"Not Alone: Medicins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders)"

Thismassive 5-disc compilation from Durtro/Jnana contains over 75 artists,all assembled for the worthy cause of raising money for Medecins Sans Frontieres, in particular their work on the African AIDS epidemic.  Setting charity aside for a moment, there is also much to be grateful for musically on Not Alone.

Theopening track by irr.app.(ext.) samples the voice of Django Stapleton(son of Steven) amidst a lovely, pastoral acoustic guitar piece, withtroubling undercurrents of drone encroaching on its ravishingbeauty.  Halfway through, the track shifts into subtle harmonicswith eruptions of studied nostalgia, with the ticking of an oldgrandfather clock and "mineshaft flute."  Mirror turns in a pieceremarkable for its brevity; "The Forgotten Language of Light" is astunningly hypnotic short-form work, like a crystalline choir of angelsringing out of the sky on a clear winter's day.  Speaking ofbrevity, William Basinski—master of the hour-plus droning orchestralloop—here contributes the lush and romantic "Because," a brief,haunting piece for piano, voice and symphonics.  It has the sameemotional impact as any of the Disintegration Loops series, butit accomplishes it within three minutes, rather than five hours. Similarly fragile and romantic moods are invoked by a trio ofpreviously unreleased tracks by Mercury Prize winner Antony, his bigsister Baby Dee and their mutual inspiration Marc Almond.

Cyclobeturns in a fantastically cracked bit of frenetic, extraterrestrialpsycho-jazz blurt that is ridiculously entertaining at onlythree-and-a-half minutes.  Matmos continue their Civil War-eramedievalist obsessions with their contribution, which sounds incrediblylike the sort of Canterbury prog proffered by the Harvest label. Coming right out of left field is Colin Potter's offering "It'sComing," all thick krautrocky textures with melodic keyboards andchiming guitars, which rocks far harder than you'd expect from a NWWalum.  Like any compilation worth its salt, Not Alonecontains some very strange cover tunes, from Sundial's version of TheOsmonds' infamous "Crazy Horses," to Isobell Campbell's lovelyessentializing of Sonny and Cher's "The Beat Goes On" to Damon &Naomi'spainfully lightweight cover of Graham Parsons' "A Song For You." Will Oldham's brother's band Anomoanon mine 70s country-rock for a songthat manages to be both touchingly nostalgic and completely silly atthe same time.

Like nearly every compilation that has ever existed, with precious few exceptions, Not Aloneis problematic in that the sheer variety of musical styles on displaypreclude a coherent song order in which each track flows from thelast.  Instead, the compilation is filled with what seem likewillfully perverse juxtapositions, wildly different aesthetic notionsrubbing shoulders with each other.  This was perhaps necessary fora compilation that includes both The Hafler Trio and Ontario bar bandslike NQ Arbuckle and Shannon Lyons, but one wanders if it wasneccessary for them to be sequenced one right after the other on discfour.  Questions like these ultimately lead nowhere, and Not Alone,like most compilations, has quite a few tracks that seem utterlyincongruous or superfluous.  It's the sort of set tailor-made forpersonal iTunes condensation.

Most of the incongruoustracks are by run-of-the-mill Canadian pop/rock bands drawn from theroster of Mark Logan's other record label Busted Flat Records, andtheir inclusion here will no doubt be excruciating to anyone not weanedon poolhall rock bands, but I suppose you can't blame a guy for usingthis comp as a cross-promotional opportunity.  I just wish ithadn't been necessary for me to hear Mary 5E's post-Alanis braying tounderstand that not all of the material on Not Alone is meantto be of the same high standards set by the major contributors. There are also tracks by some classic artists now well past theirprime—Pavlov Dog's David Surkamp, former glam idol Brett Smiley,British singer-songwriter Bill Fay, etc—that are more painful than theyshould be, and had me running for the skip button the second timethrough.

Tom Recchion's "Sea World" is an attempt atthe producing the perfect loop, and this spectral, disembodied choruswith its tantalizingly unrecognizable saccharine melody, seems to dothe trick.  The late Allen Ginsberg's Appalachain musical settingfor his performance of William Blake's "On Another's Sorrow" is anunexpected treat.  An alternate mix of "Change My World" by AndriaDegens AKA Pantaleimon uses harmonium and voice to maximum hypnoticeffect, sounding not unlike some of Fursaxa's better work. Fursaxa, by the way, appears on this compilation with an utterlydisposable track.  Ditto contributions by Angels of Light,Devendra Banhart, Simon Finn and Current 93, all great songs but oneswhich most fans will already own by now.

We finallyget a taster of Little Annie's forthcoming Durtro album with thefantastic "Freddy and Me," the chanteuse assisted by Antony andBackworld's Joe Budenholzer.  Rose McDowall's project Sorrow hasnever inspired me all that much, and the track included here doesn'tencourage me to change my opinion.  The newer wave of Americanindie-folk artists are well represented here by Bonnie "Prince" Billy,Marissa Nadler and Faun Fables.  Classic British Isles folk isprovided by previously released tracks by Shirley and Dolly Collins and new pieces byClodagh Simonds and the elusive and amazing VashtiBunyan.  Though the CD reissue happened a few years back, it'salways great to hear Linda Perhacs' "Parallelograms" again, one of themost mind-altering bits of acoustic witchcraft yet contained onwax.  Future trajectories for intelligent folk-rock are suggestedby Alex Neilson & Richard Youngs and Six Organs of Admittance, bothof whose contributions are slight but impressive.  Jim O'Rourke"Naoru" harkens back to his Eureka days, a lovely piece for acoustic guitar.

Thighpaulsandra'sweird and wonderful "Star Malloy" features the late Jhonn Balance madlyattacking an ARP 2600 while the mad Welshman himself and Sion Orgoncontribute accordion, guitar and wide-eyed space zealot vocals. Forty-seven seconds is all we get of Drew Mullholland's (Mount VernonArts Lab) new project Black Noise, but it's enough to get my mouthwatering.   Thee Majesty is as tedious as ever, moreponderous, psuedo-philosophical yammering from everyone's favoriterotten-toothed tranny crackwhore.  Thurston Moore's  "SexAddition" is all structural feedback and harsh static, quite compellinglike The Dead C, but also quite inert like the Dead Sea.  I reallycan't stand Jarboe's solo work, so "Mantra" was a repetitive waste ofmy time.  I always welcome any material by Karl Blake and ShockHeaded Peters, even if its something relatively innocuous like this Tendercide outtake "Aaron's Rod (Spared)."

Twosuperlative live tracks placed towards the end of the set bear specialmention.  Coil's live version of "Broccoli" from one of their lastgigs in London is one of the best versions of the song, Jhonn Balanceusing the song's theme of parental wisdom to exhume the pain of hisabusive childhood: "I'm dedicating this song to my stepfather who I donot get on with...and to his father who probably did the same things tohim...who then did them to me, all with a little twist of warfarewithin."  Ghost does an amazing live take on "Daggma," completewith theremin, digeridoo and deep Tibetan vocal ululations.

Thesheer volume of amazing music on offer eventually made me all butforget about the Amway seasonal-color packaging and the presence ofexcruciating Canadian bar bands, and focus instead on what a massiveundertaking this set must have been.  I hope that it does find itsway into retail outlets all over the world and that it turns asubstantial enough profit to send some much-needed aid to MSF's work inAfrica.

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