robertson’s brass statements. Hirsch brings great feeling to a melody that hints at art-rock and Kurt Weill. Iota Jot Yod also plays on Maroney’s linguistically playful original, “I’m Yours.” Here Hirsch’s delightfully wacky vocals do much to animate the cut; it’s easy to imagine hearing the song in a Dada cabaret.

Since I started writing Word Music, I’ve been tempted to mention one website that’s a remarkable treasure trove for spoken-word material—and much else—but never have done so. The reason: I assumed everyone knows about Ubuweb. But if you haven’t checked it out, there’s a whole world to explore at www.ubu.com. Founded by the conceptual poet and artist Kenneth Goldsmith in 1996, this mind-bogglingly deep resource for avant garde images, sounds, and texts is one of the best websites in existence. ✹

on new songs rather than trolling the genre’s storied past. She’s a remarkably expressive singer who chisels her melodies with exquisite precision and tonal purity, and the craft she brings to the tradition continues to obviate the need for novelty. All of the tracks feature the traditional accompaniment of acoustic guitar, Portuguese guitar, and bass, but on “Não é Um Fado Normal” (“This Isn’t a Normal Fado”) she’s joined by drums and bagpipes.

The astonishing French clarinetist called Yom has established his hardcore klezmer bona fides as a member of Klezmer Nova and more convincingly on his knockout 2008 solo album The New King of Klezmer Clarinet, the title a tweak on Naftule Brandwein’s frequent sobriquet. So with his stunning new album Unue (Buda) he situates his astonishing technique in a wide variety of contexts, engaging in bracing duets with a global array of guests—

including the Lebanese quarter-tone trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf, the Chinese Jew’s harp maestro Wang Li, Romanian cimbalom player Iurie Morar, and Iranian percussionist Bijan Chemirani, among others, rendering his technical mastery superfluous in the context of his easy stylistic malleability and lyric tenderness. With a post-klez opening like this, it’s anyone’s guess where Yom takes his gripping music next, but I’m eager to find out. ✹

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THE WEIGHT OF THE WORLD

SMOKING THAT ROCK

The Bastard Noise have long been known as a band specializing in sonic harshness. While it’s true that this is a powerful component of their sound, folks seem to overlook their musicianship. On The Red List (20 Buck Spin), a split with The Endless Blockade, they leave little doubt as to their skills and pursue this direction more emphatically than at any time in their 20-year career. They fuse the dynamics of Red-era Crimson, the chops and affect of death-grind like Cephalic Carnage, and a wonky prankster sensibility that’s served up prog-style (no more so than on the stuttering machines of “Mutant World of Shame/Underworld”). I enjoy the regular dashes of electronic shriek and whine, but Eric Wood’s superbly limber bass playing stands out everywhere for me (Intronaut’s Danny Walker plays drums nearly as well), particularly on the rumbling “Movement Two” and the toppling noise of “U.S.A. Today.” TEB are a more directly hardcore-influenced band, specifically as refracted through the grind of Discordance Axis and Pig Destroyer. Despite the idiom, they play with lots of noise, space, and dramatic movement, as on “Advanced Directive” (with blistering noise and glitch repetition) and “Model 49 Rebreather” (with swarming noise contributions from The Rita).

Italy’s Uffomaut are usually placed in the increasingly crowded “doom” category, but while they play music that’s loud, heavy, and long-form, their particular brand of minimalism—with gongs, chiming clean guitars, and moaning vocals—owes as much to Ummagumma or early Isis as to Electric Wizard or Esoteric. On Eve (Supernatural Cat), the group make their way through a 45-minute, five-part homage to Eve as rebel. The first part makes its way to an anthemic chug, the kind of thing intoned by men in cowls, exploding in feedback and then returning to primordial cool (they keep the same spooky church organ line going throughout the disc). The most potent riffery occurs during the hypnotic fourth part. I dig it because there’s always a sense of (relative) restraint, as well as wafting feedback.

Another valuable reissue from Southern Lord: Virulence’s If This Isn’t a Dream... 1985-1989. Most readers probably know this group better under their more recent name, Fu Manchu, as purveyors of stoner grooves. But in the mid-1980s, Virulence (with singer Ken Pucci the lone member not going on to the subsequent group) played with the misanthropy of My War-era Black Flag (“The Curse”) and that period’s proto-thrash (there are hints of Possessed). They deliver raucous core on “Dead Weight,” an urgent driving tune with a surprising amount of space. But it’s not so much the earlier, thrashy tunes that get under your skin.

Instead, it’s the grinding slow stuff like “Wrapped Up” (with riffing that’s in the same wheelhouse as St. Vitus), the dissonant plod of “Blank Stare,” and “Kindergarten,” whose big yawing chords and slow momentum are quite Melvins-y. The disc is generously filled out with live versions of several tunes from a 1989 Berkeley date.

Chicago trio Lair of the Minotaur might be termed power death metal if they were better musicians. It’s not that they’re bad, but rather that they seem to take as their musical role models AC/DC, Entombed, Motorhead, and High on Fire, going straight for the neck rather than fucking around with triggered drums, sweep picking, and musical frippery. Their “warriors on the wastes” lyrical style (stealing the blood of the innocent, etc.) sorta captures their music too. But the songwriting on Evil Power (The Grind-House) is better than on its predecessor, even though it remains direct

What a pleasure it is to make the acquaintance of Drunkdriver circa Self Titled (Load). Set to explode on impact, the trio pack Dead Fucking Last (anyone who remembers the Grateful... live recording fondly will absolutely flip over Michael Berdan’s old-yeller vocals), Get Fucked and Beauty Apes into a small chamber and pull the trigger till it goes “click.” The fallout is deadly and demanding, the perfect gnarled punk product for those who demand heaviness from their indie acts. The guitars are slashing, the drums are busy but foundational and the vocals, as I mentioned, are sublime, gritty as a bucket of old coffee grinds and mixed expertly. There are a lot of bands that make you wish they had a bass player; Drunkdriver, a trio, don’t. In fact, scarcely would there even be room for another element in this dimly lit din. As a reviewer, when you find an album this vital/virulent it’s often tough to move on. But move on we must...

Alliteration-blessed Tinsel Teeth truck in tight, taut torment with Trash as the Trophy (Load), mining the Halo of Flies canon and post-punkin’ it much in the same way Daughters (RIP) did once they decided to abandon grindcore blast beats and strictly screaming vocals. Victim’s Family keep popping into my head too, along with fellow Alternative Tentacles alums Dead & Gone and sister band Creeps on Candy. The way the drums marry pounding tom-tom passages to slamming crash-cymbal leads is a handy progression, always giving the mind a fresh rhythm to wrap itself around. I wouldn’t call Trash as the Trophy “all the time” music, but it’s fun and genuine. Just don’t listen to this one if you’ve got a headache or an aversion to going All The Way. Know what I’m sayin’? True to their label’s moniker, Tinsel Teeth are a Load.

Devin and Gary[’s]? Sounds like the name of a neighborhood donut shop, no? It’s actually Devin Flynn and Gary Panter, two artists famous for their pop-culture visuals, doin’ it up duo-style. Their Go Outside (Picture Box/Ecstatic Yod) is a ripe representation of the whimsy seen on the CD’s back cover, which depicts two music-geeky types frolicking in a flower garden. Gong-esque in its fret-sliding, freewheeling nature and future-prog aesthetic, Go Outside is dizzying in its excesses at times, shockingly bare and ghostly at others, creepy trumpets a constant companion of the title track in all its twisted glory. You’ll get seasick from watching the world spin for so long, but you’ll always appreciate the duo’s attention to detail as they dig themselves deeper and deeper into a hole. Gary Wilson’s loner-funk, Soft Machine’s whimsical jazz, Book of Shadows’ free-improv... it’s all there. A voice comes in at the beginning of “Four Day Creep,” saying: “Horrible; pretty horrible, but it might be... the best I can do.” I appreciate the self-deprecating jab, but you’ve got It, guys; don’t beat yourselves up.

With all the Three Mile Pilot reunion rumors floating around, teasing us to the core—supposedly the new album’s done, but where is it?—it’s easy to forget Black Heart Procession are now, officially, an indie-rock institution. What happened, though? Seems like everyone forgot about these guys somewhere between the time Amore Del Tropico—not their best work—and The Spell dropped. Six (Temporary Residence)

Kris LoCasio

Jason Bivins digs metal, doom and heavy music in all its permutations.

and sludgy. “Goatstorm” and “Riders of Skullhammer” show a newfound attention to pacing, chord changes, and dynamics. And there’s a spooky electronic intro to “Death March of the Conquerors” that I did not expect from these fellers. Mind you, there’s plenty of rocking hate anthems like the title track and “Metal Titan”— although “Let’s Kill These Motherfuckers” is unforgivably sophomoric—and “Blood from the Witch’s Vein” is crusty like early Venom. Solid and punchy.

Rotten Sound’s Napalm EP (Relapse) appropriately pays homage to Napalm Death on half of its six tracks.

But the quartet proves adept at playing a whipcrack amalgam of death and grind that owes equally as much to Nasum and Misery Index, especially on powerhouses like “Dead Remains.” They’re clearly a band to watch on the basis of their three originals. The ND covers include the brief blip “The Kill” and the much admired “Suffer the Children” and “Missing Link” (the latter with a truly excellent guitar solo, whereas they can otherwise be a bit too reverent with these tunes).

Sayyadina play in a roughly similar idiom on The Great Northern Revisited (Relapse), but bring to the music a slightly greater thrash influence (“Min Onda Bän” or “Confrontation”), giving a jolt of abandon to otherwise quite technically precise music. Of the nearly two dozen songs, only two are longer than two minutes. Yet unlike some of the more conventional bands in grind, these fellows cram a terrific amount of ideas and information and moods into these brief incisions (just listen to “The Revenge” for evidence).

Visceral pleasures abound too, as on the shrieks and breakdowns of “Sort Them Out” or the tasty twinned guitar harmonies of “Mid Livet Som Insats.” Sometimes you’re just in the mood for grind, when you want blazing technique delivered with fury.

British duo Anaal Nathrakh created quite the stir several years back, with the release of their now-classic The Codex Necro. The combination of black metal and aggressive techno seems to make sense now, given the commitment of each genre to sonic density.

In the Constellation of the Black Widow (Candlelight) finds them in a slightly more conventional space, with actual guitar riffing and slightly operatic vocals seeming to give a nod to Behemoth and Cradle of Filth. It’s sonically interesting stuff, regardless of what one thinks of the “grimness” quotient underlying much contemporary black metal. Indeed, tracks like “Satanarchist” and “Terror in the Mind of God” have an almost romantic sensibility woven through the shrieks, blast beats, and mechano-riffing. But I admit I was most compelled when the duo forsook the drama on “The Unbearable Filth of the Soul” and dove into Meshuggah-like industrial prog hammering.

Speaking of prog influence, former Emperor mainman Ihsahn completes his ambitious black metal trilogy with After (Candlelight). As I remarked in this column previously, Ihsahn—a gifted and versatile vocalist—has a far greater sonic imagination than is customary in a genre often more concerned with affect than songs, and he’s come up with a set of vivid compositions that are dynamic and thickly textured in addition to being “heavy.” The influence of recent Opeth continues on tracks like “The Barren Lands.” But what really stood out for me on this release—filled with focused and engaging compositions—was Ihsahn’s use of saxophones throughout (Jorgen Munkeby of Jaga Jazzist and Shining). It brings something quite distinctive to piledrivers like “A Grave Inversed” or the topsy-turvy “Undercurrent.” And the inclusive ambi-

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tions of the mournful closer “On the Shores” are realized very effectively, a nice distillation of what “metal” can be these days.

Chicago has a ton going on these days in the heavy realm. The Atlas Moth is a seriously interesting young band, whose A Glorified Piece of Blue Sky (Candlelight) bursts with expansive sound that comes directly out of Oceanic-era Isis but with more of the psychedelic edge of Mouth of the Architect. Like Battlefields and similar bands, you could almost hear this as “metal” played by folks who also have the Cure’s Disintegration on their desert island. This isn’t to say that the band simply wallows in texture. After all, they sound positively caustic on “Grey Wolves” and the noise of “One Amongst the Wheat Fields” might even please Mego freaks. But there’s a sense of compositional direction here: the music’s always leading to some melodic fragment, instead of a circulation of apparently unrelated riffs. Terrific stuff.

The revived Twilight collective, centered around Chicagoans Blake Judd (Nachtmystium) and Wrest (Leviathan), has returned with a truly creative recording, Monument to Time End (Southern Lord). Also present are The Atlas Moth’s Stavros Giannopolous, vocalist N. Imperial, Sanford Parker of Minsk, and Aaron Turner of Isis. This stuff seems to sum up many of the most admirable heavy developments in recent years, from the outward-leaning prog of bands weaned on Neurosis to the sonic experimentalism of American black metal noise freaks. Riff-heavy at all times, the eight tracks are stuffed with moody atmosphere, interesting compositional turns, and fluid forms.

Most people know the legendary British band Hawkwind as simply the group Lemmy was in before forming Motorhead in the mid-1970s. But of course, Hawkwind expertly refined the combination of sheer heavy groove and trippy improvising that Budgie, Blue Cheer, and Deep Purple (among others) had attempted to greater acclaim. The Hawkwind Triad (Neurot) aims to restore Hawkwind’s rightful acclaim with an album of cover versions by three ace outfits: U.S. Christmas, Minsk, and Harvestman (aka Steve Von Till). USC plays the tunes—most notably “Master of the Universe” and a wondrous “Orgone Accumulator”— like a heavy metal Neu. This contrasts just a touch with the psychedelic guitarscapes of Harvestman (whose new Neurot release Trinity is a trippy soundtrack that moves between lambent and claustrophobic). He delivers a great churning take on “D Rider,” and a harrowing folkish reading of “Down Through the Night.”

Chicago’s Minsk pile multiple instruments—including Bruce Lamont’s increasingly excellent saxophone—into their noisy swirl on “7x7” (though his flute sounds less competent on the otherwise excellent “Assault and Battery/The Golden Void”). Despite a couple of minor nods, this is far more than a diversion.

Finally, Swedish trio Kongh owe a strong debt to the great YOB, but on their Shadows of the Shapeless (Seventh Rule) they take the basic materials—tranceinducing repetition, big geologic riffs, and a healthy dose of psych texture—and make something fresh.

Mostly this comes via a rhythmic shiftiness, not so much proggy and vertically inclined as lateral and Isis-influenced perhaps. They’ve got a keen eye for the choice harmonic detail to drop into the murk, and on tunes like “Essence Asunder” they do long-form descent nearly as well as their Oregonian heroes (again, this is meant as a compliment). As always, I’m a sucker for the sentimental moment in the heart of the noise, and they do this extremely well on “Tänk på Döden.” ✹

Grant Purdum gets down with messed-up modern rock.

is the best BHP record I’ve heard since the band here, especially when inexplicable black-metal was half that age (one-sided 12” Three was their hissing sets in for a few seconds, doors almost last triumph in my eyes/ears) and quite the pivot, squeaking off their hinges and the room growing the vocals coming off a lot smokier, a lot more incredibly dark. Remember the first scene from back-alley than before, like James Jackson Toth Ghostbusters? Yeah, it’s like that. For a second. but born even badder or, if that doesn’t do it for Then, back to the bass-ics. Nice. you, Rasputina but, you know, male and tranquil.

Mongst’s Remains CD-R (Isolated Now It’s fantastic. There’s even some Joanna Newsom Waves), birthed by Pinx’ JV Dub (who also plays flavor on “All My Steps.” And did they record in other Canada bands you’ve never heard of like in a cave? Have they been listening to a lot of Objects, Aerosol Constellations, Totally Ripped Maquiladora records? Did their Black hearts get et al), serves as a much more contemplative submerged in even more ominous goo since the yang to Shearing Pinx’ oft-frenetic yin, a Krankylast album? I can’t say for sure. But yes. esque flutter through a sound catalog tougher Having never gotten “fresh” with Thao with to describe than the feeling of being “high,” the The Get Down Stay Down, all I had to go on only assured reality being that you are, indeed, was that annoying band name. It was a pleasant ascending. Helicopter whirs, soft xylophone stutsurprise to find out they’re the real thing via Know ters, space shuttles, radio static, feedback, pitch Better Learn Faster (Kill Rock Stars). A trio featurbending... you’ve been to this location before via ing deft, light-wristed drummer/brusher Willis other guides, but how the EFF did you get here, Thompson and Adam Thompson’s steady hand exactly? I say GO with it. Remains is a nice respite on bass and keys, Thao Nyugen and her ilk are after the syncopated sassing of Dub’s day job, a in the pocket like a set of keys, and guests Tuneway to have your crackling daily serving of drone Yards (whom I was going to mention anyway as a and rock it just a titter, too. Every time you think reference), Andrew Bird and Laura Veirs stop by a played-out passage is upon you, a left turn to offer a hand. Familiar as Know Better sounds, ensues and you’re lost again. Well done, lad. So...

I’m having trouble coming up with antecedents. short for “amongst”?

Antietam? Maybe a little. Under Byen? The For those who like their crusty noise-doomNo Nos? Meh, not really... Umm, let’s stick with death with a little sacrilegious zeal on the side, Tune-Yards and call it a day. A thoughtful lyrical there’s Cadaver in Drag’s Churchburner cassette exploration of sex, confusion and confusion over (Husk Records), a stretch of sound with a serious sex, with the aforementioned chops to make it case of drone tunnel vision on one side (Side A? all Real.

Side B? No one knows...), a spare sense of lurchLast issue we checked in with Shearing Pinx ing death on the other. Tension-as-titillation fans, and found ourselves, short of flat-out dead, take note: Churchburner is a frustrating listen as shorn and shocked. This ish we have a few more you wait for the gap-toothed drums to take off reasons to give the Pinx some ink, the first being while fuzzy guitars dig prairie-dog holes in, out the companion to Weaponry, Night Danger and around the snare/high-hat hits. Then a spate (Divorce). Canada’s lo-fi answer to the unflapof blurry screaming kicks in and the wait is renpable Abe Vigoda, Shearing Pinx once again tap dered worth it as jackhammers pulse and those their inner treble (no bass, folks) with skill, pairing spare drums keep plugging away, seemingly long improv randomness with astute instrumental after the tape has ceased to hiss. A more fleshedfluctuations and punk straight out of a Sailboats out skeleton might have helped Cadaver in Drag Are White album. Strangely, my favorite songs come to life earlier, but I’m glad it refuses to be on Night Danger aren’t the longer brawlers— anything but its bad, buzzkillin’ self.

“Trip Gamma” twists and turns for upwards Now, time for a random voyage into the of seven minutes, three of them dedicated to blackened innards of two Kentucky bands, Glass squall/squeal—but the four sub-30-second tracks Coffin and Tombstalker (Husk Records), for lodged next to each other like inmates at a prison a split cassette. The former a one-man band camp, getting in and out quicker than a cut off helmed by Josh Lay, the latter a four-piece, both Pink Flag. There isn’t a dull moment to be had, subscribe to a charred, lo-fi aesthetic that will preall crashed cymbals, twin guitars stretched to fretvent them from being classified directly with the bashing limits and vocals bathed in warm echo. molten burners you normally read about in Bivins’ Linking up with lazer-obsessed stutter-noise column. But, then again, this IS black-metal at the act Physical Demon for a split cassette (Isolated core despite some vague punk/hardcore overNow Waves), Shearing Pinx pull a sucker-punch tones; the shards of noise embedded in past Lay on the psyche, hanging up their ang(er)ular releases are abandoned for more of a straight-up approach to post-hardcore—and not the Jesu affair that, thankfully, leaves his Striborg-esque variety, people—in favor of subtle noise terror. vocals as they are. Apparently some in the P. Demon, for their part, are a fairly typical band blogosphere felt Glass Coffin ventured too far in the era of the 50-run tape: busy as an NYC above-ground for this split; I disagree, as GC’s intersection, raw like a squirming piece of fresh side is positively cloaked in filth. Tombstalker meat and potent as a thick bowl of pea (split, are a much more professional act, all loose ends appropriately enough) soup, rife with screams, tied, all transitions smooth, all double-bass blasts oscillations, neon-pink squiggles of sound, synchronized perfectly. I guess that’s part of the bass blasts and volcanic rumbling. Pinx’ side is problem. T-Stalker have flashy chops, yet don’t a bass-burbling mega-beast that takes a more convey emotion as effectively as the bloke on measured approach to its wares, like a Sun Araw the other side of the tape. “One” may be the exercise with murmured vox and a mean beat. If loneliest number, but it’s one Hell of a way to craft you dug Burial Hex’s side of the split 7” they did a blistering b-m album. ✹ with Sylvester Anfang II, you’ll be right at home WWW.SIGNALTONOISEMAGAZINE.COM SIGNAL to NOISE #58 | 85

REISSUE REDUX

Bill Meyer surveys the season’s key reissues.

Brother Ray

Frank Gunderson

My local newspaper asserts that the CD is in its dotage, due to be replaced by downloads, and it’s time to stop buying them. The Redux recommendation is that you ignore the format’s death notice; after all, they said that about vinyl, too. Furthermore, the column’s position is that no one should ever spend money on so sonically and physically unsatisfying a thing as a download, and promises that you’ll never read about one here. At any rate, if the CD is on its way out, it’s having a fairly productive old age. Some labels are rounding up heaps of catalog that still hasn’t made it to digital, others are atoning for past sins and assembling good-sounding and -looking versions of records that were ill-served in earlier editions. The Concord Music Group is doing right by a couple of great American singers, Ray Charles and Frank Sinatra. Brother Ray’s 1960 concept album about American locations, The Genius Hits the Road, has been bolstered with seven similarly themed additional tracks that he recorded over the next decade. Not all of them are winners—there’s no saving “The Long and Winding Road”—but come on, Ray Charles singing “Rainy Night in Georgia”?

“Deep in the Heart of Texas”? And, of course, “Hit the Road Jack.” Pure gold. The original album, which tends more towards up-tempo brass than lush balladry, isn’t bad either. The double disc Genius + Soul = Jazz includes not just the titular album but three volumes of My Kind of Jazz. You get 38 tunes from four albums recorded between 1961 and 1976 that showcase Charles’ keyboard skills—he’s got a sure hand at the Hammond B3— and the broad sound of a thoroughly grooving big band on tunes by Duke Ellington, Lee Morgan, and Luiz Bonfa. Admittedly the returns diminish as you go along, ending up in late-night TV talk show territory, but there’s plenty to savor before you get

there, especially on disc one.

Frank Sinatra took no chances on his 1967 bossa nova venture Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim. He worked with the style’s premier songwriter, Antonio Carlos Jobim, and employed a real Brazilian drummer, Dom Um Romao. The chairman’s versions of “The Girl from Ipanema” and “Corcovado” are pretty authoritative, so he gave it another shot in 1969 and recorded seven more tunes with Jobim. These didn’t go so hot, and when Sinatra first heard the release (on eight-track, the download of the ’70s), he had Sinatra Jobim scrubbed, which of course turned it into a collector’s item. The Complete Reprise Recordings includes the offending tracks, putting all of Sinatra and Jobim’s collaborations in one spot. Even the duff tunes aren’t too bad, although Sinatra unquestionably wasn’t born to sing “Desafinado.” Turns out he wasn’t sure if he was the right guy for “Strangers in the Night,” either, but massive commercial success persuaded him otherwise, and on this occasion the Redux isn’t going to argue with the people. The rest of the album Strangers in the Night is split between extroverted American songbook material and more awkward tilts at British chart toppers; Petula Clark’s “Downtown” requires more youthful optimism and less assurance than Sinatra could muster. Since the LP lasted just 28 minutes, this CD is padded with one alternate take and live versions of two songs recorded two decades later that find Sinatra still in solid voice.

The Buzzcocks offered a different vision of classic pop music. The English quartet, which was helmed

by Pete Shelley, was probably the most consistent of the first-generation punk rockers because they kept the politics personal, the Can lifts in plain sight, and the hooks right up front. This led to moderate chart success and a half-decade on the music biz

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treadmill before they packed it in (for the first time) in 1981. This sojourn resulted in a legacy of singles as tenaciously catchy as earwigs and three solid albums that now sound like the blueprint for every successive generation of punk. EMI/Mute has assembled double-disc editions of Music in a Different Kitchen, Love Bites, and A Different Kind of Tension that aspire to definitive status and just about make it. Each bolsters the original LP with over 20 singles, demos, and John Peel radio session tracks; two feature complete live sets. Jon Savage contributes notes to each disc that are as succinct as your average Buzzcocks 7”.

While the collected material hasn’t been completely remastered (sources vary from 1996 to 2008), the differences in sound help to divvy up the discs, and that is a good thing; while the Buzzcocks managed to work some variation into their sound, hearing each song two or three times gets a tad wearing.

In America, punk became a banner behind which all sorts of malcontents could get together.

Louisville’s Endtables are a good example. Take one frustrated guitar hero, one 14-year-old bassist, and one refrigerator-sized cross-dressing singer with the nerve to rhyme “vibrator” and “percolator” in his list of wants, add crisp beats and tunes that bark as well as bite, and you’ve got the recipe for an unwholesome good time. Bands like this tended not to last long and to make one or two records around the time they broke up, and so it was with the Endtables.

Drag City’s self-titled retrospective compiles the 7” they released when they were around and another that came 12 years after their 1979 demise, as well as six harshly recorded, ya-had-to-be-there live tracks and testimony from KY punk survivors Tara Key, David Grubbs, and Wink O’Bannon. You might turn it off half way through, but the studio tunes are pretty great. Cleveland’s Easter Monkeys represent another aspect of American punk: music that made it under the umbrella more because of its no-frills aggression than because of any subscription to a punk agenda. These guys could play, and they weren’t afraid to quote the Stones or the blues, but guitarist Jim Jones’ (Mirrors, Styrenes, Pere Ubu) feedback blasts and singer Chris Carnock’s antisocial bawl on songs like “Cheap Heroin” and “Underpants” made good on the rock and roll promise of good bad times in ways that Mick and Keef had forgotten years before. Splendor of Sorrow (Smog Veil) compiles everything the band ever released, which isn’t much, and adds never-before-released bonus tracks and a murky but still compelling live DVD. Kevin Dunn’s No Great Lost (Casa Nueva) presents another side of American music that populated an underground but always longed for the surface.

Dunn was a member of the Fans, a legendary Georgian power pop combo, and produced early singles by the B-52s and Pylon. This CD resurrects his solo LP The Judgement of Paris, which once sat on the DB and Armageddon catalogs alongside Pylon and Robyn Hitchcock, and adds 11 tunes lifted from other albums and singles. Dunn applies the same pared-down aesthetic to his own music as he did to his production clients, but adds a too-tense perkiness that isn’t nearly as delightful. His drum machinedriven pop occasionally justifies its cleverness— “Giovinezza” scores points for a thoughtful lyric about the inheritance of guilt—but a great cover of Bo Diddley’s “Mona” shows that he made some questionable decisions about what to keep and what

to leave out. There’s too much faux-British frost, not enough rock and roll.

But then, the ’80s were all about sketchy decisions, weren’t they? Consider the difference between Lou Reed’s New Sensations and Legendary Hearts (Iconoclassic). Well, first let’s say a word about the label. Iconoclassic reclaims ’70s and ’80s releases that have been set adrift in the shrinking music-business marketplace from out-of-print oblivion. Fidelity is their watchword; they supply all of the original album art elements, eschew bonus tracks, and their remastering emphasizes clarity over re-interpretive vividness.

Their versions of Reed’s CDs have all the virtues of my original LP pressings and none of the noise.

Truthful, stark, and enduring, Legendary Hearts was the second installment in Lou Reed’s remarkable recovery from the wretched hole he’d dug for himself for much of the ’70s. Heard from a distance of 27 years, one can wish he’d let lead guitarist Robert Quine cut loose and left out a couple dud songs, but this record still delivers the goods. Sadly, at the time it didn’t deliver much commercial action. The much more popular New Sensations, which was released in 1984, is much more problematic. It is Reed at his most eager to please, and that’s not always a bad thing; “I Love You, Suzanne” is a great single, and the title tune is a sublime evocation of everyday pleasures. But his efforts to engage with contemporary pop production—gated drums, early digital synths, a laughably tame horn section—sound painfully dated.

This is another in a long line of half-there Lou Reed records.

But then, Reed had already influenced so many bands via the Velvet Underground that one can understand him worrying more about marketplace position than artistic legacy. Galaxie 500 based their sound in large part on one VU album, the third; add some New Order-like bass lines, jazz-inspired drumming, and a big cloud of echo to hide how out of tune guitarist Dean Wareham’s singing was, and you’re there. The trio’s four-year progression, as heard on its three albums Today, On Fire, and This Is Our Music, is one of mastering that material rather than adding to it, which is probably one of the reasons why they had to break up in 1991. Another was personal acrimony (don’t expect a reunion), which makes it remarkable that their American reissues are coming out on bassist Naomi Yang and drummer Damon Krukowski’s 20-20-20 label (Domino has the rest of the world). At any rate, they’ve done a good job. Each album combines the original CD, nicely remastered, with a bonus disc. Today gets the odds and sods, including a seriously messed-up Rutles cover; On Fire gets the Peel sessions, …Music a live album recorded on their last European tour.

Around the same time that Galaxie 500 packed it in, Black Tambourine came together to play a few shows and record a few singles in Washington, D.C. As you might surmise from the spelling, not to mention their dreamy femme singing swaddled in squalling feedback, they were as enamored of UK ensembles like the Shop Assistants and Jesus & Mary Chain as Galaxie 500 were of the Velvets.

They didn’t last very long, but have since become a touchstone themselves for bands like the Aisler’s Set and The Pains of Being Pure at Heart. Black Tambourine (Slumberland) adds recent recordings of four songs from their live set to their 1991 oeuvre, which rather surprisingly refrain from fucking up their simple formula.

One last three-fer: Merge has brought Destroyer’s first three albums City of Daughters, Thief, and Streethawk: A Seduction, which were made between 1996 and 2000, back into print. Despite the name, there’s not much hard rocking about what is effectively the solo project of singer-songwriter Dan Bejar, whom you might know from his participation in Canadian indie-pop supergroup the New Pornographers. Unchecked by other writers, he applies his Jacobites-meets-Robyn Hitchcock quaver to Dylanesque lyrics that wind circuitously through stately but abstruse permutations of the Spiders from Mars’ mellower moments.

I keep wondering when musical anthropologists will hit the bottom of the psychedelic barrel, but apparently we’re not there yet. Never Mind, the sole fruit of the sick-minded collective Damin Eih, A.L.K.,

and Brother Clark (Nero’s Neptune), was privately pressed in minute numbers in Minneapolis in 1973.

Since Eih subsequently headed off to India, never to return, there’s not much back-story available, so we’ll just deal with the music. With its weave of woozy harmonies, lyrical 12-string acoustic and fuzz-toned electric guitars, it’s quite accomplished for such an obscure effort. Michael Yonkers’ folky ’70s efforts come to mind, but Never Mind’s sound (nicely recovered here from two virgin LPs) is much higher fi than Yonkers’ efforts. So does Love, especially on the creepily Manson-like closing scenario “Return Naked,” which veers between depictions of racemotivated murder and requests that we “Listen to the trees.” Equally obscure but less impressive is Livin’ Free by the Argentina-based quartet Schibbinz (Guerssen). The quartet, which was mostly the teenaged progeny of US diplomats, seems to have enjoyed renown mainly due to the scarcity of their music. Recorded in 1967 and released a year later on a local imprint, their album is an amalgam of the gentler and less hit-bound work of the Monkees and the Mamas and the Papas. The one-mic recording doesn’t entirely conceal the fragile but rather pretty harmonies that are the lads’ main strength. But their originals never transcend the fact they’re the work of imitative teenagers. One wonders if this record would ever have acquired its aura of desirability if it had also been recorded in the Midwest.

Phoenix Records is an imprint dedicated to reviving artifacts of Japan’s ’70s cosmic underground.

Improvisation, Sep. 1975 is an encounter between John Cage/Yoko Ono associate Toshi Ichiyanagi, Stockhausen percussionist Michael Ranta, and Taj Mahal Traveler Takehisa Kosugi. From the sounds of things (since the annotation is in Japanese, one must guess), the trio had a generous complement of instruments on hand; I hear prepared piano, harmonica, violin, tablas, and a shamisen, all subjected to analog electronic transformations. But since they wielded them with considerable restraint, reverberation and silence figure as prominently as instrumental sound on this eerily ceremonial-sounding endeavor.

The solitary self-titled release by Love Cry Want (Weird Forest) has tracked the opposite route that many of the albums surveyed here take before they get to this column. The quartet of organist Larry Young, drummers Joe Molineri and Joe Gallivan, and the mononymical guitar synthesizer player Nicholas recorded this music in concert in 1972 across the street from the White House in Lafayette Park. Reportedly they sufficiently provoked President Nixon that he demanded the plug be pulled.

Gallivan held onto the tapes until 1996, when he self-released them on CD. Weird Forest is now on its second pressing of a deluxe vinyl version. Its two LPs come encased in a swanky gatefold sleeve with a seizure-inducing image of the White House on the inside. This session supplants Lawrence of Newark as Young’s most flipped-out session; its grooves seem to manifest and then disappear into a crater-blasted moonscape of grimy textures. Young can’t claim full responsibility for the record’s trippiness; Nicholas is a profligate note-sprayer, but also prone to squishy ring-modulated tones, and Gallivan augments his kit with a Moog. Too much jazz-rock fails to rock, but this is heavy stuff.

Invisible Ear is one of the crown jewels of English saxophonist John Butcher’s sizable discography.

Although he’d made earlier investigations into the interface between electronics and reeds, this was the first time he devoted a whole album to the practice.

It covers an enormous range: Niblock-like walls of sound, coarse blasts that could have issued from James Cotton’s blues harp, percussive micro-droplets and sandpapery textures, all deployed with exacting intelligence and an instant composer’s instinct for doing exactly the right thing at any given moment.

It’s a stern rebuke for anyone who ever thought the saxophone’s options were all played out. It has also been shamefully hard to find since Fringes, which originally released it in 2003, sold out the original run of 600. Butcher has now issued it on his own Weight of Wax label with new cover art and liners by David Toop, but the same excellent mastering as the original. If you only get one record mentioned in this column, make it this one. ✹ WWW.SIGNALTONOISEMAGAZINE.COM SIGNAL to NOISE #58 | 87

CROSSWORD By puzzlemaster Ben Tausig.

Across

1. Tablet PC from Apple 5. Haggard with "You Never Even Call Me By My Name" 10. Eric Burdon band 13. "Truth ___" (Smog song) 15. Tore down, as a building 16. Song title for U2 and Metallica 17. Noted Civil War photographer 19. Taxonomic suffix 20. Plane's place 21. Last name in anonymity 22. A Tribe Called Quest rapper 23. Hank Williams's real first name 25. Bell ___ DeVoe 27. Amy Winehouse has one 32. Cut ___ (dance) 34. "The Mothman Prophecies" actor Richard 35. Sound during a backrub 36. Race section 37. It influenced the Fluxus movement 40. Twice, a Gabor 41. Actress Arthur who died in 2009 42. Let out, as a sound 43. Adams who quit music forever in 2009 before starting work on a new album in 2010 44. Instrument for Rahsaan Roland Kirk 49. Gives the green light 50. Gets close 51. Orange-roofed motel chain, briefly 54. Spanish relative 55. Bad thing to catch: Abbr.

58. Tognazzi of "La Cage aux Folles" 59. Adjective for some wit 64. Lobby with big guns?

65. More likely to be stuck, in winter 66. Erstwhile Bob Mould band 67. Prefix with caching 68. "Dirty ___ Done Dirt Cheap" 69. Word that can follow the circled words in this puzzle

Down

1. Believers' suffixes 2. Audio engineer's volume indicator 3. Into out there stuff 4. "Um, yeah, I know" 5. British physical comedy character 6. Musical aptitude, so to speak 7. Ghostface's groupmate 8. Took the reins 9. ___'s Grand Ice Cream 10. Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year for 2007 11. Dead set against 12. Collect, as a harvest 14. Battlefield physician 18. Piece of classical music 22. Big name in home shopping

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23. One who won't share the ball 24. TNT measurement unit 25. Roseanne ___ 26. "New Jack City" actor 27. Xavier of Latin music 28. "Uh-huh" 29. Rapper who feuded with Dr. Dre for many years 30. Space shuttle acronym 31. "Louder ___ Bombs" 32. California-born actress Jessica 33. Projectionist's unit 37. Student's furniture 38. Latin 101 word 39. New Jersey's Fort ___ 43. OR employees 45. Winning tic-tac-toe line 46. Duane of U.S. Bombs

47. ___ metal 48. Character actor Edward 51. Like some juries 52. Monstrous type 53. Brazilian musician Gilberto 55. Starch-yielding palm 56. ___ II (razor brand) 57. Closed nation, initially 59. Empty (of) 60. High card, often 61. Powerpoint chart shape 62. Iraq conflict risk, for short 63. "Ben-___"

for answers, see: signaltonoisemagazine.blogspot.com

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