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Organum, "Vacant Lights/Rara Avis"
Die Stadt
This double CD set reissues what is, in my opinion, the most thought-provoking and satisfying album by Organum, originally released as an LP from the mid-1980s. That it is paired with a frustrating singles compilation called "Rara Avis" makes me stop short from giving it a whole-hearted endorsement. Vacant Lights works so well because it seems so simple. There are two players, David Jackman (who is the center of Organum) and Dinah Jane Rowe. In what appears to be an improvised live performance, they bow metal (perhaps gongs or cymbals?), roll metal pipes along the ground, and play breathy fragments of melodies on what sound to me like shakuachis, or wooden flutes of some sort. The ever-present coating of reverb that accompanies most Organum recordings adds portense to the spare movements of the players, but it isn't overbearing here as it is on Ikon or other less successful Organum records. What takes Vacant Lights to the next level is that it appears to have been recorded outside, on a city street. The Organum duo plays along to the sounds of passing cars, city buses, honking, wind, distant urban noise... throughout, they are highly sensitive to their surroundings, treating all sounds as equal compositional elements. At times, they play beneath the city sounds, adding a layer of rolling fog under the environment. At other times, the flutes poke through, but find some aboveground pitch to blend into; eventually, environment and intentional playing become indistinguishable. Two producers (including Nurse With Wound's Steven Stapleton) are to credit for bringing the environment into the recording with such detail and clarity, but ultimately the success belongs to Organum for creating a record that is part field recording, part improvisation, and finally something unique. It's such a simple and well-executed idea, that the depth of music belies its illuson of naturalness and effortlessness. On the other hand, there is disc two. Because Vacant Lights is only about half an hour long, either the label or the artist decided to flesh it out with Rara Avis, a rare singles compilation. Given the large catalog of tiny-edition Organum 7"s that now go on eBay for hundreds of dollars, this could have been a terific idea. But the second CD is only 25 minutes long, and contains music from one 7", one side of another 7", an alternate version from a different 7", and an unreleased track. All five tracks could have fit onto the end of the first disc. Even if it was decided that it's important to keep Vacant Lights separate for aesthetic purposes (not an unreasonable notion), if they went so far as to include another CD, why not include maybe a bit more than 25 minutes to fill out the disc? I don't understand. The music on Rara Avis, however, is a good survery of Organum's palette in the mid 1980s: metal scraping noise, somber bamboo flute noodling, and deep rumbling gigantic drone, all in compact five minute chunks. It's good music, but Vacant Lights/Rara Avis is a confoundingly flawed package. - Howard Stelzer
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low, "a lifetime of temporary relief"
Chairkickers Music
Low has amassed an incredible body of work in the eleven years since their inception, this is more than likely due to the fact that Low respect their job as musicians more seriously than nearly every rock band in history, working seemingly overtime, writing music and constantly touring. What started out as a few 7" singles and compilation releases has exploded into a three-disc set of music plus a fourth disc: a double-sided DVD with some home made documentaries and all their music videos! For a fan, this collection is a gift, packaged in what even looks like a pleasant, compact gift box. Unwrapping each audio pesent contained within is like Christmas for an easily excitable child, featuring numerous recordings never commercially released, single a-sides and b-sides, compilation tracks, demos, and weird bits and pieces the band never intended to go on any records. It might sound like a mess to somebody just scratching the surface, yet, between some of the not-so-ready for our record bits are some of their most incredible, and some of their most popular live songs. Early, scratchy recordings of songs like "Lullaby," "Prisoner," and their cover of Wire's "Heartbeat" and the painful cover of Journey's "Open Arms" are probably not going to find any new fans, but their popular live mainstay "Venus," covers of George Harrison's "Long, Long, Long," and Soul Coughing's "Blue Eyed Devil," along with vinyl LP bonus/rare single tracks like "Tomorrow One," and "Don't Carry It All," could easily be some of what would make up a Greatest Hits record. Each of the three CDs come painfully close to the 80 minute mark, the second even includes some live randomness of Low performing their songs in Misfits style, and while the documentaries are home grown, they're entertaining and personal insights to the band and kid and their travels. Perhaps sometimes it's a bit too close and personal, but then again, anybody who know's Low's music knows they're pretty close (or at least are good at giving that impression) to begin with. - Jon Whitney
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CAMBODIAN CASSETTE ARCHIVES: KHMER FOLK AND POP MUSIC VOL. 1"
Sublime Frequencies
This summer brings five new releases from Sublime Frequencies, a relatively young label that has already gained a reputation as one of the most unique sources of ethnic esoterica. Owned and operated by Richard and Alan Bishop of Sun City Girls, Sublime Frequencies has already released a clutch of superlative radio collages, field recordings, compilations and video travelogues that have carved out a unique aesthetic that could be loosely termed extra-geographical psychedelia. Although their releases are invariably instructive on a variety of ethnic and cultural musical styles, they seem to function better as a kind of World Noise; unfocused and messy, lacking structure and neat categorizations, a dizzying assortment of low-fidelity exotica that transcends racial and national identities. The first of the newest grouping of releases is a unique compilation culled from over 150 aging cassettes at the Asian branch of the Oakland public library. Though this collection is subtitled Khmer Folk and Pop, the emphasis is clearly on the Pop side of things, with the majority of the tracks utilizing Western instrumentation and combining 60's dance music and psychedelic rock with indigenous Khmer styles. Those who have heard Southeast Asian pop before will know that it can be insufferably precious and cutesy, and the music on this CD is no exception. Infantile female and male vocals tackle a variety of cloying pop tunes, with unexceptional keyboards and programmed rhythms, and the occasional raunchy guitar solo. However, the range of the material chosen for this collection is quite remarkable, clearly having been chosen with care to represent as many different styles as possible, with forays into rock instrumentals, haunting ballads, garage-psych, dance music, synth-heavy new wave and easy listening jazz. Compiler Mark Gergis has avoided the inclusion of more recent Cambodian popular music, which tends to consist of tiresome MIDI and karaoke variations on classic Khmer pop of the kind represented here. In contrast, most of the tracks here utilize real instrumentalists and many also evidence unorthodox production techniques, such as the dislocated spring echoes of the unknown artist on track 19. Sadly Khmer pop music reached its apex of success in 1970, soon to be undermined by the ensuing civil war and the brutal Angka regime. Under the tyrant Pol Pot, thousands of Khmer's musicians, artists, teachers and intellectuals were viewed as enemies of the revolution, and a staggering 90% were executed at the S-21 interrogation center. Many of the post-1970 tracks on this compilation were recorded by escapees throughout the Cambodian diaspora — from Thailand to Long Beach to Rhode Island. It's hard to imagine, listening to the blissful innocence of tracks like "Don't Let My Girlfriend Tickle Me," that at one time, merely performing this music was grounds for arrest and execution. - Jonathan Dean
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"BUSH TAXI MALI: FIELD RECORDINGS FROM MALI"
Sublime Frequencies
A series of crisply recorded audio snapshots from producer Tucker Martine's travels through the West African countryside in the fall of 1998, Bush Taxi Mali is probably the most disarmingly beautiful of the five new entries to the Sublime Frequencies discography. Capturing singers and instrumentalists in several small villages in the heart of Mali, Martine's impressive recordings recreate a rich, brilliantly rendered portrait of the Mande and Dogon people comprised of guileless performances from guitar and Fulani flute players, choruses of children and stunning vocal performances. Interspersed are sounds captured from Bamako radio broadcasts, outdoor markets, street sounds, Bambaran wedding celebrations and the sounds of a village going to sleep under a clear night sky. In short, Martine provides a richly abstract documentary of his journey through these enchantingly exotic lands, through musical traditions at once foreign and hauntingly familiar to Western ears. On many vocal tracks, the blues-tinged accompaniment is performed on an instrument called the ngoni, the African ancestor of the banjo, made from fishing wires stretched over a drum body. On "Fouta Djallon," Martine captures a performance on the Fulani flute with accompanying drums, a hypnotic performance that resembles an uncomplicated version of the Moroccan pan pipes of Jajouka. Several tracks capture the beautiful vocal dynamics of female singer Jalimusa Amanita Diabate, from the prominent Diabate family of Malian musicians. Her vocal performances are singularly sad and pregnant with emotion, gloriously unsophisticated but remarkably articulate. On "Rihlah," she leans against the stone gateway to the village of Kela and effortlessly belts out a vocal lament that weaves a countermelody to the skillfully played ngonis. "O Mansa Musa" captures Sidiki Kouyate, playing an exquisite solo on acoustic guitar, a complex tune that draws a straight line from Mali's traditional musical heritage to the African-American folk and blues of the early 20th century. - Jonathan Dean
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"BROKEN HEARTED DRAGONFLIES: INSECT ELECTRONICA FROM SOUTHEAST ASIA"
Sublime Frequencies
By far the most surprising and unorthodox of SF's newest releases is Broken Hearted Dragonflies, a series of unprocessed field recordings of cicadas and dragonflies from the Southeast Asian lowlands, again captured by producer and recordist Tucker Martine. It's been very appropriately subtitled Insect Electronica From Southeast Asia, as the ear-piercing high-frequency drones of these insects suggest artificially-rendered, conceptual electronics made by some heretofore unknown Western minimalist. The spine-chilling, synthetic swoops and dithers of sound are amazingly textural and complex, making it hard to believe that these sounds are presented untreated, just as they were recorded. As a test, I played this for a friend without revealing the source of the recordings. He immediately began to make all sorts of associations, from Alvin Lucier to Ryoji Ikeda to Whitehouse. When I revealed the actual origin of these synthetic alien tones, his reaction was shock and disbelief, followed by a jubilation and fascination that such noises exist in nature. Listening to these four extended tracks — given titles like "Particle Swarm Intelligence" and "Brood X" that highlight their other-worldliness — provoke some very deep thoughts about the possibility of hidden patterns in nature. The liner notes by modern cultural provocateur Peter Lamborn Wilson (AKA Hakim Bey) outline these provocative questions. If this album was the work of a human being, we certainly would not hesitate to call it art. However, because these performances come from swarms of supposedly behavorial, mechanical, unselfconscious insects, it belongs to some other realm. The title of the album comes from a Burmese legend about a species of dragonfly who court their mates with choruses of high-pitched screams. Those that don't succeed in mating eventually scream so loud their hearts explode and they drop dead. It's an appropriately morbid image for this collection of unrelentingly piercing, shrill tones. Listening on headphones at top volume is enough to send my pulse racing, putting my heart in serious danger of spontaneously combusting. Broken Hearted Dragonflies puts nature back on the map as the source of the most complex, frightening and fascinatingly textural noises in the field of drone music. I hope my ears will stop ringing soon. - Jonathan Dean
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"RADIO INDIA: THE ETERNAL DREAM OF SOUND"
Sublime Frequencies
Edited down from hours of raw tapes of radio broadcasts recorded from 1989 to 1996 from New Dehli to Bengal to Calcutta and every point between, Radio India is the newest addition to Sublime Frequencies' growing library of ethnic radio collage. It's a massive two-disc set of low-fidelity radio transmissions that encompass Indian classical ragas, Bollywood pop music, psychedelic rock, lush orchestrals, folk music, electronic dance music and a variety of Indian divas. The patter of on-air DJs, commercials and radio dramas have all been left intact, along with a generous helping of hiss, distortion, sound dropouts and vinyl pops and skips. This compilation immediately distinguishes itself from the endless parade of Nonesuch Explorer and Smithsonian Ethnic Folkways collections of Indian music by capturing Indian music as Indian people hear it — unmediated by Western anthropologists and archivists. This isn't a collection comprised of rehearsed, self-conscious musicians performing the music of their traditional heritage in a studio at the behest of Western producers who may or may not be paying them. Rather, because of the de-emphasis on "tradition" and "heritage," much of the music on Radio India is a delightful cultural crossbreed — combining traditional Indian instrumentation with newer studio techniques and effects, freely borrowing from Western pop music, Broadway songs, European classical and baroque styles and Arabic orchestral traditions. It's a jumbled mass of sounds and influences that forms a tangible continuum of sound, the Eternal Dream of the album's subtitle. Hypnotic bedrocks of rhythmic tabla form a backdrop for dramatic swoops and curls of viola and chenai. Though it has certainly been observed before, I never fail to be amazed by the intrinsically psychedelic nature of Indian music; the expressive, reverberating character of instruments such as the sitar and sarongi, the effortless and natural swarms of incense-billowing sound. It's a tradition defined by trance and transcendentalism, by improvisation and de-intellectualization, by drones and repetition. Indian spirituality is defined by limitless concepts like Krishna and Kali, rather than the restrictive paternalistic concepts of Western spirituality. Indian music's structure is defined by open-ended, improvisatory interplay between musicians, rather than the rigid, virtuosic displays of Western musicians. It is precisely these differences that make this music so intoxicating to our ears, and Radio India allowed me to live inside this vast museum of sound for over two hours. - Jonathan Dean
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The Constantines
Sub Pop
Originally released in 2001 on the Canadian Three Gut Records, the Constantines' debut album is now available via Sub Pop to American audiences. That's not to say that those of us south of the border aren't already familiar with The Constantines following the success of Shine A Light, one of the best albums of 2003. While The Constantines have often been compared to the likes of Fugazi, they manage to equally channel the spirit of everyone from Bruce Springsteen to the Replacements. Bry Weber's vocals are the band's trademark, carrying the torch for crooners such as Tom Waits and the above-mentioned Springsteen. The band's mission is simple, as Webb screams on "Arizona," the album's opening track: "We want the death of rock n' roll." The irony is that The Constantines are more rock n' roll than most other bands in the indie pantheon, and that's their strong point. Anchored by Doug MacGregor's confident drumming and Dallas Wehrle's pulsating basslines, the songs on this album maintain an overall energy and aesthetic that gives the album a seamless quality. While the music is the driving force behind the album, Weber's lyrics are perhaps its highlight. Allusions to Isadora Duncan, Danny Rapp, and the Italian Futurists illustrate an intellectual side not often found in indie rock. The overall mood and atmosphere of the album is summed up on the final track, where in "Little Instruments" Weber sings "Mercy little rocker, bleeding guitars / Went out chasing landmarks, fell asleep at the bar / We got an amplifier." They indeed have amplifiers, and let's be thankful for that. - Carter Adams
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Pharaoh Overlord, "Battle of the Axehammer"
Last Visible Dog
Only one thing, with slight variations, really happens for the hour after this CD starts playing: a bass guitar riff... a massive, filthy, loping beast of a groove that's immensely heavy without being in any way 'metal', or even terribly aggressive. The riff is not complicated, but it is loud (as evidenced by the album's unrelenting near-bootleg-quality tape saturation distortion). The riff has no funk, no drive, it isn't headed anywhere; the guitar barely glides along with it, and the drums do not embellish it. Sloppy repetition is the game here, and no frills, lyrics or showmanship get in its stubborn way. But lest you think that this is some slowcore sleepytime, let me be clear: Pharaoh Overlord, a trio from the (apparantly) fertile psych-rock scene of Finland, play rock n' roll as it's been written by Fushitsusha, the Stooges, Les Rallizes Denudes, and Black Sabbath. Thuggish, brutal, straight to the point, but also as minimal as one can get while still acting like a rock band. The songs are stripped down so bare that they are almost identical, changing in speed and length but remaining in roughly the same key and retaining the same non-structure. It's a miracle that this music works as well as it does, as it could easily have slipped off into dull-as-dirt potsmoke self-gratification (see Acid Mothers Temple). Instead, somehow, amazingly, Battle of the Axehammer is invigorating and alive. This was obviously a live concert that must have been excruciatingly loud in the room while it was happening. Alas, it doesn't seem that more than six people were in this particular room, as after the black hole of every tune ends (again, there are no verses, bridges, or breakdowns, or any apparent internal logic... the songs mysteriously decide by themselves that enough time has passed) and air is let back in, a pitiful number of hands are audibly brought together, and a few people shout their approval. Unless there were more people attending than can be heard on the CD, and everyone else was rendered too stupified to move. - Howard Stelzer
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The fourth DVD release from Sublime Frequencies is a 50-minute travelogue through the rural, impoverished region of Northeast Thailand, an area known as Isan. The culture of Isan is distinct from the rest of Thailand because of the marked Laotian and Khmer influence. Because of its remoteness and relative poverty, Isan has escaped the Westernizing reforms that have affected the rest of the country, thus their indigenous culture and unique heritage has been well preserved throughout their years. Documentarian Hisham Mayet shot this footage in March of this year, and has done a very good job in capturing much of the unique character of the region. The film opens with a traditional ceremony and festival demonstrating the rich cultural heritage of the four dominant tribes of Isan: Khmer, Suai, Lao and Yo. It showcases marching regalia of costumed Thai, demonstrations of skills such as fire-breathing, synchronized sword fighting and acrobatics, culminating in a bizarre ritual involving the crowd throwing live chickens into the air and chasing rabbits through the grass. Laotian women participate in traditional dances, performing beautifully expressive hand gestures, synchronized to syrupy Thai music that blares out of a distorted PA system. The remainder of the travelogue features mainly raw performances on traditional Isan instruments from a random assortment of villagers and street musicians. Mr. Ken plays a bamboo khaen, a large double-sided row of pipes that produce a complex, richly nuanced sound with interior countermelodies. Mr. Thongbai plays the wod, a circular arrangement of pan pipes that make an intoxicating and magical sound. Mr. Thongsai plays a lively folk tune on a phin, a three-stringed lute that is played identically to a guitar. A few scenes shot inside gentlemen's clubs in the urban centers of Isan follow, groups of costumed girls dancing seductively in a style known as Lam Sing. The finale was recorded on a busy Bangkok street in the early morning hours, and represents a traditional vocal style called Lum Glawn. A woman sings along with an amazingly proficient performance on the khaen pipes, her dynamic vocals flowing freely at breakneck speed, to match the sophisticated peaks and valleys of the khaen. Isan is a delightful snapshot of a relatively unknown and unsung culture. - 
