- Anthony D'Amico
- Albums and Singles
The Opalio brothers have been reliably surprising me with adventurous detours and evolutions for years, but this latest album is a creative leap into even more unexpected territory than usual. In some ways, that can be attributed to the unusually sparse gear involved (two glockenspiels and a single condenser microphone), which makes it quite a bit easier on the ears than usual for the dissonance-averse. In fact, I would not even have immediately guessed that this was an MCIAA album if I had first heard it while blindfolded. On a deeper level, however, this may very well be one of the duo's defining statements (and a sneakily brilliant one at that). The Opalios long ago cast aside earthly melodies, harmonies, and instruments in their journey into the furthest regions of the atonal, psychedelic cosmos, so I would be hard pressed to think of something even more outré for the next phase. As it turns out, however, I would have been asking the wrong question altogether, as the Opalios nimbly sidestepped that stylistic challenge and opted for something far cooler than another intensification of their characteristic otherworldliness: they dissolved into pure light (musically, at least). Put in their own words, this album represents "the blinding darkness coming from a dying flame and a new light not yet discernible on an increasingly undefined horizon." Given how rampant dying flames and undefined horizons are these days, Music for Phantoms (IV) feels uncannily tapped into the earthly zeitgeist (particularly for a duo who frequently seem to exist in an alternate dimension).
In characteristically colorful fashion, the Opalios describe the genesis of Music for Phantoms (IV) thusly: "recorded in the middle of the night...in the Western Alps with only 2 glockenspiels, wordless vocals and a single condenser microphone to capture the essence of the screaming silence." Naturally, the cover art thematically complements that vision, as it comes from a Polaroid that abstractly captured a light installation that the brothers dragged through the snow at night (few artists are as tirelessly committed to finding and creating otherworldly beauty, magic, and poetry as the Opalio brothers). While nearly everything about this album feels fresh, inventive, and heartfelt, it is nominally a continuation of a side project that began in 2007 and last surfaced a decade ago. Notably, this album is a radically different animal than the first three installments in both tone and instrumentation, but it does share the series' exclusive commitment to acoustic sounds. Even acoustic sounds can be very weird in the hands of the Opalios, however, as evidenced by the first two minutes of the opening "Traces of Shooting Stars" (it calls to mind a bunch of marbles dropped on a metal platter). That is admittedly an enigmatic and curious way to kick off an album this tenderly beautiful, but absolutely everything that follows is quietly and mesmerizingly sublime.
Given the album's hyper-minimal instrumentation, its three pieces all feel roughly cut from the same cloth, but they each have their own distinctive character. In "traces of shooting stars," for example, it sounds like an enchanted music box has become untethered from the rigidity of time signatures and drifted into a reverie of dreamlike, gossamer melody. The following "ocean of iridescent silence," on the other hand, takes a more shimmering and rippling approach, as the endlessly sweeping glockenspiel runs leave a quivering haze of celestial bliss in their wake. The closing "estranging analog morphologies" initially feels quite similar (sweeping cascades of notes leave behind a blurred and beautiful vapor trail), but it steadily becomes more structured and percussive before unexpectedly dissolving into a quietly lovely and hymn-like final act. It was a genuine surprise to hear Roberto's voice used in such a naked and melodic way. I am reluctant to use the word "ambient" to describe the overall feel of Music for Phantoms (IV), as it is constructed from Coltrane-esque sheets of sound, but it does evoke a pleasant state of suspended animation and strong sense of place: this album makes me feel like I have just stepped out of my remote mountain cabin to take in a gorgeously hallucinatory canopy of swirling and shimmering stars. I cannot think of any other album that successfully casts a similar spell and it is quite a lovely and immersive place to linger, so Music for Phantoms (IV) will probably connect with a hell of a lot more people than My Cat is an Alien's more characteristically challenging vision. It certainly deserves to reach a lot of new ears, as it feel like one of the strongest and most focused albums of the Opalios' career.
Samples can be found here.
Read More
- Anthony D'Amico
- Albums and Singles
This is the first album that drummer John Colpitts has released under his own name, but he has been a familiar and almost ubiquitous figure in underground music for years through Oneida, his various collaborations, and his solo work as Kid Millions and Man Forever. Unsurprisingly, the new name signals a new direction for Colpitts, though the circumstances that inspired his stylistic shift were not exactly pleasant ones, as the album title is a literal one: this is music Colpitts composed in the aftermath of a car accident that "severely injured his back and left him unable to work or perform for months." Necessity being the mother of invention, Colpitts enlisted Greg Fox to assist him in "transposing his rhythmic ingenuity to other instruments." In more concrete terms, that means that Music from the Accident is primarily a (modular) synth album, but Colpitts' imperiled ingenuity comes through admirably well, as this is a synth album like no other and it is a good one too. Moreover, the three compositions mirror the stages of Colpitt's recovery, "shifting from stasis to toddling and finally transcendence." My favorite stage is apparently "toddling," as the stumbling, off-kilter return of Colpitts' drumming on "Up and Down" is the highlight of the album for me.
The opening "Bread" is the most synth-centric of the album's three pieces, as Colpitts weaves a meditative state of suspended animation from organ-like drones and stammering, oddly timed chords. Initially, it feels like a jazzier, organ-driven homage to classic glitch-inspired laptop music à la Oval and Fennesz, but it soon becomes fleshed out by other elements (panning drones, intensifying low-end heft, additional layers of slippery, elusive synth melody) en route to a blooping kosmische soundbath of stuttering, interwoven synth fragments. The following "Up and Down" began life as "series of complex interlocking rhythms" that Colpitts tried to drum along with, but he ultimately removed the "labyrinth of overlapping meters" to leave only his wonderfully bizarre live drumming. There is also some spacey and minimal synth accompaniment, which makes the whole thing feel like a willfully naive, outsider art deconstruction of Bitches Brew-style fusion. I wish it were a bit longer (its the shortest piece on the album), but "leave 'em wanting more" is always a better approach than "flog a good idea to death" or "overstay your welcome," so I cannot complain. Colpitts does, however, allow the closing "Recovery" to deservedly stretch out for an epic sixteen-minute run. It is yet another surprising piece on an album full of surprises, as guest Jessica Pavone unleashes a feral-sounding squall of "microtonal viola runs" to steer the album into territory akin to Spires That in the Sunset Rise teaming up with a killer drummer like Chris Corsano (or John Colpitts) for a volcanic set of drone-heavy free folk. Of the three pieces, "Recovery" is the most substantial and cathartic, but the entire album is packed wall-to-wall with enough interesting ideas and virtuosic execution to feel like a revelation and a significant creative breakthrough (quite a rare feat for any artist already a decade deep into a solo career).
Samples can be found here.
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
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- Anthony D'Amico
- Albums and Singles
This latest release from Erik K. Skodvin's long-running solo project is billed as "zen music for disturbed souls."
Recorded back in 2018 in the bunkers of the "bombed out" Schneider Brewery in Berlin as a solo cello performance (of sorts) in the vein of past longform/(darkly) meditative releases like Black Tie and Moss Garden, "Devolving Trust" was originally intended only as a one-off installation/electroacoustic improvisation.Skodvin describes the space as "wet and hollow with a dark past and long reverb," which seems like an ideal setting for an eerie cello performance (or practically any Miasmah release). While attempting to translate such magical site-specific acoustics into an album intended for home listening can be one hell of a challenge, Skodvin pulled it off beautifully here, as these two pieces make very effective use of visceral, reverberant cello moans and the long decay of notes in the brewery's empty basement hallways.In fact, the recording translated so well that Skodvin was inspired to turn it into a formal album despite being historically averse to releasing live performances.That said, this album is also something more than a faithful documentation of a unique performance, however, as Skodvin ingeniously cannibalized the original 30-minute performance for a more tightly edited and mesmerizing companion piece ("Devolve") that feels roughly like all of the best parts experienced in reverse.Both pieces are great, but I especially enjoyed how beautifully the long decay times transformed into intensifying swells when the original recording was played backwards.
The opening title piece begins with a bassy, reverberating strum that rhythmically repeats, albeit with plenty of space between strums for the long decay to fade into silence.It is a fine starting point, as the chords have a pleasingly woody and hollow tone, yet the piece begins to blossom into something more substantial after a couple minutes when Skodvin starts to introduce new chords and textures between the deep, echoing strums.The slow-motion intensification continues to evolve as the piece unfolds, gradually becoming more gnarled and visceral as echoing scrapes, harmonic squeals, and violently bowed notes become a more regular occurrence.It achieves a fascinating sort of bleak beauty, as new forms to start to appear and an uneasy balance is struck between the slow, heaving pulse of the chords and the more convulsive snarls of bowed melody.By the 15-minute mark, the piece has become something quite wondrous and organic, evoking a haunted aviary of ghost birds mingled with slowly heaving cosmic exhalations. Skodvin leaves one last trick for the final act though, as the crescendo of the piece feels like a spacey free jazz performance by a lone saxophonist in a cavernous cistern. I have absolutely no idea how Skodvin produced such a reverberating storm of blurts, squeals, and howls from a cello, but whatever he did is extremely cool and cathartic.
The reversed version ("Devolve") that follows was created from repurposed fragments of the original performance, so not all of the original performance's highlights return for an encore.They are not missed at all though, as the slowly intensifying swells punctuated by snapping attacks and backwards chords are quite delightful, as are the slow washes of dubby, static-y clicks and the haunting finale of spectral melodies.To my ears, both pieces are similarly excellent, as Skodvin manages to weaves richly textured and immersive sound worlds from just a few simple components.He also manages to perfectly balance his shadowy Miasmah-defining gloom with enough human warmth and emotional intensity to avoid ever drifting into dreary dark ambient territory.Moreover, neither piece feels particularly improvised, so I am guessing Skodvin carved away any lulls or missteps that might have hurt the pacing ("Devolving Trust" seems to be five minutes shorter than the original performance). Finally, the inclusion of the reversed and reworked second piece was one hell of a great idea, imbuing the album the pleasingly symmetrical feel of a hallucinatory palindrome. As a result of all those decisions, Devolving Trust ultimately feels like a beautifully constructed, immersive, and fully formed artistic statement rather than a live document. This easily ranks among my favorite Erik Skodvin albums.
Samples can be found here.
Read More
- Duncan Edwards
- Albums and Singles
Originally a musical radio play, these twelve tracks excavate and spotlight the life and work of original Beat poet Bob Kaufman; and with Kaufman the life and the work are genuinely inseparable. A mentor to Kerouac, and dubbed the Black American Rimbaud, Kaufman endured savage SFPD brutality, electroshock treatment, incarceration and poverty. He died in destitute obscurity on a borrowed mattress. Kaufman stilled his own voice with a vow of silence stretching from the JFK assassination until the end of the Vietnam War, yet it still resounds with the speed and spirit of surrealist jazz, forever “lost in a dream world, where time is told with a beat.”
https://alientransistor.bandcamp.com/
The Plastik Beatniks, alias Andreas Ammer, Markus and Micha Acher of The Nowist, and Leo Hopfinger aka LeRoy) formed for that September 2020 radio play, “Thank God For Beatniks.” There is also a bit of Ginsberg and Patti Smith, and excellent contributions from Angel Bat Dawid and Moor Mother which really breathe life into this project. Angel Bat Dawid has consistently exceeded the high expectation generated by her debut The Oracle, and her vocals and clarinet have a perfectly air of improvisation, joy, and pain, especially on “West Coast Sound 1956.” Similarly, Moor Mother really drives Kaufman’s "War Memoir" with empathy and passion to matched the wild, slithering, Eastern-tinged guitar lines. There’s a note of defiant optimism, too, in the simple act of changing the final word of Kaufman’s “O-JazzO War Memorial: Jazz, Don’t Listen To It At Your Own Risk” from “die" to “live."
What really tops it all off is the fact that we get to hear Bob Kaufman himself reciting brilliant pieces such as "Hollywood Beat” full of dazzlingly psychedelic imagery. It’s a kick to hear him: as if he’s chewing, trance like, on holy existential gum, spitting out near-Dadist lines exploring freedom and mocking the fashionable: “ugly Plymouths swapping exhaust with red convertible Buicks...teenage werewolves, sunset strippers, plastic beatniks… bisexual traffic lights ...disc jockeys with all night shows and all day habits… Hindu holy men with police records clear back to Alabama…hamburger broiled charcoal served in laminated fortune cookies... death-faced agents living on ten percent of nothing…unlit starlets seeking an unfulfilled galaxy..impatient Cadillacs trading in their owners for more successful models.. lanky calypso singers caught with their fads down”"
“Harwood Alley Song” has a great loop of Kaufman saying a line - “Jazz never made it back down the river” - from the "$$ Abomunus Craxioms $$" section of his "Abomunist Manifesto" published in Beatitude magazine (1959, founded by Kaufman and William Margolis.) Bob Kaufman was born in New Orleans, the seventh of thirteen kids from a Caribbean mother and German/Jewish father. He journeyed as a seafaring merchant marine where he met Kerouac, dipped into New York, before relocating to San Francisco with Burroughs and Ginsberg. He created his poems despite being beaten nearly to death by the cops, plucked for electric shock treatment, de-carded by the coast guard and blackballed by the FBI for union activity. And after sparking the Beat scene, he surely felt swamped as it changed and diluted with the tide of too many hipsters. At any rate, he never made it back down the river to the Crescent City.
The aching horns which bleed like tragedy across the fabulous title track as Kaufman recites lines from his 1959 work “Jail Poems” written in Cell 3 of San Francisco City Prison. It’s the kind of glorious adornment his words deserve. Words such as “My soul demands a cave of its own, like the Jain god: Yet I must make it go on, hard like jazz, glowing.” Words like “What of the answers I must find questions for? All these strange streets I must find cities for.” This is great album and a much more fitting tribute than the city’s gormless naming of "Bob Kaufman Alley" for the spot where he died, destitute, on a borrowed mattress.
- Duncan Edwards
- Albums and Singles
Originally a musical radio play, these twelve tracks excavate and spotlight the life and work of original Beat poet Bob Kaufman; and with Kaufman the life and the work are genuinely inseparable. A mentor to Kerouac, and dubbed the Black American Rimbaud, Kaufman endured savage SFPD brutality, electroshock treatment, incarceration and poverty. He died in destitute obscurity on a borrowed mattress. Kaufman stilled his own voice with a vow of silence stretching from the JFK assassination until the end of the Vietnam War, yet it still resounds with the speed and spirit of surrealist jazz, forever “lost in a dream world, where time is told with a beat.”
https://alientransistor.bandcamp.com/
The Plastik Beatniks, alias Andreas Ammer, Markus and Micha Acher of The Nowist, and Leo Hopfinger aka LeRoy) formed for that September 2020 radio play, “Thank God For Beatniks.” There is also a bit of Ginsberg and Patti Smith, and excellent contributions from Angel Bat Dawid and Moor Mother which really breathe life into this project. Angel Bat Dawid has consistently exceeded the high expectation generated by her debut The Oracle, and her vocals and clarinet have a perfectly air of improvisation, joy, and pain, especially on “West Coast Sound 1956.” Similarly, Moor Mother really drives Kaufman’s "War Memoir" with empathy and passion to matched the wild, slithering, Eastern-tinged guitar lines. There’s a note of defiant optimism, too, in the simple act of changing the final word of Kaufman’s “O-JazzO War Memorial: Jazz, Don’t Listen To It At Your Own Risk” from “die" to “live."
What really tops it all off is the fact that we get to hear Bob Kaufman himself reciting brilliant pieces such as "Hollywood Beat” full of dazzlingly psychedelic imagery. It’s a kick to hear him: as if he’s chewing, trance like, on holy existential gum, spitting out near-Dadist lines exploring freedom and mocking the fashionable: “ugly Plymouths swapping exhaust with red convertible Buicks...teenage werewolves, sunset strippers, plastic beatniks… bisexual traffic lights ...disc jockeys with all night shows and all day habits… Hindu holy men with police records clear back to Alabama…hamburger broiled charcoal served in laminated fortune cookies... death-faced agents living on ten percent of nothing…unlit starlets seeking an unfulfilled galaxy..impatient Cadillacs trading in their owners for more successful models.. lanky calypso singers caught with their fads down”"
“Harwood Alley Song” has a great loop of Kaufman saying a line - “Jazz never made it back down the river” - from the "$$ Abomunus Craxioms $$" section of his "Abomunist Manifesto" published in Beatitude magazine (1959, founded by Kaufman and William Margolis.) Bob Kaufman was born in New Orleans, the seventh of thirteen kids from a Caribbean mother and German/Jewish father. He journeyed as a seafaring merchant marine where he met Kerouac, dipped into New York, before relocating to San Francisco with Burroughs and Ginsberg. He created his poems despite being beaten nearly to death by the cops, plucked for electric shock treatment, de-carded by the coast guard and blackballed by the FBI for union activity. And after sparking the Beat scene, he surely felt swamped as it changed and diluted with the tide of too many hipsters. At any rate, he never made it back down the river to the Crescent City.
The aching horns which bleed like tragedy across the fabulous title track as Kaufman recites lines from his 1959 work “Jail Poems” written in Cell 3 of San Francisco City Prison. It’s the kind of glorious adornment his words deserve. Words such as “My soul demands a cave of its own, like the Jain god: Yet I must make it go on, hard like jazz, glowing.” Words like “What of the answers I must find questions for? All these strange streets I must find cities for.” This is great album and a much more fitting tribute than the city’s gormless naming of "Bob Kaufman Alley" for the spot where he died, destitute, on a borrowed mattress.
- Duncan Edwards
- Albums and Singles
Originally a musical radio play, these twelve tracks excavate and spotlight the life and work of original Beat poet Bob Kaufman; and with Kaufman the life and the work are genuinely inseparable. A mentor to Kerouac, and dubbed the Black American Rimbaud, Kaufman endured savage SFPD brutality, electroshock treatment, incarceration and poverty. He died in destitute obscurity on a borrowed mattress. Kaufman stilled his own voice with a vow of silence stretching from the JFK assassination until the end of the Vietnam War, yet it still resounds with the speed and spirit of surrealist jazz, forever “lost in a dream world, where time is told with a beat.”
https://alientransistor.bandcamp.com/
The Plastik Beatniks, alias Andreas Ammer, Markus and Micha Acher of The Nowist, and Leo Hopfinger aka LeRoy) formed for that September 2020 radio play, “Thank God For Beatniks.” There is also a bit of Ginsberg and Patti Smith, and excellent contributions from Angel Bat Dawid and Moor Mother which really breathe life into this project. Angel Bat Dawid has consistently exceeded the high expectation generated by her debut The Oracle, and her vocals and clarinet have a perfectly air of improvisation, joy, and pain, especially on “West Coast Sound 1956.” Similarly, Moor Mother really drives Kaufman’s "War Memoir" with empathy and passion to matched the wild, slithering, Eastern-tinged guitar lines. There’s a note of defiant optimism, too, in the simple act of changing the final word of Kaufman’s “O-JazzO War Memorial: Jazz, Don’t Listen To It At Your Own Risk” from “die" to “live."
What really tops it all off is the fact that we get to hear Bob Kaufman himself reciting brilliant pieces such as "Hollywood Beat” full of dazzlingly psychedelic imagery. It’s a kick to hear him: as if he’s chewing, trance like, on holy existential gum, spitting out near-Dadist lines exploring freedom and mocking the fashionable: “ugly Plymouths swapping exhaust with red convertible Buicks...teenage werewolves, sunset strippers, plastic beatniks… bisexual traffic lights ...disc jockeys with all night shows and all day habits… Hindu holy men with police records clear back to Alabama…hamburger broiled charcoal served in laminated fortune cookies... death-faced agents living on ten percent of nothing…unlit starlets seeking an unfulfilled galaxy..impatient Cadillacs trading in their owners for more successful models.. lanky calypso singers caught with their fads down”"
“Harwood Alley Song” has a great loop of Kaufman saying a line - “Jazz never made it back down the river” - from the "$$ Abomunus Craxioms $$" section of his "Abomunist Manifesto" published in Beatitude magazine (1959, founded by Kaufman and William Margolis.) Bob Kaufman was born in New Orleans, the seventh of thirteen kids from a Caribbean mother and German/Jewish father. He journeyed as a seafaring merchant marine where he met Kerouac, dipped into New York, before relocating to San Francisco with Burroughs and Ginsberg. He created his poems despite being beaten nearly to death by the cops, plucked for electric shock treatment, de-carded by the coast guard and blackballed by the FBI for union activity. And after sparking the Beat scene, he surely felt swamped as it changed and diluted with the tide of too many hipsters. At any rate, he never made it back down the river to the Crescent City.
The aching horns which bleed like tragedy across the fabulous title track as Kaufman recites lines from his 1959 work “Jail Poems” written in Cell 3 of San Francisco City Prison. It’s the kind of glorious adornment his words deserve. Words such as “My soul demands a cave of its own, like the Jain god: Yet I must make it go on, hard like jazz, glowing.” Words like “What of the answers I must find questions for? All these strange streets I must find cities for.” This is great album and a much more fitting tribute than the city’s gormless naming of "Bob Kaufman Alley" for the spot where he died, destitute, on a borrowed mattress.
- Duncan Edwards
- Albums and Singles
Originally a musical radio play, these twelve tracks excavate and spotlight the life and work of original Beat poet Bob Kaufman; and with Kaufman the life and the work are genuinely inseparable. A mentor to Kerouac, and dubbed the Black American Rimbaud, Kaufman endured savage SFPD brutality, electroshock treatment, incarceration and poverty. He died in destitute obscurity on a borrowed mattress. Kaufman stilled his own voice with a vow of silence stretching from the JFK assassination until the end of the Vietnam War, yet it still resounds with the speed and spirit of surrealist jazz, forever “lost in a dream world, where time is told with a beat.”
https://alientransistor.bandcamp.com/
The Plastik Beatniks, alias Andreas Ammer, Markus and Micha Acher of The Nowist, and Leo Hopfinger aka LeRoy) formed for that September 2020 radio play, “Thank God For Beatniks.” There is also a bit of Ginsberg and Patti Smith, and excellent contributions from Angel Bat Dawid and Moor Mother which really breathe life into this project. Angel Bat Dawid has consistently exceeded the high expectation generated by her debut The Oracle, and her vocals and clarinet have a perfectly air of improvisation, joy, and pain, especially on “West Coast Sound 1956.” Similarly, Moor Mother really drives Kaufman’s "War Memoir" with empathy and passion to matched the wild, slithering, Eastern-tinged guitar lines. There’s a note of defiant optimism, too, in the simple act of changing the final word of Kaufman’s “O-JazzO War Memorial: Jazz, Don’t Listen To It At Your Own Risk” from “die" to “live."
What really tops it all off is the fact that we get to hear Bob Kaufman himself reciting brilliant pieces such as "Hollywood Beat” full of dazzlingly psychedelic imagery. It’s a kick to hear him: as if he’s chewing, trance like, on holy existential gum, spitting out near-Dadist lines exploring freedom and mocking the fashionable: “ugly Plymouths swapping exhaust with red convertible Buicks...teenage werewolves, sunset strippers, plastic beatniks… bisexual traffic lights ...disc jockeys with all night shows and all day habits… Hindu holy men with police records clear back to Alabama…hamburger broiled charcoal served in laminated fortune cookies... death-faced agents living on ten percent of nothing…unlit starlets seeking an unfulfilled galaxy..impatient Cadillacs trading in their owners for more successful models.. lanky calypso singers caught with their fads down”"
“Harwood Alley Song” has a great loop of Kaufman saying a line - “Jazz never made it back down the river” - from the "$$ Abomunus Craxioms $$" section of his "Abomunist Manifesto" published in Beatitude magazine (1959, founded by Kaufman and William Margolis.) Bob Kaufman was born in New Orleans, the seventh of thirteen kids from a Caribbean mother and German/Jewish father. He journeyed as a seafaring merchant marine where he met Kerouac, dipped into New York, before relocating to San Francisco with Burroughs and Ginsberg. He created his poems despite being beaten nearly to death by the cops, plucked for electric shock treatment, de-carded by the coast guard and blackballed by the FBI for union activity. And after sparking the Beat scene, he surely felt swamped as it changed and diluted with the tide of too many hipsters. At any rate, he never made it back down the river to the Crescent City.
The aching horns which bleed like tragedy across the fabulous title track as Kaufman recites lines from his 1959 work “Jail Poems” written in Cell 3 of San Francisco City Prison. It’s the kind of glorious adornment his words deserve. Words such as “My soul demands a cave of its own, like the Jain god: Yet I must make it go on, hard like jazz, glowing.” Words like “What of the answers I must find questions for? All these strange streets I must find cities for.” This is great album and a much more fitting tribute than the city’s gormless naming of "Bob Kaufman Alley" for the spot where he died, destitute, on a borrowed mattress.
- Duncan Edwards
- Albums and Singles
Originally a musical radio play, these twelve tracks excavate and spotlight the life and work of original Beat poet Bob Kaufman; and with Kaufman the life and the work are genuinely inseparable. A mentor to Kerouac, and dubbed the Black American Rimbaud, Kaufman endured savage SFPD brutality, electroshock treatment, incarceration and poverty. He died in destitute obscurity on a borrowed mattress. Kaufman stilled his own voice with a vow of silence stretching from the JFK assassination until the end of the Vietnam War, yet it still resounds with the speed and spirit of surrealist jazz, forever “lost in a dream world, where time is told with a beat.”
https://alientransistor.bandcamp.com/
The Plastik Beatniks, alias Andreas Ammer, Markus and Micha Acher of The Nowist, and Leo Hopfinger aka LeRoy) formed for that September 2020 radio play, “Thank God For Beatniks.” There is also a bit of Ginsberg and Patti Smith, and excellent contributions from Angel Bat Dawid and Moor Mother which really breathe life into this project. Angel Bat Dawid has consistently exceeded the high expectation generated by her debut The Oracle, and her vocals and clarinet have a perfectly air of improvisation, joy, and pain, especially on “West Coast Sound 1956.” Similarly, Moor Mother really drives Kaufman’s "War Memoir" with empathy and passion to matched the wild, slithering, Eastern-tinged guitar lines. There’s a note of defiant optimism, too, in the simple act of changing the final word of Kaufman’s “O-JazzO War Memorial: Jazz, Don’t Listen To It At Your Own Risk” from “die" to “live."
What really tops it all off is the fact that we get to hear Bob Kaufman himself reciting brilliant pieces such as "Hollywood Beat” full of dazzlingly psychedelic imagery. It’s a kick to hear him: as if he’s chewing, trance like, on holy existential gum, spitting out near-Dadist lines exploring freedom and mocking the fashionable: “ugly Plymouths swapping exhaust with red convertible Buicks...teenage werewolves, sunset strippers, plastic beatniks… bisexual traffic lights ...disc jockeys with all night shows and all day habits… Hindu holy men with police records clear back to Alabama…hamburger broiled charcoal served in laminated fortune cookies... death-faced agents living on ten percent of nothing…unlit starlets seeking an unfulfilled galaxy..impatient Cadillacs trading in their owners for more successful models.. lanky calypso singers caught with their fads down”"
“Harwood Alley Song” has a great loop of Kaufman saying a line - “Jazz never made it back down the river” - from the "$$ Abomunus Craxioms $$" section of his "Abomunist Manifesto" published in Beatitude magazine (1959, founded by Kaufman and William Margolis.) Bob Kaufman was born in New Orleans, the seventh of thirteen kids from a Caribbean mother and German/Jewish father. He journeyed as a seafaring merchant marine where he met Kerouac, dipped into New York, before relocating to San Francisco with Burroughs and Ginsberg. He created his poems despite being beaten nearly to death by the cops, plucked for electric shock treatment, de-carded by the coast guard and blackballed by the FBI for union activity. And after sparking the Beat scene, he surely felt swamped as it changed and diluted with the tide of too many hipsters. At any rate, he never made it back down the river to the Crescent City.
The aching horns which bleed like tragedy across the fabulous title track as Kaufman recites lines from his 1959 work “Jail Poems” written in Cell 3 of San Francisco City Prison. It’s the kind of glorious adornment his words deserve. Words such as “My soul demands a cave of its own, like the Jain god: Yet I must make it go on, hard like jazz, glowing.” Words like “What of the answers I must find questions for? All these strange streets I must find cities for.” This is great album and a much more fitting tribute than the city’s gormless naming of "Bob Kaufman Alley" for the spot where he died, destitute, on a borrowed mattress.
- Anthony D'Amico
- Albums and Singles
I have a long-running fondness for tape loop artists, yet I had always lumped this Craig Tattersall project together with more conventional ambient fare until last year's reissue of 2009's A Miscellany For The Quiet Hours finally smacked me in the head and made me pay closer attention. I bring that up because Light Trespassing (recorded roughly a decade later) entered heavy rotation in my life immediately after my Quiet Hours obsession and it has been quite interesting to hear how Tattersall's vision has subtly transformed over the ensuing decade. In some ways, it feels like the two albums could have been recorded in the same damn week, but it is also clear that Tattersall has been consciously chasing an even more minimal and lowercase vision than the one he started off with. That tendency makes Light Trespassing a bit less immediately gratifying than some other Humble Bee releases, but I suspect that may very well be the point. In fact, Tattersall's execution remains as mesmerizing as ever—he is simply achieving the same ends with an increasingly reduced palette and even fewer moving parts. In essence, all that truly changed is that I now need to listen a bit more attentively before Tattersall's delicate miniatures reveal their full beauty. It feels akin to witnessing a tightrope walker systemically removing all safety measures as they become more confident in their ability to consistently nail their signature tricks without even the hint of a wobble.
In keeping with the theme of extreme minimalism, Tattersall and Motion Ward have provided very little background information about this release other than the poetic phrase "like the last embers of a fire burning." As far as album descriptions go, however, that is quite an admirably apt and concise summary (though it does demand some familiarity with Tattersall's previous tape work in order to grasp the full implications). To my ears, it feels like Tattersall decided to expand the ephemeral beauty of the fading final moments of his usual fare (the point where all the added layers fall away to reveal the naked, beating heart of a piece) into an entire album of such "last embers." The first few pieces provide an especially lovely introduction to the possibilities opened up by such an approach. In "A Little Alone Snow," for example, it seems like two harp loops of slightly different lengths create an endlessly transforming melody as their moment of collision keeps subtly changing. Elsewhere, "However Far I Walk" initially sounds like little more than a simple arpeggio fragment played on an acoustic guitar, but then a new loop begins dancing through the spaces between those notes to form a tender melody. Tape noise, recorder clicks, hiss, and room tone also play a larger role than usual on this album, particularly on "When Your Voice Disappears." My favorite pieces on the album tend to be the more fleshed out gems that begin surfacing near the midpoint though ("A Day of Light and Air," "Inside Out Mountains," and "Dotted and Course With"). They each have their own unique character, of course, but they all evoke a similarly elusive and ineffably beautiful scene akin to a half-blissful/half-ghostly dream in which I am waiting outside a train station on a perfect spring day awaiting a long lost love. Those are not the only quietly gorgeous pieces to be found, however, as Light Trespassing has quite a satisfying arc of deepening warmth and soft-focus dreaminess. If there is a caveat with this album, it is merely that it takes a few listens for the full beauty of its sublime spell to sink in, but I certainly got there eventually. In fact, I wish I could dissolve myself into this album. I have not figured out how to do that yet, unfortunately, so I will try to content myself by merely stating that Light Trespassing adds yet another singularly beautiful album to Tattersall's rich and varied discography.
Samples can be found here.
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- Anthony D'Amico
- Albums and Singles
This latest release from "US-born, Norwegian-Mexican artist and producer" Carmen Hillestad finds her back on her usual label (Smalltown Supersound), but it otherwise feels like the logical successor to last year's oft-excellent Perlita. That is great news for me, I had been hoping that Perlita would not be a one-off departure for this shapeshifting project. That said, this project had already begun moving away from rock with the "cosmic excursions and dubby ambient-jams" of 2019's Both Lines Will Be Blue, so maybe Hillestad is stylistically here to stay for a while (I hope so, at least). She is nevertheless still a creatively restless artist, however, as this album reveals yet another significant evolution for Carmen Villain's arty, instrumental side: Only Love From Now On feels quite a bit more "Fourth World" indebted than previous releases and that transformation suits the project beautifully. Notably, flautist Johanna Scheie Orellana makes a welcome return after being featured on Perlita's brilliant "Agua Azul" and trumpeter Arve Henriksen now joins the party as well (for one song, anyway). Those more collaborative pieces tend to be the strongest ones, as the presence of a melodic hook almost always deepens the impression left by Carmen Villain's already-wonderful ambient/dub/exotica concoctions.
According to Hillestad, this album is "fueled by the sense of scale in feeling small in the face of things so large" and the "contemplation of how the biggest impact we can have is in the people close to us." Both are certainly themes that resonate with many these days, but they manifest themselves in fairly abstract ways here, as my main impression is that Only Love From Now On feels intimate and inward-looking, resembling a hypnagogic strain of exotica intended for the tropical grotto of the mind. Sometimes, anyway. Other times, it calls to mind a kosmiche twist on Terry Riley-style minimalism ("Silueta") or a dubby, hiss-soaked collision of loscil and Huerco S. (lead single "Subtle Bodies," which was coincidentally remixed by the latter for the B-side). Unsurprisingly, that single is one of the album strongest songs even if it might err on the side of being slightly too understated (the squelchy beat, water sounds, and breeze-like washes of hiss call to mind a killer rave at a frog pond whose denizens are very concerned about not bothering their neighbors). As delightful as that sounds, there are some other cool touches as well (dubby percussion effects, an actual bass line, buried vocals, etc.).
The album's other top-tier highlight is the closing "Portals," which elegantly combines a hollow and haunting melodic loop with watery exotica touches and bleary melodies that enigmatically drift in and out like ghosts. I quite like the four remaining pieces as well though (even when they delve into stylistic terrain I usually avoid). The title piece is the biggest would-be offender in that regard, as it resembles a smoky, neon-lit jazz-style flute solo in a billowing ambient dreamscape, but the backdrop is nicely frayed and hissing and I dig the stammering chords that emerge near the end. Elsewhere, the opening Henriksen collaboration sounds like a lost '80s classic of Fourth World-inspired desert psychedelia. A persuasive person could have easily convinced me that it was from an imaginary Jon Hassell album and I would probably would have driven myself mad trying to track down that non-existent opus afterward, which I consider a fine compliment (I half expected to see Holger Czukay or Jah Wobble turn up in the credits). Hillestad goes it alone for "Future Memory" (tropical Twin Peaks spin-off meets kosmische synth act) and "Liminal Space" (stammering, deconstructed house music over a panning, uneven rhythm of clacking pool ball-like sounds) with similarly fine results. In fact, there is not a single uninspired piece to be found on this album—just varying degrees of understatedness. There are probably a few small things that could have been changed to give this album more immediate and broad appeal, however, as this album occupies a blurry nexus where songcraft, dub techno, and psych-damaged moonlit palm tree ambiance overlap precariously. Fortunately, none of the inherent compromises involved in realizing such a vision bother me at all, as I love said vision and Hillestad's nuanced execution is extremely impressive. There are definitely a handful of pieces that will immediately connect with more casual listeners (the songs with more pronounced melodies or grooves, unsurprisingly), but this is one of those albums that seems to get better and better the deeper I listen to it.
Samples can be found here.
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