Music Blog Postings for August-September 2009

Shown is a view of the headstock of a Parker PA22 acoustic. The PA series is unique among acoustics in design and playing feel. They sound like a fine acoustic, they play and handle like an electric.

September 30, 2009—When a record company can, in a few sentences on the overlay of a CD jewel case, nail the significance of the music contained within, it is a sign that a) they know what they are doing and why they are releasing the music in the first place, and b) that there is thought behind the artists they sign and the music they produce. It also makes the reviewer’s job a little difficult. One must say something in addition to what has already been voiced. But of course if one has nothing personal to add to the discussion, why would one be reviewing the music in the first place? So we’ll proceed.

These are the thoughts going through my head as I listen to a recent Tzadik release by guitarist Tim Sparks, viz. “Little Princess: Tim Sparks Plays Naftule Brandwein.” It is a lovely bunch of music. Brandwein was an important Klezmer clarinet exponent. Tim Sparks takes a number of pieces associated with the clarinetist's career and rearranges them for his acoustic guitar along with Greg Cohen on contrabass and Cyro Baptista on percussion (see the September 22nd posting for a look at Baptista’s latest album).

First of all, the re-arrangements are quite attractive, with the accent on Sparks’ formidable yet subtle finger-picking abilities. There are also Spark’s improvisations built into the exposition of the songs, and they are reaffirming of his personal involvement with the pieces he has elected to perform.

Cohen and Baptista give great support and with Sparks behind the neck, Klezmer transforms from its original instrumentation and dance orientation to a quieter, more intimate music. You could still dance to most of this music, if you so desired, but it’s the sheer beauty of the minor mode melodies as transposed to a jazzier, more Jewish Kottke-Fahey meets Charlie Byrd sort of sound that hits this listener. Sparks in no way is an imitator of the artists just mentioned. I only bring them up to give some rough idea of the sound and style of his playing.

This is guitar playing on a very high level. The fact that it is based on traditional Jewish melodies makes it all the more remarkable and all the more interesting. Whatever your religious, cultural and/or musical persuasions, you will find in Tim Sparks a true artist in the acoustic realm. He’s one of those musicians that may inspire you to remark to yourself, “I wish I could play like that.” There is no higher compliment, to my mind.

As a person who has lived, worked and "transpired" in and around New York City for much of my life, for me the Jewish cultural heritage has pervaded all that has been available to absorb locally on every level. Tzadik albums such as this one recognize and embrace that heritage and bring its import to the music of the present day. This is the kind of cross-cultural fertilization that keeps the American music scene strong and growing. I embrace it heartily!

September 29, 2009—Just out is the Land of Talk EP (Saddle Creek), titled “Fun and Laughter”. Lead singer-guitarist Elizabeth Powell returns after a vocal ailment put her on the sidelines for a greater part of the year. The good news is that she sounds as fine as ever. “Fun and Laughter” gives you around 20 minutes of new songs plus three music videos. My video software has a temporary glitch so I was not able to watch the footage. The music however, I am happy to say, I’ve been listening to and it is in a very good place. Like their full-length CD “Some Are Lakes,” which hit the streets about a year ago (see my September 16th review), Land of Talk come through with excellent music in the Alt-Indie mode. The band is adept at creating mini-walls of guitar sound (dry walls, not “I am in a cave” sounds), punchy bass, throbbing drums and Elizabeth’s great vocal approach. There are four really nice songs, lyrical but tough.

They are about to tour the west coast of the US. After that I hope they’ll go back into the studio for some more music! Why? There’s a certain indefinable something about Land of Talk and I think they are on the edge of a cosmic breakthrough, an artistic unflowering. That’s just my intuition. As it is this EP gives you a tantalizing glimpse into their world. This is good music, perhaps flirting with the monumentally good. They have quickly become one of my favorite bands. “Fun and Laughter” gives you a good taste of why.

September 28, 2009—If you are the sort of person who sits around and asks yourself, “What’s up with Funkadelic?” Why are they considered by some as important innovators? This is for you. They made a good number of records in their time, and not all of them are totally representative of what they sometimes did. I like their 1976 album “Hardcore Jollies” (originally Warner Brothers, now Priority). You can hear early Prince in there and yes, some of the roots of Hip Hop also. When their Funk was good, it really was good. But, as this album shows and their name suggests, they inject a Metal (then called "Hard Rock") strain into their music.

Lead guitarists Michael Hampton and Eddie Hazel play some nice leads and the ghost of Hendrix is never very far away. Listen to their live version of “Cosmic Slop.” It has a hard riff that could have come right off a Hendrix album. And they groove! They rock out! This is to my mind the album to get if you want to hear them at their most advanced and hippest.

September 25, 2009—Scrapple is a food where the individual ingredients themselves are subservient the processed and cooked totality. It is the manner of making that gives scrapple its unique flavor. Now I’m not sure who still eats it today. My parents' Philadelphia area upbringing meant that it was served in my house during my youth. What matters right now is the analogy of many elements coming together to create a unique whole. That is certainly the case in the music of On Ka’a Davis’ brand new release “Djoukoujou” (Tzadik).

The recording brings out Mr. Davis’s affinity with a number of African and African-American styles: the Afrofunk of Fela Kuti, the space Freedom of Sun Ra, American Psychedelic Funk, and then there are other things too: small ensemble free jams, Beefheart, traditional African music, I could go on but these are the most obvious.

Onka’a utilizes acoustic and electric guitar, African percussion, drums, bass, saxes, trumpets, violin, a vocal chorus and a number of other elements to create a long and interesting suite of half-jammed, half-written preludes, interludes and postludes. It’s rather outside of the mainstream at all times. It is intoxicating and invigorating in its ultimate cumulative effect. This is very interesting music. It will stimulate the adventurous listener like no other.

It’s an Afro equivalent to one of my personal favorites, an old ‘70s recording titled “Iowa Ear Music.” Like that ensemble, On Ka’a Davis covers a great deal of ground and ends up dishing out something with an organic wholeness that brings to you a musical impression far in excess of that of any individual segment. So it’s like scrapple. Only much better for you. Do not pass “go.” Proceed directly to your bricks and mortar or online music outlet and grab a copy. Otherwise you’re going to miss something cool.

September 24, 2009—We celebrate the two-year anniversary of this site and this blog right about now. We’ve had over 45,000 visitors in the past year alone. That’s a pretty nice start for a site that is not giving away free mp3 downloads and we thank all of you. . .

The Long Beach, California, Chili Cookoff, June 9th, 2002. . . now THAT was an event for historians to contemplate for years to come. Actually, I don’t know, I wasn’t there. I imagine if you liked chili and could eat a fair amount of it, it was a good thing. Not surprisingly I mention this event for some reason other than the chili. The Jam Band Particle played a longish set there, with four substantial jams. It was captured in a very good way technically and can be downloaded at the archive.org site.

So what’s with Particle? They have staying power, since they continue to play in various venues here in 2009. They have a guitar-keys-bass-drums lineup, with a guest (?) on alto sax at the end of the show we're talking about today. Their jams are on the funky side of things, not as thoroughgoingly as Garaj Mahal (see review below for them), but the rhythm section tends toward a Funk propulsion as a jumping off point. The guitarist can ring out like Santana but with a different tone and set of notes. He has facility and a Rock-Fusion trajectory.

It’s all pretty straightforwardly expectable. Sometimes I felt as if I was sitting on a train listening to the sound of the wheels going over the breaks in the rails along with the squeaks and rattlings one hears in that sound world. But this music is not monotonous enough to be trancy. And they can build up to various climaxes that dispel that feeling. Also, too, there are moments where the Funk combines with spacy synth and guitar in a vein that suggest an Ozric Tentacles affinity. Those moments don’t last too long however, and that's probably too bad. Otherwise there is much that one might call “pedestrian” for lack of a more precise definition. It’s the sort of jam one might get in on at the Berklee practice rooms down in the basement of the main building back when I was there in the stone age. I don’t know where Particle went musically after this date. In 2002 they were not breaking any new ground.

September 23, 2009—John Zorn has been an artist you can expect the unpredictable from over the years. Looking back at the various stylistic permutations he has engaged us with, there’s certainly no sense of inevitability. Movement from the out stance, the avant game pieces, Bop revisited, Death Metal, Action Noir, Radical Jewish styles, on to the movie music and beyond. . . nothing really gets left behind but where he’ll take listeners on that musical baggage cart can be surprising.

One of his latest CDs, “O’o” (Tzadik), named after a ravishingly beautiful but now extinct Pacific bird, is a good case in point. It’s a mid-sized ensemble featuring some of John’s more ubiquitous collaborators: Marc Ribot on guitar, Jamie Saft, keys, Joey Baron, drums and a few I don’t recall from previous recordings, like Kenny Wollesen on the vibes.

“O’o” transforms a number of styles into a Zornian re-engagement. There’s Jazz-Rock as pioneered by early Gary Burton groups, Easy Listening exotica music from the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, Surf and early Psychedelic, some Jewish inflected minor musical strains, and a touch of New Age, Minimalist and Fusionist streams of musical utterance. What emerges is no elevator music, it is not banal in any of the usual senses. It has a mellow base coat with considerably contrasting overpainted strokes of musical brilliance. Like much of Zorn’s work, there are a series of quotations and borrowings of diverse stylistic possibilities, but the text is original. When it touches on banality, it does so to rework and transform that banality into its opposite.

Ribot’s guitar work here and elsewhere shows him to be creative in a widely divergent series of contexts, sounding authentic to the style quoted, yet retaining a particular contemporary individuality.

“O’o” is an album I was preparing not to like as I checked it out the first time through. Subsequent listens found me getting increasingly engaged until now, when I love its accessibility for the possibilities of an exposure to a wider audience, and even more I love the quirky originality that makes it good music for those who listen more carefully.

More surprises from Mr. Zorn. A very pleasant one this. The Trojan Horse of easygoing accessibility brings to the listener a rather subversive collapse of genres once again, with invigorating results. For years albums would attempt to be helpful to record stores with a tiny message that read “File under…” and then go onto specify Rock, Easy Listening, Jazz, etc. File this one under ZORN!

September 22, 2009—Brazilian percussionists, when they are good, usually have a broad versatility and an expertise with a battery of various instruments. Part of it comes out of the wonderful percussion sections of Samba bands, where there are distinct families of instruments working in syncopated tandem to create complex layers of rhythm. That sound can only be approximated by a single musician, but nonetheless percussionists coming out of the tradition can do a serial version of that variety of sounds, one by one. They can of course also use other percussionists to augment their own playing. Or they can overdub various parts to provide that multi-instrument percussion ensemble.

The more prominent practitioners, at least those who get exposure in the US, generally do combinations of all three. Airto has. It was his pioneering work with Miles, with his wife Flora and with his own bands that energized the scene, bringing others in his wake and opening up the Brazil-Jazz group sound to a wide spectrum of traditional Brazilian forms, more modern aspects contemporary Jazz and more electric influences.

Cyro Baptista is doing very good work in this vein with his Banquet of Spirits ensemble. He brings the musical amalgam in question into the new century, especially on his latest album “Infinito” (Tzadik). He is joined by a number of fellow percussionists. Guitarists Nevin Breit and Romero Lubambo supply an important aspect of the sound, mostly on the nylon stringed acoustic, but there are also a good variety of shifting configurations of musicians and instruments, including at various times, violin, keys, melodica, oud, soprano sax and various traditional Brazilian instruments, among other things.

The ensemble sound combines the various stylistic elements you expect from modern Brazilian diaspora bands. There are the idiomatic vocals, the slightly electric Fusion moments, and extensions and transformation of the Samba tradition. It’s very enjoyable music that I suspect will keep your interest high throughout. If you’ve liked Airto’s music I don’t see how you can miss with this one. It’s a good introduction for the newcomer as well.

September 21, 2009—Some groups may have a local following. Everybody else may scratch their collective heads when they hear the name. Like The Crying Shame (not the Cryin Shames, that’s an older band). They are based in Seattle. On the archive.org live collection there is only one show represented. Under genre is listed “Psychedelic Folk.” Well that’s one way to put it. They have some roots showing—of old time Country, mostly. And they sound appealingly Folk-Rockish. So I downloaded that one show—December 8, 2006 in Seattle. There’s violin, cello I believe, guitars, bass, drums and vocals.

The lead vocals are “underground rough” and are not without charm. The originals have a sort of alt-indie feel to them. It’s all pretty good, except the intonation of the violin is not always perfect. Perhaps the monitor wasn’t loud enough to get on pitch. This band might yet do something great. As of 2006, that night, they weren’t there yet.

September 18, 2009—For a number of years, the Stone, a music venue in lower Manhattan, has hosted some of the most creative artists of the Downtown music scene. Downtown music refuses to be pigeonholed. Much of the music incorporates Avant and Free Jazz, Funk, electric Avant Rock, World Musics, experimental and contemporary Classical approaches in various proportions. What any ensemble does on any given occasion is wide open. Anything can happen. John Zorn of course is a key figure in all this, as is his label Tzadik.

With the hard times we have increasingly experienced in the past several years the Stone has become an endangered entity. Additional moneys are needed to ensure that they can continue to present important music for all who wish to hear it.

Out of this comes a series of performances by some of the Downtown heavyweights. The sessions have been recorded and released by Tzadik to help raise money to keep the Stone going. All who participate in the creation and production of the releases have given of their time freely so that the maximum amount of monetary help can be provided. Out of this are three (so far) Special Edition CDs, which can be purchased only at the club, from Tzadik’s website (www.tzadik.com), The Downtown Music Gallery or Ipecac. Of the three, “The Stone: Issue One” forms the subject of today’s discussion.

In many ways Issue One is a very good place to start. It is good for those who wish to experience the Downtown thing and it is good for those who want to support the Stone and also hear some very interesting music at the same time. Issue One has a formidable lineup, many with a long association with John Zorn’s various ensembles. There’s Zorn himself on alto, Dave Douglas, trumpet, Bill Laswell on bass, Ben Perowsky on drums, Rob Burger on keys and Mike Patton on vocals of the out-of-the-ordinary sort. They meld together as a single musical entity for a rather wildly disparate series of events.

Moments of raucous cacophony abut with dreamy introspective electric panoramas in the manner of Miles’ “In A Silent Way.” It’s an adventure in sound that exemplifies what on the surface seems eclectic but deep down constitutes the radical revision and ultimate overturning of the staid and fast notions of genre that have prevailed in the last 40 years. That’s part of the downtown scene’s legacy and an open-minded listen will give you much to ponder. Plus you’ll help the Stone survive.

September 17, 2009—When you are not on the inside as a listener for a particular style of music, everything might sound the same to you. I’ve heard such comments about Indian Classical, the Blues, Metal, Fusion, Bop, etc. On the other side, if you are a styling insider for a kind of music, you see the differences clearly, you evaluate them, and come up with in your head a kind of tree representing which artist goes with which, which followed out of which, that sort of thing. That is, if you are a listener that takes the whole corpus of that music seriously.

Hip Hop. Sometimes I get a feeling of sameness. I’ll admit I am no insider. I don’t hear it all; don’t have a very clear picture of what comes out of what. My ears are my only guide. I know I’ve listened and liked some of the things that are considered important. As far as the mainstream of Hip Hop, I find sometimes that it interests me less than the fringes.

Well, so take Gangsta Grills, and their album “Drama” (Atlantic). I’ve been listening. I am the sort of listener that usually checks out the words only after the music grabs me. So that puts me at a disadvantage with Hip Hop. Without the words, what’s left? There are melodies that coexist with raps and the latter can get my attention. Like Gansta's hit “Day Dreaming” that's on this disk. It has a catchy melody. It grabs me for that.

Production values are a big IF with me and Hip Hop though. . . . And first off, the beats. There is a fake backbeat on almost all Hip Hop tunes. It’s MIDI programmed, or electronic drums, or maybe even a real drummer on a real set processed to sound like a machine. This is the fashion. My problem: every beat sounds the same in timbre, and that bores me. Get a good drummer in there, let him really play, don’t process it too much, and you’ll find that the music grooves and breathes much better. And what about the synth bass—sounds good from the car trunk with that big-butt subwoofer, and that’s what it’s made to do. Still, get a real bass player, give him the freedom to play lines that go with the overall sounds and a more organic groove is going to happen. Then how about the synth instrumental tracks? They are designed to backdrop the ever-present vocals and I’ll admit there is more happening there than there used to be. But it’s not always very interesting to my musician’s ear. The kind of things done and the sound don’t always change much from track to track. That’s not the point, you’ll say. It’s the message of the lyrics and it’s a matter of hitting it hard and making a trainload of money.

The vocals, that’s what it’s about, obviously, and I get that. The way the rap gives the word and the sound of that giving is much of the point of the music. And so to me you have Hip Hop and Opera both into a similar bag. It’s all in the vocals and what’s being said. Somebody ought to combine the two musics, though most people would hate it I suppose.

Anyway “Drama” seems like as good an example of what’s happening right now as anything. What’s next? That interests me.

September 16, 2009--Just about one year ago, the Canadian Indie-Alt Rock band Land of Talk released their first full-length album, "Some Are Lakes” (Saddle Creek). They now have a new EP which I’ll be covering soon, but first I thought I’d backtrack to the Lakes CD, because I’m just hearing it and I like what I hear.

The band is fronted by vocalist-guitarist Elizabeth Powell and she has a very individual vocal style. It’s fragile, pure, yet a little weary sounding. The band comes up with interesting guitar chordings and voicings through (I think) non-standard tunings, at least part of the time. In that way Sonic Youth has been an influence, I would think. There’s just a shade of garage-primal in their delivery. The songs are strong, hard hitting and personal in a sort of universal way. They have something I really like in a band, a sort of underground personality. They are a big highlight of my Indie Rock listening so far this year. Me like. Stay tuned for a conversation about their new EP, very soon.

September 15, 2009—When you want to know how big a following a Jamband has, check out the number of downloadable shows on archive.com’s Live Music stash. Garaj Mahal has 256 uploaded, and that’s a pretty fair amount.

I caught their 4/10/05 show at the Blind Melon, San Diego. At well over two hours, this is plenty of music to evaluate and the on-stage microphone placement combines with good equipment and a sure hand at the controls for a very pleasant listening experience.

This is a band that jams quite a bit, and there are very few vocals to distract. The musical smorgasbord presented that night has a good deal of Hancock-Headhunter’s type Funk (which they put their own spin on) along with some more typical Fuse-Psych-Jam routines. These guys are very tight. The lead guitarist is very good. So is the bass player. It is worth a listen.

If some people would think that they are beating a dead horse (Funk), they still beat it with real skill and appreciable originality. In these eclectic times, no style should be considered dead or out of bounds, particularly if you can do something with it. Not everybody does. Garaj Mahal does.

September 14, 2009—We turn the hands of the Jamband clock back several years for a performance of Juggling Suns at Teaneck, NJ’s Mexicali Blues. Here is band that pays a heavy debt to the later Dead and the Allmans. Lead Guitarist Mark Diomede certainly comes out of the Garcia school and he sounds pretty good in this show. The drummer sometimes lays into a quasi-Disco beat, other times more in the loose Rock vein. Rhythm guitar and keys are generally pretty prominent in the mix. The lead vocals are a bit functional, with some of the weaknesses of Weir on a less than stellar night.

The recording quality of the soundboard output is good. Juggling Suns do some cover tunes and some originals, the latter of which do not particularly distinguish themselves. At least on January 29, 2005, when this was captured for our ears, they do not overwhelm. Diomede’s guitar in the jam segments is pretty together, the rest is pretty average live Jamband fare.

September 11, 2009—Last summer I devoted a posting to the Katie Pearlman Band and their performance some time ago at Lee's Campground, which is downloadable on the archive.org site. I was taken by the strong songwriting, Katie’s soulfully appealing vocals, and the loose Jamband feel the group brings to the stage. After reading my posting Katie very kindly let me know of her website (www.katiepearlman.com) and its extensive holdings of live mp3s featuring the band on various gigs. There is much to listen to there, and the “document as you go” nature of the recordings means that some nights have better balance between the instruments and vocals than others (mostly good), but a listen through the collection gives you a good handle on the repertoire and the full breath of Katie’s music.

When I first heard the Campground download, I didn’t realize that Katie was the drummer in the band. She’s solid there and helps drive the band into the grooves they deliver. That’s all particularly clear on the mp3s we speak of today. Most importantly these mp3s reaffirm to me her talent and the direct hipness of the band.

There is also Katie the solo artist to be considered and appreciated. There’s a new album of Ms. Pearlman in this light as well as some mp3s that showcase this part of her music. I’ll do another posting on that soon. In the interim I once again recommend you listen to this band in action, live, on the mp3s and flac downloads and/or through their CD releases. There’s a classic quality to the music, and it’s cool listening for sure.

September 10, 2009—The Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey have been around for a bit and in the process have gathered a rather wide following, with cache in the Jamband world as well as everyday music lovers and Jazz aficionados.

If you give a listen to their new EP “One Day in Brooklyn” (Kinnara) it’s easy to see why they have broad appeal. Pianist Brian Haas and drummer Josh Raymer are the founding members and they have developed a kind of unclassifiable style (along with such bands as the Bad Plus) that incorporates Rock sensibilities and even a little Country. Their new lineup adds steel guitarist Chris Combs and acoustic bassist Matt Hayes. Mr. Combs especially breathes a great deal of life into the band sound. He is one part Country, one part Bluesy and one part Jam-Psychedelic in his approach.

The song selection is eclectic and appealing. They do a version of “A Laugh For Rory/Black and Crazy Blues,” a Roland Kirk bit that is dedicated to the late Joel Dorn and proceeds along in a quite jolly fashion. The Beatles’ “Julia” has a delicate lyricism and brings out the best in Brian Haas’ semi-balladic approach. There are some interesting originals also, and they close with Monk’s “Four In One.”

In the end, you get a short set that shows the wide stylistic net they have cast on their travels. Don’t expect a typical Jazz performance, nor anything else really in terms of categories. If you relax and forget your preconceptions, you’ll no doubt find yourself in a happy musical listening space. And dig that Combs steel guitar! Nice.

September 9. 2009—Chicago is a hard town. Chicago is a town where the cold, hard truth rules much of the time. That’s probably why the blues has flourished there. To tell the truth about the cold, hard truth, you have to be in it, somehow. Lupe Fiasco is a Chicagoland original. His Hip Hop goes after the real and finds it. I reviewed his second album towards the beginning of this blog. Now for another: his first (I think) came out in 2006. It’s called “Food and Liquor” (Atlantic). Like on the second, Lupe finds a way to speak directly and with poetic justice about the problems he sees on the streets, like absent fathers, skate kids with a future unknown, drugs, gangstas, a lack of hope felt by many. It’s all done with a musically full yet hard-nosed style. The raps flow, they signify. The music affirms what the words are saying. In the end there’s still hope.

Lupe is a one-of-a-kind artist. You should try to hear what he has to say.

September 8, 2009—Guitarist Rez Abbasi has gradually emerged as a significant player on the American Jazz scene. His Pakistani-American roots come through in his sound with South Asian elements, some quite subtle, others more readily apparent, influencing his approach. Then there are those Rock and Jazz elements that form the backbone of his music. He plays with a progressive Fusion-Postbop sensibility. The compositions and form of his improvisations reflect a distinctive transformation of the conventions and norms of the contemporary stylistic bag. Plus he has facility and an engaging tonal palette.

His brand-new release “Things to Come” (Sunnyside) finds him in the company of some of the foremost South Asian-American improvisational heavyweights out there. Rudresh Mananthappa works the alto and uses his solo time judiciously, with streams of cogent lines and a controlled fire. The same can be said of pianist Vijay Iyer. Drummer Dan Weiss, who made an amazing Hindustani influenced solo drum CD several years ago, lets out with unending streams of rhythmic drive and subtlety.

Rez puts in some fantastic playing, in the electric mode for the most part; his compositions and arrangements are usually busy, harmonically shifting essays in group virtuosity. Perhaps the most interesting moments in the CD are the pieces where Indian vocalist Kiran Ahluwalia sings in a classical style as Abbasi’s arrangements transform and retextualize that vocal music with innovative Jazz-Fusion harmony and counter-melodic backdrops.

It’s clear from “Things to Come” that Rez is a most provocative force on the contemporary music scene and bears watching closely as he continues to progress. As it is this is a highly absorbing musical set that will appeal to the many listeners who favor substance and musical density in their musical fare.

September 4, 2009—The instrumental Rock ensemble Moraine combines a dark palette with unique instrumentation and driving, sprawling architectonic musical structures in their just-released CD “Manifest Density” (MoonJune). Guitarist Dennis Rea is the motivating impetus behind the sound and he gets off some solo electric gems throughout. His guitar is joined by violin, cello, bass and drums for an elaborately interweaving tapestry of new sounds.

It is one of those CDs that immediately gets your attention from the opening bars of the first cut. One could speculate as to what influences the band has had, but what’s most important is that for a listening experience it’s truly tabula rasa time. Moraine doesn’t really sound like anybody. They are a Prog-Rock original, that most rare of entities. They do not take an easy path. They do not rely on riffs of a gratuitous nature or other filler material. It’s through-composed music all the way. They achieve a continuously compelling group sound that grabs you by the ears and does not let go. Playing music a little like Schubert in form but not in sound, they create long, endless melodies. Not sweet melodies to lull the senses; overwrought, nervous melodies to put you in sharp focus, to help you deal with the modern world we live in.

Mr. Rea and company have achieved orbit status. Join their musical space station for an awesome feeling of weightless exhilaration. Such refreshingly outside Rock invites repeated absorption, and gives you a feeling of anticipation for future editions. This band could pan out to be the biggest Prog thing since Beefheart, Crimson, Gary Lucus and/or the Softs. Time will tell. They are off to an auspicious start with “Manifest Density.” Cheers to MoonJune for making the music available for us all.

September 3, 2009—In the course of my daily listenings for review and edification, I sometimes think I know what to expect when I put a disk in my player. I am also sometimes greatly surprised because the music exceeds what I imagined was possible with the particular combination of space and time captured, of players and venues.

Such is what happened to me with the DVD “Live from the Sanctuary” (Sanctuary Media) by the Splatto Festival Chorus. It’s an hour of the group, well captured in sound and video, and what an hour it is!

Splatto has an extraordinary lineup of musical freethinkers and the combination is rather explosive. There is Dave Barrett on saxophones, a player I’ve appreciated much in the past via his innovative Splatter Trio. He has a wry sort of sound and can be counted upon to contribute key improvisations whenever he is given the opportunity. Michael Bisio is on bass. Any reader of this blog will know my profound respect for his inventive abilities. He is simply one of the best improv players active today. Ed Mann plays percussion, vibes and has much to do with the live electronics that are so important a part of this set. Now if you don’t know his work with Zappa, you should. He’s one of those cats that can scare you with his talent and ability to execute. Then there’s violinist Todd Reynolds, who also uses a laptop here to generate electronic transformations of what transpires musically. He’s been with the seminal Bang On A Can unit, among other things. What he plays in this hour really floors me. He uses his “classical”* concert training and his considerable facility to interact with the others with true creative flair. What a tone he gets, but what good ideas too! And come to think of it, this is a superb example of a band with IDEAS, really good ones.

Splatto reaches sublimity in this set. It’s one of the most successful and engaging combinations of improv and live electronics I’ve heard in a long time. And the music goes everywhere at once. There are free moments, then perhaps an engaging motive on bass or violin that’s taken up or contrasted electronically and instrumentally by everybody. Or suddenly some Rock-Funk elements pop onto the soundscape and the band pushes the boundaries further back. Perhaps then a hypnotic circular event, then maybe a spacey envelope of tone color, followed by a raunchy, earthy moment that exposes some other-expressed rootedness in our common musical heritage.

The Splatter Festival Chorus play illegal music. It’s music that is unlawful. A band is not allowed to combine the genre references and style absolutes in the way that Splatto does. Yet they do and nobody is in musical jail yet. And of course it’s not just that they combine all the elements they do. It’s the WAY that they do it and make full kinetic use of the very diverse backgrounds of the four spontaneous composer-musicians involved. To see this band perform via DVD is especially illuminating, because you get a clear picture of the relationship between what the players are doing and how the electronics are engaged and developed around them as the music unfolds.

I could describe the sound events more thoroughly but I think it suffices to say that this is important music made by a group that surely should be heard widely and recognized. My wife likes it, too. And for me she is the litmus test for what a discerning non-technically trained listener hears in whatever I am playing around the house, a prototypical “people’s ear,” even if she is not so typical in that she imbibed non-Western as well as Western music with her mother’s milk. Well, so perhaps she has a sort of World Ear. And the World Ear likes it. I think you will too.

I believe you can find this DVD at www.JazzSanctuary.org. I highly recommend that you look and listen. __________________________________________________________________ *I originally used the term "legitimate" in this passage. "Legitimate" as used to describe technique does have unfortunate connotations (that other techniques are somehow not legitimate). "Classical" has a more or less synonymous meaning, but it is another unfortunate word. It does strictly connote a particular period in concert music, the "classical" period. In that way it's rather odd when used to refer to other periods, contemporary period music especially. Plus "classic" also implies the existence of music that is "non-classic." "Is that piece of music one of the classics?" somebody might ask. "No, it's not of that caliber" might be the answer. So that implies a value judgement too. But we must use some term or other. "Classical" will have to do for now. Trombonist Jeff Albert notes in his recent "Scratch My Brain" blog posting all that "legitimate" implies, and I believe he is correct. See www.scratchmybrain.com for his lucid rant on this term. This may sound to some like a pedantic quibble. It is not. The terms we use have ramifications and we should stay away from those that imply negative evaluations. __________________________________________________________________ September 2, 2009—Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians were/are more than an outfit capable of reaching a mass audience; they are a top-notch band whose groove comes to the forefront live. They are capable of good, loosely together guitar jams too. Give a listen to the short set recorded at a July 14, 1990 gig and available for free Creative Commons access at the archive.org Live Music holdings.

Edie was (and is) a vocalist of rare charm and direct delivery. Of course her songs put her over the top as well, but it's her own performance of them that makes them especially memorable. That’s evident on this set too. The group runs through much of their more familiar material, but the very good sound quality and their gamely cooking mood make this much more than a rote recital. And then there’s a really intriguing, very New Bohemians version of Dylan’s “Hard Rain” as an encore.

September 1, 2009—The Prog-Fuse outfit Slivovitz plays music that should make their Napoli hometown proud. The second disk, “Hubris” (MoonJune), just out, fills the ears with excellent arrangements and fine musicianship. Like the two Z’s, Zappa and Zorn, they cross genres fearlessly and adroitly. The mid-sized ensemble tackles anything and everything from Mideastern, Gypsy, Free, Surf to Tango, Samba and other roots musics, with that exuberant insouciance that brings a smile and perks up the ears. You get the feeling throughout that they craft their bricolage-like confabulations out of an inner musical need, not from some facile cleverness. Slivovitz music emerges here as a unified and rather rarified entity. The soloists are strong, occasional vocals idiomatic and the dynamic of rapid travel through madcap musical episodes invigorating.

This is apparently their second offering. They have already managed to amalgamate the various influences into their own unique sound. My guess is that we will be hearing much more from these fine player-writers in the years to come. I surely hope so. Check them out.

August 31, 2009—On this final day of August I am back after a few days “on holiday,” as they put it in England. My wife and I drove to the northwestern edge of New Jersey, the Delaware Water Gap, and saw a big old black bear, looked for decent Jersey tomatoes but had no luck, went to the thrift store to find a serviceable pair of winter shoes, and read Dostoevsky, a history of the French and Indian War, and some little other things. Now I am bolstered up to attack the new season. There are interesting new music releases in store and a few a little older but still worth talking about.

Today there’s Dr. John’s 2008 opus about NOLA, Katrina and sleazy politics, “City that Care Forgot” (429 Records). Is this the greatest record he ever made? Probably not. If the rumors are true that many labels would not touch this disc because of the “controversy” involved, it’s hard to believe, in light of where we are now, almost-fall 2009. Because he is just speaking truth, after all. Musically, it’s prime Doctor J. with soulful vocals, solid horn lines, and guest appearances by Eric Clapton, Terence Blanchard, and others. The message is the thing, though. Strive on. Catastrophe may strike, fat cats may be selling you down the river, but keep up the fight. Here it is 2009, August, and all of that still holds. We need to be the levee that stands strong.

August 25, 2009—Electronica and other musics that use sampling have been guilty in the past of taking a snippet of something, a spoken phrase or sung line, or perhaps a sound effect, and just repeating it over and over ad nauseum. Once the initial surprise wears off (which is about two minutes after the first time you’ve heard the effect), the result is annoyance, irritation, and any number of other negative emotions. Thankfully, it seems that MIDI music makers have gotten away from this incredibly bad habit.

Like for example, the group Hippie Hop, as heard live in Philadelphia on 9/24/05 (and available for free download at archive.org). They stay quite clear of any cheap effects. Hippie Hop veers toward the cosmic soundscape end of Electronica, although beats are very much a part of it. It’s all synths and MIDI drums, but it doesn’t sound like something a dance club would program. It’s almost subtle and not terrible. It’s certainly a sign that there is hope for this kind of music, though much of it out there to me is pure dreck.

August 24, 2009—In case you blinked and missed it, Tucson’s Giant Sand (also known as Giant Sandworms) have been together since 1985 in various incarnations. Their blend of roots-Country-Alt-Rock has laid-back/frenetic appeal. The archive.org live music section preserves some of their shows for free, band sanctioned download.

I’ve been listening to their September 2, 2005 gig at Tucson’s Club Congress. It has a very clear and crisp soundboard-derived presence and they run though lots of their songs from their long history. There’s an off-hand, faux-casual mastery of the simple, ironic presentation at work. And you get around 75 minutes of their goodies. There’s probably no better way to decide what you think about them, and it’s good listening no matter what.

August 21, 2009—In these days of artist-produced CDs, small boutique labels and what can only be called vanity projects, if you ask a music consumer to buy your CD and you fill it with 64 minutes of SOMETHING, it had better be good. Ernesto Diaz-Infante has given us his 64 minutes on “The Long Await Between Collasped (sic?) Lungs” (Pax).

Mr. Diaz-Infante devotes the CD in question to a long soundscape that consists of overdubbed layers of electric and acoustic guitars and a little vocalizing. The CD is copyright 2003, so I am catching up on this one. I am late because I couldn’t decide whether I should review it or not.

Now on my blogs I tend to avoid mentioning a recording at all if I have nothing good to say about it. So I will say something good eventually in this review. Stick with me.

Sometimes the progressive, avant ends of the music scene tend to run in extremes. If you are going to make something that’s ugly, for example, make it REALLY ugly. If you make something beautiful. . . you get where I am going.

The problem I have with the particular soundscape at hand is that it is ugly, but NOT UGLY ENOUGH to be interesting. There are guitar sounds that are used to build up the soundscape and at least half of the long CD involves that gradual densification. Some of the sounds he uses are intensely banal—the thrumming of open strings, plunking from prepared strings, wobbly slide notes wavering between notes a half step up and a half step down. Hearing the build up is a snooze. It’s neither ugly enough nor interesting enough to warrant subjecting a listener to 30 minutes or so of it.

Towards the end, the density of the banal sounds increases and the whole thing gets a kind of droning regularity to it. Also a kind of cimbalom effect with single-note rolls comes in to the mix and has some interest. Then there are some mumbled cosmic sorts of vocals to go atop all of that, and so the last 20 minutes isn’t at all bad. Mr. Diaz-Infante should have started in the middle, given us half of this music and perhaps something else along with it. That would have made a big difference, I think.

This CD should be available from CD Baby if you are so inclined.

August 20, 2009—Africa’s influence on the music world has been enormous, though not always acknowledged. It should be no surprise to anyone that wonderful music continues to be made there. Today’s CD serves as an example.

Staff Benda Bilili live on the grounds of a public zoo in Kinshasha, Congo. They make their way by street performance. The four main members are paraplegic. They sing and play guitars in a kind if variant on the Highlife style. They are accompanied by a group of driving rhythm-percussionists, plus a fellow that plays a homemade stringed instrument with one string and a tin can as resonator. He is incredible and the sound he gets cuts through overtop the ensemble with a soulfully high-pitched set of runs that are sometimes given a wah-wah effect by manipulating the tin can opening. It’s not uncanny. It’s truly canny!

Their CD “Tres Tres Fort” (Crammed) captures the excitement of Staff Benda Bilili with faithful fidelity. It is very lively music and if you like Highlife and Afropop you will probably find the music contained therein nigh irresistible. I found it so.

August 19, 2009—There are creative winds blowing across our planet, bringing new sounds, bringing new approaches and musics that go beyond the standard categories. A very good example is a CD coming out next month by composer-drummer Tyshawn Sorey. His “Koan” (482 Music) brings together what at first glance looks like a standard guitar trio, with Todd Neufeld on the six stringer, Thomas Morgan on acoustic bass, and Mr. Sorey taking the percussion chair.

The music however is not at all of the standard jazz, free, or rock sort. Much of the music has dreamy, haunting, slowly repeating chordal patterns on the guitar, with bass and drums accompanying or playing counter patterns. It’s Minimalism slowed down to a ruminative crawl, and it’s perhaps like nothing else out there. A few pieces augment the mood, such as the modern-Concert tinged “Two Guitars,” which finds bassist Morgan doubling on the nylon-stringed classical instrument in a quiet duet with Neufeld. The final “Embed” has moments where freely unfolding balladic trio music prevails. All of it is rather extraordinary.

It’s a remarkable recording. If you want another fresh look at where we are today, “Koan” is one good place to find it.

August 18, 2009—Wendy Waldman was one of those singer-songwriters that came to prominence in the ‘70s. For various reasons, she did not have the kind of sustained success of people like Elton John or James Taylor, to take a few examples at random. Early in this blog I mentioned her second album, “Gypsy Symphony” (Warner Brother), which was her second album and to me remains very worthy listening. Collector’s Choice has released what looks like all of her Warner Brothers albums from that period. I grabbed her first, “Love has Got Me” a little while ago and am just now getting to it.

As a first album it has plenty of merit. Her beautifully wrought voice is there and a set of twelve solid originals. The arrangements are kind of more stereotypical than the second record. They sometimes have the standard backup singer parts, strings, horns and the like of a Rock album looking for Pop radio play back then. The second album is more quirky in that wise. But the artistry of Ms. Waldman overcomes these pedestrian elements to put out a program of her songs that shows, even then, that she was not churning out anything ordinary. She was a real artist—and still is.

August 17, 2009—Some CDs I get for review are puzzles, enigmatic. Like Senior Coconut’s “Around the Word” (Nacional). The sticker on the shrink wrap says “A Latin electronic tribute to club hits. . .” Yes, I get that. But it’s almost like one of those space-age bachelor pad records. There are some very lounge lizardy vocals, but really only a few squarely in that bag. And yes, they do Latin versions of club music that I know or I guess I should know. The electronics are subtle, like in sampling a vocal or drum riff and some synthesizer parts. Nothing disrupts the style focus.

But to the credit of Mr. Coconut, the band has absolutely smoking horns and Latin percussion and some nice parts for marimba. I came away from my listening with a pleasurable feeling. The arrangements are for the most part kicking. This is tongue-in-cheek lizardry, but also some really hot Latin music that manages to be both contemporary and retro at the same time. Fun!

August 14, 2009—Incarnations of Ed? They are a Jamband you may not have heard of. Ed had a number of shows posted on archive.org’s Live Music section. I picked one, from just about two years ago (8/11/07) at the Red Square in Burlington, Vermont. Unfortunately, their shows seem to have disappeared from the site, but I'll describe the one I have been hearing anyway.

Aside from a spacey version of “Frankin’s Tower,” they tend to go their own way. There are instrumental jam numbers in the main, and not very many vocals. They don’t pick up on fusionish forays, they aren’t especially bluesy, there may be a Phish influence. It’s all largely key-center or vamp based hypnotics, psychedelics and playful worrying of riffs. They don’t always go where you expect them to, and that’s probably a good thing. The lead guitarist utilizes digital delay sometimes to double his noteing and he does fine in that. He can have a kind of mid-range heavy singing tone at times that is appealing. Keys and sax have some solo time, too. It’s a group dynamic that prevails. They aren’t bad at all. I do wonder what they’ve been up to since this show.

August 13, 2009—The Post-Prog Rock aggregate Beep Beep hails from Nebraska and have been mixing & matching tones since 2001. Their second album “Enchanted Islands” (Saddle Creek) came to me via a friend. It was released last March, but good music is always timely so we need to consider them.

First off, according to the jewel case copy, this is a kind of virtual voyage to the Galapagos Islands, but only in some metaphysically cosmic sense. The quartet plays rather inimitable music, combining intricacies that touch upon the influences of Beefheart and some of the more intelligent, musically sophisticated groups making residence in newly repopulated Alt and Prog camps.

The guitar parts are really interesting, with jagged lines, chords and motival hooks that stand out. The songs are well conceived and rock with alternating fire and a gentle quality. Lyrics are daydreamy, like a sunny summer afternoon spent under a tree feeling the slowly warming grass under your bare feet.

This is an excellent example of why guitar-based Rock has in no way exhausted its possibilities. And I wouldn’t just say that to be nice. There’s nothing in it for me but the true pleasure of good sounds. Beep Beep provides a great deal of that.

August 12, 2009—Freely collaged improvisational music has been with us for quite some time, but often does not include an electric guitarist in the mix. When there are two guitarists in an ensemble of this kind, it is a rather rare event.

Marc Edwards & Slipstream Time Travel has such a lineup on “Ode to A Dying Planet” (Ayler Download), and it gives the ensemble a distinct sound. Edwards, a freely powerful drummer, sets the general tone with continuous detonations of freetime clusters. He’s joined by Jeffrey Surtout on piano and the electric guitarists Tor Snyder and Ernest Anderson. Generally speaking one of the guitarists (not sure which is which) plays trebly chords and acid-etched lines; the other has a ringing rhapsodic sustain and phrases more melodically.

This is group improvisation pretty much all the way. There is a churning turbulence to the music, with Shurdut’s pianistic expressions tending toward the sensory-motored events Cecil Taylor pioneered. Marc Edwards throughout supercharges the session with high-energy free propulsion.

This is uncompromising outness but the constant wash of textures gives the listener guideposts that help him/her negotiate through the thickets of sound, feel a narrative thrust and internalize the virtual event-clock that ticks on for the forty-something minutes of the recording. Powerful stuff!

August 11, 2009—Mamer is a Chinese musician who takes the music of his grasslands heritage and makes something quite beautiful and unusual out of it. His “Mamer/Eagle” (Realworld) CD combines guitar, synths and drums with the traditional strings, percussion and flutes of his homeland. And he sings his songs in a traditional way, but manages to sound like a Chinese Richard Thompson at the same time. The combination is really quite incredible. Something like this could be a colossal failure. Mamer has the artistry and imagination to get a result that is haunting. I am so impressed that I would unreservedly recommend this to anybody with thirsty ears. This is the real deal, World Music that communicates universally to planet-wide music lovers.

August 10, 2009—Singer Gale Garnette had a big pop hit with “We’ll Sing in the Sunshine” in 1964. My older sister bought the single and played it semi-endlessly for a time on her keen-teen Decca record player. I didn’t think much of the song one way or another. It was OK.

Garnette formed/joined a band called Gale Garnette and the Gentle Reign and did two albums with them around 1967. Both are shoe-horned into a Rev-ola CD, “An Audience with the King Of Wands & Sausalito Heliport.” Now there are a few things to be learned from examining those albums.

1. Back then there were demographic-genre separations that were fairly rigid and if they were transgressed, well, you might have a sales problem. On one side was the hippie Rock crowd, who were looking for cosmic lyrics, buzzing guitars and a sort of musician-as-arteest view of what was happening. Then there was the general Pop crowd that more or less craved sentimental, schmaltzy, simple tunes that stuck in the mind. The artists were supposed to have pizzaz, to raise both arms in the air during the rousing climax of their song as performed on the Johnny Carson Show. There wasn't supposed to be much that was "deep" about the whole gig.

The gap between the two groups was as wide as it would ever be. Wayne Newton records were just not played at the Love-In. The Ultimate Spinach didn't have followers in the Florsheim crowd.

The Gentle Reign tried to appeal to both groups, and on the Pop side they didn’t have quite the right combination for success, regardless of what else they were doing on those records. Then they did the Rock band thing, with varying degrees of effectiveness, a few nice guitar solos, some psycho-sitar things, cosmic lyrics like “you could have been anyone, and you were,” etc. Through it all is Gale Garnette’s somewhat appealing voice. Inexplicably, one of their strongest tunes, Fred Neil’s “The Dolphins,” is sung by another band member. Go figure

2. In those days there were Producers and A & R people who did not necessarily have a grasp on the Rock thing. This was true of the older generation in general. I can remember watching a Patty Duke Show episode that included a “teen party” and the music and dancing were put together quite obviously by people who had no clue what was going on. There was plenty of that out there then. I don’t think Garnette’s management offered the best advice on tune selection. And maybe that accounts for #1.

3. A bit of the collector’s dilemma: If something is extremely rare and generally has been unavailable for years, it may be a hidden gem and the joy of discovery will ensue upon purchase. On the other hand, the reason why you haven’t heard of or about the record may be because it just plain stank. When it comes to the Rock scene of 1967, it can go either way. There are gems and stinkers in somewhat equal proportions. And don’t get me wrong, the Gentle Reign albums don’t stink completely. . . not ALL the time. But there are cuts that will make you wince, and there are more than a few of them.

If you are Gale’s granddaughter, you will love this compilation, perhaps. For the rest of us there are other, better ways to occupy our music-listening time.

August 6, 2009—Technically evolved Garage Band music. Is that an oxymoron? If the art of the Garage has a certain ineptness built into its foundations, then how does one judge the level and intensity of that? I’ll confess I was a member of some terrible bands from 7th grade through high school and I’ll tell you one thing. There’s a big gap between the terrible-terrible and the terrible-great. And the Condo F_s are in the latter category. Their EP “F_book” (Matador) has all the raw power and energy of the best of the primitive garagists, right down to the hum of the guitars between tunes. They cover songs by the Beach Boys, Troggs, and other nuggets, sounding like a band giving it the last run through in the garage before the big high school dance.

They do it so well, though. The guitars are raw and amp-blown, vocals frenetic and snotty, drums crashing along. It’s absolutely terrible-great music. With Sky Saxon of the Seeds no longer among us, it is fitting that the Condo F_s emerge to re-energize the form.

August 5, 2009—If the Southern Rock (Allmans) approach to the jamband style is your thing, chances are The Mood Cultivation Project will appeal to you. I’ve been listening to a show recorded April 17, 2004 and available as a free, Creative Commons download at archive.org.

They have a strong lead singer, go for those two-guitar harmonies and rambling man guitar jams. It’s a solid outfit with originals that stand out as most definitely decent. The sound quality is good. Dig into them if you choose.

August 4, 2009—When I have in-depth music listening to catch up on (that is, from my personal music batch, not things sent to me for review), I generally follow the order received method, working my way through the piles with the ones there the longest going first. So when I turned to tenor saxophonist Stephen Gauci’s trio recording “Substratum” (CIMP), it had been sitting around a little while. A new listen made me realize I should have jumped it to the top of the pile.

“Substratum” comprises a 2006 session with Gauci joined by the formidable bass talents of Michael Bisio and the always appropriate drumming of Jay Rosen. The three had just gotten to CIMP’s Spirit Room studio after an extended tour as three-quarters of the Michael Bisio Quartet. It’s only natural, then, that the three of them were well tempered as a playing unit. The music shows a relaxed unity of purpose that can be attained only by extended time together on the bandstand.

Gauci owes no stylistic allegiance to anyone. He’s absorbed the Bop-to-Free language of improvisation and made something his own from it. This session shows him in high relief on an extended set that puts him in fine contrast with Bisio’s extraordinary bass explorations and the very sensitive Jay Rosen, a cat who listens carefully to the other two and reacts beautifully, with subtle drive and attention to drum tone. Gauci shows here as elsewhere that he doesn’t repeat himself, that he continually plays in the moment. It’s what great improvisation is about.

“Substratum” is a meeting of the masterful, all in good form. And it has that CIMP highly dynamic recording quality, showing the band in whisper mode and with all the shouts, too!

August 3, 2009—Soundtracks, especially when they arrive on my desk unexpectedly, can go almost anywhere. The use of “Rock” to enhance mood and story goes way back. My parents and I stumbled on a teen movie when I was a kid. I was overawed because they used a Duane Eddy tune (“Only the Young”) as the soundtrack theme. I thought that was very cool, though my parents weren’t exactly thrilled with either the song or the movie itself. Then there was “Having A Wild Weekend” featuring the Dave Clark Five, not exactly notable in retrospect. Of course, the Beatles’ movies were inconic. And how many thrilled to “The Wall?” “Purple Rain?” Whatever.

Wim Wenders and David Lynch were and are expert users of Rock to set the mood of a movie. I am reminded of them when I listen to the soundtrack (Elektra) to the HBO series “Trueblood.” I don’t have HBO so I’ve never seen it, but the soundtrack certainly sets a mood. There’s a retro, love-out-of-hand, melancholy darkness to the whole thing. Lucinda Williams’ “Lake Charles” transforms a potentially cheerful vacation stop-off ditty into a regretful look at loss and lack. The venomous Stones tune “Play with Fire” (as redone by Cobra Verde) similarly brings dark clouds and thunder to the forecast. Otherwise, there’s a rootsy hardness to the music, with appearances from Slim Harpo, Dr. John, Allen Toussaint, even the Flying Burrito Brothers. It all makes me want to watch the series.