Ze
1983's Flaming Demonicscomes right at the end of James White's four-year run as the reigningKing Shit of No-Wave Fuck Mountain, and the intervening years have notbeen as kind to this album as they have been to his earlier efforts. Bythis time, White had parted company with The Contortions/Blacks, andthey are sorely missed. For Flaming Demonics, White insteadutilizes an assemblage of studio session players, who, while certainlytalented, are more orthodox in their approach, bringing much of themusic the too-polished veneer of traditional jazz playing. Coming afterthe similarly lackluster Sax Maniac, this album probablysounded a death knell for the artist, evidenced by the fact that hestopped performing and recording not long after its release. Inhindsight, however, the album is not nearly as bad as some haveclaimed, and it contains several tracks that James White converts willfind especially entertaining. The album continues White'sMephistophelian obsession with the diabolism of jazz and funk music,with plenty of lyrical allusions to the selling of his soul and thedemonic possession supposedly evidenced by his serpentine horn blasts.The album opens with "The Devil Made Me Do It," where unnaturalpolyrhythms form an uncomfortable backdrop for staccato swipes ofjangling funk guitar and an abrasively lyrical saxophone dialogue."Rantin' and Ravin'" is an extended rock-bop instrumental, soundingsurprisingly similar to James Brown's early-80's work ("Livin' InAmerica," anyone?). Your reaction to that comparison will no doubtlargely determine your opinion of this material. Things get a littlebetter with a medley of Duke Ellington classics ("Caravan" and "ItDon't Mean A Thing"), which are unceremoniously thrown into the mixwith the White original "Melt Yourself Down.". The whole mess providesnine minutes of ararchic fun, especially the incongruously chaoticelectric organ solo towards the beginning. This reissue includes threebonus tracks, which travel even further down the homogenized, early80's rock-jazz path, veering dangerously close to Huey Lewis and theNews territory. A version of one of my favorite early-60's rock n' rollsongs, Gene Pitney's "Town Without Pity," is a little tooself-consciously "cute" for White, and his head-scratching version leftme wondering about his motives in covering such a classic song. Allgood things must come to an end, alas.
1983's Flaming Demonicscomes right at the end of James White's four-year run as the reigningKing Shit of No-Wave Fuck Mountain, and the intervening years have notbeen as kind to this album as they have been to his earlier efforts. Bythis time, White had parted company with The Contortions/Blacks, andthey are sorely missed. For Flaming Demonics, White insteadutilizes an assemblage of studio session players, who, while certainlytalented, are more orthodox in their approach, bringing much of themusic the too-polished veneer of traditional jazz playing. Coming afterthe similarly lackluster Sax Maniac, this album probablysounded a death knell for the artist, evidenced by the fact that hestopped performing and recording not long after its release. Inhindsight, however, the album is not nearly as bad as some haveclaimed, and it contains several tracks that James White converts willfind especially entertaining. The album continues White'sMephistophelian obsession with the diabolism of jazz and funk music,with plenty of lyrical allusions to the selling of his soul and thedemonic possession supposedly evidenced by his serpentine horn blasts.The album opens with "The Devil Made Me Do It," where unnaturalpolyrhythms form an uncomfortable backdrop for staccato swipes ofjangling funk guitar and an abrasively lyrical saxophone dialogue."Rantin' and Ravin'" is an extended rock-bop instrumental, soundingsurprisingly similar to James Brown's early-80's work ("Livin' InAmerica," anyone?). Your reaction to that comparison will no doubtlargely determine your opinion of this material. Things get a littlebetter with a medley of Duke Ellington classics ("Caravan" and "ItDon't Mean A Thing"), which are unceremoniously thrown into the mixwith the White original "Melt Yourself Down.". The whole mess providesnine minutes of ararchic fun, especially the incongruously chaoticelectric organ solo towards the beginning. This reissue includes threebonus tracks, which travel even further down the homogenized, early80's rock-jazz path, veering dangerously close to Huey Lewis and theNews territory. A version of one of my favorite early-60's rock n' rollsongs, Gene Pitney's "Town Without Pity," is a little tooself-consciously "cute" for White, and his head-scratching version leftme wondering about his motives in covering such a classic song. Allgood things must come to an end, alas.
A recording of a live performance on May 13, 1980, Live Aux Bain Douches is the single best James Chance live album available, eclipsing ROIR's White Cannibal and Soul Exorcismreleases. The recording is far superior to any of the other livematerial I've heard, and the band seem to be fully engaged with thematerial, delivering an energetic set to a wildly appreciate audience.Opening with a unexpectedly searing version of Michael Jackson's "Don'tStop Till You Get Enough," Chance and the band expertly tear through aset comprised equally of raucous funk, sophisticated hard bop andadrenaline-pumped dance music. The creeping forward momentum of "IDanced With A Zombie" is an opportunity for Chance and his horn sectionto showcase their talent for blistering improv, creating interwoventhreads of smoldering brilliance. On a pair of James Brown covers — "IGot You (I Feel Good)" and "King Heroin" — Chance displays his uniqueperspective on the material; on the former, he adds a level of snarlingrockabilly attitude to the perennial Brown favorite; on the latter, heslows down and extends the song into a tortured, emotive blues thatpierces straight to the heart with gut-wrenching power. Switching backinto fast tempo for the final one-two punch of "Put Me Back In My Cage"and "Contort Yourself," Chance hoots and hollers, throwing his entirebody into the performance, as his band throws together a hyperactivearrangement that constantly threatens to upend itself. Live Aux Bain Douchesclearly manifests a confident ensemble, fully in control of theirtalent, delivering a blazing set unparalleled in the annals ofpost-punk. My only complaint is that I wasn't there to witness theperformance firsthand.
Though Off White was released in the same year as Buy,it points to a new trajectory for James Chance. Renaming himself JamesWhite (in a snotty white-boy parody of James Brown), he recast TheContortions as The Blacks and veered towards the kind ofslickly-produced funk-disco hybrid that had already become a Ze Recordstrademark. The album opens with two new versions of "Contort Yourself,"the first a radically reworked and extended mix by August Darnell ofcartoon Latino-disco gangsters Kid Creole and the Coconuts. Darnell'sversion of the song subtracts the dissonance and adds a loopedbassline, uptempo hi-hats and full-on disco throb. This could be adancefloor classic in any era. The rest of the material on Off Whiteis engrossingly unorthodox, fearlessly matching White's asymmetricalfree-jazz with smoothed-out NYC disco sleaze. "Stained Sheets" is abizarre dialogue between White and an anonymous woman enraptured in herown sexual malaise, over a druggy, slow-cooked improvisation. There'snothing more embarassing than pandering white-boy versions of islandmusic (see Buster Poindexter's "Hot Hot Hot"), but "(Tropical) HeatWave" somehow sidesteps the usual pitfalls, mostly because of White'sblazing saxophone solos. The two parts of "Almost Black" act as adancefloor-friendly showcase for White's unstoppably intense soloing,as anonymous female voices admire White for being so nearly a blackman: "I love him cuz he might be white/but every time I feel thatsmack/I want him more because he's almost black." White's cavalierattitude in dealing with this kind of edgy race material (other songtitles: "White Savage," "Bleached Black" and "White Devil") isrefreshingly provocative, especially in our current social climate ofgutless, politically-correct racial dialogue. The tastiest bonus trackon the disc is "Christmas With Satan," a 10-minute narrative aboutYuletide with the devil that deliriously quotes classic holiday tunessuch as "Walking in a Winter Wonderland" and "Hava Nagila." For sheerinventiveness and off-kilter funkiness, Off White is without compare in the James Chance catalog, and this disc is far and away my favorite of the bunch.
For followers of the fertile New York City scene circa 1977-1983 thatspawned the avant-punk-funk-dance-jazz meltdowns of the so-calledNo-Wave and Mutant Disco genres, there could be no better news than theresurrection of the classic Ze Records label, and the accompanyingreissue program. Having already released a clutch of fantastically rareand sought-after albums from Was (Not Was) and Lizzy Mercier Descloux,Ze recently unveiled four superior reissues of James Chance/White'sclassic LPs, adding bonus tracks of rare material and reproducing theoriginal artwork and liner notes. Together with recent reissues andcareer-spanning discs from DNA, Mars, Glenn Branca and the TheoreticalGirls, my No Wave cup truly runneth over. Most of this materialappeared on Tiger Style's recent Irresistable Impulsebox, but there's something more satisfying about having replicas of theoriginal packaging, each album kept to its own disc. The only advantageof the Tiger Style set was the inclusion of 1982's Sax Maniacalbum, which tanked on Warner back in its day. However, if you'vetracked down this LP as I have, you would probably agree that thismaterial is far from essential. 1979's Buy is inarguablyessential, however, the first full-length LP from The Contortions aftertheir appearance on Brian Eno's epoch-defining No New Yorkcompilation. Their lopsided funk energy is in full swing on this set ofstudio material, all dissonant melodies, lurching rhythms and jaggedbleats of saxophone, together with Chance's bratty, nihilistic vocaloutbursts. The rolling basslines and urgent drumbeats suggest dancemusic, but the material is so aggressively irregular that it begs forsome kind of interpretive spastic acrobatics, an imperative made clearin the lyrics for the Contortions' most well-known song: "It's betterthan pleasure, hurts more than pain/I've got what it takes to drive youinsane/Now is the time to lose all control, contort your body and twistyour soul...Once you take out all the garbage that's in yourbrain/Forget about your future and just go insane." Chance slows downthe tempo a bit with the intriguiging noir-jazz stylings of"Anasthetic," imparting the dark sense of claustrophobia experienced innarrow metropolitan alleyways. Bonus tracks come in the form of threesuperlative early live cuts, including one particularly angular coverof Elvis Presley's "Jailhouse Rock," which Chance introduces in histrademark confrontational style: "And now a little something for allthose of you who live in the past, and that's about 99 percent of youidiots out there." 
Sandwiched between two sheets of metal, numbered out of an edition of333, and signed by Z'ev, Crippled Intellect Productions has released anexcellent 10" of a percussive singularity. The two performancesrecorded on this release are of the kind that are rarely played live orrecorded in the studio. Side A begins with Z'ev suggesting that some"travelling music" be played and what follows is a series of metal onmetal rhythms that, on the whole, don't seem to fit a single rhythmictime signature nor suggest any kind of ethnic reference. The entirepiece feels like an experiment in time; it is as though the pulsingthat consistently finds its way into this piece is moving time along ina new way and the texture of the instruments on top of eachother createa new terra firma to experience this time on. Whether the travellingZ'ev was suggesting was of a mystical kind or merely a trip across landand sea, the movement of these apparent non-rhythms slowly builds intoa piece that creates the illusion of recognition — the rhythm wasalways there in my mind, Z'ev simply showed it to me. Side B beginswith the humming of metal sheets. They are surprisingly melodic and, astime carries on, they begin to resonate in a rubbery way, bouncing in aperfect wave form and releasing their ghost in the form of a beautifulmoan. It sounds as though Z'ev must've added some kind of extrainstrument to this performance or somehow mixed scrap pieces with therest of his instrumentation because their is the constant effect ofmetal rolling about slowly over this wave of sound made by the metalsheets. Z'ev doesn't seem to be in control of this extra element allthe time, but the result is amazing. It's hard to imagine how Z'evcould make music like this solely from percussive elements. The secondtrack on the second side is a comparatively more straight-forwardexercise in diversity. Z'ev opens by banging away at some kind of metalpipe that changes tones here and there; it's either that or Z'ev ismoving like a speed demon between multiple metal drums, each of whichcarry a different tone. The rhythms on this track are more definite,but I find it difficult to keep time with Z'ev and his sense ofdirection and composition. The instrument used on this side isincredibly beautiful and at times sounds like an incredibly low steeldrum that emits the most powerful of sounds.At times it seems as if the rhythm is weaving like a snake through Z'evand his hands. This is undeniably a kind of work that I have neverheard from anyone else. Z'ev's music is unique beyond compare and hiscomplete mastery of texture and sound only adds to the unique characterof his drumming. 
Hatred and comedy have never seen to come together so frutifully. Kites' side of this split 12" is The Hidden Familyand its features stick out in my mind as some perverted hallucinationof a three-ring circus. The music isn't particularly carvinal-esque,but for some reason Kites doesn't sound vicious or biting enough toconvey a sense of dread that freezes me to the core. Track titles like"All the Jesus Shit" and "Screw Style" do little to change theappearance that this is a near-humorous attempt at frazzled samples andTV-static composition. This isn't a complaint, though. Kites' approachto noise is one that makes the second half of this split seem all thatmore disturbing. There's nothing particularly amazing about the Kitesside, but it doesn't amount to anything near amateur, either. It's justnot my cup of tea. Perhaps my exposure to a live Prurient performancewill bias what is to follow, but Prurient's White amounts to ahellaciously viscious vocal attack that comes away simultaneouslyaddictive and abusive. A pounding series of feedback serves as arhythmic base for Prurient to scream his unrelenting vocals over.Whether or not the poem included on the cover of the split 12" isactually what is performed by Prurient is questionable. The words beingspoken aren't exactly what's important, it's the delivery of thesehalf-words and hate-fuelled screams that makes Prurient's music sofrightful. As soon as "Spanish Moss" (the centerpiece of this side)finished, I immediately replaced the needle at the start of the recordand went over Prurient's music again trying to decide what it was thatfascinated me so much. Prurient live stuck in my mind because of hispresentation and how in control he was of the noise when all he had wasa couple amps, a couple mics, and distortion pedal or two. On record,Prurient is so utterly raw that his noise is hard to ignore. Drumsmashes, psychotic mumbling, uninhibited feedback and a feel for whatis and isn't bearable makes Prurient more entertaining than many otherswho feel noise is just a mix and mash of heavy and disroted sounds. Trylistening to this record with the sound turned down, the effect is justas chilling as when the volume is loud enough to make ears blister andhearing a difficult task. -
Translating as "hare's ears," "Oreledigneur" has become a blanket termto mark the assorted collaborative works of this duo, proprietors andkey players of the Fringes/Bowindo camp, responsible for two of themore remarkable release schedules in improvised elecroacoustics toappear in recent years. Though it is their third album under the name, Oreledigneuris the first produced by Giuseppe Ielasi and Renato Rinaldi alone,despite their countless outsourcing of material for labelmates'releases. Not only do the duo's friends feed happily off of theirever-expanding stockpile of skeletal acoustic ambience, field capturesand intimate electronic scavenging, but the artists themselves drawfrom these private sessions to fill gaps in their own solo work. Arecent example would be Ielasi's Plans which uses generoushelpings of Rinaldi's endlessly warm percussive meanderings and lushacoustic surface-testing to fill the gaps between the disc's moresculptural inclusions, like the cyclical guitar figures that helpdelineate the piece's turns. With such a picked-apart history, theOreledigneur sound might be tempting to describe as glamorized filler,as the yet-unrefined bursts of inspiration from these two stalwartsound explorers, rushed to tape in a frenzy and either given over tofuture improvements or left to stew in their own crudity. Luckily, Oreledigneurthe album, while not without its rough edges, is no collection ofthrowaways. Rinaldi and Ielasi have clearly taken time to blend andpolish five concise statements of mission, each a distillation of thetensions the duo seems compelled to uphold, and of the surprisingly"available" emotional quotient of their work, solo and otherwise. Trueto the sensibilities of both artists, there is a constant dynamicbetween sounds with a genuine "presence" or immediacy (often due totheir connection with recognizable instrumentation or phenomena) andother sounds that appear as if glimpsed across a dreamy distance,suspended in the same near-nostalgic limbo that consumed Plans.Any sense of crudity in the music is likely an immediate response tothe forced tension between the surface sounds, like the labored enginechugs or metallic patter that opens the disc, and the more opaqueunder-layers, the rich atmospherics flaking restlessly off Ielasi'sbrittle guitar or dropping from the great underwater bells anddoor-hinges that might now be signature Bowindo sounds. The effect ofthis kind of tension, rising as the disc progresses, is that the soundsmore comfortably left half-filled-in, those shifting about with noclear resolution, become the ones that carry the greatest degree ofemotive weight. The sense of longing that these nebulous patches ofchiming guitar and blooming analog fragments provoke seems somehowinappropriate in the face of the blank machine drones, everydaymechanics, and scattered street ambience that populate the foregroundof Oreledigneur. The effected result, to borrow a phrase, is"nostalgia for nothing," emotion without center that shifts nervously,though sincerely, with each listen, guarded against sentimentality butalways left somewhere, hanging. While the previous Oreledigneurproductions offered similarly beautiful, barely-anywhere bits ofecstasy, neither came close to these trembling heights.
After three years of eclectic 7" singles and a couple of Fanny CDs, myfavorite Ant-Zen sublabel Mirex presents its first-ever compilation.Many people seem to worship the Hymen sister label yet neglect thishigh-quality breakcore imprint, although this intense collection willsurely attract new converts to join the ranks of the alreadyrespectable number of devotees. Carbonmarks its unique place in the Ant-Zen tradition by screaming Top 40song lyrics at the top of its lungs, pissing blood all over the rug,and boasting a roster of familiar established names as well as risingunderground scene stars. Here, breakcore displays its many hideous andgoofy faces in true schizophrenic fashion, and while industrial puristsmay revel in the brutality of Hecate and recent signing Subskan, manywill be tempted to cringe over the subversive mash-up experiments ofOve-Naxx and Donna Summer. Those who resist the knee-jerk anti-popreflex and stay open-minded will be aurally rewarded for their efforts.Representative of the style off his full-length From Zero,Enduser's "Basement" creatively fuses a somber Tori Amos piano riff andragga MC toasting with crunchy junglist and hip hop loops. Drop TheLime makes an appearance here with "Chump Killers," a DSP-fucked blendof spastic electro-funk and hyperactive broken beats akin to his workfor the likeminded Tigerbeat6 label. "Kiss Me On The Dancefloor," thephenomenal selection from Sickboy, throws together a maddeninglydelicious, yet undeniably aggressive, update of old school rave. Mirexwould do well to snatch up more of this guy's work for a CD releaseimmediately. Atypical to this release, Line 47's "Taken Away" offers anunusual yet gratifying moment where the noise and mischief are somewhattoned down in favor of melancholy and melody. From Blaerg'sHitchcockian beginnings to End's Morricone-inspired closer, thesetwenty tracks continually pummel the speakers and delight the ears.Though notably lacking any presence of the notoriously prolificVenetian Snares, arguably the biggest name in the subgenre today, Carboncomes out stronger than any breakcore compilation I've heard to date,including those that do include the Snares Man. While I am tempted tocall Mirex "a label to watch," people should have have honestly caughton before now. Jump on the bandwagon now and perhaps the rest of uswill accept you... in time. 
"Tras" opens the two-song single. At under four minutes, it's a perfectintroduction to the band as it's both rhythmically challenging andcatchy as all hell. The precise guitar riffs combined with a TVtheme-like keyboard ditty are a perfect fit for drums that areaggressive enough for a metal record, but, as the drums come equippedwith a super slick sound and an occasional shuffle, are way too cool tobe wasted on brainless hair tossing. "Fantasy" is almost a throwback tothe sampled staccato sounds of Ty Braxton's album with echoesreverberating in time with the rhythm. It's boldly almost completelyabsent of melody yet rich in beats, provided by drum machines, punchysamples, and live percussion. At the eight-minute mark when that 808kick comes in, any speaker in its path is in trouble. 
Together with Tras, EP Ccould easily form a complete album. The repetition on the opener "B +T" is deceptively simple: it's pretty and layered with differentmotives, occasional breaks and samples, all which keep the song inperpetual motion. After the short drumless "UW" that could makeKraftwerk blush by its atmospheric twittering, the band comes back infull swing with "Hi/Lo," substituting a low end synth where a bassshould be. "Hi/Lo" may be slower than some of their other loud numbersbut it's no less grand, building in intensity gradually over the nearlyeight minutes, from a small pile of rubble to a mountainous beast.Finishing off the disc are the short "IPT-2" and "Tras 2," eachincorporating what seems like a bit of digital fuckery at first, withthe second one ending with the drummer trailing off on his own. It'shard to not admit that Battles are flirting with traditionally nerdyinstrumental alt-rock/post-whatever styles, and, as a number of groupsthat each member was in before Battles, they are admittedly crafty. Thetrick to the craft is making something interesting enough for the bandto play and attractive enough for the audiences to enjoy it, and withthat, mark my words, Battles are something to watch.
In a way that is noble, isolated, and romantic, the strings and voicesof Tom Carter, Christina Carter, and Heather Leigh Murrary craft musicas though it were made for lost souls and restless spirits. There is anuneasiness in the wobble and sway of their plucking and weaving thatradiates uncertain photographs and blurred figures. Without a doubtthere exists this haunting dimension to the Charalambides' music, butto mistake their music for stringed ghastliness is to miss half thebeauty of Joy Shapes.Christina Carter serves as some kind of medium between this world andthe next, where mountains blur in the distance, disappear, and leaveonly sand in the wake of their death. This world crafted out of slideguitars, chimes, voices, and various string instruments has nocertainty, belonging to the spirit of improvisation and illusion. "HereNot Here" wails away as Christina Carter chants "The rains shines / Andthe sun falls / Here is here / Here is not here." A theme ofdeceptiveness is already established in the early lyrics and it becomesall the more evident in the spring-like rumble of guitars that slowlyecho into the darkness near the end of the song. The vocals often comeaway sounding as though they belonged to some ancient Greek comedywhere the hero dies tragically and the lyrics tell of his passing intothe next world. There are shrieks and cries throughout the record; someare intelligible and others act as part of the instrumentation. Thoughthis all sounds like it might belong to tragedy and fear, "Joy Shapes"changes the direction of this record and opens up a door of uncannybeauty. "Joy Shapes" drops like a focused lense over the mistylandscape the Charalambides' had painted over the previous thrity-twominutes and rings like water ripples over the surface of a pond. Theinteraction of the guitar, the delicacy now present in Carter's voice,and the story-like lyrics all represent something from this worldwithout spoiling the fragile mystery that occupied the first half ofthe record. As "Natural Night" progresses though its trembling fingersand whale-like waves of sound, calm washes over everything and astrange pearl-light marks the descent of dread and the rise of peacefulunderstanding. The closing "Voice For You" put me under a spell of lovethe instant I heard Christina Carter's voice unmasked and smiling frombehind the veneer of its previous enigmatic allure. The droning ofCarter's voice into an instrument, the slow rumble of the approachingend, and the keyboard-like crooning of electric guitars all twist andturn until they explode and wrestle to a slow and natural end. Allalong this music had been a focusing from the realm of unease and doubtto the harmonies of love and oceanic rhythm. The Charalambides might beplaying a strange music that completely lacks any familiar songstructure or easy point of reference, but it is honestly affectionate,somehow familiar, and warm to its core. 
