17 August 2010

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Albums and Singles

artist: Benoit Pioulard

title: Lasted

catalog#: krank145

formats available: LP / CD / Digital

release date: October 11, 2010

content:

Lasted is the third album by Thomas Meluch under the alias Benoit Pioulard. Thomas has toured throughout North America and Europe since his last record, the process of which has had a marked impact on the development of these songs as lyrics and structures have been scrapped, tweaked and reworked in the live setting. As with previous albums it was recorded and mixed in domestic isolation, this time throughout the rainy season in his current home of Portland, Oregon.

While the extent of the dreary climate’s influence on the results is left to the listener’s discretion, what is certain is that Thomas has a preternatural ability to weave disparate sound components into a cohesive sonic tapestry, mixing a varied palette of field recordings and percussive elements along with melancholy melodies to create songs that recall - and are akin to - vespers of long-buried memories.

track listing:

1. purse discusses  2. sault  3. rto  4. gloss  5. tie  6. shouting distance  7. fluoresce  8. lasted

9. weird door  10. ailleurs  11. passenger  12. tack & tower  13. a coin on the tongue  14. nod

selected discography:

Precis 2006 kranky

Temper 2008 kranky

press quotes for Temper:

"Pioulard's distinctive process of melding opposites into a unified whole is a rare talent and one that will always be welcomed." Skyscraper

"Pioulard is equally gifted at creating uniquely outdoorsy sound worlds as he is at crafting hook-filled songs."  All Music Guide

"This is baby-making music for sasquatches; break-up soundtracks for amoebas. Benoît Pioulard’s tarp of harmonized vocals are slid like a piece of wax between the mess below and prickly melody, bright and stereo, on top." Cokemachineglow

"Meluch's aesthetics remain hushed but at the same time fill a room with his swirling microcosm of creaks and close mic-ed strums, and of course his mournful but pleasing croon anchored squarely to the top of the mix." Raven Sings the Blues

"Pioulard's work is a remarkably effortless cohabitation between bedroom electronics and wistful songwriting." The Wire

17 August 2010

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Albums and Singles

artist: Boduf Songs

title: This Alone Above All Else In Spite Of Everything

catalog#: krank144

formats available: LP/Digital

release date: September 6, 2010

content:

The fourth Boduf Songs extended play was created using Mathew Sweet's standard recording set up of a single microphone and a small array of instruments, but it comes with a few surprises - most notably the prominence of electric guitar, bass and stomping drums on a few tracks. All of the elements that make his previous sound creations so arresting are still present; the impeccable song structures, the minimal approach, the delicate yet dominant singing. The album opens with the naked sound of the hammers of an old upright piano striking strings, an apt metaphor for the lyrical content which is just as raw and exposed. Mathew broadens his vocal approach here, exploring range and employing some unpredictable, well-placed harmonies. This Alone Above All Else In Spite Of Everything is effectively a concept record, and makes for a dramatic journey. Mat states "There is a theme that runs through each song and the track order is paramount to that - it's a hugely important part of making a record work." So pay attention.

track listing:

1. Bought Myself A Cat O’Nine  2. Decapitation Blues  3. Absolutely Null And Utterly Void

4. I Have Decided To Pass Through Matter  5. Green They Were, And Golden Eyed

6. We Get on Slowly  7. The Giant Umbilical Cord That Connects Your Brain to the Centre of the Universe  8. I Am Going Away And I Am Never Coming Back

selected discography:

Boduf Songs 2005 kranky

Lion Devours the Sun 2006 kranky

How Shadows Chase the Balance 2008 kranky

press quotes for How Shadows Change the Balance:

"How Shadows Chase the Balance is among the most spiritually and psychologically devastating albums I've ever heard, but it's also a simple album about living life, about our peculiar position in the universe and the candid exploration of the impact those experiences have on all of us. It's also, by a large margin, one of the strongest albums I've heard this year." Tiny Mix Tapes

"...crawling folk songs drenched in a stew of fire, brimstone and, of course, blood. Yes, How Shadows Chase the Balance is in love with the gloom but rarely does despair sound this sweet." Exclaim

“How Shadows Chase the Balance is often so suffocatingly bleak that its anger and despair rarely rise above a faint but insistent ghostly presence, like the beating of a tell-tale heart. Unsettling and gorgeous..." All Music Guide

"In Boduf Songs' brutal theology, darkness devours light, death defeats the living, and nature and culture are at perpetual fisticuffs." Pitchfork

"Boduf Songs makes some of the duskiest, autumnal and beautiful loner psychedelia." Stereogum

15 August 2010

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Albums and Singles

Easily the most maligned release in Swans' discography, there is a definite awkwardness to it, no doubt in part to major label pressures and the heavy hand of Bill Laswell on the production. However, listening to the material in context, it does show the evolution of the band's sound, even with its obtuseness. While it does have a certain "sore thumb" quality to it, it is a necessary evolutionary step for the band that’s flawed, and a flawed Swans album is better than most other bands at their best.

Young God Records

When the more folk-tinged era of Swans was compiled on 1999s Various Failures, a large portion of the material on this album was ignored, reduced to only two tracks, while Love of Life and White Light From the Mouth of Infinity were both significantly represented.This was later fixed with the limited release of Forever Burned, which contained the album in its entirety, along with the tracks left off of Various Failures from the two subsequent albums, but even then the reissue was tough to come by.

One of the biggest issues with this album is the loss of control Michael Gira had to deal with in its creation.Sharing production duties with Bill Laswell and a slew of his session musicians, there was to be a definite Laswell stamp on the sound.For a band without a clearly established identity, this could be a good thing, because for how prolific he was (and is), Laswell knows what he's doing and is certainly not a amateur in the studio.But Swans were not a band trying to find themselves:by this point they were a monolithic force of nature that knew what they wanted to do.Due to the fact that the only Gira, Jarboe, and Norman Westberg are present, they're outnumbered by Laswell's associates, which surely was another strike against the album sounding like a true Swans one.

The acoustic guitars and dark American folk vibes that were toyed with on Children of God are in full effect here, with absolutely no hints of the concrete walls of guitar noise that characterized their previous work.However, too much of the more folk influenced sound they were cultivating is obscured by bouzouki, tablas, and other stereotypical "world music" sounds, which unfortunately strips a lot of the identity away from the disc.

While not challenging by any means, many of these songs still stand as strong compositions:opener "The River That Runs With Love Won't Run Dry" features a rather standard acoustic/electric hybrid sound with the appropriate dose of Gira's apocalyptic lyrics that still gives it a definitive Swans feeling, even if the slew of stringed instruments hint at something else."Let It Come Down" has a similar feel and structure, but features less of the heavy hand of Laswell and his cast of session players in comparison, retaining a sparser sound that fits just as well on their later albums.

There are moments where the sound begins to drift too far into forgettable major label facelessness, such as "Mona Lisa, Mother Earth" and "Saved."While the former retains a bit of darkness that has characterized the band, the latter, with lyrics such as "When sunlight falls on your shoulder/you look like a creature from heaven" are just a bit TOO far from the likes of "Raping A Slave" for its own good.On its own it's not an entirely bad song, but within the greater context of Swans, it sticks out as severely lacking.

The two Jarboe-led tracks, "I Remember Who You Are" and a cover of Blind Faith's "Can't Find My Way Home" are difficult to pinpoint, because depending on my mood, they're either some of her best work with the band, or they feel too forced and histrionic.Both, however, are sparse tracks that also keep away from the over-instrumentation that so many of the other songs suffer from, which is a strength in itself.As I've said though, my opinion of these two changes from day to day as to whether I think they’re good, powerful songs, or exaggerated emotional clichés.

Somewhat ironically, one of the most definitive late-period Swans songs appeared on this album.The closing "God Damn the Sun" encapsulated the Johnny Cash/Leonard Cohen hybrid that the band returned to on subsequent releases, and has been a live staple of Angels of Light since their inception.The intensely depressing lyrics fit the thematic mould of traditional country, but in a very authentic sense, and thus remains a serious downer, yet simultaneously a beautiful song.

It's not hard to see why both Gira and fans have targeted this disc as being a less than stellar album, because it simply does have too much polish to it, in a bad way. While those who followed Swans from the beginning were probably the most dismayed upon this release 21 years ago, because it so clearly signified the death of the heavy, sludgy sound that was on its way out with the previous Children of God album.However, once they were able to better shape the sound on the subsequent releases on Gira's own Young God imprint, it obviously is a necessary evolutionary step in their career.The thing for me is, there's a number of good songs here, they just suffer from cluttered percussion and spotty execution.I have always wondered what The Burning World would sound like without Laswell's session musicians and the influence of Uni/MCA Records on the final release.If this had been a fully Gira-led production on an independent label from the beginning, I think the world would have a much different perspective on it.It is certainly not a shining star in the Swans discography, but it's better than many would lead one to believe.

samples:

• The River That Runs With Love Won't Run Dry
• I Remember Who You Are
• God Damn The Sun

 

15 August 2010

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Albums and Singles

This is the kind of music that makes my brain feel like it is chewing itself. The five short works here act as a kind of clearing house for my mind; listening enforces defragmentation. These works act like miniature vacuum cleaners, erasing all the info-garbage that tends to accumulate after a few uninterrupted hours of total media immersion. Visceral and cacophonous it reminds me I have a body. Listening to noise is healthy.

CWnil

I tend to think of noise in magickal terms: it performs the same kind of psychic function as a banishing ritual does, cleansing the area in which it is played, or the mind of the person who plays or listens to it. I’m not suggesting that Jeff Carey subscribes to this viewpoint, but these are the types of experiences I am in search of when listening to the style. The noise I enjoy also has an ecstatic quality, putting me back in touch with my body. This is especially important to me as I am a writer who works in a library, and with the vast swathes of information and media at my disposal it is easy to get stuck in my head. Meditation is good for calming the mind, but noise cuts to the chase and silences my thoughts for me.

This EP does all of this for me in a way that is quick and succinct. Recorded live and direct-to-disc without overdubs it captures the immediacy of his electro-instrumental style. As an electronic musician who is dedicated to performance, Jeff Carey creates his own software and gear allowing him to control all parameters of composition in real time. The sounds themselves do not belie their construction, and they seem as if they were perfected in a hermetically sealed chamber. While clearly digital the songs are muscular and vigorous.

"Ctrl" opens the disc with a fluttering of gelatinous flubber, interspersed with quick squelches, clicks, clacks, and mechanical clucks. "Mod" seems to use more ring modulation, lending pleasant glissando and resonance to the signals. "Freq" is quieter, focusing in on static. It moves along like soft stream of gently attenuated and polished white noise. While all the material is highly abstract "Trig" is also the most dissonant. Scraping sounds, akin to bowed metal, zoom alongside the prominent percussive blasts that give the song its meat. The disc ends about twenty minutes after it starts, making this a perfect listen for when I need to quiet the caterwauling of my mind. That external noise can create internal silence is an essential paradox of this music.

samples:

• Ctrl
• Mod
• Trig

 

15 August 2010

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Albums and Singles

In characteristic Sublime Frequencies fashion, Mark Gergis' latest compilation documents a truly unique and flourishing scene that very few people even knew existed. It is hard to think of many positive things that came out of the Vietnam War but the free exchange of music and equipment between American soldiers and Saigon's hipper young musicians certainly resulted in some raucous and inventive music that could not have otherwise existed. Punk would have had no reason to happen if rock music had been this wild in the Western world in the mid-'70s.

Sublime Frequencies

This is the sort of album that could only have come out on Sublime Frequencies for many reasons, but the main one is that compiling such a retrospective seemed like such a complicated and near-hopeless task: these songs were essentially wiped from the earth after Saigon fell to the Viet Cong in 1975.Some musicians were tipped-off by friends and were able to flee the country to continue their careers as nomadic rock n’ roll refugees, but the ones that stayed behind were forced to destroy any evidence of Western culture to avoid being dispatched to reform camps.Further complicating the endeavor was the fact that Southeast Asian cultures have a tendency to view pop music as a disposable and very of-the-moment thing.Even if this music had remained available, most Vietnamese music fans wouldn’t care.They are interested in what is happening now, not forty years ago ("fetishism of the old is left to those rare creatures obsessed enough to take on the task"). As if that wasn't enough, any new interpretations are viewed as supplanting the original versions, making Internet searches an exasperating process.Consequently, original recordings from that short-lived era are staggeringly difficult to come by in 2010, even without a language barrier standing in the way.Fortunately, Gergis was aided in his efforts by a California record collector named Rick Foust who had presciently snapped up a lot of these recordings when they were available in Vietnamese-owned shops in the '80s.

Gergis definitely tried to give a broad overview of the scene, which necessarily means that listeners will probably not fall in love with every single song.On the flip side, however, it is hard to imagine anyone who loves music not being floored by at least one or two pieces here.I personally had a hard time embracing some of the more high-pitched vocal performances, like Bich Loan's opening "Tinh Yêu Tuyêt Vòi."Fortunately, he is backed by CBC Band, whom the liner notes describe (quite rightly) as "teenage acid rock of the highest order."Acid rock is generally not a favorite genre of mine, but these teens were smart enough to replace its more plodding and self-indulgent aspects with infectious youthful exuberance and a rumbling, funky low-end.It is impossible not to love a band that is so obviously intent on tearing it up.Notably, even though Rolling Stone proclaimed them "The Best Band in the Orient" at one point, they only ever recorded two songs (for the soundtrack to a comedy, no less).The band, who now live in Texas, were absolutely stunned that Mark found those songs (even they themselves hadn’t heard them in nearly four decades).

The most essential piece on the album, however, is probably Bang Chan's incendiary "Nhurng Dóm Mat Hoa Châu," which features one of the absolute best rhythm sections that I have ever heard.The groove is so perfect that the rest of the band could have been playing literally anything and it wouldn't matter, but everything else is great too: wild organ solos, smoky saxophones, fuzzed out guitars, and cool sultry vocals.It must have been a bit disorienting for some G.I.s to come back home and hear the comparatively neutered rock being played on radios in the US after experiencing such funky, frenzied abandon abroad.That said, there are a number of other stunning pieces strewn throughout the album that take wildly different stylistic paths, such as Lê Thu's languidly melancholy "Sao Bien," the mutant Motown girl-group pop of Thai Thanh, and Thanh Lan's suavely cosmopolitan "Hoài Thu."

As with just about all Sublime Frequencies releases, the sound quality is quite raw.It actually works quite effectively in this case, as this music deserves to be heard as it was experienced in those steamy Saigon clubs forty years ago: gritty and unfiltered.Most of these artists rely heavily on sinuously funky bass lines and overdriven and wah-wah'ed guitars, both of which only sound more visceral with increased volume and in-the-red recording quality.In general, I am not a fan a foreign pastiches of American rock, but the sheer enthusiasm and passion of these musicians transcended my apathy beautifully and instantly.Saigon Rock & Soul captures a singular cultural nexus: the thrill of discovering rock and roll colliding with the urgency of living in the midst of a war zone.This is some of the most thrillingly alive music that will be released this year (and one impressive feat of musicology to boot).

samples:

• Bich Loan and CBC Band, "Con Tim V√† Nur√≥c Mat"
• L√™ Thu, "Sao Bien"
• Phurong T√¢m, "D√™m Huy√™n Di√™u"

15 August 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

The origins of this compilation read like the plot to an quirky indie comedy: a German musicologist misplaces his passport, loses his luggage, misses his flight, and winds up taking a completely different flight. When he arrives at his revised destination, he spends some time with a compelling eccentric, some unexpected things happen, and the experience changes the course of his life. The eccentric character in this instance was Dick Essilfe-Bonzie, a producer for Ghana's influential indie label Essiebons, and reluctant caretaker of a mountain of forgotten recordings that Polygram never bothered to collect when they took over.

Analog Africa

It is both fascinating and alarming how much of a role serendipity and chance play in musicology sometimes.Altered flight destination aside, curator Samy Ben Redjeb was not planning to embark upon a Ghana compilation at all when Essilfe-Bonzie presented him with a box of recently digitized recordings that he was thinking of emerging from retirement to release himself.Soon after, Redjeb learned that the reissue project wasn’t going to happen after all ("things are complicated")and that Dick had several huge boxes of doomed master tapes sitting on his veranda getting rained on.Given that: 1.) he had no choice but to save the tapes, and 2.) he already had heard quite a bit of great of great music from Essilfe-Bonzie's prematurely aborted digitizing project, it became a forgone conclusion that Samy needed to shelve his Togo and Benin projects and plunge into the sudden windfall of Ghana-iana.I am curious to see how many more albums emerge from this treasure trove, as only 12 of the songs included on Afro-Beat Airways were actually taken from Dick's archive.

For the most part, the focus of the album is placed quite squarely on funky, organ-based Afro-Beat.To his credit, Redjeb avoids the unnecessarily epic song lengths and prolonged, self-indulgent solos that have historically torpedoed many of my Afro-Beat listening experiences.In fact, most of the songs are a punchy four minutes or under, except for the cases where they are excellent enough to warrant departing from that formula.If it weren't for the inclusion of a brief and infectiously propulsive piece by De Frank Professionals, song length would actually be directly proportional to song quality: all of my other favorites tend to go on for a while.In particular, the K. Frimpong and Ebo Taylor pieces are pretty stellar.Notably, two of those were among the tapes liberated from the boxes sitting outside Essilfe-Bonzie's house, narrowly avoiding oblivion to become compilation highlights.I was also quite fond of African Brothers Band's "Ngyegye No So," which features a charming mid-song spoken breakdown courtesy of the very charismatic Nana Ampedu ("Well well well...my people, are you okay?").I'm a sucker for those.

Afro-Beat Airways is a very solid and likable compilation.There wasn't a single song that stood out as a flat-out masterpiece (aside from maybe Ebo Taylor's sinuously funky "Come Along"), but nothing stood out as disappointing either.That is no small feat, as Ghana—like Nigeria—has been anthologized to death in recent years.Unearthing the gems from such a vast and complicated trove of available material is a never-ending (and daunting) sifting process and Redjeb has done a great job of it. I was particularly excited about the K. Frimpong piece, which I didn't have yet (and would never have had, without his intervention).I was equally thrilled to learn from the liner notes that Vis-à-vis were his studio backing band, thus providing me with my next internet scavenging target.

Obviously, a lot of great African music is turning up on mp3 blogs like Awesome Tapes From Africa, but having a knowledgeable guy like Samy around to ferret out all the best stuff and write about it is pretty wonderful and indispensable.Not many people have the resources or patience to try to chase down dozens of long-retired obscure musicians in foreign countries, so a lot of the pictures, anecdotes, and line-up details included here are pretty unique and invaluable. The album itself is certainly enjoyable, but the accompanying interviews and biographical information are even better.

samples:

• African Brothers Band, "Ngyegye No So"
• De Frank Professionals, "Afe Ato Yen Bio"
• Ebo Taylor & the Sweet Beans, "Odofo Nyi Akyiri Biara"

12 August 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

I do not know if there would have been a more fitting epitaph for the departing Hydra Head label. As the final full length release, Black Curtain channels both the beautiful and the ugly of the label’s catalog, in a wonderfully engaging deconstruction of metal as a genre and as an art form, something Aaron Turner and colleagues embarked upon with the founding of Hydra Head 17 years ago.

Hydra Head

Jodis, the trio of guitarist/vocalist Turner, bassist James Plotkin, and drummer Tim Wyskida, at times bears more than a passing resemblance to Khanate, partially because Plotkin and Wyskida were that project’s rhythm section as well.Both projects revel in a beyond slow crawl, letting any guitar riff or drum beat ring out for what seems like an infinity.However, while the misanthropic Khanate was largely characterized by Alan Dubin's inhuman, demonic snarl, Turner's vocals here are much more calm and restrained.Khanate's slow plod was like malignant thoughts stewing in the mind of a medicated psychopath, while Jodis uses the lugubrious pacing to develop into an introspective, depressive beauty.

The sprawling, tortured guitar of "Broken Ground," the album opener, exemplifies this.It is erratic and fragmented, yet conjures a brilliantly sad sensibility to it.Turner's vocals stay low in the mix, depressed yet melodic, radiating a powerful sense of isolation.The infrequent drums add a dramatic punctuation, without providing any sense of inertia.The guitar slowly builds upon itself, becoming more and more distorted until reaching a glorious crescendo of noise.

None of the six pieces move at anything but a glacial pace, and there is more space than density, but the album is far from monotone."Red Bough" first alternates between only vocals and threadbare guitar notes. It transforms into a slightly faster, bombastic piece with the full rhythm section and quells back to more ambient spaces."Awful Feast" eschews most riffing entirely, leaving only chiming guitar notes and treated, monastic chanted vocals.

The album closer, "Beggar's Hand," is the only time where things begin to get dark, with the downtuned guitars diving more into the low end, becoming a more bleak and visceral experience.It retains the more beautiful elements of what preceded, and Turner continues singing rather than growling, but there is more of a sinister undercurrent.Surprisingly, for such a dramatic sounding piece, it ends the album on a rather understated note.

The slow, depressive pace of Black Curtain simply adds to its mood, but like the best Jesu material, it never comes across as a self-indulgent mope. Instead it is cautiously optimistic and empowered, spotlighting the power and beauty that can arise from sadness.As a swansong piece for a beloved label, it is a perfect one.

samples:

• Broken Ground
• Awful Feast
• Beggar's Hand

 

12 August 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

With each release, this Canadian duo has taken their idiosyncratic approach to black metal and pushed it out further, to the point where it bares little resemblance to the genre that birthed it. Alight in Ashes, for example, brings in much more in the way of noise-tinged soundscapes and haunting, unique vocals than it does any staccato riffs or cookie monster growls.

Profound Lore/Sige

One of the two most striking facets of this album is its lack of percussion.Some deep, monotone thuds can be heard lurking in the either on "Salamandra" and "Cup of Oblivion," the latter especially coming across as some Neolithic caveman pounding a simple, but functional rhythm.Other than that the album is pure ambience and texture

The other distinctive element is Geneviève’s distinctive voice, which seems to channel some medieval madrigal more so than anything of the modern era.For that reason some of the tracks, most specifically "Disease of Fear," take on a certain neo-folk quality, though amidst distorted squalls and fuzzy synths rather than acoustic guitars or more traditionalist instrumentation.

The opening to the aforementioned "Disease of Fear" also looks more towards the past than the present:structurally it does sound almost like a medieval ballad, but played by a barely controlled passage of feedbacking guitar.The dichotomy between classical and modernism, of powerful beauty and ugly dissonance, is an ongoing theme throughout the album.The stripped down "Burnt Offerings" is just guitar that reaches soaring and dramatic swells of gorgeous tone and guttural, unpleasant lows for eight brilliant minutes.

The same dichotomy applies on "Arsenikon (Faded in Discord)":bent and lovely guitar tones clash with one another under multi-tracked, droning vocals in a stop/start structure that prevents things from getting too comfortable.The more attractive sounds begin to take command at the end, only be swallowed by a morass of static and noise.

Alight in Ashes is an even further abstraction of conventional sound than its predecessors, which is definitely an asset in the overpopulated world of black metal and its various offshoots.Unlike other albums in this field though, it is inviting and downright melodic at times, leading to a great, eclectic whole.

samples:

• Salamandra
• Burnt Offerings
• Disease of Fear

 

11 August 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Jack Dangers, the mastermind behind Meat Beat Manifesto, has already established his reputation as a legendary figure in electronic music. With classic albums such as Storm The Studio, Armed Audio Warfare, Satyricon, In Dub, and 2008’s Autoimmune, MBM has never stopped evolving and influencing the musical landscape. Over the course of its existence, MBM has been labeled industrial, techno, breakbeat, IDM, Acid House, Drum N’ Bass, Dubstep, and more. No label seems to stick, as the music evolves with every release. With the new album, Answers Come In Dreams, Mr. Dangers once again expands on the Meat Beat Manifesto sound. Hypnotically beautiful, the album pulses with life.

Released on Metropolis and available October 12th, 2010.

01. Luminol
02. Mnemonic
03. M.Y.C.
04. Let Me Set
05. #Zero
06. Quietus
07. Token Words
08. Waterphone
09. 010130
10. Zenta!
11. Please
12. Chimie Du Son

08 August 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Sun Ra is one of the most challenging and innovative composers of the 20th century. He has a stupefyingly enormous discography, he espoused an enigmatic philosophy of cosmic proportions, and his music is often full of dense and unconventional sounds. Knowing where to start can be difficult, digesting his more experimental recordings even more so. For these reasons, and because of its once rare status, 1978's Lanquidity has long been among the most coveted Sun Ra records. It blends the Arkestra's characteristically obtuse performances and noisy tendencies with strong melodies, fat bass lines, and relatively straightforward rhythms. It's an excellent record for beginners and maybe the most accessible Sun Ra album ever recorded.

Evidence

Because of previous encounters with Sun Ra's music, I was surprised by what I heard in the opening moments of Lanquidity. The title song features a plodding rhythm beat out by percussionist Michael Anderson, horn solos cool enough for an early Miles Davis record, and space enough to identify the many fractured tones that materialize around Richard Williams' weighty bass line. It is impressive that, with more than 14 Arkestra members on board, nearly every one of them gets the chance to speak up before the first song is out. Keyboards, synthesizer noise, oboe, flute, bassoon, and various horns (one of them played by Eddie Gale) take turns chattering or singing over the foundation of Anderson and Williams' somnambulistic rhythm section. The Arkestra's ingenious blending of simple rhythms and melodies with angular bursts of noise and interwoven phrases makes concentrating on the music's many complexities easier. The sometimes jarring juxtapositions of sax honking and squealing woodwinds are transformed into colorful, ecstatic, and pleasing expressions, like fireworks exploding over a familiar scene. And the often vibrant, strongly melodic solos are made that much more attractive by the atonal harmonies and contrasting elements that swirl throughout the song. Each musician plays off the other musician in such an effortless and easy-sounding way that I'm tempted to think Sun Ra notated each and every last note of the song, right down to the most nuanced dynamics. "Lanquidity" is a masterwork of arrangement and performance, and one of the best opening songs to an album that I've ever heard.

But things only get better from there. "Where Pathways Meet" is brisk and far more upbeat, almost danceable. Williams' bass, Sun Ra's piano, and a baritone sax combine to form a basic melodic pattern with a boastful, heavy swagger while a trio saxophones bluster a melody over it that swings so hard it rocks. Michael Anderson and second percussionist Artaukatune slam out a sample-worthy backbeat that is met by more blaring horns, a pair of dueling electric guitars, and a from-the-gut trumpet solo so emotive it outshines everything the Arkestra and both guitarists can pump out together. On each of the following songs, the same basic idea is employed: Sun Ra combines attractive and catchy melodies and rhythms with spaced out, often impressionistic instrumental voices that are more painterly than they are musical. It is astonishing that the Arkestra keeps this same basic formula compelling throughout the entire album. The rhythms, melodies, solos, and tapestry-like arrangements on each song are all memorable, layered, and exciting, and they've yet to get old, though I've played this record countless times in the last couple of months. Whether or not anyone could dance to this stuff, the music commands the body just as well as it commands the imagination, and I think that is one of the reasons it is so enduring.

"There Are Other Worlds (They Have Not Told You Of)" concludes the album in a more abstract and disjointed way. A constant rhythm section still leads the song, at least at first. But, Sun Ra adds more synthesizer, wandering piano, and atonality to the proceedings. Eventually, whispering voices are added to the mix, which speak of space, music, secret knowledge, and mysterious worlds beyond our own. From start to finish, the music becomes increasingly fractured, until it is broken down into primal piano and synthesizer utterances, like a radio communication received from afar. These final moments lead naturally into Sun Ra's more abstract and difficult music, as if the album were made to prepare listeners for what comes next, whether it be a record like Interstellar Low Ways or Heliocentric Worlds Vol. 2. My natural inclination once the album has finished is to put more Ra on and follow him further into the outer reaches of music.

For those curious about the man's music Lanquidity is an excellent place to begin. More than that, it's a stupendous album that marries Sun Ra's more adventurous ideas with a soulful and catchy sound anyone can appreciate.

samples:

• Where Pathways Meet
• That's How I Feel
• There Are Other Worlds (They Have Not Told You Of)