25 July 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

The world didn't exactly end for Nigeria in the late 1960s, but it sure must’ve felt like it for most people, as a failed military coup led to a series of massacres and pogroms that ultimately snowballed into a full-scale civil war. One of the many casualties left in the wake of that chaos was Highlife music, which was far too breezy and urbane to remain relevant in the face of widespread death and turmoil—the youth of Nigeria craved something rawer and harder and they found it in American funk and British rock. Within a few short years, however, those outside inspirations were ingeniously assimilated into something all their own.

Soundway

I experienced a little bit of trepidation when I first listened to this compilation, as I am not a fan of '70s rock in general and psychedelic rock in particular.Also, while I am quite enthusiastic about African music from that period, I am not especially keen on African versions of Western music.Thankfully, the bulk of The World Ends is anything but slavish in its emulation of James Brown and the British Invasion.Instead, it seems that Nigeria's musicians merely borrowed the best elements from both, appropriating rock's structured hookiness and funk's propulsive grooves, then Africanizing the beats and slathering it all with a liberal doses of cool, intensity, and abandon.Also, the psychedelic element is practically non-existent here, aside from a few overdriven guitar solos and self-indulgent organ workouts.Even those are likable though, as self-indulgence is not the least bit tiresome when it is occurring over an awesomely funky vamp.These guys seemed like they were far more concerned with heating up dance floors than smashing through the boundaries of perception, a sentiment that I am wholeheartedly in sympathy with.I would much rather hear something with some guts than a Nigerian pastiche of Jefferson Airplane or Piper at the Gates of Dawn (though that actually sounds like it would be pretty entertaining, now that I think about it).

It is rare for me to enjoy any compilation from start to finish, but this one is a pleasant exception.I like nearly everything here (except "Blacky Joe" by People Rock Outfit) and absolutely love several pieces, particularly The Hygrades' "Somebody's Gotta Lose or Win."Obviously, some songs are less catchy than others, but nearly all of the artists included display a knack for tight bass lines, funky guitar jangling, and complex, off-kilter percussion—there are almost no straightforward rock beats or rhythm guitars here.Also of note, when I finally got around to reading Uchonne Ikonne's brief biographical sketches, I made the amusing discovery that my two favorite songs on the album are both by identical twin duos.The Identicals are pretty representative of what the rest of the album sounds like, but they just seem to do everything much better than everyone else: the vocals are impassioned yet melodic, the drums are wild and muscular, and the guitar and organ riffs and fills are both awesome and well-timed.The Lijadu Sisters, on the other hand, are a distinct aberration, as they are both female (appropriately) and very laid-back.Also, their "Life’s Gone Down Low" sounds far more like something that would be on a Studio One disco or funk compilation than anything I've heard from Nigeria.Regardless, the slow-motion beat and harmonized dual vocals are absolutely irresistible.

As is typical of Soundway compilations, The World Ends includes some very comprehensive liner notes and a fascinating array of album art and performance photos from the period.Unexpectedly, however, there are also a couple of hilarious observations included from veterans of the scene.Renny Pearl recounts that once rock music took hold, guitarists in Nigeria went from being quite rare to being absolutely ubiquitous and that it became very hard to fill any other position in a band.My favorite quote, however, is from Fela Kuti, who lamented that a James Brown imitator from Sierra Leone became so popular in Nigeria that he had to move to Ghana just to get people to pay attention to him ("This man was tearing Lagos to pieces … He had all Nigeria in his pocket. Made me fall right on my ass, man… After that Pino tore up the scene, there wasn't shit I could do in Lagos.").

Obviously, there has been a landslide of releases over the last few years devoted to unearthing lost Nigerian classics (including at least five on Soundway alone), but The World Ends makes it clear that Miles Claret is nowhere near running out of quality material.In fact, it appears as though the vein might actually be inexhaustible. This is among the strongest, most listenable, and most immediately gratifying African music compilations that I've heard to date (though, sadly, the aforementioned Mr. Pino is not included—presumably to prevent the rest of the world from being torn to pieces).

Samples:

• The Identicals, "Akwa Kayi Ji Bia Nuwa"
• The Lijadu Sisters, "Life‚Äôs Gone Down Low"
• The Hygrades, "Somebody's Gotta Lose or Win"

 

25 July 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

To glimpse the enduring possibilities which some people uncovered in the 1960s you could do worse than listen to the first three or four Incredible String Band records. The group merged folk traditions, personal memories, future hopes, and East/West philosophy with an amazing innocence, sincerity, and flow. The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter makes clear some key recording principles: have something worth saying, use your own voice, and get an engineer or producer who can properly document your expression.

Fledg'ling Records

The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter was produced by Joe Boyd and engineered by John Wood at Sound Techniques studio. Boyd’s fantastic autobiography White Bicycles reveals a host of tales to thrill the most ardent music snob and puts the ISB in proper context. Boyd was UK tour manager for Muddy Waters, he plugged Dylan in at Newport, recorded Pink Floyd’s first single, and ran the UFO club in London. The ISB were Boyd's first signing to the Elektra label and the Rolling Stones tried to steal them away. He booked them into huge venues and considered them peers of Cohen and Mitchell. As he says, originally "they performed Scots traditional music as if it had taken a journey to the Appalachians and back via Morocco and Bulgaria." But before the second record, The 5000 Spirits or The Layers Of The Onion, founder member Clive Palmer split for India (people didn't leave in the 1960s they split) and apparently exposed the fact that Williamson and Heron didn’t actually get along so well without his friendship buffer. Certainly there is a useful tension in the music and if it emanates from that dynamic well the result is never dull and holds up in the harsh glare on the early 21st century.

Heron and Williamson are good songwriters and confident performers. They weave traces of childhood, drone, a cappella, Eastern tonal traditions, innocence, fantasy, romance, myth and spirituality. The music does not sound overcrowded or forced, though, since Wood and Boyd were the perfect partners to ensure it got the clarity and space it deserved and because the ISB never forced anything. Boyd details both the way that groups tended to record back then and the way in which engineer John Wood worked. If something didn’t sound right in 1968, the engineer would get up and go into the studio and either replace or reposition the microphone, or move the musician to another part of the studio (which had three differing ceiling levels and thus three different acoustics) searching for the sweet spot for each sound. At that time, groups would attempt to capture some of the excitement of live performance by recording as much as they could in one go. That said, The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter was one of the first records to be made using the new 24 track recording technology. This allowed for overdubbing and detailed separation of instruments and voices. Williamson likens the process to painting, with the ability to change structures and color. The end result isn't at all overdone and has a weird power. Listening in my car one morning made me jump as I was convinced someone spoke from the back seat!

The opening piece "Koeeoaddi There" speeds up and slows down according it's own flow and fluctuates between a child's perspective, nonsensical rhymes, and the lyric "earth water fire and air, met together in a garden fair, put in a basket bound with skin, if you answer this riddle you'll never begin." The long "A Very Cellular Song" contains fragments of "Bid You Goodnight" by The Pindar Family which they learned from Joseph Spence. "The Minotaur's Song" starts as if channeling Gilbert and Sullivan and has a call and response style ("Ican't dream well because of my horns/He can't dream well because of his horns") which seems to predict Monty Python's "Lumberjack Song" song.

But with the ISB it's almost pointless to pick out favorite tracks. They adhered to the mantra of channeling flow and following a muse while hoping not to ruin the inspiration by doing too much. Some people may find them irritating hippies but I regard them as liquid acrobats, folk magicians, poets, and innocent romantics. I listen to the low notes and allow the rest to float over. Somewhat like listening to dub or swimming in that trying too hard (to understand the lyrics or follow the tune) may impede enjoyment or progress. Boyd feels that the brilliant Heron/Williamson duo was the group's peak, but later records are worth hearing, especially Wee Tam and The Big Huge and Liquid Acrobat As Regards The Air. Oh, forget that, they are all good. Even Earthspan has some great moments such as the gloriously compressed "Banks of Sweet Italy."

The girlfriends-in-the-band era of Licorice and Rose changed things (even as it retained the approach of playing any instrument regardless of formal skill and training) as did the journey into and (for some of the group) out of Scientology. Licorice seems to have disappeaered somewhere in California but she did garner a mention in Elmore Leonard's Freaky Deaky. Rose returned to the UK and in the 1990s was Lady Mayoress of the Welsh town of Aberystwyth—surely a more bizarre gig than her time in the ISB. There have also been reunions and gigs with assorted members as well as tribute records. Williamson continues recording and touring and the last recording of his I heard, Skirting The River Road, was a surprisingly good interpretation of the poems of Blake, Whitman, and Vaughan along with some of his own.

ISB never made a truly bad record but this re-master of their third album is arguably their best. They linger in semi-obscurity despite some initial commercial success and praise from Lennon, McCartney, and Robert Plant. Incredibly, Joe Boyd tells how Caetano Veloso claims to have been inspired by the ISB and how Silvio Rodriguez decided to become a songwriter while recovering from a gunshot wound and listening to a bootleg copy of 5000 Spirits.

samples:

• Koeeoaddi There
• The Minotaur's Song
• Swift as the Wind

19 July 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Michael Wells has some new music available through Beat Port and Tik Tok Music.

"Vuvuzela-la-la" is a new Tricky Disco track celebrating this year's World Cup while a new EP "Son of God" is the latest digital single available from G.T.O.

18 July 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

In 1989, Christoph Heemann and Edward Ka-Spel decided to embark upon a tape-exchange project in hopes of creating "atmospheric/textural music." The duo soon enlisted several other talented folks from H.N.A.S. and the Legendary Pink Dots milieu and recorded an album's worth of raw material, which Heemann himself then combined, edited, and mixed into what became the band's debut. Ka-Spel has since stated that Mimir was a bit of a disappointment (though he liked the remixed version), as Heemann did not carve up the source material aggressively enough to realize their initial vision. Nevertheless, it seems they made an inventive and engrossing album despite themselves. This might be their best release.

Streamline

When Mimir was first released on Flabbergast 1990, it had a wildly different sequence than the one that ultimately emerged after Christoph Heemann spent an entire year re-editing it for its 2007 reissue.Despite the enormous amount of time and effort expended, however, the actual musical content did not change too much, aside from the conspicuous removal of the chanted introduction to "Air." Taken as a whole, the current version should sound quite familiar in all major respects to anyone who has the original version, as the same motifs unfold in roughly the same order.Taken on a song-by-song basis, however, the 2007 Mimir is an entirely a different (and better) experience, condensing the original nine pieces into a mere five (yet somehow growing a few minutes in length).

Christoph's remix is an impressive feat on a number of levels.For one, Heemann took something relatively straightforward and digestible and gutsily transformed it into something more difficult, but ultimately more rewarding.The opening piece on the 1990 album ("Entrance") is essentially a very likable, vaguely Asian-sounding guitar figure bolstered by some artfully warped keyboards and flutes.In the 2007 version, that same guitar motif gradually unfolds into thick, swoopingly psychedelic analog synths and a melancholy piano and violin coda over the course of an epic 24-minute running time.What once felt like three separate good ideas compartmentalized into three separate works now feels like one immersive plunge into (and re-emergence from) a rabbit hole of fractured, mind-bending weirdness.

After that mesmerizing opening salvo, Mimir could've ended and I would have been completely content.The album continues on for another 18 minutes though, growing quite a bit more abstract and unfolding in a vaguely menacing and surreal fashion.I actually prefer the more focused and melodic side of Mimir (which I believe runs counter to Heemann and Ka-Spel’s own preferences), but there are a number of wonderful passages that emerge amidst the constantly shifting drones and treated field recordings that follow.Also, the band has a fairly unique and unpredictable take on ambient music, informed by a healthy interest in musique concrète and tape loop experiments.My favorite moments are the warm, shimmering ambiance that begins "Curtain/December 3, 1989" and the ugly psychedelia of "December 2, 1989/Air," which sometimes sounds like a whinnying demon horse from the bowels of hell.I also prefer the more organic and "human" side of Mimir on display here, which almost vanished entirely with 1993's Mimyriad.Mimir deftly balances Ka-Spel and Silverman’s spacier, more artificial sounds with a host of recognizable instruments like flute, violin, and kalimba, though Andreas Martin’s guitar playing is still woefully under-represented.

Being a serious artist means being in a state of constant evolution.Consequently, there are probably very few active musicians who are able to look back on their work from nearly two decades ago without cringing and making some rather harsh internal criticisms.Christoph Heemann is somewhat unique in his inability to ignore those feelings and has (on more than one occasion) gone back to fix his earlier mistakes and make the album he felt he should've made the first time around. He might get a bit too fixated on details that no one will notice except for him and his collaborators, and he might make some decisions that I find baffling (like keeping the electric guitar noodling in "Smashed"), but it is very refreshing to know that he deeply cares about what he is putting out.Mimir might not have been quite realized Heemann's original vision for this project, but his personal failure inadvertently makes for a pretty great album, as the music clearly took on a life of its own.Mimir is a rather singular entity—a sort of self-detonating, post-modernist supergroup.Having this many talented and odd people working together can't help but result in some excellent music, but that natural cohesion is at odds with Ka-Spel and Heemann's perverse tendencies to deconstruct, subvert, and confound.This time around, the chemistry won.

(The song titles embedded in the 2007 Streamline CD are wrong.The correct track listing is available here.)

Samples:

• Entrance/Escalator/Window
• December 2, 1989/Air
• Curtain/December 3, 1989

 

18 July 2010

Matthew Spencer

Albums and Singles

Every music city in America has a group like the Second Family Band. Musicians will go to each other’s shows, hang-out, tour together, and maybe share rent on a house or practice space. Eventually they all end up in the same room together, jamming. Someone sets up a microphone, turns on the tape recorder and soon thereafter another album of "shadowy" group improv is set loose on the world. The Second Family Band matches the pattern, but with an important distinction: Their music is worth listening to.

Brave Mysteries

Theorists would have us believe that improvisation is a democratic art, built on consensus through musical dialogue. It’s a wonderful ideal, but if a band isn’t air-tight there’s usually one or two musicians tasked with holding back anarchy. On Veiled Gallery the distinction goes to the banjo player and drummer (The musicians are not credited with any specific instrument).Together they supply the backbone of the album, an interlocking exchange of hypnotic riffing with the metronomic thud of a floor-tom. The arrangement is spacious, giving momentum while allowing the rest to drone, bleat, and squawk their heart’s content.

Typical to these communal jam-sessions is the drifting coherence and shaky performances that crop up occasionally on the album. This is not to say that Veiled Gallery is a mess. The recordings was edited by someone with an ear for the band’s strengths as wells as a sympathy for the audience. The Second Family may play on with ecstatic abandon, but the listener is, for the most part, spared from having to hear the musicians run out of inspiration.

Releasing improvised music used to be more of a gamble, but the proliferation of new distribution and recording technologies has lifted cost and labor barriers, making it easy and cheap for any odd group to get together, hash together a few songs, and then throw out product into an already saturated market. The Second Family Band avoids that cycle by judicious self-editing. When so many groups today trade in images of mystery, it’s good to listen to one that believes some things are best left unheard.

18 July 2010

Creaig Dunton

Albums and Singles

The title and content of this EP could be interpreted many different ways. For one, the seven short tracks were all built using a single household implement, such as a rubber band or metal pan. Second, the sparse, short pieces are prime sampling material for DJs and other artists, making the disc a "tool" for recycling. Regardless of its potential uses, the material makes for a compelling example of Ielasi’s ability to turn the mundane into the extremely listenable.

12k

Although a simple premise, Ielasi needs only the most basic of editing to coax complex, rhythmic tones and textures out of his slew of non-musical instruments.For "Rubber Band," the simple plucks we’ve all played around with whilst bored at school or work are transformed into a snappy bass sequence that could be gleaned from a classic synth."Cooking Pan" develops into a deep, muffled, nautical beat that could be pulled off an old Monolake album, and "Aluminum Foil" utilizes the tiniest bits of metallic noises, panned around and cut into frail snare drum sounds, to rival some of the best glitch artists.

The final two tracks especially sound the most fully fleshed out, with layers of sound that ape real instruments very well."Tin Can" focuses on deep, echoed clinks to make the kick drum rhythm, but other sounds are nicely molded into reverberated snare hits."Paper Lamp" develops an organic, bassy percussion sound onto which high pitched echoes and squelchy sound effects are put atop.How this is all sourced from a paper lamp is a head scratcher, but I have no reason to doubt the artist's honesty.

It is rare that such an intentional concept piece such as this can make for a purely pleasurable listening experience, but Ielasi manages.Without any knowledge of how this was created, one would think it was a subtle, but complex suite of rhythmic electronic music.Knowledge of how the sounds were created simply adds to the pleasure and appreciation of listening, but is surprisingly unnecessary.

18 July 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

On his second album, this young Russian artist, a.k.a. Marat Shibaev, continues his infatuation with the sparse, dub infested blend of minimalist electronic music popularized by the likes of Porter Ricks, but with his own personal touch. The result is just the right balance of repetitive electronic thump and abstract textural explorations.

Lantern

Odysseia is heavily based on muffled, repetitive analog kick drum thumps and bassy synth pads, creating a murky nautical sound that feels as if it’s being played deep under the sea.The opening "Abyss" exemplifies this, with wave-like reverberated noises with the buried analog drums, but dynamic improvisational squelches present as well.The clash between the repetitive beats and ambience with the vibrant, abstract rattling creates a powerful synergy in which the track becomes repetitive without being dull, and chaotic without being formless.

Minuscule clicks and oceanic organ passages on "Polaris" keep this vibe alive, tossing waxy random sounds in amongst the otherwise repeating beats.Even the venerable 808 hand-clap sounds make an appearance in "Researches of Depths" within the deep kick drums and subsonic bass line.

While there is a comfortable familiarity with the 4/4 bass drum programming, Shibaev isn't afraid to tinker with the formula to try new things.The erratic rhythms and less obvious sounding drum hits of "Immersing" sounds more like an intentionally random scattering of sonic fragments within the sea.The more spacious "Solar System" focuses less on the rhythm and more on the textures, with wavy noise stabs and raw analog synth notes defining the piece."Mermaid" is similar in placing a greater emphasis on the deep minor chords, creating a darker, more claustrophobic sheen over the track.

Amongst the final two songs is where the dub influences shine through most."Spirits" is first and foremost a rhythm based piece, with the ambient textures scaled back to display the complex programming of the beats, utilizing appropriate amounts of echo and reverb.The closing "Reverberation" feels like a return to the surface after the deep explorations prior, with the less murky synths allowing the light to shine through.The result is not only more upbeat, but its treated rhythms and shaker percussion resemble dub in its most traditional form.

While the songs here do feel as if they have a definite formula to them, it is one that accommodates enough variables to allow them to develop their own identities, creating an album that feels thematically cohesive, but not overly repetitive.The rhythm programming is perhaps the most static element here, but even that has enough variation to keep the album fresh.What's here has been done before, but here it’s done well enough for this fact to be irrelevant.

samples:

• Abyss
• Mermaid
• Reverberation

 

18 July 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Unlike his previous works, which were often emphasizing sine waves and other synthetically derived sounds, Kosame is all about the world around us and the sounds of everyday life. Combining recordings of opening windows and boiling water with home made instruments and classic synthesizers, the result is a world of sound that may not resemble "songs" per se, but instead an aural study of our surroundings.

Spekk

Ikeda has created this album to explore the concept of "yuragi," which roughly translates to "fluctuation."In this case, fluctuation in the sound of society, as well as fluctuation of instruments:the varying tonality of home made rubber and wood instruments, as well as the unpredictability of analog synthesizers.On "Kosame (Drizzle)" the various nuances of the human voice is used:Ikeda's reading of the novel Mizuumi is cut up and spliced to focus on the movements of the mouth and the sounds of saliva more than the voice being extruded.

On "Hakuchu (Daylight)," the old creaking sounds of the window in Ikeda's childhood home create the primary texture, mixed with birdlike flutters and clipped fragments of static bursts.With the frail strums and sparse arrangement, there is a nostalgic but sad color to the sound.The same emotions appear in "Marebito," which is dedicated to Ikeda's late grandmother.The bird-like synth chirps and mournful string plucks create a dynamic, but sorrowful series of textures.

Tracks like "Mikazuki (Crescent)" have a less emotional color to them, but provide the same quality of sound exploration.In this case, an empty champagne bottle is used like a miniature gamelan, creating percussive clinking sounds, and also as a reverb chamber to turn dripping water into cavernous noises, combined with hissing sounds from blowing on the bottle.The result is a sonic microcosm derived from a single instrument.

While "Seijaku (Stillness)" is based upon a singular common sound (the boiling of water), here it is juxtaposed with a variety of other effects and instruments to create a broader spectrum.The rattling and bubbling noises of boiling water change in consistency throughout, but are paired with tentative string notes from homemade instruments and the occasional bleeping synthesizer.The boiling is the focus, becoming more and more forceful as the piece concludes, but never overshadows the other sounds.The closing "Tobira (Gate)" uses the field recordings of Ikeda walking around, picking up wood and nails that are used to create an instrument used during the piece, leading to a subtle collection of friction sounds created between strings and nails. While it can be a challenging listening experience, Kosame on the whole is definitely a rewarding one.

samples:

• Hakuchu (Daylight)
• Mikazuki (Crescent)
• Seijaku (Stillness)

 

18 July 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Guano Padano, assembled by Alessandro Stefana, features guests Alessandro Alessandroni (renowned whisteler of the immortal Ennio Morricone western soundtracks), Gary Lucas (Captain Beefheart/Jeff Buckley guitarist), Chris Speed (clarinet player with Tim Berne, Uri Caine, John Zorn etc.) and, last but not least, the legendary Italian singer Bobby Solo.

Guano Padano’s music is a kind of road movie, unfolding between the scorching asphalt of Highway number 4 and the juicy smells of the peasant festivals so common in the Pianura Padana. It’s a dreaming
mixture of rock, psychedelia, folk and country, jazz improvisations and Morricone hints. Alessandro "Asso" Stefana and Zeno de Rossi started to work together some years ago while playing in Vinicio
Capossela’s band, of which they are still steady members. For this trip they are joined by Danilo Gallo, a double bass player with a dark, meaty, gutsy style, who has shared with Zeno various adventures
merged in El Gallo Rojo collective, one of the most interesting experiences of Italian underground and independent jazz.

LP version limited to 500 copies.

More info

18 July 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Featuring Can’s Jaki Liebezeit on drums along with Helmut Zerlett and Dominik von Senger amongst others, on Phantom Band’s eponymous debut they try to bring the new musical frontier of '70s Germany into the then sprightly '80s with varying degrees of success. This mixed bag of krautrock-cum-world music lacks the punch of their Freedom of Speech album but acts as a fitting introduction to the group’s brief career.

Bureau B

Liebezeit’s fondness for Jamaican-inspired rhythms and instrumentation are apparent from the offset with "You Inspired Me," which sits somewhere between Westernized exotica, saccharine lounge jazz and a krautrock drift. The end result is not as unpleasant as the previous sentence reads; despite it sounding dated, the band play with enough feeling to not upset the music. The same can be said of most of the album, although occasionally the Phantom Band dip into some cheesy self-indulgence such as some of the guitar playing on "I am the One" or "Rolling." Even within the most cringe-worthy moments, there is still something worth latching on to. In the aforementioned "I am the One," von Senger unleashes a beautiful guitar solo just over halfway through that is worth any amount of unnecessary noodling.

Liebezeit’s brief moment to shine occurs on "Phantom Drums," a dizzying array of overdubbed percussion which takes in as many unusual and unique sounding percussive instruments in its brief existence as possible. This leads into the album’s zenith, "Absolutely Straight," which sees all of the Phantom Band lock into a serious, meaty groove. The bouncing bass line of Rosko Gee anchors the soaring guitars to the unearthly pulse of Liebezeit’s drums. The same levels of excitement are captured in the dying moments of the album with "Pulsar" which sounds the most like what modern ears would consider krautrock but with a more fashionable production for the time.

Overall, this album is enjoyable but sounds very much of its time from the production down to the instrumentation (particularly on pieces like "Without Desire," which is almost painfully outmoded). This is not necessarily a bad thing but I must admit I find it a little too '80s for my tastes. At times I feel like I am listening to a recording for a particularly adventurous set of session musicians who have been given some studio time in exchange for playing Phil Collins' backup band. However, knowing that the fantastic Freedom of Speech was also created by the same players reveals this album to be a dress rehearsal for the real performance.

samples:

• I am the One
• Absolutely Straight
• Pulsar