We have finally cleared out the backlog of great music and present some new episodes.
Episode 711 features music from The Jesus and Mary Chain, Zola Jesus, Duster, Sangre Nueva, Dialect, The Bug, Cleared, Mount Eerie, Mulatu Astatke & Hoodna Orchestra, Hayden Pedigo, Bistro Boy, and Ibukun Sunday.
Episode 712 has tunes by Mazza Vision, Waveskania, Black Pus, Sam Gendel, Benny Bock, and Hans Kjorstad, Katharina Grosse, Carina Khorkhordina, Tintin Patrone, Billy Roisz, and Stefan Schneider, His Name Is Alive, artificial memory trace, mclusky, Justin Walter, mastroKristo, Başak Günak, and William Basinski.
Episode 713 brings you sounds from Mouse On Mars, Leavs, Lawrence English, Mo Dotti, Wendy Eisenberg, Envy, Ben Lukas Boysen, Cindytalk, Mercury Rev, White Poppy, Anadol & Marie Klock, and Galaxie 500.
Skolavordustigur Street in Reykjavík photo by Jon (your Podcast DJ).
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Kreng is Belgian sound sculptor Pepijn Caudron, who is best known for providing music for the oft perverse, ritualistic, and unsettling work of the Abattoir Fermé theater company. Appropriately, this debut compilation of those recordings is otherworldly, creepy, darkly humorous, and riddled with portentous silences.
While L’Autopsie Phénoménale De Dieu could arguably be best classified as dark ambient, there are a couple of unusual aspects to Kreng’s work that render him unique. For one, Caudron’s work was originally based entirely on samples. While he seems to have softened somewhat in this aesthetic extreme (this album features both a pianist and a percussionist), borrowed material is still Kreng’s backbone. Secondly, Caudron’s work has earned some eclectic and unexpected comparisons to artists such as Morton Feldman, Harry Partch, Deathprod, and Moondog. This stems largely from his penchant for burgling from such highbrow sources as modern classical, first generation electronic artists, field recordings, and free jazz.
The opening piece, “Na De Sex,” begins with twinkling piano and a lone soprano, before segueing into a lurching reverie of discordant piano, shuffling jazz drums, abrupt electronic flourishes, and uncomfortably sharp violins. It closes with a campy movie snippet involving witches. I wish Caudron had used more film dialogue on the album (he has a knack for it), as its rare appearances make for many of the album’s highlights and flashes of humor. He is also quite adept at using female classical vocalists to haunting effect, but he is much more liberal with that. Incidentally, the noir-ish “Tinseltown” which follows, sounds like Erik Satie playing along with a field recordings of African percussionists while a disoriented trombonist and a deeply troubled violinist take turns wandering into the room. Eventually it all stops completely until a haunted-sounding blues or gospel vocalist laments “Oh Lord” to break the brief silence.
Some of the other more striking moments on the album are the nightmarish, yet propulsive “Kolossus,” and the menacing and vaguely tribal “The Black Balloon & The Armadillo,” which makes very effective use of rumbling low-end distortion. I was also quite fond of the disquieting “In De Berm (Part Three),” which uses samples of free jazz drumming to maintain an ebbing and flowing intensity while all kinds of strangeness swirls about. It ultimately concludes with a mournful soprano, a lonely church bell, and movie snippet proclaiming “we will dance…like nobody ever before.” The following “Nerveuze Man” sounds like a continuation of the same track and culminates in some uncomfortable chromatic strings (I’m somewhat puzzled by the seemingly arbitrary nature of the song breaks). The album’s centerpiece is probably the threatening and dense three-piece song suite “Scenes Met Mist,” but some of it verges on being bombastic. There are some other elements of heavy-handedness strewn throughout the album (such as prominent sounds of a woman weeping) too, but it is impossible to determine whether they are a result of clumsiness on Caudron’s part or merely a necessary component for the theatrical work. It is probably the latter, but they still hurt the album- I’d like to hear Kreng attempt a stand-alone work.
I don’t honestly know quite what to make of this album. Caudron is undeniably doing something rather unique here and has a lot of great ideas, but taken as an entire album, L’Autopsie drags a bit and ultimately sounds a bit one-dimensional. Also, soundtrack albums that are disembodied from the actual work they are soundtracking rarely hold up on their own. This was no exception: rather than becoming immersed in this album, I was seized with the nagging feeling that actually seeing a complete Abattoir Fermé production would have been an infinitely more rewarding experience. At the very least, it would certainly contain more rape, human sacrifice, and necrophilia. That said, I will definitely throw this on if I ever find myself in a situation where I need to brood or lurk menacingly in a ruined castle (or at a black mass).
(The CD version of L’Autopsie includes seven more tracks than the limited edition green vinyl version, but the vinyl version has much sexier artwork.)
This was never one of my favorite EN records. It followed the near perfect Tabula Rasa and at its center was the dreadfully too-long "NNNAAAMMM," which kept it from getting regular front-to-back plays in my house. But now upon revisiting the album due to its reissue, I'm surprised at how many of my favorite EN songs come from this underappreciated gem.
The record starts with a quick and boisterous anthem in "Was Ist Ist." Immediately, Blixa Bargeld's clever wordplay takes center stage as the album kicks into high gear around the chanted refrain that translates to "What is is, what is not is possible," it of course sounds much better in German! I think that casual observers of EN probably most often associate the band with metal percussion, angsty collage, or the musical automatons that make performances so interesting, but Bargeld's lyrical style is for me the main draw on albums like this one. With Ende Neu, the wordplay begins with the album's title which is formed by cropping the band's name down to words that are completely contained within it. "Was Ist Ist" drives forward with the harsh cadence of consonants repeating, with words twisting to state truths and corollaries, and with phrases like "Einst neue Bauten" that play further with the sound and meaning of words. This may be Neubauten's most clever work, and if it's occassionally more playful than powerful, it works more on the brain than in the guts.
From the opener, the album slows way down for the lovely duet ballad of "Stella Maris." This is EN at their most coy and romantic—a side of the band that poked through on Tabula Rasa and its companion singles, but that is more fully explored here and in later works. "Stella Maris" is so pretty that it's hard to swallow following the brash verbal assault of the album opener, and that may be why I don't associate the songs on this record very well. Songs like "Stella Maris," "Die Explosion im Festspielhaus," and "The Garden" work from simple, sparse melodies and bass arrangements, eschewing the mechanized fury found elsewhere on the record.
Though "NNNAAAMMM" is a perfect example of Bargeld's brilliant use of words as sounds and rhythms, its eleven-minute running time is an endurance test. The track builds quite simply from the repetition of the words "New No New Age Advanced Ambient Motor Music Machine" and over several peaks and valleys it collects counter rhythms and the stretched out vocalized acronym "NNNAAAMMM" to induce a sort of trance—when I can stay with it. "NNNAAAMMM" is the perfect track for a remix because of the brilliantly subversive idea to replicate machine rhythm with speech, but when I'm listening to the album straight through, the song can feel like a chore despite my appreciation for it. Fans who were hoping that EN would turn out something motorik and maybe even danceable may find "NNNAAAMMM" to be just what the doctor ordered but for that type of track, I prefer the shorter and more mechanical "Installation No 1," which almost sounds like EN doing Kraftwerk with Bargeld repeating the oxymoronic command: "Disobey. It's the Law."
"The Garden" finds Bargeld once again harnessing the power of repetition, this time in English as he is backed by a string arrangement and a melodic beeping that keeps time. It's a song that features beautiful orchestration that recalls the aching of "Armenia" from 1983's Zeichnungen Des Patienten O.T. as much as it anticipates the melodic phrasing of 1999's "Total Eclipse of the Sun." These are the Neubauten moments that I remember most fondly—the quieter and more refined moments where Bargeld's lyrics and the way that he utters them have time and space to sink deeply into the brain. These are the moments when EN is functioning like a subversive pop band with hooks and catchy lines that linger long after the clanking and crashing of their more violent work has faded.
In the end, I don't know that Ende Neu works for me as an album as much as it just provides some very good songs for the greater EN catalog. I love the cover and the title and the way that it cheats the listener into thinking that EN the "rock band" is back with its clamorous opening cut, but I find myself skipping over some of the songs to get to the ones that really resonate. With an entire remix album also available and an entire disc of Darkus remixes of "NNNAAAMMM," there's a lot to choose from.
Former Black Dice member Eric Copeland has set out on his own off late, forging a highly unique sound that draws lines between pop, hip-hop, experimental and dance modes into an entrancing discourse on contemporary music culture. This, his second solo outing, further traces this at once nostalgic and futuristic musical approach ever deeper into the spaceways.
From the opening it is clear that this is not a sampling album of the usual order. Hardly as poppy as Animal Collective has become in recent outings, "King Tit's Womb" starts things with a pitch-bent vocal loop loping along atop a slowed down, street meandering beat before a bass line's funk restrains the work from being overwhelmed by the snaking fits and starts. More in line aesthetically with James Ferraro (of the Skaters) and his Lamborghini Crystal or Edward Flex projects, the piece has the same Ray Ban adorned dimentia of Ferraro's work, if a tad more giddy.
Yet the overwhelming nature of the pieces do retain this feel, pulling from seemingly any source that holds appeal in the name of a congested and highly immediate sound whose basis could only lie in the overloaded information age of today. The title track moves from short rap samplings, sprawled amongst a thick mass of bass garbble and flow, to trotting techno rhythms being manipulated to whatever sickening means are necessary.
Where many in this realm have a difficult time avoiding the trappings of a certain sound, Copeland's abilities extend themselves in his manner of treating each track as its own, forming worlds evocative of a highly varying number of moods.The celebratory chorus of pumping rhythms and crowded mumblings on "Osni" has a summer time trajectory that is highly contrasting to the go-nowhere pop malfunctioning of "Muchas Gracias." "Al Anon" is perhaps an even better of the pop album at the heart of this record, with nearly decipherable lyrics splayed over a bounding, spring-like rhythm with a chorus and everything.
At its heart the disc—actually a combination of two previously released EPs—is a party record, but one conscious of its role within that setting. Never a copyist and, conversely, a theft at heart, Copeland has fun with his material to such a degree that it becomes a distinct vision all his own, as twisted and convoluted as any contemporary head space. There's a poetry to the method it seems, but one buried far beneath the laughter accompanying it.
Brock Van Wey's Echospace debut is the first album to be released under his own name, but its content will not surprise anyone familiar with his previous ambient work as BVDub. It probably won't surprise anyone that this is a great album either: so much so, in fact, that Echospace head Stephen Hitchell was inspired to make an accompanying bonus album of his own reinterpretations. In this case it works, but I sure hope that does not become standard industry practice.
White Clouds Drift On and On was explicitly influenced by the works of Steve Roach, Gas, Brian Eno, Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Basic Channel, and classical minimalist composers like Steve Reich. Obviously, it is incredibly easy to humiliate yourself when you namecheck folks like Brian Eno, but such comparisons are not unreasonable here. For the most part, Van Wey avoids pastiche or explicit allusion and manages to forge a sound that is most assuredly his own. His success is mostly due to his impressive skill as a producer: lots of people make ambient albums based around warm synthesizer washes, but Van Wey creates uniquely vibrant, ever-shifting, and often surprising soundscapes by tweaking it all with hiss, lengthy decays, complex layering, and dynamic use of manipulated field recordings and elements like backwards acoustic guitars.
Among the influences cited, White Clouds Drift On and On seems most overtly reminiscent of Wolfgang Voigt’s Gas project, but with a distinctly cinematic bent: Van Wey seems to be quite fond of lush, billowing synth-strings (which dominate the opening “Too Little Too Late”). That particular piece is a bit too melodramatic and aggressively sad, but the subsequent tracks are all rather sublime. Especially “I Knew Happiness Once,” which endlessly repeats a warm, undulating synth loop and augments it with high-end sizzle, shimmering guitar, and very striking digitally altered vocals (probably from an African field recording). The fragile and floating melancholy of the song is mesmerizing, but it initially seems inhumanly cool and remote. Consequently, when the electronically distressed vocals slowly creep in, it sounds like my drugged, heavenly bliss cloud is being rended by very something very real and heartsick. “A Gentle Hand to Hold” also stands out, largely due to its subtly warped shoegazer guitar motif and warmly bittersweet synths. Essentially this is a great album from start to finish (with the arguable exception of “Too Little Too Late,” though I was intermittently charmed by its distant yowling vocals). Each individual song is a small gem of quivering, shifting heaven: listening to this album is like being inside a slow-motion volcano that spouts delightful soft things like feathers and kittens instead of rocks and magma, but also occasionally spews desolation and heartbreak. (I say that about every album though)
Hitchell’s re-envisions of Van Wey’s material (as Intrusion, amusingly) differ quite radically from the source album. Thankfully Hitchell’s…ahem… intrusion into the album is largely a welcome one, and rather ambitious as well: in general, Van Wey’s material is pushed extremely low in the mix, leaving only hisses, sizzles, or subterranean surges to subtlety allude to each track’s origins. Hitchell does maintain a very similar tone to the original album though, but the focus is shifted completely away from the source ambient washes and replaced with slow, deep percussion and warm dubby synth stabs. For the most part, the reinterpretation album is very nuanced, rhythmic, and immersive, but it also seems weirdly dated: the omnipresent minimal pulsing house beat and the heavily reverbed keyboards are conspicuously reminiscent of what was coming out on Mille Plateaux five years ago, like Twerk or Electric Birds (fortunately I happen like that stuff). Also, occasionally Hitchell missteps and gets a bit too slick and conventional: his languorous conga rhythm and gentle synth washes in “A Gentle Hand to Hold” would not be out of place in an upscale coffeehouse or a softcore porno with aspirations of sophistication. At least, upon first listen anyway (there’s quite a bit of cool understated studio wizardry happening, so the track is not a complete failure).
Despite some small flaws, Van Wey has crafted an instant ambient classic: White Clouds Drift On and On is completely engulfing and features enough subtle quirks to make keep it that way for many repeat listenings. This is oceanic in the best sense of the word, as what seems like placid beauty is roiling with activity upon closer inspection. Naturally, the Intrusion versions are not quite up to the same level, but those are unreasonably tall expectations to match: Hitchell’s tracks are packed full of buried studio flourishes that make for a memorable headphone album in its own right.
Ethan's third full-length takes inspiration from a roller rink and a Wurlitzer organ. Immersing himself in playing and repairing the pipe organ informs his updated sound manipulations with feeling for the older technology and balances melody with free-form flights. Oaks is alluring, impressionistic music that may prove to be a portal for those who have previously found such realms cold, shapeless and uninviting.
Much of the music on Oaks gives the illusion of simplicity. In fact Ethan Rose took around 18 months to fashion this album by recording and manipulating the sound of the 1926 Wurlitzer theater pipe organ in Oaks Park, Portland. The result is unobtrustive, calming, and has an immediately familiar feeling reminiscent of ambient tape loop experiments. This is not, though, a disc to put on and ignore while doing something else. From the first distinct notes, which cut through the silence and hang like crystal stalagtites, Rose's attention to detail is palpable. Not everyone will care about his methodology but he achieves an undeniable air of nostalgia and yearning.
The Oaks Park was built by the Oregon Water Power and Railway Company and opened on May 30, 1905. The park homepage describes it as often used as a business retreat and for weddings and holidays but being "rather uncrowded at other times." Suitably then, a pleasant loneliness pervades the entire record, especially on "Mighty Mighty" with high notes suggesting flickering sunlight, and distant low tones booming like the heartbeat of a sleeping giant. As the world becomes more crowded and peaceful isolation rarer it is no wonder that memories of the past take on a rosy hue. Fittingly, there is an aura of precious melancholy throughout Oaks, and "Scenes From When" is a very apt track title.
Oaks Park has amusements such as Looping Thunder (a rollercoaster), Rock-O-Plane (like a Ferris wheel but with enclosed seat) and Big Pink (a large slide that is now pink, yellow and blue). However, the best feature of the park is commonly accepted to be a wooden roller skating rink. Every Thursday and Saturday skaters are "serenaded" by the pipe organ—the largest in any skate park in the world. I doubt they will ever hear the organ produce anything more ethereal and transporting as Rose manages on Oaks.
The rink is close to the Willamette River it is traditionally prone to flooding. To counter this the rink floor was set on floating pontoons and, when a flood advisory is issued, the floor is separated from the rest of the building foundation. Two tracks refer to this threat and its solution. "Rising Waters" drips and crackles with faint sounds which vaguely resemble raindrops and lightning. "The Floor Released" has bubbling low and sparkling high notes which mutate into an intricate swell. The track also features a wheezing sound which accentuates the overall sense that Oaks is proceeding at the pace of steady, deep breathing.
Elements of repetition in the music are appropriate, given the circular paths taken by skaters going round a rink. Rose manages to balance a light atmosphere with an intimate intensity which, as aforementioned, comes from his attention to detail. As well as computer and electronics he benefits from the many pipes, instruments, and sound effects on the organ itself. These include gamba, vox humana, viol celeste, horn diapason, kinura, tibia, chrysoglott, chinese block, sleigh bells, tom, boat whistle, and telephone bells. The mood-defining opener, "On Wheels Rotating," is my favorite example of this and contains perhaps the broadest palate of sound; deep resonant tones and peaks of gorgeous spinning sound—like I imagine the lovely humming of a gyroscopic dervish ensemble.
To confuse matters a little, Ethan Rose's music is featured in Gus Van Sant's skateboarding film Paranoid Park, whereas Oaks Park has been featured in the films Untraceable (2008) and Breaking In (1987). I haven't seen any of those but I have seen Blade Runner, though, and am happy to report that—barring a couple of very briefly similar moments—Oaks avoids the heavy-handed saccharine sentimentality which now makes much of that soundtrack unlistenable.
Back in January, 2009, skaters at the Oaks Park roller rink were treated to Rose playing the whole album for a release party, along with a set by the resident organist, Keith Fortune. I am still returning to enjoy the disc six months later. With Oaks, Ethan Rose taps into the individual experience of considering or gazing at a beloved place or physical emotional landmark: willow tree, deserted ballroom, still pond, crumbling cliff, neglected castle, or even roller rink.
The Sinking of the Titanic is a piece of music that is a lot more than notes arranged in a certain order. It is the perfect marriage of conceptual art, music and raw emotion. In this reissue of a 1990 performance (originally on Les Disques du Crépuscule), the conceptual side of the piece comes to the fore as Gavin Bryars and his ensemble perform in a water tower and push the piece for the first time well beyond the constraints of previous performances.
The Sinking of the Titanic is a piece of music that is a lot more than notes arranged in a certain order. It is the perfect marriage of conceptual art, music and raw emotion. In this reissue of a 1990 performance (originally on Les Disques du Crépuscule), the conceptual side of the piece comes to the fore as Gavin Bryars and his ensemble perform in a water tower and push the piece for the first time well beyond the constraints of previous performances.
The reissue of this particular recording comes at a particularly poignant time both in light of the history of the Titanic, recent air disasters and for personal reasons. Last month, the only remaining survivor of the Titanic disaster passed away aged 97. Although Millvina Dean was only a baby at the time, it is an important milestone in the history of the Titanic as its last human link has now left us and Bryars work now becomes musical archaeology. Equally, it is hard not to think of lives lost in the recent air disasters involving Air France off Brazil and Yemenia Airways off the Comoros Islands which have both resulted in so much loss of life. In particular, the Yemenia Airways disaster has a touch of that Titanic myth with its sole survivor being rescued despite the totality of the destruction.
On a more personal note, I lost my grandmother earlier this year after a long battle with illness. We used to watch movies together and one of the last films we watched together was her favorite, A Night to Remember. In the film, when the Titanic goes down the band play the hymn “Nearer, My God, to Thee.” At her funeral, we requested “Nearer, My God, to Thee” to be sung and in the weeks after, I found my own solace in the The Sinking of the Titanic. Of course, the music Bryars based his piece on was not “Nearer, My God, to Thee” but on the hymn “Autumn” as this is the most likely swan song according to the accounts from the last survivors who abandoned ship. In the sleeve notes (as interesting as the music), Bryars discusses how different hymns became tied up in the myth surrounding the Titanic but equally how important each of these myths are to the nature of his piece.
Out of the four recorded versions now available of The Sinking of the Titanic, I will admit that this one is the least satisfying. The performance starts too hastily for my preferences (the first few bars sounding a little forced) and its length (an hour) is not justified when compared to the superior short version and the better developed long versions that were recorded afterwards. However, aside from these frankly minor reservations there is little here to fault. Bryars' utilization of violas instead of the usual violins gives the music has a softer feeling. It is fascinating to hear the introduction of new elements like marimba, bass clarinet and the bell which are used so effectively in later recordings.
The edges are further blurred by the resonance of the water tower in which it was performed. Out of the three storeys of the tower, the ensemble played on the lowest storey (after having the water drained out) while the audience were placed on the middle floor. In order to further link the music to idea of an orchestra playing as they submerge, all the music was channelled through the empty top storey before reaching the audience; in essence the music was filtered by the water tower. In the sleeve notes, Bryars relates an incident of art imitating life as he reveals that shortly into the performance, the drained water started to leak back in and fill up the water tower as they played. Finding himself in the same position as the orchestra he is so fascinated with, his ensemble risked their own safety in order to finish the piece (although in more danger of electrocution rather than drowning).
Overall, there is so much tied up in Bryars’ The Sinking of the Titanic that I find it hard to be in any way objective about it. Even without the knowledge of the thinking behind the piece, the music is so startling in its beauty and its sadness that it is essential listening on that level alone. Combined with the conceptual side of things (and for me, its emotional baggage), it is a devastating work of such magnitude that I cannot begin to convey how vital it is. This reissue may not be The Sinking of the Titanic in its most perfect state but it shows how the piece evolved from its 1975 recorded debut on Obscure Records to the masterful and definitive 1994 recording on Point Records; further reinforcing Bryars insistence that this be a continually evolving composition.
Recorded in 2006, this release looked like it would not see the light of day but thankfully these four Germans and Southern Records have come to their senses. While the EP is brief (only one 10 minute piece), this is another slice of brilliance from the same dark cavern that they have always mined for their music.
While I would have loved for another couple of pieces, I can forgive Bohren for coming up with only one awesome track due to the limited working time in Southern Record’s studio (where all the Latitudes releases are recorded, usually in a day). Although this is the first release they recorded since Geisterfaust, it seems the band had returned once again to the more accessible style perfected on Black Earth and later on Dolores.
There are no surprises here as to how “Mitleid Lady” sounds; extended notes on the electric piano punctuated by stabs of gorgeous nocturnal jazz melodies, all the while conjuring up images of beautiful women, shadows and intrigue.
The Sinking of the Titanic is a piece of music that is a lot more than notes arranged in a certain order. It is the perfect marriage of conceptual art, music and raw emotion. In this reissue of a 1990 performance (originally on Les Disques du Crépuscule), the conceptual side of the piece come to the fore as Gavin Bryars and his ensemble perform in a water tower and push the piece for the first time well beyond the constraints of previous performances.
Mev 40 is an essential listening experience. The four discs of this set bring together eight tracks from seven performances spanning 40 years of Musica Elettronica Viva’s activity, from 1967 through 2007. In 1966 musical ideas were flowering in America and Europe. As American expatriates living in Rome they were steeped in the classical New Music scenes happening on each side of the Atlantic, as well the heavy spell cast by Free Jazz. Musica Elettronica Viva was a new hybrid that blossomed out of that fecund sound pool. Within their songs can be heard a zeitgeist that not only spans the decades, but an inclusive and intuitive impulse whose periphery extends far beyond the group and deep into audio culture at large.
By continuously extending their musical vocabulary, the sound world of Musica Elettronica Viva (MEV) has remained on the cutting edge of improvisational praxis. The prospect of remaining in a comfortable niche is not something I imagine these musicians would relish. Instead they have made a habit of pushing on the boundaries, of going into domains of practice that test the limits of their abilities, allowing them to expand on their already formidable technical proficiencies. Each member of MEV functions as a tributary bringing in a diverse range of skill sets to their collaborative river of song. The core group consists of Alvin Curran, who has seemingly embraced the entire spectrum of contemporary non-commercial music; Frederic Rzeweski, composer and virtuoso pianist; Richard Teitelbaum, electronic aficionado and pioneer of brainwave generated music; and Garret List, trombonist extraordinaire. As a collective they have amplified their power by bringing in an extremely talented cast of characters that included, among others, saxophonist Steve Lacy, whose presence and influence is heard on a number of these tracks.
The first disc opens with “Spacecraft,” an exemplary noise piece. Highly atonal and asymmetrical, much of the sounds consist of non-traditional instruments like amplified glass plate with attached springs and contact microphones, a move that in 1967 set a precedent for what groups like Matmos and many others do today: amplifying the minutiae of sound. Mixed with a synthesizer self built by Alan Bryant from electronic organ parts and the tenor sax of Ivan Vandor this music has much of the same shrill cacophony that can be heard at any given contemporary noise show, with a notable difference: the players seem more in touch with the ability to be silent and make room for each other than much of what I hear on nights out. As such this track is my least favorite of the set, though it does have some brilliant moments. Finding those moments within its 30 minutes is what makes it problematic for me.
More nuanced than the power chords of punk rock in their strategies of opposition to the state, the socio-political concerns of MEV are a constant thread of connectivity running through their work. Collective musical improvisation is by its very nature a form that embraces egalitarianism. A traditional band set up on the other hand tends towards the hierarchical—with lead singers and lead guitars—which is possibly one of the reasons why many of them never have an active lifespan anywhere close to 40 years. Improv is open-source, free from the dogma of playing songs by rote, making intuitive leaps of the imagination the norm; and when expert players are involved their responses to each other don’t sound sloppy. Their revolt against the military industrial complex is evidenced by more than just their collective structure and approach, and can be heard on songs like “Stop the War” (a live broadcast from WBAI in New York on New Years Eve, 1972). Speaking out against Nixon and the Christmas bombing of Hanoi, Vietnam, this number contains snippets and phrases from traditional war time standards like "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" and "Taps," and carries an emotional resonance that is made all the more powerful by the gorgeous interplay between delicate piano lines and electronic squelch burst from the moog. “Mass.Pike,” from 2007, sends the anti-war message out once more, quoting the above mentioned songs again, but in a different sonic context, along with a conversation of sampled voices saying, “bashing the federal government/I’m not bashing the federal government I’m bashing Slick Willie because he deserves bashing. This is a democracy is it not? We do have a first amendment do we not? Do we not have a first amendment?”
Listening to the entire set is a substantial investment of time, and though it certainly can be enjoyed as background music, attentive listening offers deeper rewards and a more lasting impression. The songs themselves are, for the most part, presented in chronological order; most likely they all would have been if half of them were not over 40 minutes long. “Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam Pt. 1” and “Pt.2” are thus separated onto discs two and three. It is in the two parts of this performance that some of their most wild playing occurs, as they range out into nearly interplanetary, diverse musical territories. Rzewski plays electronically processed prepared piano on this outing, giving his instrument a nearly alien timbre, well matched with the wheezing soprano sax of Steve Lacy. The group moves easily from slowly churning quiet moments, full of groans and creaks, to insane time signatures that make my mathematically incompetent mind spin with delirium. Throughout the entire set the electronic elements are expertly mixed with the acoustic, each accentuating the other without domination. In each performance there is something new and surprising. Frequently, when I think I have pinned a song down to its constituent elements, to its overall mood and feel, it shifts gears, and spins off on a new trajectory. This is a labyrinth, a musical version of Jorge Luis Borges Garden of Forking Paths, a place where each choice is met with further endless choices and where infinite possibilities hide behind every corner.
A reissue of a legendary private press Brazilian psych record, this disc represents a welcome document of this too rarely heard classic. With a mellow fusing of psych, folk and plain great songwriting, the album provides a number of instantly memorable sides with subtle and pleasing idiosyncrasies keeping them afloat.
While the album will certainly not be a revelation to those already attuned to the likes of Os Mutantes, Gilberto Gil or Lula Cortes, it is a valuable document of the era's ripe musical scene. The opening title track's simple melody and stripped back production blend Byrds-like fluidity with a distinctly Brazilian sound. The song seems well aware of its strengths and, conversely, its limitations, making for a wholly mature sound whose restraint is as notable as its flavor.
At just under a half hour in length, the album has little time to waste, so each of the eight songs stick closely to the qualities of the opener, representing concise, almost sketch-like frameworks whose material alludes to an even grander potential. Yet the bedroom intimacy of songs like "Quem Me Viu Por Ai?" have a charm all its own, calm, relaxed, and distinctly summery.
Elsewhere the group does display some edge, albeit in a highly sun-splotched manner. The wah'd guitar line of "Meu Sol" hints at the underlying culture from which this album was born, but again it keeps its cards close to its chest. "Quero Voce, Voce" sprawls out a bit, drawing the pop elements out and combing them into a subtly psychedelic, tempo-shifting feel-good romp.
The understated mastery of form is again apparent on "Medu," eschewing the tpyically busy ornamentation of the time for sparsely accompanied, yet equally colorful and playful, melodic lines whose emotional depth is sincere without being cheesy, exciting without being intimidating. The snake charm line backing "Arcozelo" provides grim, prog-rock shadows to the otherwise buoyant backing band.
Considering the widespread love of Brazilian music from this era, it is little surprise that an album originally limited to 500 copies would fly under the radar. And while many releases are far more psychedelic or adventurous or overtly exciting, few are as consistent in material and realization. The closing "Valsa Para Fabrici," with its opening mournful guitar line, flute whisps and stuttering bird-like synthesizer, is as restrained as anything Mutantes ever released, but in this context the result is as surprising as much of that group's output, moving into gliding, surf's up guitar before simmering along into near circus theme fare. Again, the excitement here is in its material, not necessarilly its construction, and with material this good how can you blame them?