Gapplegate * * Music
It's not just a guitar. It's your sound.Grego Applegate Edwards Blogs on Music and Musicians, with Some Attention to Guitarists, Bassists, and other Creative People
March 19, 2010--Happy Friday!
Today the posting is at our http://gapplegateguitar.blogspot.com site. It's on the new album by Ted Leo and the Pharmacists. Have a good weekend. We'll back over here next week.
March 18, 2010--Today the posting is again at http://gapplegateguitar.blogspot.com. It's about nylon string guitarist Scott Fields and his ensemble. As always, thanks for reading these blogs!
March 17, 2010--Another day for posting at the twin site http://gapplegateguitar.blogspot.com. Yo La Tengo is up for discussion today. Take a look over there if you care to do so. Happy St. Patrick's Day.
March 16, 2010--I'd tell you all to beware the Ides of March, but they have passed, haven't they? We are recovering in Jersey from a storm that the term "noreaster" doesn't quite describe. A hurricanal slap in the face was more like what happened. "Oh, the wind and the rain" an Elizabethan song has it. I was singing that to myself Saturday as chimney and fence went south (or was it north?) and trees threatened to fall, then did.
Today's posting will be up at our twin site http://gapplegateguitar.blogspot.com. It deals with the new album by Elysian Fields, which I like very much. Head on over there to read it.
March 15, 2010—The vital strain of Brazilian Samba has both directly and indirectly infused the Jazz Mainstream for many years. A Samba-Jazz rhythm section gives an ensemble a straight eighth-note approach more flexible than a Rock mode and in the right hands has a swinging undercurrent that catalyzes the ensemble and soloists into a smoldering groove that can be somewhat light and cool without sounding Smooth in the pejorative sense. (My prejudices come out here. Smooth Jazz has no appeal to me, I’ll readily admit).
Pianist Jon Gold and his new CD, “Brazil Confidential” (Zoho) (available April 13th) fits right in with the sort of Samba Jazz described. It’s music with the weight and density of Chic Corea’s “Light as A Feather,” but does not sound like that band in any derivative sense. There are also Bossa tempo numbers, classical-guitar comping in the idiom by Scott Anderson and Luiz Ribeiro as well as some restrained electric work, evocative vocals by Tatiana Parra and Leah Siegal, idiomatic Brazilian percussion, soloists that sound comfortable and fluid in this groove, not the least in leader-pianist Jon Gold, and interesting, colorful arrangements and songs.
There are also Oregonesque moments of lyrical winds and/or cello that bring out another dimension of Gold as composer-arranger. It is a listen that gives pleasure and finesses your foot tapping accompaniment so that YOU are in on this music, too, if you are inclined. “Brazil Confidential” is a welcome addition to the Brazilian Tinge and a testament to the continued importance of the musical hybrid.
March 12, 2010—If you look on the little image of today’s album for review, you’ll see that Eremite Records (on their site, where I picked up the image) pasted over the cover shot the words “Out of Print.” This album came out I believe in 2001. You can still find copies on the net, but for the artists involved, it is for all purposes a void when it comes to documenting their music. In these times serious American music, be it of the free or mainstream jazz variety, rock of an ambitious sort, classical composers of today, and whatnot, does not get much exposure via the general public. Labels like Eremite are small. The pressing of this disk may have been in a quantity of one or two thousand. Once it sells out, that is usually the end of it.
Don’t blame the small labels. They may be lucky to make a few dollars when they sell out on a title, or they may just break even. It’s a fact of life. In Europe and Japan, things are a little different. They treasure their musical artists there. And ours too... The government subsidizes recordings, tours, and those sorts of things (at least sometimes and I don’t know how much that has changed in economic downtimes). The citizens of those countries think it valuable to keep the musical arts alive. In the United States, we care less and less, it seems. There used to be channels of support for serious musical artists. I don’t believe there is much of anything left of that today.
We of course believe in the Free Enterprise system. As a small businessman, running a guitar outlet, I too believe in that system. But anyone who reflects on the past, present and future of our culture, society and commerce mechanisms has to see that there are limits to an untrammeled FE system. It does not automatically do the right thing. That lesson should hit us especially hard in these times. I don’t think I need to elaborate there.
The vast majority of our mass-media system right now perpetuates the success of the lowest common denominator of the arts. If you like, read in that “music that appeals to people who neither understand nor care about music in any larger sense.” That doesn't always apply straight down the line, but it still holds as a generality.
When cable TV came along, we were told that we would get a vast number of choices, things to appeal to smaller niche markets, to people like “us”. That has happened in some ways, but it also has been a colossal failure on a cultural level in other ways. I now have 500 channels to choose from on my cable service. Choices? Most of them are what network and smaller TV channels covered 20 years ago, and don’t now. Reruns (not nearly as much as then), real dramatic and comedy series, old movies, the actual news. In other ways, the fact is that those other, smaller yet seriously important niches one might imagine would be available, things that are not mass media in smaller chunks, they do not seem to be there much, if at all.
The music we discuss today for example, would NEVER be found on any of those 500 channels. There are no stations covering serious American Art Music on any regular basis. Oh, sure, someone may cover some “Jazz Festival,” and when you check to see who is playing, at least half of the artists aren’t even Jazz musicians, others are in the commercial Smooth categories and related things. Very rarely does a true improvising artist of today make an appearance.
The fact is, whether in microcosm or macrocosm, the free market goes by a “dummy it down” criteria. It makes no room for an audience that might be small, but open to non-standard fare that is above the 6th grade level of understanding. And of course it doesn’t allow the larger audience a chance to hear music they may find they like. The system assumes we are all stupid people. The system fails; it threatens to extinguish what is most valuable in our cultural heritage.
So, back to the album for today. “Out of Print,” the image tells us. Still, it is a live performance by bassist Alan Silva and Oluyemi Thomas on reeds. The CD is called “Transmissions.” It is around an hour long, a concert of Silva and Thomas in free duet. You CAN still find it, if you search around a little.
Alan Silva was one of the real pioneers of Avant Garde improvisation here in the US. His 1964 album has been reviewed on these pages and that review can be found at our sister site (http://gapplegateguitar.blogspot.com). He was with Cecil Taylor and other important originators of modern improvised music, he was responsible for some key early albums, has played bass but also violin and keyboards, and he has made some astonishing big band, large ensemble recordings of Free Jazz.
On this duet disk you get the Silva way of improvising in all of its dramatic and dynamic grandiloquence, exposed in a two-man performance for all to hear. Whether bowing or plucking, Silva shows his great power and strength as a bassist-improvisor. Oluyemi Thomas shows his own real virtuosity in the classic freestyle performance practices that go back to Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman and other first-generation pioneers.
There is high art happening in this music. And probably no more than a handful of Americans are aware of it. You should at least try to listen to music like this, with an open mind. We have no Emperor (thank God) here in the US to support and cultivate a music that perhaps ultimately must be appreciated over time, with some patience. Nor do we have government programs to support the music, for the most part. So it is up to PEOPLE and that means people like you to keep it alive. This is an excellent CD. It is crime that it is out of print. We Americans should not let that happen. There are generations to come who will wonder if we as a people did anything worthwhile in the musical arts. We cannot afford to let music like this be lost to them.
March 11, 2010—From yesterday’s Tango music we jump to a new, ambitious second outing by Titus Andonicus, who commemorate and deconstruct the Civil War in a concept album. It was released two days ago to coincide with the 148th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings, in which the ships the Monitor and the Virginia engaged in an intensive and decisive skirmish in the Battle of Hampton Roads.
This New Jersey homeboy indie band does not deal with that war in a direct sense. As band leader Patrick Stickles notes, the war serves as an “extended metaphor” for a narrative that has a kind of slacker poetic glory. This is a well paced musical work that dives in and out of post-Clash punk, in the process plunging into adventurous asides with a considered musical eclecticism that keeps the listener focused during the 65-minute program.
Oh, I should mention that the album is called “The Monitor” (XL).
This is not ordinary fare. It has an epic sweep and Indie-Rock-As-Art caliber arrangements and songs. It combines in rare fashion a raw elementality with a sophisticated feeling for form. Now that may sound pretentious to fans of this sort of music. But guess what, I’m from New Jersey too. And if you grew up in this state, you are used to dealing on a daily basis with a mingling of the crude and the sublime. Drive around Hoboken, Jersey City and Secaucus, then head up to Sussex County and you’ll understand what I mean. If I hear a touch of Springstein in the music, it is certainly intentional on the part of Titus Andronicus. But they are probably way too punky for a typical Springstein fan. And at the same time they work in a slacker-opera mode that reminds me of The Streets at their best, but with a vibe that is pure Jersey. Much more than that as well. No matter. This is the sort of music that should find its natural audience because it is very good. I am a part of that audience! That happened after listen number four, I believe.
March 10, 2010—I’ve known a number of people in my life who were avid music listeners, even musicians. I’ve noticed a pattern with many of them that I sometimes detect in myself. Confronting certain assumptions I think is critical for getting past the purely personal and into the realm of "proper thinking" about any piece of music. Proper, that is, if you are to have any kind of objectivity. I believe many, if not most people listen to certain kinds of music for complex reasons, some of those relating to who they are as a person and not the music itself per se.
Music is part of the furnishings of one’s life. What you listen to says something about who you are. So I think that one of the things going through one’s mind in the course of first hearing a piece of music is “if I like this music, what does that say about me as a person?” Will it ramify with what I believe or wish to believe about myself as a person? Does it make me cool? Youthful? Conservative? Sensitive? Liberal? Sophisticated? Earthy? Manly? Feminist? And so on. Those answers may not relate to the music itself, but they influence how we react to the music.
Another factor one might call the “air guitar” effect. Is this music I could imagine myself playing? Would I want to play this music (or compose it) if I could? If the answer is yes, you might tend to like the music. For those who make music, there is another process of questioning, I think. Namely, is this music I could play technically? If not does it threaten me? Or does it make me want to become a better musician? Does this music threaten to overwhelm my own musical niche? Or do I not understand the music and do I feel angry about that? Inquisitive? Exhilarated?
As a music writer I try to ask myself all of these questions as I listen. No matter what the answer I must work beyond that to the music itself for an objective (more or less) evaluation. In the end I might like music I would not personally want to play, may not be able to play, may not completely understand, and may not ramify with who I am as a person. Of course, this approach stops at a point where ethics intervene. So I would not accept a CD of Nazi drinking songs no matter what the music is about.
After such a long harangue, we have today’s CD. It’s by contrabassist Pablo Aslan. It’s called “Tango Grill” (Zoho). This is Tango Jazz. Now with all the questions I’ve mapped out above, the answer to me for this CD is as follows. No. I can’t really imagine myself playing this music, but it does ramify with my self-perceived identity as a person who appreciates all kinds of international styles. I’ve never been especially informed about Tango music, though it has a very fascinating history. I’ve just not spent much time exploring that music.
“Tango Grill” features a mid-sized ensemble playing some sophisticated Tango music. The musicianship is very high and the soloing is quite decent. I was taken by Mr. Aslan’s work on the bass, both bowing and pizzicato. This is what a very good Jazz Tango bass player can sound like, though I’ve never thought much about that.
The music is certainly excellent for what it is. If you never thought you’d like Tango music, here’s one where you just might. If you are already into it, well here is an excellent combination of good soloists, nice pieces and very good performances. Maybe I could imagine myself playing it after all. I did do a few “air Tango” moves in my kitchen when I was listening, much to my wife’s amusement. This is something that bassists would appreciate. It is something that anybody with open ears would appreciate too, I think.
March 9, 2010—Elysian Fields have been getting my attention lately. They are Jennifer Charles on vocals, Oren Blodoe on guitar and vocals, plus whoever else is playing with them at any point. Their very first album, self-titled and released in 1996, an EP (Radioactive), is I believe out of print but you can find it on the net.
It’s a good example of why they are interesting. The songs have a Lynchian darkness-in-innocence, though Jennifer’s unique voice is a little world-knowing. It also has a lovely soft, languid, sultry quality with a deceptively casual delivery. The songs are intelligent, poetic and in the advanced Alt-Art Song realm. The four songs here are worth extended ear exposure. They get better if you listen time and again. It’s all about love in its various moods. Oren’s guitar work is quite interesting. Hey, no kidding they are good. We’ll look at their new album in a couple of days.
March 8, 2010—The late’60s were a distinctive one for Rock. If you don’t know that, then today’s recording probably is not for you. There was a wave of bands by 1969 adopting a psyche-somatic credo. Not all of them got the promotional push they undoubtedly would have benefited from. One such group is Music Emporium, an early LA progressive band whose only LP was pressed in a quantity of 300!
Needless to say they did not get noticed and quickly receded into the long darkness of vault half-life. That record however can be found as a CD on Sundazed Records if you search around a little.
It turns out that this band was not at all bad, in fact good for its kind. They have the guitar-combo organ-bass-drum and cosmic vocals lineup. They play music totally enmeshed in the time zone. Think the Clear Light, the Electric Prunes, Iron Butterfly, Country Joe and the Fish, early Doors (a little), and the various psyche influence then prevailing. The original LP plus a generous number of bonus alternate instrumental/backing tracks are included. If you love this genre, there’s a good period vibe in this obscure find for you to savor. And they are definitely musical in what they do.
March 5, 2010--Today's posting discusses the music of Kurt Vile. It's at our other "guitar" site http://gapplegateguitar.blogspot.com. We'll be back here Monday. So have a good weekend and please go on over there to read that post.
March 4, 2010—There was a period of time in the ‘50s when almost every alto sax player coming up was heavily influenced by Charlie Parker. It was only natural given the stature of Charlie’s achievement, and of course many of those players went on to become important in their own right as they worked through and expanded out from that influence. But the rare few who managed NOT to sound like Bird ultimately got the brass ring for the post-Bird scene. Really that was Lee Konitz in those days. He didn’t and doesn’t. And what he did sound like had a full measure of artistry that made him worthy of attention.
Today in the world of improvising guitarists, my experience is that Pat Metheny and John Abercrombie have enormous cache among the guitarists who have come up and established themselves in the past decade or so. Sure, there are other influences too, but those two get a lot of imitators.
Enter Michael Musillami, a player who has been around awhile. He channels the roots of the music and the guitar tradition in his own way. He doesn’t sound like Pat or John.
His well-burnished trio with drummer George Schuller and bassist Joe Fonda has been the vehicle of preference for Mr. Musillami in the recent past. He now releases his fifth album with the unit, “Old Tea” (Playscape). It’s a moving tribute to Michael’s son Evan, who voluntarily left this world one year ago. The album remembers him through pieces suggested by important or poignant events in Evan’s short life and also the feeling of loss and bereavement Michael and his family experienced in the time after.
It is not necessarily to know the background to this set of performances to appreciate them, partly because Michael has deliberately put a positive vibe on the musical transformation of the tragic experience, but perhaps it does account for a concentrated intensity and directness of purpose on these sides.
“Old Tea” puts Musillami and the trio in a musically profound mode. There is a rooted pentatonic bluesiness to much of it but every cut has some real power, even the more reflective pieces. The trio plays exemplary, fully interactive music but it is Musillami that soars highest. He shows significant guitar artistry here. He puts forth an aural presence that has force and delicacy in equal measure. This is surely one of the guitar releases of the year and Musillami is a musician to be reckoned with. Listen to “Old Tea” and you’ll hear why.
March 3, 2010--Once more, the daily posting is over at http://gapplegateguitar.blogspot.com. No-Man has a new DVD set and I must say I rather give it a rave. We'll be back over here tomorrow.
March 2, 2010—Mission of Burma have been around a bit and have established a loyal and vocal following for their Grunge-Alt-semi-Metal power trio excursions. “The Sound the Speed of Light” (Matador), their latest album from last year, is a good mix of Alt song stylings and quasi-Metal punkiness.
When done right, this kind of music has a raw excitement that blows out the slick Pop garbage that one can be inflicted with on the mundane media outlets. Mission of Burma do it right. A jolt of electricity and a set of songs to hang it on.
March 1, 2010--Once again our posting for today is on our other "guitar-bass" site http://gapplegateguitar.blogspot.com. It looks at a brand-new Prog outfit, bllt. Take a look there to read about them. We'll be back here tomorrow with more chills and spills, depending on the weather and my dexterity in relocating cups of hot coffee from the kitchen to my office space.
February 26, 2010--Today's posting is on our sister site http://gapplegateguitar.blogspot.com. It addresses the NOLA Open Ears music series and two sets by the electric band WATIV. Please go over there to check it out.
February 25, 2010—There are Jazz outfits around right now that have plenty of improvisation, do not have roots in Bebop, yet are not always exactly “Free” in the sense of playing regularly in a relatively unstructured context. Such a group, and a good one to boot, is guitarist Jon Lundbom & Big Five Chord. They have a new one, “Accomplish Jazz” (Hot Cup) and it has been giving my ears a workout of late.
It’s a quintet, with Lundbom plus Jon Irabagon on alto sax, Bryan Murray, tenor, “Moppa” Elliot on upright bass and Danny Fischer, drums. In addition to a cover of the Louvin Brothers’ “The Christian Life,” they run through four abstract originals. The ensemble work is clean and precise, modern. The rhythm section is first rate. Jon Lundbom as soloist has great interest. He tends to work phrases, repeating them, varying them, extracting tension and power in the process. Interestingly, Irabagon on alto follows that sort of way as well. Murray shows strong direction in his tenor excursions and also tends to “worry” phrases, but perhaps less so than the others.
From a compositional, ensemble and solo perspective this group has a strong identity. “Accomplish Jazz” does definitely accomplish Jazz, and they do it well. This is a bit of a blast to hear. It will challenge your ears without overwhelming your senses. I hope you will give it a spin.
February 24, 2010—Holly Miranda sings like an angel and writes quirky Alt songs. She also plays guitar, was born in New York and lives in Brooklyn. All these are good things in my mind.
Her first album, “The Magician’s Private Library” (XL) is due out any day (I’ve forgotten the street date), and that also is a good thing. The record starts with an adaptation of a children's song and parts of that melody line recur in various transformed states throughout the program.
This is the sort of no BS music making that does not mess with that nauseating slickness so much a part of the pap-at-the-pops media sound one is apt to hear on the airwaves. It is music that is NOT STUPID. In fact, no small amount of thought has gone into the songs and arrangements. The private library is a place where one might glean secret knowledge, maybe about yourself. Artists like Holly are the sort to grow into luxuriously beautiful plantings if nourished and well-tended. I hope that happens. She is off to a great start anyway.
February 23, 2010--Today's posting is located at our sister site http://gapplegateguitar.blogspot.com. The review is of Beppe Crovella's tribute to Soft Machine keyboardist Mike Ratledge.
February 22, 2010—The concept album has become a rarity today. Part of that has to do with how an album gets a potential butchery on the commercial MP3 downloading sites. You are given the option of only buying the tracks you like. The album as entity does not always carry over in this context. It becomes a repository of songs for sale.
In contrast to this Shearwater’s new album stresses the wholeness of the music. “The Golden Archepelago” (Matador) is the third part of a triptych of interrelated records, all having to do with personal and environmental deterioration. This third part dwells on islands, living on them, their change over time, the experience of wonder and loss
All this is songwriter Jonathan Meiberg’s baby. The songs are different, movingly so. The arrangements are mostly Spartan but very evocative. Listening to this album is like embarking on a trip through space and time, to contemplate island imagery as bitter-sweet memory.
It strikes me as being one of those albums that has the potential to define the new decade, at least partly so. It has that kind of iconicity.
February 19, 2010—For many years the contemporary big band has been difficult to keep afloat because of the changed jazz economy. Gigs are scarce these days, yet there remains a need for steady work at a fee that can take care of the larger payroll. Then there are the difficulties of keeping a stable group of right-minded players together throughout the scuffling vicissitudes of day-to-day musical existence. At least since the days of the original Thad Jones-Mel Lewis band, the problem can be ameliorated by getting a steady Monday night gig (normally a musician's day off), so that band personnel can do their weekly session-gig routines and still be available to play in the band every week.
I don’t know if the Big Crazy Energy New York Band has landed such a gig but their first (as far as I know) CD “Inspirations, Volume One” (Rosa) has a polish and tightness that can seemingly only come about through a statistically significant number of nights on the bandstand.
Trombonist Jens Wendelboe leads the 16 piece band & vocalists through a program of his solid originals and a series of classic numbers from various sources. For example, there’s Cobham’s “Pleasant Pheasant” done with a full horn treatment that gives one renewed interest in the possibilities of large band Fusion, there’s “Dear Old Stockholm,” the traditional number made so much of by Miles and Getz, a Joe Henderson classic, and the Beatles' “A Day in the Life.”
The soloists are all quite decent. It’s the fullness and tightness of the band and its arrangements that make this program a pleasure to hear. If you like straight-ahead modern big band music, this one is for you!
February 18, 2010--Once again our posting is on sister site http://gapplegateguitar.blogspot.com. Today we consider a very interesting new guitarist, Timucin Sahin! Please take a trip over there to read. Tomorrow we'll be back on this page. Thanks.
February 17, 2010—The world is filled with musical people, some with a genuine vision for their music, waiting for us to take notice.
Copenhagen’s Efterklang is one such group. I’ve missed their first two albums, but their third, “Magic Chairs” (4AD), which hits the streets in the US this coming Tuesday, is on my listening radar.
This is not music that’s easy to classify, which to me is a good sign. They write music that has progressive elements, yet also has a Pop veneer. The group runs through interestingly quirky originals that have understated yet vibrant arrangements. I’d say they have a certain Police-meet-British-post-ELO resemblance, but that would not be entirely accurate. There’s a “post” quality to the music in any event.
Melody is important to them, but arrangements make up half the battle. They use strings in a restrained manner, not as “sweetner” but as a musical color, a bolsterer of the ensemble mix. The same goes with synths, brass and such.
“Magic Chairs” is interesting, enjoyable music.
February 16, 2010—It’s always rewarding to come across a band that does something well, does something not a lot of other bands are doing, and are rather unknown. This all applies to Scurvy, a five-man unit headed up by alto sax-composer Johnny Butler. He’s joined by Ryan Snow on the trombone, Adam Caine on the electric guitar (who I am familiar with from his own music), Rus Wimbish on the electric bass and Jason Nazry on drums.
They have a new CD coming out soon, their second, and I have been listening to it. “Fracture” (Hi4Head Records) assaults the senses (in a good way) with ten pieces. The composition style of Johnny Butler has some resonance with the Flying Luttenbachers, George Russell and some of the Downtown cats, but is no less distinctive for all that. There are often complicated, abstract lines played off one another—tightly coiled spirals of contrasts between asymmetrical repetition versus linear worrying of line forms. It’s especially intriguing and appealing when guitar, bass and drums work a jaggedly hard-hitting rhythmic-melodic figure while the horns play a complimentary contrasting line form in a post-Funk idiom that propulses like Funk, but does it in a way that ignores backbeats, stiff riffing and other mainstays.
These compositions intrigue and are quite interesting. Butler, Snow and Caine have solo space to move within and acquit themselves well. The music combines an avant freedom with hard driving arrangements.
This is a GOOD band, a GOOD recording and it shows that Scurvy are one of the most interesting of the tight-loose, rock-jazz, open-closed ensembles working today. During ths cold winter if you like well put together music that combines free, electric and advanced ensemble modernity, Scurvy has the heat to warm your musical insides. I hope you check them out.
Johnny Butler also has a solo sax loop project happening, and we will be considering that too in a blog post to come.
February 15, 2010--Today's posting is on our sister site Gapplegate Guitar. Go to http://gapplegateguitar.blogspot.com to read it.
February 12, 2010—When Gil Scott-Heron garnered the attention of listeners with such politically committed songs as “Johannesburg” in the ‘70s, the time was right for his brand of Progressive Soul. Now these many years later he is a survivor. He’s maintained his artistic integrity. A new EP “I’m New Here” (XL) shows him reflective, poetic, musically strong. It is dedicated to his family, his grandmother who raised him, and dwells on the difficulties of becoming/remaining who you are in a world that would seek to place you in a pigeonhole.
Gil’s voice has aged over the years. If anything though, that has given him an even more expressive apparatus to get across the music and vision inside him.
“I’m New Here” addresses the continual disenfranchisement of continued existence. Gil finds that after all this time, he still is “new,” never really at home in the world, facing a need to turn around and go back, to run but with the realization that there’s no destination that will be acceptable.
“I’m New Here” combines recitation, poetics, a world-weary but maximally perceptive awareness, and his formidable vocal instrument to once again “say something” about life. There are a few surprises, like his attractive, gritty version of Bobby Blue Bland’s “I’ll Take Care of You.” But mostly this is a “new” Scott-Heron, which is a world-wise Scott-Heron, a musically hip as always Scott-Heron, a profound Scott-Heron.
February 11, 2010—Today’s posting, a new singles compilation by a group that shall remain nameless on this page, can be found at our sister site, http://gapplegateguitar.blogspot.com. Go ahead on over there to read it. Thanks!
February 10, 2010—I don’t ordinarily cover the Jazz-Funk style of music. It’s not that there haven’t been excellent groups and recordings out there, but it is one of the areas of the music that can be mired in the formulaic, lost in an endless repetition. Even that wouldn’t be unforgivable if the music had some hair on it. Often it does not, which means that the point for funking it up in the first has been lost.
Dave Sharp (bassist and bandleader) and his Secret Seven, at least on the new CD “7” (Vortex Jazz), have that hair. This is a band that plays with plenty of fire and chutzpah. It’s Sharp on electric and upright, Chris Kaercher on the tenor and other saxes, plus a good Hammond guy, percussion, drums and a variety of guitarists and such.
What else puts this above the norm? There is an Afro-Latin and even a South Asian component in there sometimes which distinguishes the sound. And the grooves and arrangements are pretty nice. Plus the hair.
February 9, 2010—The group called Vampire Weekend just released their second album, “Contra” (XL), and it is not uninteresting. Imagine Jason Mraz, a kind of upbeat, chipper but sensitive and complicated sensibility, but combine that with a little Paul Simon, and, every so often Donovan in his second psychodermic stage. Now forget all of that and add some interesting arrangements, interesting lyrics, quirky Rock-Alt-Pop perspectives and quite decent tunes.
There’s a playful quality to this music. I found it rather refreshing.
February 8, 2010—What makes Imogen Heap popular now, after so long more-or-less on the underground of the scene? Her latest album, “Ellipse,” is not really more commercial that the last. It is on RCA though, and seemingly getting some promotion. Her guest appearance with Jeff Beck on an album and on his Ronnie Scott DVD surely helped.
“I Megaphone” was quite a bit edgier than what she does now. That was the early-ish ‘90s. Her “Fru Fru” disk was really fetching, to me at least, but did not get her a great deal of fame, so to say. The last CD was quite beautiful.
In the end, perhaps the audience is just finally coming to recognize what was always there.
“Ellipse” continues the trend of Imogen multi-tracking elaborate vocal parts and showing off her impressive range and vocal colors. The arrangements are quite good, but take a back seat to the main attraction, Ms. Heap’s glorious vocal instrument. She can yodel, soar into a high range, do the quiet, breathy mid-range, and get polyphonic vocal group sounds of great beauty. The songs are very evocative. She is a rare songbird, a singer-songstress of unparalleled singularity. “Ellipse” is as good as anything she’s done. I can’t say enough about her without getting gushy. She is a true artist.
February 5, 2010—Today's posting looks at the Prog-Fuse group Doubt. It is located at our sister site http://gapplegateguitar.blogspot.com. Please go there to read it. Thanks.
February 4, 2010—Austin, Texas supports music. I gleaned that when I visited there some time ago. I've heard compilations of bands from Austin in the past, some better than others. A new compilation came out last week that seems definitive for what’s going on there right now for the Alt-Garage-Punky sort of thing. It’s called “Causal Victim Pile” (Matador).
What you get is 19 bands you’ve probably not heard of unless you are hanging out down there. The music is edgy and raw. It does not make overtures to mainstream “Rock” radio play, at last not in any overt sense, and that helps make it a satisfying listen. Here’s your chance to check out Kingdom of Suicide Lovers, Elvis, the Stuffies, the Teeners, Lost Controls and the rest of them. It’s a healthy injection of the slashing, thrashing and twanging world of real bands that play their own instruments and think that MIDI controllers are alien mind-control devices.
February 3, 2010—Gentle Giant in retrospect turned out to be one of the most important and prolific Prog Rock outfits to emerge in the early ‘70s. At the time I didn’t think so, mostly because I just never gave them the listen they deserved. Their fourth album “Octopus” (Vertigo/Columbia) (1972) finds them with an ambitious program of what one can only term “Art Rock Songs,” elaborate, sophisticated pieces with contrapuntal devices, long and interesting melodic arches, arranged instrumental parts of much interest and all-around musicianship.
It happens to be an excellent place to enter into their musical vision. You get 35 minutes of Prog at its high level. The more you listen, the more impressive it gets. That is my take. The problem: these fellows were actually too good to be very popular back then. As time goes on, Gentle Giant begins to gain the stature they always should have been awarded. Listen to "Octopus" and you’ll get an idea why.
I am not the one to give you a free download of this record. I do recommend you buy a legitimate copy. It is around. In this way you support the artists, at least in the abstract, and also you generate the royalties Gentle Giant are due.
February 2, 2010—There is no lack of talent out there in musicland. Singer-songwriter Basia Bulat numbers in the ranks of such artists coming into the fray. She celebrates her second album release (OK, so I am a week late) with “Heart of My Own” (Rough Trade). It centers around an angelic warbling voice-as-instrument. It’s fragile or robust, depending, and it is dead-on, a rapid vibrato a little like Tracy Chapman but with less of a burnished quality. She strums her acoustic (and at least once a ukulele) and directly communicates her songs in a straightforward way. Arrangements tend to be minimal but effective. Some cellos, or perhaps muted horns, rhythm section, a dulcimer or autoharp. She sounds like a representative for a tradition that does not yet exist, a tradition of Basia Bulat music.
The songs are the thing and they are sensitive folksy alterative essays in feelings and passions remembered later, when there’s time to reflect. Now she might say “no, that’s not it.” I don’t know. The point is that she has a personal way of expressing her life and it is musically entrancing.
I find such music necessary. If she did not exist in this space and time, someone would have to invent her. We need good songs right now. A voice for the today that is here and passing daily, only to return again. “Heart of My Own” is good musical travelling. May she continue to develop and claim an audience that is rightfully hers, even if some of them don’t realize it yet.
February 1, 2010--It is summer in Brazil; it sure is not in New Jersey. So it’s fitting that we kick off February with a Brazilian offering by bassist Nilson Matta and his group Brazilian Voyage, namely “Copacabana” (Zoho).
This is good contemporary Samba-Bossa played in a loosely hip way. Matta and his rhythm-mates drummer Mauricio Zottarelli and percussionist Ze Mauricio make sure the music has the lift and movement that is a prime facilitator for music like this to work. And Nilson’s solo spots have some heft. Harry Allen’s tenor has a sort of Getzian cool, which of course fits right in; flautist Anne Drummond and pianist Klaus Mueller give a good accounting of themselves in the solo sphere.
It’s a program of mostly originals with a few warhorses thrown in, but it all works nicely. If these sorts of sessions float your boat, “Copacabana” should give you a refreshing musical taste of a southern hemisphere summer, most welcome here in the heart of a northern winter.
Today the posting is at our http://gapplegateguitar.blogspot.com site. It's on the new album by Ted Leo and the Pharmacists. Have a good weekend. We'll back over here next week.
March 18, 2010--Today the posting is again at http://gapplegateguitar.blogspot.com. It's about nylon string guitarist Scott Fields and his ensemble. As always, thanks for reading these blogs!
March 17, 2010--Another day for posting at the twin site http://gapplegateguitar.blogspot.com. Yo La Tengo is up for discussion today. Take a look over there if you care to do so. Happy St. Patrick's Day.
March 16, 2010--I'd tell you all to beware the Ides of March, but they have passed, haven't they? We are recovering in Jersey from a storm that the term "noreaster" doesn't quite describe. A hurricanal slap in the face was more like what happened. "Oh, the wind and the rain" an Elizabethan song has it. I was singing that to myself Saturday as chimney and fence went south (or was it north?) and trees threatened to fall, then did.
Today's posting will be up at our twin site http://gapplegateguitar.blogspot.com. It deals with the new album by Elysian Fields, which I like very much. Head on over there to read it.
March 15, 2010—The vital strain of Brazilian Samba has both directly and indirectly infused the Jazz Mainstream for many years. A Samba-Jazz rhythm section gives an ensemble a straight eighth-note approach more flexible than a Rock mode and in the right hands has a swinging undercurrent that catalyzes the ensemble and soloists into a smoldering groove that can be somewhat light and cool without sounding Smooth in the pejorative sense. (My prejudices come out here. Smooth Jazz has no appeal to me, I’ll readily admit).
Pianist Jon Gold and his new CD, “Brazil Confidential” (Zoho) (available April 13th) fits right in with the sort of Samba Jazz described. It’s music with the weight and density of Chic Corea’s “Light as A Feather,” but does not sound like that band in any derivative sense. There are also Bossa tempo numbers, classical-guitar comping in the idiom by Scott Anderson and Luiz Ribeiro as well as some restrained electric work, evocative vocals by Tatiana Parra and Leah Siegal, idiomatic Brazilian percussion, soloists that sound comfortable and fluid in this groove, not the least in leader-pianist Jon Gold, and interesting, colorful arrangements and songs.
There are also Oregonesque moments of lyrical winds and/or cello that bring out another dimension of Gold as composer-arranger. It is a listen that gives pleasure and finesses your foot tapping accompaniment so that YOU are in on this music, too, if you are inclined. “Brazil Confidential” is a welcome addition to the Brazilian Tinge and a testament to the continued importance of the musical hybrid.
March 12, 2010—If you look on the little image of today’s album for review, you’ll see that Eremite Records (on their site, where I picked up the image) pasted over the cover shot the words “Out of Print.” This album came out I believe in 2001. You can still find copies on the net, but for the artists involved, it is for all purposes a void when it comes to documenting their music. In these times serious American music, be it of the free or mainstream jazz variety, rock of an ambitious sort, classical composers of today, and whatnot, does not get much exposure via the general public. Labels like Eremite are small. The pressing of this disk may have been in a quantity of one or two thousand. Once it sells out, that is usually the end of it.
Don’t blame the small labels. They may be lucky to make a few dollars when they sell out on a title, or they may just break even. It’s a fact of life. In Europe and Japan, things are a little different. They treasure their musical artists there. And ours too... The government subsidizes recordings, tours, and those sorts of things (at least sometimes and I don’t know how much that has changed in economic downtimes). The citizens of those countries think it valuable to keep the musical arts alive. In the United States, we care less and less, it seems. There used to be channels of support for serious musical artists. I don’t believe there is much of anything left of that today.
We of course believe in the Free Enterprise system. As a small businessman, running a guitar outlet, I too believe in that system. But anyone who reflects on the past, present and future of our culture, society and commerce mechanisms has to see that there are limits to an untrammeled FE system. It does not automatically do the right thing. That lesson should hit us especially hard in these times. I don’t think I need to elaborate there.
The vast majority of our mass-media system right now perpetuates the success of the lowest common denominator of the arts. If you like, read in that “music that appeals to people who neither understand nor care about music in any larger sense.” That doesn't always apply straight down the line, but it still holds as a generality.
When cable TV came along, we were told that we would get a vast number of choices, things to appeal to smaller niche markets, to people like “us”. That has happened in some ways, but it also has been a colossal failure on a cultural level in other ways. I now have 500 channels to choose from on my cable service. Choices? Most of them are what network and smaller TV channels covered 20 years ago, and don’t now. Reruns (not nearly as much as then), real dramatic and comedy series, old movies, the actual news. In other ways, the fact is that those other, smaller yet seriously important niches one might imagine would be available, things that are not mass media in smaller chunks, they do not seem to be there much, if at all.
The music we discuss today for example, would NEVER be found on any of those 500 channels. There are no stations covering serious American Art Music on any regular basis. Oh, sure, someone may cover some “Jazz Festival,” and when you check to see who is playing, at least half of the artists aren’t even Jazz musicians, others are in the commercial Smooth categories and related things. Very rarely does a true improvising artist of today make an appearance.
The fact is, whether in microcosm or macrocosm, the free market goes by a “dummy it down” criteria. It makes no room for an audience that might be small, but open to non-standard fare that is above the 6th grade level of understanding. And of course it doesn’t allow the larger audience a chance to hear music they may find they like. The system assumes we are all stupid people. The system fails; it threatens to extinguish what is most valuable in our cultural heritage.
So, back to the album for today. “Out of Print,” the image tells us. Still, it is a live performance by bassist Alan Silva and Oluyemi Thomas on reeds. The CD is called “Transmissions.” It is around an hour long, a concert of Silva and Thomas in free duet. You CAN still find it, if you search around a little.
Alan Silva was one of the real pioneers of Avant Garde improvisation here in the US. His 1964 album has been reviewed on these pages and that review can be found at our sister site (http://gapplegateguitar.blogspot.com). He was with Cecil Taylor and other important originators of modern improvised music, he was responsible for some key early albums, has played bass but also violin and keyboards, and he has made some astonishing big band, large ensemble recordings of Free Jazz.
On this duet disk you get the Silva way of improvising in all of its dramatic and dynamic grandiloquence, exposed in a two-man performance for all to hear. Whether bowing or plucking, Silva shows his great power and strength as a bassist-improvisor. Oluyemi Thomas shows his own real virtuosity in the classic freestyle performance practices that go back to Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman and other first-generation pioneers.
There is high art happening in this music. And probably no more than a handful of Americans are aware of it. You should at least try to listen to music like this, with an open mind. We have no Emperor (thank God) here in the US to support and cultivate a music that perhaps ultimately must be appreciated over time, with some patience. Nor do we have government programs to support the music, for the most part. So it is up to PEOPLE and that means people like you to keep it alive. This is an excellent CD. It is crime that it is out of print. We Americans should not let that happen. There are generations to come who will wonder if we as a people did anything worthwhile in the musical arts. We cannot afford to let music like this be lost to them.
March 11, 2010—From yesterday’s Tango music we jump to a new, ambitious second outing by Titus Andonicus, who commemorate and deconstruct the Civil War in a concept album. It was released two days ago to coincide with the 148th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings, in which the ships the Monitor and the Virginia engaged in an intensive and decisive skirmish in the Battle of Hampton Roads.
This New Jersey homeboy indie band does not deal with that war in a direct sense. As band leader Patrick Stickles notes, the war serves as an “extended metaphor” for a narrative that has a kind of slacker poetic glory. This is a well paced musical work that dives in and out of post-Clash punk, in the process plunging into adventurous asides with a considered musical eclecticism that keeps the listener focused during the 65-minute program.
Oh, I should mention that the album is called “The Monitor” (XL).
This is not ordinary fare. It has an epic sweep and Indie-Rock-As-Art caliber arrangements and songs. It combines in rare fashion a raw elementality with a sophisticated feeling for form. Now that may sound pretentious to fans of this sort of music. But guess what, I’m from New Jersey too. And if you grew up in this state, you are used to dealing on a daily basis with a mingling of the crude and the sublime. Drive around Hoboken, Jersey City and Secaucus, then head up to Sussex County and you’ll understand what I mean. If I hear a touch of Springstein in the music, it is certainly intentional on the part of Titus Andronicus. But they are probably way too punky for a typical Springstein fan. And at the same time they work in a slacker-opera mode that reminds me of The Streets at their best, but with a vibe that is pure Jersey. Much more than that as well. No matter. This is the sort of music that should find its natural audience because it is very good. I am a part of that audience! That happened after listen number four, I believe.
March 10, 2010—I’ve known a number of people in my life who were avid music listeners, even musicians. I’ve noticed a pattern with many of them that I sometimes detect in myself. Confronting certain assumptions I think is critical for getting past the purely personal and into the realm of "proper thinking" about any piece of music. Proper, that is, if you are to have any kind of objectivity. I believe many, if not most people listen to certain kinds of music for complex reasons, some of those relating to who they are as a person and not the music itself per se.
Music is part of the furnishings of one’s life. What you listen to says something about who you are. So I think that one of the things going through one’s mind in the course of first hearing a piece of music is “if I like this music, what does that say about me as a person?” Will it ramify with what I believe or wish to believe about myself as a person? Does it make me cool? Youthful? Conservative? Sensitive? Liberal? Sophisticated? Earthy? Manly? Feminist? And so on. Those answers may not relate to the music itself, but they influence how we react to the music.
Another factor one might call the “air guitar” effect. Is this music I could imagine myself playing? Would I want to play this music (or compose it) if I could? If the answer is yes, you might tend to like the music. For those who make music, there is another process of questioning, I think. Namely, is this music I could play technically? If not does it threaten me? Or does it make me want to become a better musician? Does this music threaten to overwhelm my own musical niche? Or do I not understand the music and do I feel angry about that? Inquisitive? Exhilarated?
As a music writer I try to ask myself all of these questions as I listen. No matter what the answer I must work beyond that to the music itself for an objective (more or less) evaluation. In the end I might like music I would not personally want to play, may not be able to play, may not completely understand, and may not ramify with who I am as a person. Of course, this approach stops at a point where ethics intervene. So I would not accept a CD of Nazi drinking songs no matter what the music is about.
After such a long harangue, we have today’s CD. It’s by contrabassist Pablo Aslan. It’s called “Tango Grill” (Zoho). This is Tango Jazz. Now with all the questions I’ve mapped out above, the answer to me for this CD is as follows. No. I can’t really imagine myself playing this music, but it does ramify with my self-perceived identity as a person who appreciates all kinds of international styles. I’ve never been especially informed about Tango music, though it has a very fascinating history. I’ve just not spent much time exploring that music.
“Tango Grill” features a mid-sized ensemble playing some sophisticated Tango music. The musicianship is very high and the soloing is quite decent. I was taken by Mr. Aslan’s work on the bass, both bowing and pizzicato. This is what a very good Jazz Tango bass player can sound like, though I’ve never thought much about that.
The music is certainly excellent for what it is. If you never thought you’d like Tango music, here’s one where you just might. If you are already into it, well here is an excellent combination of good soloists, nice pieces and very good performances. Maybe I could imagine myself playing it after all. I did do a few “air Tango” moves in my kitchen when I was listening, much to my wife’s amusement. This is something that bassists would appreciate. It is something that anybody with open ears would appreciate too, I think.
March 9, 2010—Elysian Fields have been getting my attention lately. They are Jennifer Charles on vocals, Oren Blodoe on guitar and vocals, plus whoever else is playing with them at any point. Their very first album, self-titled and released in 1996, an EP (Radioactive), is I believe out of print but you can find it on the net.
It’s a good example of why they are interesting. The songs have a Lynchian darkness-in-innocence, though Jennifer’s unique voice is a little world-knowing. It also has a lovely soft, languid, sultry quality with a deceptively casual delivery. The songs are intelligent, poetic and in the advanced Alt-Art Song realm. The four songs here are worth extended ear exposure. They get better if you listen time and again. It’s all about love in its various moods. Oren’s guitar work is quite interesting. Hey, no kidding they are good. We’ll look at their new album in a couple of days.
March 8, 2010—The late’60s were a distinctive one for Rock. If you don’t know that, then today’s recording probably is not for you. There was a wave of bands by 1969 adopting a psyche-somatic credo. Not all of them got the promotional push they undoubtedly would have benefited from. One such group is Music Emporium, an early LA progressive band whose only LP was pressed in a quantity of 300!
Needless to say they did not get noticed and quickly receded into the long darkness of vault half-life. That record however can be found as a CD on Sundazed Records if you search around a little.
It turns out that this band was not at all bad, in fact good for its kind. They have the guitar-combo organ-bass-drum and cosmic vocals lineup. They play music totally enmeshed in the time zone. Think the Clear Light, the Electric Prunes, Iron Butterfly, Country Joe and the Fish, early Doors (a little), and the various psyche influence then prevailing. The original LP plus a generous number of bonus alternate instrumental/backing tracks are included. If you love this genre, there’s a good period vibe in this obscure find for you to savor. And they are definitely musical in what they do.
March 5, 2010--Today's posting discusses the music of Kurt Vile. It's at our other "guitar" site http://gapplegateguitar.blogspot.com. We'll be back here Monday. So have a good weekend and please go on over there to read that post.
March 4, 2010—There was a period of time in the ‘50s when almost every alto sax player coming up was heavily influenced by Charlie Parker. It was only natural given the stature of Charlie’s achievement, and of course many of those players went on to become important in their own right as they worked through and expanded out from that influence. But the rare few who managed NOT to sound like Bird ultimately got the brass ring for the post-Bird scene. Really that was Lee Konitz in those days. He didn’t and doesn’t. And what he did sound like had a full measure of artistry that made him worthy of attention.
Today in the world of improvising guitarists, my experience is that Pat Metheny and John Abercrombie have enormous cache among the guitarists who have come up and established themselves in the past decade or so. Sure, there are other influences too, but those two get a lot of imitators.
Enter Michael Musillami, a player who has been around awhile. He channels the roots of the music and the guitar tradition in his own way. He doesn’t sound like Pat or John.
His well-burnished trio with drummer George Schuller and bassist Joe Fonda has been the vehicle of preference for Mr. Musillami in the recent past. He now releases his fifth album with the unit, “Old Tea” (Playscape). It’s a moving tribute to Michael’s son Evan, who voluntarily left this world one year ago. The album remembers him through pieces suggested by important or poignant events in Evan’s short life and also the feeling of loss and bereavement Michael and his family experienced in the time after.
It is not necessarily to know the background to this set of performances to appreciate them, partly because Michael has deliberately put a positive vibe on the musical transformation of the tragic experience, but perhaps it does account for a concentrated intensity and directness of purpose on these sides.
“Old Tea” puts Musillami and the trio in a musically profound mode. There is a rooted pentatonic bluesiness to much of it but every cut has some real power, even the more reflective pieces. The trio plays exemplary, fully interactive music but it is Musillami that soars highest. He shows significant guitar artistry here. He puts forth an aural presence that has force and delicacy in equal measure. This is surely one of the guitar releases of the year and Musillami is a musician to be reckoned with. Listen to “Old Tea” and you’ll hear why.
March 3, 2010--Once more, the daily posting is over at http://gapplegateguitar.blogspot.com. No-Man has a new DVD set and I must say I rather give it a rave. We'll be back over here tomorrow.
March 2, 2010—Mission of Burma have been around a bit and have established a loyal and vocal following for their Grunge-Alt-semi-Metal power trio excursions. “The Sound the Speed of Light” (Matador), their latest album from last year, is a good mix of Alt song stylings and quasi-Metal punkiness.
When done right, this kind of music has a raw excitement that blows out the slick Pop garbage that one can be inflicted with on the mundane media outlets. Mission of Burma do it right. A jolt of electricity and a set of songs to hang it on.
March 1, 2010--Once again our posting for today is on our other "guitar-bass" site http://gapplegateguitar.blogspot.com. It looks at a brand-new Prog outfit, bllt. Take a look there to read about them. We'll be back here tomorrow with more chills and spills, depending on the weather and my dexterity in relocating cups of hot coffee from the kitchen to my office space.
February 26, 2010--Today's posting is on our sister site http://gapplegateguitar.blogspot.com. It addresses the NOLA Open Ears music series and two sets by the electric band WATIV. Please go over there to check it out.
February 25, 2010—There are Jazz outfits around right now that have plenty of improvisation, do not have roots in Bebop, yet are not always exactly “Free” in the sense of playing regularly in a relatively unstructured context. Such a group, and a good one to boot, is guitarist Jon Lundbom & Big Five Chord. They have a new one, “Accomplish Jazz” (Hot Cup) and it has been giving my ears a workout of late.
It’s a quintet, with Lundbom plus Jon Irabagon on alto sax, Bryan Murray, tenor, “Moppa” Elliot on upright bass and Danny Fischer, drums. In addition to a cover of the Louvin Brothers’ “The Christian Life,” they run through four abstract originals. The ensemble work is clean and precise, modern. The rhythm section is first rate. Jon Lundbom as soloist has great interest. He tends to work phrases, repeating them, varying them, extracting tension and power in the process. Interestingly, Irabagon on alto follows that sort of way as well. Murray shows strong direction in his tenor excursions and also tends to “worry” phrases, but perhaps less so than the others.
From a compositional, ensemble and solo perspective this group has a strong identity. “Accomplish Jazz” does definitely accomplish Jazz, and they do it well. This is a bit of a blast to hear. It will challenge your ears without overwhelming your senses. I hope you will give it a spin.
February 24, 2010—Holly Miranda sings like an angel and writes quirky Alt songs. She also plays guitar, was born in New York and lives in Brooklyn. All these are good things in my mind.
Her first album, “The Magician’s Private Library” (XL) is due out any day (I’ve forgotten the street date), and that also is a good thing. The record starts with an adaptation of a children's song and parts of that melody line recur in various transformed states throughout the program.
This is the sort of no BS music making that does not mess with that nauseating slickness so much a part of the pap-at-the-pops media sound one is apt to hear on the airwaves. It is music that is NOT STUPID. In fact, no small amount of thought has gone into the songs and arrangements. The private library is a place where one might glean secret knowledge, maybe about yourself. Artists like Holly are the sort to grow into luxuriously beautiful plantings if nourished and well-tended. I hope that happens. She is off to a great start anyway.
February 23, 2010--Today's posting is located at our sister site http://gapplegateguitar.blogspot.com. The review is of Beppe Crovella's tribute to Soft Machine keyboardist Mike Ratledge.
February 22, 2010—The concept album has become a rarity today. Part of that has to do with how an album gets a potential butchery on the commercial MP3 downloading sites. You are given the option of only buying the tracks you like. The album as entity does not always carry over in this context. It becomes a repository of songs for sale.
In contrast to this Shearwater’s new album stresses the wholeness of the music. “The Golden Archepelago” (Matador) is the third part of a triptych of interrelated records, all having to do with personal and environmental deterioration. This third part dwells on islands, living on them, their change over time, the experience of wonder and loss
All this is songwriter Jonathan Meiberg’s baby. The songs are different, movingly so. The arrangements are mostly Spartan but very evocative. Listening to this album is like embarking on a trip through space and time, to contemplate island imagery as bitter-sweet memory.
It strikes me as being one of those albums that has the potential to define the new decade, at least partly so. It has that kind of iconicity.
February 19, 2010—For many years the contemporary big band has been difficult to keep afloat because of the changed jazz economy. Gigs are scarce these days, yet there remains a need for steady work at a fee that can take care of the larger payroll. Then there are the difficulties of keeping a stable group of right-minded players together throughout the scuffling vicissitudes of day-to-day musical existence. At least since the days of the original Thad Jones-Mel Lewis band, the problem can be ameliorated by getting a steady Monday night gig (normally a musician's day off), so that band personnel can do their weekly session-gig routines and still be available to play in the band every week.
I don’t know if the Big Crazy Energy New York Band has landed such a gig but their first (as far as I know) CD “Inspirations, Volume One” (Rosa) has a polish and tightness that can seemingly only come about through a statistically significant number of nights on the bandstand.
Trombonist Jens Wendelboe leads the 16 piece band & vocalists through a program of his solid originals and a series of classic numbers from various sources. For example, there’s Cobham’s “Pleasant Pheasant” done with a full horn treatment that gives one renewed interest in the possibilities of large band Fusion, there’s “Dear Old Stockholm,” the traditional number made so much of by Miles and Getz, a Joe Henderson classic, and the Beatles' “A Day in the Life.”
The soloists are all quite decent. It’s the fullness and tightness of the band and its arrangements that make this program a pleasure to hear. If you like straight-ahead modern big band music, this one is for you!
February 18, 2010--Once again our posting is on sister site http://gapplegateguitar.blogspot.com. Today we consider a very interesting new guitarist, Timucin Sahin! Please take a trip over there to read. Tomorrow we'll be back on this page. Thanks.
February 17, 2010—The world is filled with musical people, some with a genuine vision for their music, waiting for us to take notice.
Copenhagen’s Efterklang is one such group. I’ve missed their first two albums, but their third, “Magic Chairs” (4AD), which hits the streets in the US this coming Tuesday, is on my listening radar.
This is not music that’s easy to classify, which to me is a good sign. They write music that has progressive elements, yet also has a Pop veneer. The group runs through interestingly quirky originals that have understated yet vibrant arrangements. I’d say they have a certain Police-meet-British-post-ELO resemblance, but that would not be entirely accurate. There’s a “post” quality to the music in any event.
Melody is important to them, but arrangements make up half the battle. They use strings in a restrained manner, not as “sweetner” but as a musical color, a bolsterer of the ensemble mix. The same goes with synths, brass and such.
“Magic Chairs” is interesting, enjoyable music.
February 16, 2010—It’s always rewarding to come across a band that does something well, does something not a lot of other bands are doing, and are rather unknown. This all applies to Scurvy, a five-man unit headed up by alto sax-composer Johnny Butler. He’s joined by Ryan Snow on the trombone, Adam Caine on the electric guitar (who I am familiar with from his own music), Rus Wimbish on the electric bass and Jason Nazry on drums.
They have a new CD coming out soon, their second, and I have been listening to it. “Fracture” (Hi4Head Records) assaults the senses (in a good way) with ten pieces. The composition style of Johnny Butler has some resonance with the Flying Luttenbachers, George Russell and some of the Downtown cats, but is no less distinctive for all that. There are often complicated, abstract lines played off one another—tightly coiled spirals of contrasts between asymmetrical repetition versus linear worrying of line forms. It’s especially intriguing and appealing when guitar, bass and drums work a jaggedly hard-hitting rhythmic-melodic figure while the horns play a complimentary contrasting line form in a post-Funk idiom that propulses like Funk, but does it in a way that ignores backbeats, stiff riffing and other mainstays.
These compositions intrigue and are quite interesting. Butler, Snow and Caine have solo space to move within and acquit themselves well. The music combines an avant freedom with hard driving arrangements.
This is a GOOD band, a GOOD recording and it shows that Scurvy are one of the most interesting of the tight-loose, rock-jazz, open-closed ensembles working today. During ths cold winter if you like well put together music that combines free, electric and advanced ensemble modernity, Scurvy has the heat to warm your musical insides. I hope you check them out.
Johnny Butler also has a solo sax loop project happening, and we will be considering that too in a blog post to come.
February 15, 2010--Today's posting is on our sister site Gapplegate Guitar. Go to http://gapplegateguitar.blogspot.com to read it.
February 12, 2010—When Gil Scott-Heron garnered the attention of listeners with such politically committed songs as “Johannesburg” in the ‘70s, the time was right for his brand of Progressive Soul. Now these many years later he is a survivor. He’s maintained his artistic integrity. A new EP “I’m New Here” (XL) shows him reflective, poetic, musically strong. It is dedicated to his family, his grandmother who raised him, and dwells on the difficulties of becoming/remaining who you are in a world that would seek to place you in a pigeonhole.
Gil’s voice has aged over the years. If anything though, that has given him an even more expressive apparatus to get across the music and vision inside him.
“I’m New Here” addresses the continual disenfranchisement of continued existence. Gil finds that after all this time, he still is “new,” never really at home in the world, facing a need to turn around and go back, to run but with the realization that there’s no destination that will be acceptable.
“I’m New Here” combines recitation, poetics, a world-weary but maximally perceptive awareness, and his formidable vocal instrument to once again “say something” about life. There are a few surprises, like his attractive, gritty version of Bobby Blue Bland’s “I’ll Take Care of You.” But mostly this is a “new” Scott-Heron, which is a world-wise Scott-Heron, a musically hip as always Scott-Heron, a profound Scott-Heron.
February 11, 2010—Today’s posting, a new singles compilation by a group that shall remain nameless on this page, can be found at our sister site, http://gapplegateguitar.blogspot.com. Go ahead on over there to read it. Thanks!
February 10, 2010—I don’t ordinarily cover the Jazz-Funk style of music. It’s not that there haven’t been excellent groups and recordings out there, but it is one of the areas of the music that can be mired in the formulaic, lost in an endless repetition. Even that wouldn’t be unforgivable if the music had some hair on it. Often it does not, which means that the point for funking it up in the first has been lost.
Dave Sharp (bassist and bandleader) and his Secret Seven, at least on the new CD “7” (Vortex Jazz), have that hair. This is a band that plays with plenty of fire and chutzpah. It’s Sharp on electric and upright, Chris Kaercher on the tenor and other saxes, plus a good Hammond guy, percussion, drums and a variety of guitarists and such.
What else puts this above the norm? There is an Afro-Latin and even a South Asian component in there sometimes which distinguishes the sound. And the grooves and arrangements are pretty nice. Plus the hair.
February 9, 2010—The group called Vampire Weekend just released their second album, “Contra” (XL), and it is not uninteresting. Imagine Jason Mraz, a kind of upbeat, chipper but sensitive and complicated sensibility, but combine that with a little Paul Simon, and, every so often Donovan in his second psychodermic stage. Now forget all of that and add some interesting arrangements, interesting lyrics, quirky Rock-Alt-Pop perspectives and quite decent tunes.
There’s a playful quality to this music. I found it rather refreshing.
February 8, 2010—What makes Imogen Heap popular now, after so long more-or-less on the underground of the scene? Her latest album, “Ellipse,” is not really more commercial that the last. It is on RCA though, and seemingly getting some promotion. Her guest appearance with Jeff Beck on an album and on his Ronnie Scott DVD surely helped.
“I Megaphone” was quite a bit edgier than what she does now. That was the early-ish ‘90s. Her “Fru Fru” disk was really fetching, to me at least, but did not get her a great deal of fame, so to say. The last CD was quite beautiful.
In the end, perhaps the audience is just finally coming to recognize what was always there.
“Ellipse” continues the trend of Imogen multi-tracking elaborate vocal parts and showing off her impressive range and vocal colors. The arrangements are quite good, but take a back seat to the main attraction, Ms. Heap’s glorious vocal instrument. She can yodel, soar into a high range, do the quiet, breathy mid-range, and get polyphonic vocal group sounds of great beauty. The songs are very evocative. She is a rare songbird, a singer-songstress of unparalleled singularity. “Ellipse” is as good as anything she’s done. I can’t say enough about her without getting gushy. She is a true artist.
February 5, 2010—Today's posting looks at the Prog-Fuse group Doubt. It is located at our sister site http://gapplegateguitar.blogspot.com. Please go there to read it. Thanks.
February 4, 2010—Austin, Texas supports music. I gleaned that when I visited there some time ago. I've heard compilations of bands from Austin in the past, some better than others. A new compilation came out last week that seems definitive for what’s going on there right now for the Alt-Garage-Punky sort of thing. It’s called “Causal Victim Pile” (Matador).
What you get is 19 bands you’ve probably not heard of unless you are hanging out down there. The music is edgy and raw. It does not make overtures to mainstream “Rock” radio play, at last not in any overt sense, and that helps make it a satisfying listen. Here’s your chance to check out Kingdom of Suicide Lovers, Elvis, the Stuffies, the Teeners, Lost Controls and the rest of them. It’s a healthy injection of the slashing, thrashing and twanging world of real bands that play their own instruments and think that MIDI controllers are alien mind-control devices.
February 3, 2010—Gentle Giant in retrospect turned out to be one of the most important and prolific Prog Rock outfits to emerge in the early ‘70s. At the time I didn’t think so, mostly because I just never gave them the listen they deserved. Their fourth album “Octopus” (Vertigo/Columbia) (1972) finds them with an ambitious program of what one can only term “Art Rock Songs,” elaborate, sophisticated pieces with contrapuntal devices, long and interesting melodic arches, arranged instrumental parts of much interest and all-around musicianship.
It happens to be an excellent place to enter into their musical vision. You get 35 minutes of Prog at its high level. The more you listen, the more impressive it gets. That is my take. The problem: these fellows were actually too good to be very popular back then. As time goes on, Gentle Giant begins to gain the stature they always should have been awarded. Listen to "Octopus" and you’ll get an idea why.
I am not the one to give you a free download of this record. I do recommend you buy a legitimate copy. It is around. In this way you support the artists, at least in the abstract, and also you generate the royalties Gentle Giant are due.
February 2, 2010—There is no lack of talent out there in musicland. Singer-songwriter Basia Bulat numbers in the ranks of such artists coming into the fray. She celebrates her second album release (OK, so I am a week late) with “Heart of My Own” (Rough Trade). It centers around an angelic warbling voice-as-instrument. It’s fragile or robust, depending, and it is dead-on, a rapid vibrato a little like Tracy Chapman but with less of a burnished quality. She strums her acoustic (and at least once a ukulele) and directly communicates her songs in a straightforward way. Arrangements tend to be minimal but effective. Some cellos, or perhaps muted horns, rhythm section, a dulcimer or autoharp. She sounds like a representative for a tradition that does not yet exist, a tradition of Basia Bulat music.
The songs are the thing and they are sensitive folksy alterative essays in feelings and passions remembered later, when there’s time to reflect. Now she might say “no, that’s not it.” I don’t know. The point is that she has a personal way of expressing her life and it is musically entrancing.
I find such music necessary. If she did not exist in this space and time, someone would have to invent her. We need good songs right now. A voice for the today that is here and passing daily, only to return again. “Heart of My Own” is good musical travelling. May she continue to develop and claim an audience that is rightfully hers, even if some of them don’t realize it yet.
February 1, 2010--It is summer in Brazil; it sure is not in New Jersey. So it’s fitting that we kick off February with a Brazilian offering by bassist Nilson Matta and his group Brazilian Voyage, namely “Copacabana” (Zoho).
This is good contemporary Samba-Bossa played in a loosely hip way. Matta and his rhythm-mates drummer Mauricio Zottarelli and percussionist Ze Mauricio make sure the music has the lift and movement that is a prime facilitator for music like this to work. And Nilson’s solo spots have some heft. Harry Allen’s tenor has a sort of Getzian cool, which of course fits right in; flautist Anne Drummond and pianist Klaus Mueller give a good accounting of themselves in the solo sphere.
It’s a program of mostly originals with a few warhorses thrown in, but it all works nicely. If these sorts of sessions float your boat, “Copacabana” should give you a refreshing musical taste of a southern hemisphere summer, most welcome here in the heart of a northern winter.
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