21 October 2010

Anthony D'Amico

Albums and Singles

I probably do not follow the contemporary psych-rock scene as closely as I should, so this 2019 side project from Sweden's Hills managed to elude me for a couple of years. On one level, the leap from Hills to Centrum is not exactly a dramatic one, as För Meditation arguably resembles a Hills album with the electronic guitars and jammier tendencies excised. On a deeper level, however, the spell that Centrum casts is very different from that of most modern psych bands, as För Meditation feels like a lost classic from the late '60s/early '70s nexus where hallucinogens, Pandit Pran Nath, and eastern religion collectively transformed the more adventurous fringes of rock forever. In more practical terms, that means that För Meditation is full of droning, chanting, and raga-damaged psychedelia great enough to earn Centrum a place in my personal pantheon of Swedish psych/free music titans like Parson Sound and Träd, Gras och Stenar. They clearly also learned a trick or two from more recent bands too though, as they do an impressive job of sidestepping the genre's more indulgent tendencies and beautifully channel the killer ride cymbal grooves of classic Om (albeit opting more for hypnotic repetition than muscular intensity and virtuosic flourishes).

Rocket Recordings

The album's description begins with a quote from David Lynch about transcendental meditation and its tenet that "true happiness lies within," but Centrum seem to enthusiastically embraced the Zen ideal of ego death as well, as the band's enigmatic line-up is given only as "members of Hills and Weary Nous." That anonymity admittedly makes sense here, as the focus is not on individual performances so much as it is on the band members seamlessly converging in perfect harmony for a series of great droning grooves. Or, as the label puts it, "beguiling tapestries of drone-based hypnosis, mantric vocal chants and ritualistic folk along with field recordings" (the latter made by the band in India). The opening "Vid Floden" is a representative introduction to that aesthetic, as a slow, heady groove of pulsing Shruti box swells, muscular bass riffage, hazy chanted vocals, and a cool flute hook unfolds for ten straight minutes with minimal evolution. There are some subtle effects and a decent amount of guitar soloing (both clean and distorted), but the magic primarily lies in how the various musicians interact and embellish the groove without ever breaking the spell with indulgent missteps. Instead, elements like the smoldering guitar solo in the following "Sjön" serve more of a textural and dynamic purpose than a cathartic or melodic one. That said, that solo does inject a soulful intensity that plays a significant role in making "Sjön" one of the album's strongest pieces. Of course, the warbling wah-wah improvisations and heavy ride cymbal beat play crucial roles as well (especially once the tambourine kicks in).

The remaining two pieces are unsurprisingly devoted to variations on the same themes. The brief "Stjärnor" is the closest thing to a single, as it distills the Centrum vision to a tight five minutes and enhances it with a melodic violin theme, but it also breaks the hypnotic spell a bit with a very prominent wah-wah solo in its final moments. The closing "Som En Spegel," on the other hand, heads in the opposite direction and stretches out for twelve epic minutes with little threat of derailing. Initially, it feels a bit too fast and too muscular to quite hit the raga/drone comfort zone, but it gradually blossoms into a masterful slow burn with the addition of tambourine, serpentine flute melodies, and a very cool finale of dub-inspired percussion flourishes. Aside from the mixed success of "Stjärnor," För Meditation is a damn near perfect album in my book. While it is not terribly hard to find other psych-rock bands who look to the east for inspiration, very few are able to match the natural chemistry and sublime execution that Centrum bring to the form.

Samples can be found here.

21 October 2010

Anthony D'Amico

Albums and Singles

This latest release from Aleksandra Zakharenko is a "selection of soundscapes created by throughout various stages of last year" described as "subliminal moments, suspended fragments, caught between time zones." While that description could admittedly fit quite a lot of Perila's music, 7‚Äã.‚Äã37‚Äã/‚Äã2‚Äã.‚Äã11 has a far more intimate and informal feel than this year's previous release on Smalltown Supersound (How Much Time It Is Between You And Me?). That uncluttered, sketch-like approach suits Zakharenko quite well, as it brings out a bit more distinctive character than her more layered and produced work. Given that Perila is one of the more consistently intriguing artists in the ambient-adjacent abstract electronic milieu, there is plenty to like (or love) about that more produced side too, but I found this more stark and simple side easier to connect with on a deeper level, as these six songs distill Zakharenko's vision to its most pure form without sacrificing any of the beauty.

Vaagner

The opening "long dizzying air through a balcony door" sounds exactly like I would expect Perila to sound when filtered through the beautifully murky melancholia of Vaagner's house aesthetic (or at least curated with that aesthetic in mind). It is one of the more minimal pieces on the album as well, as it is essentially a spoken-word piece over a little more than a ghostly hum that rises and falls like a slow exhalation. The words are compellingly poetic and vaguely confessional, as it Zakharenko seems to be haltingly recounting fragmented and enigmatic memories from a past spring burned deep into her psyche. It strikes quite a mesmerizing balance of eerie and sensuous and is easily as strong as anything I have previously heard from Perila. In fact, I would have been thrilled if it was followed by five more pieces in the exact same vein, but only a fool would expect that, as Zakharenko's music has long featured a strong element of unpredictability. In keeping with that theme, the following "amorphous absorption" sounds like deconstructed dub techno sourced from dripping stalactites and chopped, hallucinatory voices, while the blearily melodic reverie "haven't left home 4 4 days" evokes the melancholy of a rain-soaked and cloud-darkened afternoon. A similarly drizzly atmosphere returns for the two pieces that close the album, but "this story doesn't make any sense" detours into a gently seething and bubbling experiment in disjointed, deconstructed, and unconventional percussion that feels like it is fading in and out of focus. It is an enjoyable piece, but the two pieces that follow even more impressive. I especially enjoyed “Crash Sedative,” which feels like a stoned and stumbling twist on classic Bill Evans-style jazz piano. "1 room" delves into a similarly noir-ish jazz vein, but feels too haunted and texture-focused to exist outside an especially creepy David Lynch film.

Nearly everything on the album is both good and distinctively "Perila," however, which makes this modest release an unexpectedly satisfying and absorbing album. On a related note, Vaagnar has also issued a considerably shorter sister EP (Memories of Log) that compiles strays from one of Zakharenko's stronger collaborators with Ulla. I expect anyone who likes 7‚Äã.‚Äã37‚Äã/‚Äã2‚Äã.‚Äã11 will enjoy that one too, as I certainly did (particularly Ulla's sublime closer "falling water lullaby").

Samples can be found here.

21 October 2010

Anthony D'Amico

Albums and Singles

This enigmatic Illinois collective has never been particularly keen on revealing much about themselves, but they do have something of an origin story in which the project was birthed when they fatefully discovered a section of a film trailer in an abandoned drive-in theater back in 1983. While I do not believe they ever specified which film they found, all signs point to a George Romero or Lucio Fulci film, as "sounds from films about fake corpses constitute some of the earliest material used by Fossil Aerosol Mining Project." In fact, the project nearly always sounds like a hallucinatory collage of badly distressed VHS tapes of Dawn of the Dead, but the project has also released several explicitly zombie-indebted releases over the course of their long and macabre career, some of which were eventually compiled on 2014's digital-only Zombi Traditions. As befits the subject material, those already remixed, remastered, and revised pieces have been cannibalized once more for this definitive edition. As the previous incarnations of these songs have been purged from existence, I cannot say how well these latest versions stack up against the earlier ones, but I can say that this is easily one of the best Fossil Aerosol Mining Project albums that I have heard. To my ears, this album is the embodiment of everything I love about this project, as it perfectly captures the imagined ambiance of a late '70s/early '80s mall where the only remaining signs of life are strains of kitschy muzak and cheery announcements of incredible bargains eerily reverberating around the ransacked, rubble-strewn, and desolate halls until the electricity eventually fails.

Self-Released

Given this project’s mystery-shrouded nature, I cannot say for certain what their working methods were back in 1983 or if they have evolved at all over the ensuing four decades, but it definitely seems like the collective has an extremely purist approach to how they use their material. It seems fair to say that one of the project’s self-imposed constraints is that all of the sounds they use must be scavenged, so the difference between a middling album and great one lies in how well the fundamentally non-musical material lends itself to musicality (and how ingenious the collective can be when the material does not). In practical terms, that means that the essence of Zombi Tradition's aesthetic is murky ambiance conjured from hiss, garbled samples, and industrial hum, but that foundation is often enhanced with enigmatic vocal fragments, snatches of ads, and bits of repurposed muzak.

When they hit the mark, the results can be wonderfully creepy, immersive, and hallucinatory in a very unique and distinctive way. In the case of this album, those moments mostly tend to be the longest pieces. For example, the seething slow burn of "Damaged Years Ago" steadily swells to a haunted crescendo of inhuman-sounding backwards voices and a promise of "all the most popular brands." Elsewhere, "Italian Resurrection" evokes the swaying industrial ambiance of a massive engine slowly churning in an enigmatic miasma of footsteps, tape hiss, and eerie vocal fragments ("help me") that bubble up from the depths. Later, "The Shopping Mall Has Long Since Flooded" sounds like a broken radio playing flickering, unintelligible, and creepily reverberant emergency dispatches to a long-abandoned and partially submerged food court. A couple of the shorter pieces are excellent too though. I especially love the hiss-ravaged muzak phantasmagoria of "1983," which has the creepy, sad, and playful feel of some recent Aaron Dilloway albums. That said, the whole album casts a wonderfully unbroken spell and the execution is unusually strong for FAMP (presumably because the material has been reworked so many times). Given the grisly and oft-schlocky source material being repurposed, I was pleasantly surprised by the bleak beauty and subtly morbid humor of these pieces, as they never err into oppressive darkness or easy kitsch (even when a cheery voice is encouraging me to "visit often"). To my ears, this is one of the true jewels of the Fossil Aerosol Mining Project discography (if not the project’s culminating achievement).

Samples can be found here.

18 October 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

If you hang around enough basement shows, if you listen to enough record collector shop talk, if you read lists of your favorite obscure musicians listing their favorite obscure musicians, then you just may have heard of the Dead C. Two decades into the game, the band has not swerved from their distinctive brand of tangled, noisy improvisational rock. To that end, Patience delivers no surprises, no attention-grabbing gestures towards a wider audience, just a steady devotion to raw, monolithic sound.

Ba Da Bing

The Dead C have, at least to my knowledge, never been about quick thrills.In that regard, any of their albums could be titled Patience for the heavy, slow motion dynamics the band specializes in. Two lengthy tracks, each about a quarter hour long, comprise the bulk of the record, with two short tracks in between. The opener, "Empire," is built around conventional, doom-metal style groove provided by drummer Robbie Yeats.Squalls of feedback rise and fall, howling over the beat, the variety of pitches tones resembling synthesizers as much as guitars and amps.

It’s not until the last half of Patience that the band flirts with the coarse formlessness for which they are infamous. "South" begins sparsely, with slow, muffled guitar strumming buried in high pitched amplifier hum. Shards of loopy feedback crop up, followed by metallic, detuned guitar riffing. Just as the song is about crest in a spasming crescendo, Yeats joins in with a standard, punk-rock beat, except that his kit sounds stifled and distant, unable to overcome the noise around it.

It may be asked why a band like the Dead C would continue plugging away in near obscurity for decades.Peer respect and cultish fans help, but these things alone aren’t enough sustain a band, and we may as well just forget about album sales entirely. The only cogent answer seems to be that the band has little ambition but to make the kind of music that appeals to the mainstream. Throughout all the changes in taste that have come in the last two decades, their dedication to improvised rock remains almost singular. Patience indeed.

samples

• Empire
• Shaft
• South

18 October 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

After over two years of recordings, swapping files and reworking each others' material, this collaboration between Steven Stapleton and Larsen has been long awaited. Regrettably, the end result is not uniformly great as the album has a number of pieces which do not reflect the best capabilities of either party. Yet, all is not lost as there is gold here amongst the debris. Some brilliant sounds are sandwiched between other less exhilarating pieces.

 

Important Records

Featuring Eberhard Kranemann (a.k.a. Fritz Müller), "Tickety Boo" is a terrific slice of krauty, Nursey psychedelia. There are shades of Stapleton’s collaborations with Stereolab running through the piece but it also strikingly resembles some of the more upbeat material that ended up on Coil's posthumous albums, particularly "Algerian Basses" and "Princess Margaret's Man In The D'jamalfna" from The New Backwards. It is hard to hear exactly what Kranemann is contributing to the piece (though he is credited with a band’s worth of instrumentation) but his impact is significant; this is far removed from Stapleton’s recent output. The druggy, exotic beats begin to break down and melt into each other as the music takes on a new character halfway through the piece. Slide guitar and lysergic vocals reinforce the tyranny of the beat even as strange metallic percussion tries to chip away at the rhythms.

The second piece continues where "Tickety Boo" leaves off but the lights are dimmed as Nurse With Wound and Larsen begin their approach. "Easin' By" begins well, a bell-like drone slowly developing into a landscape of vibrations as lighter drones and distant chimes begin to add color and life to the music. The drone becomes thicker and foggier, a pink haze like a smog made from marshmallow vapors. Distant trumpets are barely audible, maybe someone is playing a Miles Davis record in the next apartment or maybe it is part of the act but in any case it adds to the dreamy effect.

Unfortunately, once "Easin' By" ends, the album stumbles and never fully regains its stride. "Rock, Baby, Rock" and "Bug Vaudeville" has roughly the same material being treated by Stapleton and Larsen respectively. Neither version is particularly inspiring; the presence of both on the same release seems like a redundant gesture to me. Both Stapleton and Larsen assemble their pieces along similar lines and in each case there is not a lot to write home about; an inert bass line and meandering, processed guitar melody start in the middle of nowhere and do not get far. Neither "Rock, Baby, Rock" nor "Bug Vaudeville" are bad per se and granted they are a move away from the norm for Nurse With Wound but they sound too much like some of Larsen's weaker moments to be even something novel.

In fairness to Larsen, there are a couple of their pieces (i.e. the ones where they have done the most shaping of the material) which they can be proud of. "Call Me, Tell Me" is up there with my favorite works by Larsen, recalling the finer moments of SeieS or Abeceda. Their distinctive repetition and pretty melodies snowball into an avalanche of driving noise. Marco Schiavo’s drumming provides a focal point for the music; his fluid, precise and beautifully phrased percussion acting like a frame for the other members to hang their contributions on.

Considering A Selection of Errors has been in the pipeline for so long, I have a feeling that this cake is over-baked. When it is good, it is stellar but the presence of what seems like filler material detracts from the album as a whole. Reduced to an EP this would have been awesome but, as it stands, it lacks enough focus to make it a classic.

samples:

• Tickety Boo
• Call Me, Tell Me
• Bug Vaudeville

 

18 October 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Originally a series of 7" split singles released on the Trensmat label, this compilation collects all the original releases on one CD and also includes a few covers not previously released as part of the series. Featuring a fantastic selection of bands (this is not a collection of also-ran bands doing a crappy tribute album) which for me are mainly an improvement on the originals. Hawkwind are one of those bands whose influence I appreciate more than their original recordings and to hear some bands I truly love interpreting their music has given me a new found enthusiasm for Hawkwind themselves.

 

Critical Mass

Mugstar have been the driving force behind the album and they are represented twice, once with "Born to Go" (originally on the split with Mudhoney) and again with the previously unreleased "Paradox" from my favorite Hawkwind album Hall of the Mountain Grill. They take a fairly straight reading of the music but play like there is no tomorrow (and there just might not be if they play any harder). Elsewhere Moon Duo and White Hills put more idiosyncratic spins on the songs; the former taking a minimal electronic approach and the latter start from a place that closely resembles Hawkwind but push through the invisible boundaries into something more resembling Japanese psych like Les Rallizes Denudes or Up-Tight.

Bardo Pond’s interpretation of "Lord of Light" from Doremi Fasol Latido combines Hawkwind's interstellar drive with Bardo Pond's own smoked aesthetics; the cosmic synth sounds traditionally associated with Hawkwind marrying perfectly with the chunky guitars and Isobel Sollenberger's flute. Mudhoney do an equally good job of putting their own spin on Hawkwind's music. Their version of "Urban Guerilla" could have come from Superfuzz Bigmuff; they completely deconstruct Hawkwind’s space mystic vibes and transpose the song to the American northwest. This is plaid shirts and weed rather than glitter and LSD.

Not all the songs are as successful as the ones mentioned above, Magoo's cover of "Space is Deep" is a bit flat in comparison to the blissed out sounds that can be heard throughout the rest of In Search of Hawkwind. It sounds like they are trying too hard to capture Hawkwind’s superficial sound without fully engaging in the spirit of the music. The same cannot be said for Acid Mothers Temple & the Cosmic Inferno who have made a career out of continuing where Hawkwind left off. Their take on "Brainstorm" lives up to the song’s title; the music rages through my mind like a supernova.

I tend to be more critical of tribute compilations than any other form of release. Along with bad split singles, bad tribute albums bring out the worst in second tier artists and the worst in me. However, In Search of Hawkwind is an almost perfect example of a tribute album. The bands included all exemplify the influence of the original artist and most of the pieces chosen are executed with love, care and tonnes of enthusiasm.

samples:

• Bardo Pond, "Lord of Light"
• Acid Mothers Temple & the Cosmic Inferno, "Brainstorm"
• Moon Duo, "Hurry On Sundown

 

17 October 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

With his custom guitar and unconventional playing techniques, Fongaard is one of the unrecognized innovators of prepared guitar, even in his native Norway. Here, three discs of his work, and a DVD, are lavishly presented to hopefully increase the recognition of this artist. There is a lot of material to digest but it is well worth the effort and presents a distinct missing link in the world of experimental guitar.

Prisma Records

Fongaard was a self-taught composer who spent much of his studies focusing on the sciences and mathematics in addition to music, often working to combine the different disciplines in various new configurations, as well as spending a significant amount of time playing traditional guitar as a studio musician and in theater productions, working with the likes of little known directors such as Ingmar Bergman. All of this lead to a conceptual interest in expanding the traditional 12 tone scale into a 24 scale, and eventually an infinite scale, with microscopic tonal variations utilized and recognized.It’s not hard to see how this concept is very much complementary to the early electronic composers and today’s noise/experimental scene.

To further this, Fongaard had a custom built guitar to work within this 24 tone scale, doubling the number of frets that can be played.In addition, he used various innovative playing techniques, such as using violin bows, percussive techniques, and various tools and objects to mute and bend strings.Coupled with a motivation to avoid the techniques of the contemporary electro-acoustic artists of his day, Fongaard’s work was mostly based upon live recordings, using only occasional effects and manipulating tape speeds to achieve his desired effect.

The results are something quite akin to what the world was hearing from artists such as Pierre Henry and Luc Ferrari in feeling, but sounding like nothing else at the same time.On some of the pieces presented here, the guitar playing is quite obvious, but unique due to its construction:"Evolution (5 Movements)" from 1965 and "Electrofonia No. 2," from 1969 focus on the taut, plucked guitar strings and short, sharp notes that sound somewhere between guitar and violin in color.

Other pieces take on a darker feeling, such as the reverb soaked "Galaxe (For 3 Quarter-Tone Guitars) Opus 46," which meshes the chirping guitar with heavy reverb initially, then pained guitar and banshee-like shrieks of sound, all topped off with percussive, clattering guitar strings to close the piece.This is one of only three pieces included here that had ever been commercially released in the past, to put the material here into perspective.

The long "14 Aforismer for Mikrointervall-Gitar, Opus 63" uses other techniques, such as erratically pitch-bent notes and droning space that sounds purely electronic, but is more likely drawn out passages of guitar that give a warm ambient feel to everything."Elektrofonia No. 1" introduces some subtle, but recognizable flanging to the reverbed guitar notes, sometimes held out into near silent open space, and other times allowed to develop into cautiously restrained feedback.The "Sinfonia Microtonalis" tracks that mostly constitute the third disc also include a greater selection of effects, such as the chilling scraped strings that close the first part and the delayed, almost fuzzed out sounds of the third part differ from one another greatly, yet work well together.

The set also includes a DVD capturing a few television performances of his music."Dimensjoner" and "Relieff" are both dances, the former mixing abstract images with a single dancer in muted gray tones, while the latter is more dynamic, with a larger group of performers and lots of bright, bold colors.It definitely is a product of the 1970s, but is definitely unique as well."Stjernetaker" is a piece for television that mixes processed images with natural ones, creating a pseudo documentary that is quite hypnotizing.The most fascinating piece here though is "Komponist Med Gitar," which is a television interview with Fongaard from 1971.While the discussion is in Norweigan and not subtitled, Fongaard’s demonstration of his guitar techniques and style need no explanation, and offers a rare opportunity for observing how these unique sounds are made.

While he was relatively unknown even in his own country, Fongaard has had a quiet, but discernable influence on avant garde guitar composition that becomes much more obvious once one listens to this set.Sadly, only about a fifth of his compositions were performed while he was still living, so he never even managed to hear the bulk of his work.Lovingly curated by Lasse Marhaug, this set shows the same attention to detail and consideration that has been demonstrated on his Pica Disk box sets in recent years, and is obviously a work of extreme care and thoughtfulness.

samples:

• Galaxe (For 3 Quarter-Tone Guitars), Opus 46
• Elektrofonia No. 1, For Orchestra Microtonalis, Opus 78
• Sinfonia Microtonalis No. 1, Opus 79

 

17 October 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

After the dissolution of his criminally underrated Band of Susans project, Robert Poss continued his obsession with the various noises of the electric guitar, no longer restrained by the constraints of "rock" music (though he pushed those boundaries pretty hard with BoS). Settings is a collection of music recorded for various purposes, but follows the concepts established on his 2002 album Distortion is Truth, reveling in the dissonant and not so dissonant tones of both guitar and analog synthesizer technologies.

Trace Elements

Although it is a compilation album, there is a definite sense of consistency and quality that unifies the pieces. Even though they may have been written and recorded for disparate purposes, Poss' overall approach keeps them nicely tied together. The two opening pieces, originally composed for choreographer Alexandra Beller, are unified through the use of resonating bells. The first piece focuses on the sound of bells and quiet underlying electronic textures, the sharp bell rings initially disturb the calm, but their natural decay then strengthens the subtlety. By the second piece, a series of treated, repetitive guitar notes appear, creating an odd combination of erratic bells, rhythmic guitar, and sustained electronic ambience that somehow works perfectly together.

Other pieces further focus on drawing together almost opposing sounds and instruments to create idiosyncratic, yet compelling works. "Feed Forward" (also for Beller) pairs shrill guitar feedback with sparse synths and warbling electronic sounds to great effect, and the clash of melody and abrasive electronic buzz on "Inverness" seem greatly influenced by Poss collaborator and former Wire guitarist Bruce Gilbert’s solo outings.

Two of the three Gerald Casel commissioned pieces combine this concept with a distinct marching sound: "Border Crossing March" uses marching band percussion, dour industrial textures and bleeping modular synths to create a piece that is reminiscent of some of Cabaret Voltaire's earliest experiments, but with a stronger focus on composition and structure rather than pure experimentation. "Border Piano Walk" follows a similar rhythmic path, but instead uses piano as its sole source material. With sharp tunings and clanging reverberation, it takes on a very tense, metallic motif throughout.

Regardless of the setting, Poss seems to be unable to avoid allowing some traditional music/rock structures into the mix, in a good way. "With Music No. 2 (Excerpt)" has a looped riff that’s used throughout, mixed with more open, drifting guitar and a natural feeling bass line. While it takes a drastic turn towards improvised percussion at the end, there is still a rock feel to it. "Concordance" also utilizes mostly untreated guitar, chiming and layered with only the most subtle effects to create a warm and inviting piece. The one that made me smile, and probably will have the same effect on other Band of Susans' fans, is the closing "Robert Palmer Tribute Coda (Live Excerpt)," which is a wonderful, but painfully short blast of lo-fi guitar noise and squall that simply ends too quick.

Robert Poss' solo work has definitely shown the influence of his collaborators, which includes such luminaries as Bruce Gilbert and Phill Niblock. However, he is definitely following his own path, combining modular synths and guitars in ways that others haven't. Not a collection of songs, this feels more like a diverse and strong album, and is one not to be missed. I just hope he never forgets his love of raw, guitar noise, because he still does it like no other.

• The Structure (For Alexandra Beller)
• With Music No. 2 (Excerpt)
• Inverness

 

17 October 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Over the course of their incredible 27-year career, Sun City Girls seemed to make a point of doing everything as triumphantly and aggressively wrong as possible, precluding any possibility of widespread acceptance. While they certainly recorded their share of awesome psychedelic jams and inspired ethnic music appropriations over the years, their anarchic sense of humor and love of absurdist theatrics resulted in an accompanying avalanche of baffling and wildly self-indulgent work as well. Of course, that eccentric unpredictability and willingness to try literally anything was central to their charm. Consequently, Funeral Mariachi makes the most fitting of swan-songs, as they’ve finally done the most unexpected thing of all: made an album of very listenable, melodic songs.

Abduction

Sun City Girls effectively ceased being an entity on February 19th, 2007, when long-time drummer Charles Gocher died from cancer.Although he was present for the recording of Funeral Mariachi, it seems like he may have passed away before the album fully took shape (which goes a long way towards explaining why it took another three years for it to be finished).While the percussion is certainly quite spare and understated throughout, the more telling indicator is that this album is quite languid and melancholy.There is a deep sadness to Funeral Mariachi that feels more like an elegy to a dying or departed friend than anything resembling a "normal" session by three of the most willfully obtuse guys around.Besides, Gocher always seemed more aggressively bizarre than the Bishop brothers–it is difficult to imagine him not sabotaging the album's more sublime or muted moments with surreal stream-of-consciousness beat poetry or a Japanese theater interlude or something if he'd seen the project through to completion.

I bet Gocher had quite a bit of influence on the opening piece though, as "Ben's Radio" begins and ends with crazy cut-up sounding falsetto vocals in a real or imagined foreign language.After that though, and some periodically shrill warbling, most of the Girls' more inaccessible quirks disappear completely.Even so, the album is still deeply aberrant (how could it be otherwise?), but the weirdness is confined largely to chants, foreign language vocals, unusual influences, and eclectic instrumentation in the service of fairly coherent, flowing, and melodic songs.The Girls definitely borrow from a very wide palette stylistically, effortlessly tossing out allusions to traditional Arabic music, spaghetti western themes, flamenco, and Indonesian pop, yet it rarely feels forced or clumsy.Of course, it probably helps that Gocher and the Bishops enlisted some very talented guests to help them out– it is difficult to imagine the ghostly "Black Orchid" working nearly as well without Jessika Kenney's ethno-vocal pyrotechnics or "Funeral Mariachi" without David Carter's smoldering trumpet.

Uncharacteristically, it is very difficult to point to a clear highlight on this album, as there is pretty much nothing half-baked here.I am hard-pressed to think of another Sun City Girls album that is this focused and uniformly good.Notably, however, there is one song that could almost be a successful single of sorts, as "This Is My Name" has a pleasant English-language melody, an excellent laid-back groove, and some awesome raga-influenced riffing from Richard Bishop.In fact, Richard is in dazzling form throughout the whole album, tackling No Wave skronking ("Ben's Radio"), finger-twisting Eastern modes, sublime shimmering, Satie-esque piano miniatures, and Ennio Morricone twang with equal deftness and tact.

It's pretty hard to imagine anyone being disappointed by this album, though longtime fans may be surprised at how sane, sincere, and non-ragged it all sounds.Sun City Girls have made a comparatively accessible album, sure, but the only real difference is that band decided to apply their freewheeling kitchen-sink eclecticism to songs with strong melodies rather than allowing that strangeness to be an end unto itself.Their individuality remains quite firmly intact, but they've made it a bit easier for the rest of the world understand what all the fuss was about.Funeral Mariachi is the sound of a singular band riding off into the sunset with an unexpected amount of grace and emotional resonance–a clichéd metaphor for sure, but one that is warranted by the album's very conspicuous Morricone influence, I'm afraid.This is definitely one of the best things Sun City Girls have ever recorded.

Samples:

• This Is My Name
• Vine Street Piano (Orchestral)
• Blue West

17 October 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

ESP Disk's most recent re-issue of the now well-known and loved Heliocentric Worlds series is haphazard and sloppy, offering only the most minimal improvements over their last re-issue from 2005. Fledgling Ra listeners will be happy to find all three volumes together in one package (this time on three distinct discs), but everyone else will likely be disappointed by the lackluster bonus material, mediocre packaging, and poorly edited liner notes. Anyone who owns all three albums already can safely ignore this release, the rest of us can bemoan its poor presentation.

ESP Disk

Each of the three Heliocentric volumes were performed and recorded in the span of less than a year, between April and November of 1965. Ra was accompanied by the same 12 musicians for both dates, among them multi-instrumentalist Marshall Allen (probably most famous for his sax playing), bassist Ronnie Boykins, and baritone sax player Pat Patrick (Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick's father). Roughly 19 instruments find their way onto the record, including tuned tympani, bass clarinet and bass trombone, the clavioline, tuned bongos, bass marimba, and an electronic celesta. Band size, instrumental choices, excellent performances, unclassifiable sounds, and the improvisational structure of all three volumes have earned these records an important place in the history of free jazz, as well as a legendary status. They were performed and released before John Coltrane's Ascension, broke strongly with the turbulent and wilder styling of Ornette Coleman's double quartet, and showcased an altogether different sound for the Arkestra, which had just released a string of excellent, but more readily digestible records, including Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy. Along with The Magic City, The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra most strongly define Ra's New York period sound and represent some of his most enduring ideas as a composer and band leader. Whether or not they can be classified as free jazz is another question entirely.

Listening to Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, I focused immediately on their fragmented, frequently clumsy ensemble and solo passages. Boykins, percussionists Jimhmi Johnson, Pat Patrick, and Roger Blank, and the rest of the Arkestra spend much of their time stumbling over (and sometimes through) their instruments, producing atonal passages of a childish quality with seemingly little attention paid to structure, melody, or rhythm. Nothing I'd heard or read before could help me get inside the tympani and bass duets of "Heliocentric" or the drunken clavioline and piano fights on "Nebulae." The best I could muster was a feeble comparison to early Nurse with Wound records, because Ra's sudden tempo changes and unusual instrumentation produced effects and contrasting textures that reminded me of the tape collages Stapleton produced. After listening more closely and reading some helpful articles, I was clued into the structure hiding behind the chaos, and subsequently into the beauty and originality of the Arkestra's sound.

Ra would conduct his large group by pairing instruments together and providing them loose rules. For instance, Boykins would be instructed to bow his bass, or trombonist Teddy Nance would be told to play long, whole notes against a contrasting rapidly moving flute solo, and both would be paired with seemingly unrelated percussion solos, wood blocks, or bass marimba. Each group of musicians would solo together, but only as Ra conducted them to do so and only according to a mood or idea Ra was exploring. So in one instant trombone and sax are playing together, and then the wood block and bass, and at any moment the whole band could erupt in a fit of excitement and noise, each with a wave of Ra's hand. The results are bizarre or surreal duets, trios, or ensemble movements with instruments that either contrast each other strongly or blend in awkward and glaring ways. My favorite example is when Ra pairs Robert Cummings' woodblocks and his own bass marimba with Boykins' already prominent acoustic bass. These two or three instruments fuse almost completely and very nearly produce the illusion of a single instrument, but their distinct timbres and colors keep them from having an entirely happy marriage.

I originally thought Sun Ra was seeking to create or highlight diversity and disparity in his music. The failure of his instruments to blend completely emphasized that, but so did the clumsy melodic phrases and tottering rhythms. Time, greater familiarity with Ra's music, and a little studying have changed my mind, and I now think the opposite is true. Boykins' bass playing on "The Sun Myth" is like nothing I've heard in jazz; it resembles the bowing of a bass in a classical orchestra more strongly than anything in jazz. And the loud percussion passages sound like a child's first drum lesson, but the Arkestra manages to force these two unlikely partners into a striking, if coarse, unity. Elsewhere, Ra pits shrieking saxophones against a background of swirling cymbals and buzzing electronic tones. Convention suggests these elements can't or shouldn't be paired, but the Arkestra miraculously draws them together. Their success depends both on Ra's guidance and on each musician's finely honed abilities; such abstract and spontaneous playing is neither easy nor natural. The resulting moods are sometimes tense, other times meditative, and frequently humorous or playful. Only rarely can the Arkestra be said to play as a band in any traditional sense. Parts of the third volume, as well as "Cosmic Chaos" and "Of Heavenly Things," feature a tighter logic and more coherent sense of counterpoint, so those songs make a more immediate kind of sense. But, for much of the record, we listeners are required to explore the depths of their expectations and interpretive skills in order to encounter the Arkestra's power and philosophy fully.

That's one of several reasons these records have taken such a hold on me. Their fluid character is another. Written and performed in the middle of New York City during the 1960s, Ra was automatically placed among the free jazz moguls of the time, but very few of these songs sound like jazz compositions at all, free or otherwise. I do hear fragments of jazz's past, but classical music, noise, tape collage, and other early electronic phrasings and expressions are present, too . I can't offer a better categorization, but I tend to agree with the theory that these records were filed under free jazz because nobody knew what else to call them.

Unfortunately, ESP Disk has done little to support the wonder and depth of Ra's music. This three disc set promises a lot and pretends to make good on them with an attractive outer sleeve and smartly distributed index of songs. Each of the three volumes gets its own disc, meaning none of them are muddled by bonus songs and none of them flow into each other unnaturally. When a disc ends, the album ends, too, and I applaud ESP's decision to keep each record distinct in that way. The original artwork for each album is also represented, although they're all tucked away beneath transparent CD trays. Still, unfolding the box set reveals a neat and simple layout. It's not the most attractive presentation in the world, but it functions well and I'm not sure how I would change it to make it any better. However, there's no booklet included with this set, and that's the first big problem I have with it. Extensive liner notes are nowhere to be found and only the most meager information about these records is provided on the back panel. Considering Sun Ra's ever-increasing popularity and the scope of the Arkestra's history, I'm surprised there wasn't more information provided up front. Things continue to deteriorate as I scan what little information is provided. Sun Ra's electronic keyboard, the "clavioline," is misspelled "clavoline" and the song "Of Heavenly Things" is misprinted as "Oh Heavenly Things." Additionally, "piccolo" is spelled as "picolo" on the back cover. These are small complaints, but they make the package feel cheaper and more hastily assembled than it should.

An impressive lineup of bonus features could make up for these mistakes, but calling any of the extras a bonus would be stretching it a bit.The first disc contains a roughly 16-minute "documentary" titled Spaceways. It's less a documentary film and more a piece of propaganda for Sun Ra's philosophy and ideas. If any of the bonuses are going to appeal to a Sun Ra fan, this is the one, but much of what Ra has to say can be found in books about him or in articles easily found on the Internet. Furthermore, the quality of the audio and video is low, probably because it was pulled from the original film without any effort given to improving its sometimes murky dialog and overall grainy picture. The second disc contains a "Sun Ra Photo Archive" that is little more than 12 JPEG files. A few of those files are images of the album covers, which are widely available everywhere and featured prominently in the set's artwork already. The other images may have their own value, but hardly constitute an archive. The critical writings "archive" on the third disc is a collection of Acrobat files containing reviews from publications large and small, including a Rolling Stone interview, a couple of brief mentions in The New York Times, and liner notes for all three volumes. Two of the reviews are very well written, reproduced clearly, and provide helpful information about the Heliocentric recordings. The remainder are poor scans of newspaper articles. The Rolling Stone feature could be a good read, but features tiny text and fuzzy image quality, which makes reading it tedious. Worse yet, the liner notes for each record, which should have been printed in a separate booklet (or at least somewhere in the box set itself), are included as part of this "archive." This isn't just cheap, it's insulting. ESP are basically lying to their audience about the content of their bonus material by including basic and necessary information for any good box set as a "bonus" feature. That's a lot like giving a giant middle finger to the consumer.

Having some of Sun Ra's best music made more readily available is truly exciting and a blessing. So much of his music is rarer than it should be. But the artwork, details, and presentation of that music should be treated with as much reverence and care as the music itself is.

samples:

• Heliocentric (from Vol. 1)
• A House of Beauty (from Vol. 2)
• Intercosmosis (from Vol. 3)