Jeez, always one of my favorite album covers and this dinky thing is the only image I can find. Apparently, the CD reissue solarized the photograph quite a bit and added (unnecessarily) some typographics, resulting in this:


Loses all the atmospherics of the original, compromises the gravitas.

Anyway, I've been gradually playing through my Ornette vinyl. Nothing to say that hasn't been said thousands of times about most of the early recordings as well as Prime Time and later (I more or less lost interest after the "Naked Lunch" soundtrack, I've been told unfairly) so I'll concentrate on my favorite period which begins with this recording and goes up through about 1971.

re: the Town Hall Concert (1962)--I wonder what contemporary admirers from the avant classical world like La Monte Young made of Coleman's writing for strings. In the context of the time, it was pretty old-fashioned, after all, not too mention somewhat romantic. To me, it's not a very far cry from the essence of his jazz work of the time but I get the impression the latter went down more smoothly than the "classical" writing among the contemporary cognoscenti. But I'm just guessing--I don't recall ever reading any commentary from those quarters. Anyone? In any case, "Sadness", as performed here still stands out as one of Ornette's most stirring works, just beautiful.


I'm in the camp that never had a problem with Denardo Coleman, at least as a prepubescent. Even more so in retrospect, it's a fine idea, something entirely in keeping with other non-professional movements of around the same time (like some portion of the Scratch Orchestra), a notion perhaps also applicable to Ornette's own early trumpet and violin work, each featured here.


(Another dinkified image) I guess this has seen the light of day on disc; I have the Lotus LP that appeared in '80. From February, 1968 in Rome (according to discographies I've see--the album says 1967) with Izenzon, Haden and Blackwell. A good, rather loose set (Lonely Woman, Monsieur le Prince, Forgotten Children, Buddah [sic] Blues)--I enjoy Ornette with two bassists and percussion, though I've always found Izenzon and Haden to be very opposite kind of musicians, mostly with regard to the former's relative "thinness" of sound and the latter's resonant girth; makes for good tension here. Fine trumpet from Ornette on "Forgotten Children" and a rare (?) example of his shenai work on the last track. Did he introduce Redman to that instrument or vice versa?


Love this recording. For me, this is the one where Ornette's music really takes the step into what was my favorite period of his, even more so that the great early work. Redman's a big part of getting to that sound, the perfect, earthy foil for Ornette's spiraling tone. Beautiful, full sound from all, including Denardo.


See, that's what I call an album cover. Didn't realize until just now, looking over a discography, that this (and "New York Is Now!, which I have on CD) was recorded a bit before "Ornette at 12"; I'd always thought it came afterwards. Ornette's one date with Elvin Jones and Jimmy Garrison and the Coltrane rhythm section meshes just fine. Another muscular recording with a thick, juicy sound. Redman's ferocious on "Airborne", some of his finest vocalized playing on record. Doesn't get talked about enough.

More next time.

I used to talk about the new eating. One time Terry Riley said, "Yeah, even the cooks'll get rebellious. We'll walk into a hamburger stand and order something to eat. In a few minutes the cook'll give us some salt. Just salt. Then one of us will say, 'What? Is this all?' And the cook'll answer, 'Whatsamatter, dontcha like static eating?'"

- La Monte Young,
Tulane Drama Review
Winter 1965

Rhodri Davies/David Lacey/Dennis McNulty - Poor Trade (Cathnor)

Sometimes, there's a divide between sheer beauty of sound and underlying structure and in large part, this release demonstrates that. While not drones per se, the three pieces are each continuous soundscapes generated by harp, percussion and electronics and the colors heard are quite lovely and fascinating. But, perhaps akin to some of the music issued on Four4Ears recently, I don't hear too much in the way of backbone and the sounds aren't "airy" enough not to require it. There's often a pulse and, while at first blush I found that attractive, over the course of (especially) the longest track, it began to wear on me, somehow seeming to have little purpose aside from an unnecessary handrail. This is all very vague, I realize, but I'm trying to describe the swings I had back and forth between enjoyably bathing in the sonics and being frustrated at my inability to find solid conceptual ground. The two shorter (11-12 minute) tracks work better, managing to at least imply some kind of membrane beneath the hums. Not bad by any means but frustrating. It reinforces that, for myself, deep structure is what makes a music memorable, less so attractive sounds. But perhaps I'm missing something....Cathnor


David Lacey/Paul Vogel - The British Isles (homefront)

Coincidentally, on the same day as I received the above, this modestly titled disc also appeared in the mailbox, and it's a beaut. Due to Lacey showing up on both as well as their temporal proximity re: my ears, it's tough not to (unfairly) compare them. It's too simple to differentiate in terms of structure by saying that one's a non-stop stream while the other is segmented in various ways, thus the placement of sounds becomes inherently part of the structure, but....there's something to that. The balance achieved between types of sound (timbre, dynamics, texture, atmospherics) and how they're placed is very convincing, forming a very solid skeleton, though not an obvious one. Rhythms occur, but they don't push and they're rough around the edges. One of the better releases I've heard this year.

If homefront has a page (or if there's an image around for this one) I can't find it but they're available from erstdist

[Hey, here comes a cover image right now....]




Salvatore Dellaria/Adam Sonderberg - Untitled -> Ongoing

Something of an outlier. Dellaria and Sonderberg, both members of the very fine Dropp Ensemble, have put together fifteen "studies" culled from weekly get-togethers spanning 2007 & 2008. Essentially, these are bits of raw material from which they may or may not create "finished" compositions in the future. The styles thus spanned are vast, from the furious poundings of "Pulse" or "Drums" to field recordings to hums to crackles, etc.; brutally raw ("No-input mixing desk") to romantically delicate ("Piano"). It poses as nothing more than a sketchbook and, approached as such, it's a helluva lot of fun; not a weak drawing in the bunch. Best, you can hear for yourselves here

A meme going around (I found it at Caleb Deupree's fine blog):

The top 100 or so books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users. Bold the books you have read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish.

[If blogspot has underlining capability, I don't see it--suffice it to say that some of the below were read for school, maybe five or six. The Iliad, Odyssey and the Aenied stand out to me as things I should really get to.)


Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: A novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked: The life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault's Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela's Ashes: A memoir
The God of Small Things
A People's History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics: A rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity's Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood: A true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield

New CD player in place today (NAD C515BEE).

Had to initiate it properly, natch. Damn, does this sound great. Hadn't put it on in a while; will likely spoil me for listening to anything else for the next few days.

Sooooo good.

Anthony Patera/David Brown/Sean Baxter - Interference (emd.pl)

Prepared piano, prepared guitar and drums, a nice arrangement of instruments. Very...clatter-y. Almost sounds like a group of mbiras with serious spider-webbing in the resonators, muting the metallic nature of the bars with cottony strands. A little same-y over the long haul (five track, all occupying similar territory), but enjoyable enough getting there. On emd.pl Oh, and nifty packaging:




John Clair/Jed Shahar - Tennis (Fenimore)

Strong set from this local duo, ranging from rough industrial dronage ("car chase") to gossamer thin tones over ambient noise and chatter ("silver leaf linden"), and family arguments ("drop and drag"). On these first three tracks, I enjoyed the sonics very much but found myself wanting to hear a bit more structural rigor (as difficult as that is to define in this area). The last track delivers it--it's again essentially a rough drone, but the depth of field and the intermittent emergences of buzzes and ratchetings outside of the general drone provide the kind of aural scaffolding I was hoping for. Excellent piece, good, solid release. fenimore


Ecstasy Mule - Songs of Love & Redemption (Batterrie)

Not my cuppa, particularly, but if you're into Chadbourne-tinged, folk/blues weirdness with an urban-noise edge, Ecstasy Mule (Len37 and Casey G--Kurt?) will go down smoothly, the banjos, mandolins and drawled/moaned vocals nesting in nicely amidst the subway squalor.


Ecstasy Mule - Contemplates Hunting and Drinking When the Rainbow is Enuf (Batterrie)

Not so dissimilar, except revolving around read newspaper clippings relating to the disc's title, that is hunting accidents, etc., spoken over guitar noise, four mixes of more or less the same piece. The noise is OK; I could do without the recitation.
Both available from SquidCo


Emmanuel Mieville/Eric Cordier - Dispositif: Canal Saint-Martin (Xing Wu)

A sound portrait of the Centre d'Animation Jemmapes in Paris, created by the deployment of some 30 microphones all around the structure (concert hall, dance studios, offices, outside, etc.) then mixed live by Mieville & Cordier with some additional input from them via field recordings and computer. Wonderful stuff with an enormous range of sound (a favorite being something halfway between low brass and a very squeaky door). Great density. There are two shorter remixes, one by each musician (12&14 minutes as opposed to the 37-minute main piece) which, though fine, might be unnecessary as far as the disc as a while goes, but that's a quibble. Beautiful recording!


Jean-Luc Guionnet/Seijiro Murayama - Le Bruit du Toit (Xing Wu)

Guionnet's alto integrates better, for me, with percussion than those examples I've heard with electronics. I see Murayama was on a Fushitsusha album (self-titled, 1990, PSF, but I get those confused), so it's possible I've heard him before, but whatever, he's pretty impressive here, restrained enough, filling up the space with imagination and subtlety. This took a couple of listens to grow on me, but grow it did, especially the first of the two tracks. Xing Wu. Also available, I believe, via erst dist

******************

Read Branden Joseph's "Beyond the Dream Syndicate: Tony Conrad and the Arts after Cage". Decent read, interesting to me for all the documentation on NYC activity from about 1958-65, how people were dealing with the post-Cage world in music (including Cardew), a tough task and, in cases like the Conrad/Young affair, sadly with careerist, possessive overtones. It did make me want to check out Conrad's early work more closely than I have, including his films (especially 'Flicker', which I've never seen). Pretty good read, a little over-academic in the constant post-modern references.

Steven Hess/Miles Tilmann - Departures (other electricities)

A set of six tracks released on vinyl (relatively brief, about 1/2 hour). The initial impression was of a take on Jon Hassell's Fourth World music and while that tinge remained throughout, the bulk of the music is far more reminiscent of Radian, Hess not quite as supernaturally metronomic as Brandlmayr but in the same ballpark. "Departures" doesn't have the same bit, though. It's lush and easy to sink into, but I wanted to hear more grit, more urgency. The final cut, "six by six" comes the closest. Hear a bit for yourself at the OE site


Esther Venrooy/Heleen Van Haegenborgh - Mock Interiors (entr'acte)

Very smooth hums and drones, verging on the "too smooth" but never quite settling there, always containing an itch here, an uncomfortable squiggle there. Van Haegenborgh contributes piano and harmonium to Venrooy's electronics, keeping things generally tonal and calm. External sounds occasionally intrude, but overall the 11 pieces bubble and flow along, never quite achieving the depth of Venrooy's prior releases on the label, but enjoyable enough. For listeners wanting to get beyond Eno, etc. (btw, my copy came enswathed in black crepe--not sure if this was a packing decision or the intended packaging but, whatever, it was coolly mysterious)



Chamber Music Concerts, vol. 1 (Okura, Sugimoto, Unami) hibarislubloadfactor joint release, 3 discs.

Tom & Jerry (Sugimoto) One is tempted to hear this as a hyper-slowed down cartoon chase and violence scenario befitting its title. Organ (or an approximation thereof) and drum and silence. Fine subtle over- and undertones in the keyboard, good use of space, inevitably recalling kabuki. Oh, and those rising scales appear, a bit truncated. It's the kind of piece I imagine I'd having a tough time sitting through if in the same room, but could enjoy from an adjacent space as one sound-element in a larger situation. Not sure if that's complimentary or not, though I think Taku wouldn't mind.

one, two, three, and many (Okura) A relative plethora of sound with Xavier Charles (clarinet), Sugimoto (acoustic guitar) and Unami (acoustic guitar). As almost everything on this production, it's spacious; here the odd twang (reminds me a bit of Partch's kithara) offsets the occasional soft, reedy cry. It's warmer than the preceding piece and I could see enjoying it live, no problem. Nice work.

4 pieces for violin accompanied with 2 guitars (Unami). Same guitarists as above, this time on electric, along with Hiroki Chiba on violin. Meatier still (while remaining lean), in four shortish sections, the first featuring lovely held tones from the violin over struck and strummed guitar--excellent piece. Next, more agitated bow strokes, a staccato feel while the third is almost playfully pointillist. The final portion dissolves almost completely into small drops and smears. Interesting little suite...

Infold (Okura) for solo harp (Yuko Uesu)
--eh, didn't much for me...bland.

Thirteen Steps (Unami) for koto (Ryuko Mizutani), bass clarinet (Okura), acoustic guitar (Sugimoto) and "contraguitar" (explanation, please) (Unami). Again, despite the coloration, didn't grab me--maybe the pacing was too regular, dunno.

Life with Gravity (Okura) for trumpet (Axel Dorner), alto (Okura), and two electric guitars (the Taku's). More interesting, somehow. The repeated trumpet tones toward the end get quasi-hypnotic and the piece carves out a good space.

D (Sugimoto) for three electric guitars (Tetuzi Akiyama & the Taku's) Quite beautiful, kind of an attenuated version of his music from the "Opposite" period.

Chamber Orchestra I (Sugimoto) A septet including two voices, gradually won me over after a dry start--the repeated (every 30 or so seconds) guitar chords provide a friendly tonal center.

Bass Trombone & Chamber Orchestra (Sugimoto) Kanji Nakao on the low horn + two altos and three guitars. A minute of silence, a deep foghorn bellow, then a series of points and a handful of held tones, over only five minutes. The trombone does get a bit scalar...not to the piece's benefit.

Kinoshita-Kun (Unami) Quintet for violin, alto & three guitars. This one works quite well, nice offsets between long drones on the violin and brief guitar plucks, with the breathy alto acting as glue. Good one.

Uesu-san (Unami) Solo harp. Very beautiful track, its spareness interrupted mid-piece by a disturbing stereotypical harp flourish, clearly achieving the goal of disorientation.

Ezaki-san (Unami) For trumpet (Ezaki), trombone (Nakao) and tuba (Takero Sekijima). OK, but failed to compel real interest, maybe due to the similarity in tones. Interesting, in this extreme context, which structures work (for me) and which don't.

xc (Okura) Solo clarinet (Charles) eh, sounds like a warmed-over Braxton piece from 1977.

Red Scarf, Red Curtain (Okura) For violin and two guitars. Like the title, not the piece so much. A little high-strung and wheedling.

Tres Amigos (Okura) Three electric guitars. Getting a bit tired maybe, but again, didn't find anything special on this track. Reminded me of parts of Crimson's "Moonchild", not a bad thing, but...

California Guitar Trio (Unami) Beautiful work to end the set with, again getting into Partchian tonalities at certain points, dreamy with a tinge of queasiness.

So overall, obviously, a mixed bag but in general, I thought Unami's pieces took the cake. Happy to have as wide-ranging a collection as this one out there and if you're at all interested in the area, pretty much a must-have. Besides, I imagine opinions will vary as to the value of given works.

I believe erstdist is stocking them.

It's fairly rare in this neck of the woods to experience a concert made up of three different performances where each one was strong in its own unique way and where, looking back, you find yourself thinking of each of them almost equally and fondly.

At Issue Project Room this past Saturday, this was the happy situation, at least for myself--I get the feeling most there, while likely enjoying all three sets, were
knocked out by the final one and I can see their point. (Mudd, at I Hate Music, has a fine take of his own.

First up, however, was the duo of Bhob Rainey and Jason Lescalleet who are on schedule for an Erstwhile release sometime within a year or so. Taking best advantage of the long, rectangular space, Rainey situated himself more or less in the middle, Jason toward the rear though still having audience members behind him. Rainey began with a series of extremely controlled, very quiet breath tones, quite beautiful in and of themselves. Jason, I thought for a moment, was engaging in Sugimoto aesthetics, simply sitting behind his devices and listening for several minutes. Unbeknownst to me, he had placed four digital recorders on the music stand in front of Rainey and they were doing their work. Eventually he stood up, gathered in one of them, turned it on back where it had begun recording and placed it on the floor near the rooms entrance. Over the next 15 or so minutes, he did the same with each of the recorders, positioning them at various spots in the room. I thought this worked superbly, a fine example, I guess, of the sort of "process music" that bothers some fans but which I really love. Depending where one sat, I imagine you'd get varying ratios of live Rainey and taped and, for me, the piece lost a bit of focus as it went on but still hit some marvelous points, especially with Rainey interacting and blending with himself and the amplified room noise. Very fine set and sets ones anticipation at a high point for their eventual recorded collaboration

Next up was nmperign (Rainey and Greg Kelley) with Sean Meehan. You sort of know what you're likely to be in for with this particular combination and it's a testament to their deep musicianship that, even when this eventuates, there's more than enough going on that the listener can continue to hear things (s)he hadn't noticed before, pick up patterns previously unperceived. So, yes, it was quiet (I'm told Sean plays loud every so often, but I've never experienced this), the three used the kind of sounds they're known for but still, it worked marvelously, full of small peaks and valleys and never causing this listener's interest or fascination to waver. Plus, crucially, it was of precisely the right length, maybe 20-25 minutes, full to the rim and then cut off.

Graham Lambkin had wowed a few of us with his "Salmon Run", quickly followed up by the very fine "The Breadwinner" with Jason, this being something of a delayed record release event. Lambkin, until the prior evening in western Massachusetts, hadn't performed live in several years and never (I don't think) in this kind of improvising situation. He did rather well. The set had a wonderful form as a whole, even as it was subdivided into several sections; it kind of read as an album, in a way. Describing it all would be nigh impossible, but suffice it to say that Lescalleet was manipulating his noisemakers with both ferocity and sensitivity (none of the floor tape machines, btw, though two smaller ones on his table with correspondingly shorter tape loops employed) and Lambkin's feeds into that maelstrom were pointed and simply beautiful, including a recording of Ave Maria and an incredible choral piece which he later said he didn't know the title or composer of, though it was performed by the Tallis Scholars (If anyone knows, please inform me). The show climaxed--and the word is perfectly appropriate here--with Jason chanting a lyric from, I would be informed later (sorta proud not to have known) from a Kiss song, "You have such great expectations." He did this un-miked and fairly quiet at first, then made himself something of a human tape-loop, iterating the phrase at gradually increased levels of both volume and rage. Not sure if anyone was keeping count, but I'd guess that he was up over 25 times, by which point it had long since become an anguished howl, before things subsided. A little bit intense. One of the many things I love about Jason's music is his willingness to include "dangerously" emotional elements, things one could easily abuse and turn to schmaltz but with which he manages to retain a real rigor and clarity of intent. Powerfully done.

(I know, I know, that's not the proper cover--but I can't locate an image of one more than about an inch square anywhere....)

Toshimaru Nakamura/English (Joe Foster, Bonnie Jones)- One Day (Erstwhile).

Very tough, excellent recording, hard (for me) to fully grasp--don't know that I have, yet--but I like it a lot. I often have this problem with "open-circuit" musicians, probably not for any good reason--it takes a while for things to sink in. Might also have to do with the way this music straddles and hops around the middle ground between extended sounds and isolated ones. Just when you're beginning to appreciate something on a drone-like level (more hum than drone, actually), it breaks off and just when you're beginning to enjoy the placement of small, crackly sounds in space, a hum sets in. You kind of have to aurally "step back" and reconcile the two--or I do, anyway, and that's only one thing going on here. Took me a good four or five listens to do so and I'm happily bathing in the music at this point. Really good, really challenging. After all's said and done, maybe my favorite release this year.

[Ok, here we go--it's a beautiful cover, worthy of reproduction]




I never quite understand how certain items find their way to my mailbox, though I'm generally grateful that they do. This is, by my tastes, an odd example of that phenomenon. Loïc Dequidt's "Nomade" (Kopasetic) is a quartet date with the leader on saxophones, Tommy Smith (I take it something of an ECM veteran) on piano, Mattias Hjorth on bass, and drummer Peter Nilsson. [Edit: Oy, I'm an idiot--see comments below. That's what I get for not reading the credits more closely. My general evaluation stands, however] I guess there are many of these types of musicians around, that is, Jan Garbarek disciples, but it's still a bit shocking to hear what sounds for all the world like a mid-70s Garbarek session. Odder still that, were it the case, it would be a really good one, something maybe short of "Witchi-Tai-To" (though probably at least as good as "Nude Ants"), but not unreasonably so. Now, I don't particularly understand why one would want to replicate the music some 30 years after the fact, but if that's your thing, give Dequidt a try--very strong on its own terms.



A quartet date, recorded in 2003 but just released, with Mike Bullock (bass), James Coleman (theremin), David Gross (alto sax) & Steve Roden (voice, objects, electronics) on (1.8)sec. Solid, quiet (mostly) improv recording with, occasionally, a bit of a ritualistic sound, as in the second cut (an excellent one) where Roden & Bullock (I think?) set up a slow, deep pulse, Coleman and Gross breathing above--very effective. Some of the best work I've heard from those involved.


Inveterate loon (I mean that in a good way) Tom Djll has teamed up with electronicist/turntablist/film maker Tim Perkis in a duo called Kinda Green (recorded three or four years ago), and has issued a self-produced disc that may not be available anywhere other than through the principals (try Tom's MySpace page). While my exposure to Djll's music in the past has been relatively small, what I have heard tended to contain more of a wacky component than I was typically comfortable with. While there's certainly a healthy dollop of wackitude (including some echoes of Sun Ra's goofier synth work) herein, there's also a level of restraint at play, a sense of molding the burbling hysteria, that works pretty well. The highlight is the 23-minute "Sagebrush Drip Kyrie", a cool, low-key rumination with much subtle variation in texture and color that maintains focus and commands attention throughout, with minimal joking. Strong piece.

***********************

Went out to fotofono in Brooklyn for the first time last night, experiencing a reasonably satisfying trio of performances--Will Guthrie, (great to see you again, Will!) solo, constructed an enjoyably rocky and bumptious set making much use of heavy springs strung across inverted cymbals and other amplified objects and dangling wires; he elbowed his way toward a couple of fine coalescences of sound.

Barry Weisblat (electronics) and Andrew Lafkas (string bass) played an unusual set where both stayed, for the duration, in a fairly tonal drone area, Barry playing far more smoothly than I've ever heard him before, Lafkas bowing richly. For the first six or eight minutes, it was absorbing but then something--always fascinating to try, unsuccessfully, to quantify exactly what--went awry and the remainder of the music failed to gel.

Guthrie then returned for a trio with Howard Stelzer (excellent meeting Howie for the first time!) on electronics and cassettes and Newton Armstrong on laptop. As in the opening set, it was deliciously awkward and pothole-filled with some fine music emerging from the inevitable collisions. Very nice mass to the sounds.

Nice, intimate place, Fotofono, too--something of a living room where about 20 can fit with not too much discomfort.

*************

Just arrived and on now, sounding very good: Esther Venrooy/Heleen Van Haegenborgh - Mock Interiors (entr'acte)

Also listened for the first time to the 3-disc set, "Chamber Music Concerts, vol. 1" on (deep breath) hibarislubloadfactor), featuring compositions by Masahiko Okura, Taku Sugimoto and Taku Unami (details here). Some very beautiful stuff buried in there, generally more "full" than I expected, requiring numerous more listens, though.

“We’re not playing to musicians alone,” Donavon said, “We are playing to the public, you dig, and it’s time for some new music. You say that the Japanese know more about our music than we do? That’s cool–but we made it.”

That was my result, from George Lewis' "A Power Stronger than Itself", when Robert Kirkpatrick, from A Spiral Cage tagged me in this round of the net version of a chain letter, wherein one must:

1) Pick up the nearest book.
2) Open to page 123.
3) Find the fifth sentence.
4) Post the next three sentences.
5) Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

Thus, I'll annoy several blogging friends, forcing them to play along. Hereby tagged guten well are: Richard Harland Smith (contributor to Movie Morlocks), Pete Cherches (Word of Mouth) and Caleb Deupree (Classical Drone).

Have at it gentlemen...don't blame me!

[edit: I'm only into the second chapter of Lewis' tome, but so far it's very engaging. He's balancing academic and street reasonably well, thus far, maybe a bit overboard on the biographical details, but conjuring up a good picture of the Chicago bop and proto-free scene in the 50s and (halfway through Chapter Two) the racial divisions in NYC in the early 60s. Fun factoid: Joseph Jarman, Fred Anderson and John Cage apparently performed in concert around '68.]

There are people who seem to possess an inherent musicality, something in them that causes virtually everything they do to manifest as "musical". In jazz, Monk is often so cited ("He even walks musical"), an assessment with which I agree. For myself, another has always been Don Cherry. It's as though melody is coursing through his
veins. However far he ranged, however blistering or abstract his playing, there was always, at least up to a certain point, a sense of song there. One of my favorite musicians.

I believe I only saw him perform three times. The first was at the old Kitchen, on Wooster and Grand, I guess around '76, in a loose knit band with his wife Moki on tambura (I think) and two or three others I can't quite remember, possibly Frank Lowe among them. Maybe Badal Roy? In fact, if you're still reading here Mark Forman, I think this concert was where we first met, which would place it around October of '76.

Saw Cherry with Ornette in the summer of '77 at Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center, an amazing "double bill" with the Cherry/Redman/Haden/Blackwell quintet first, then Prime Time.

The last time was not so pleasant, a quartet date at a short-lived club on Houston St. called "Spiral", sometime in the mid 80s. Cherry was apparently in the midst of one of his bouts with heroin and was spaced out to the extreme, seemingly having little idea where he was, what was going on. Bob Stewart was with him on tuba (and was spectacular). There was a guitarist (I don't remember who) and a last-minute, young drummer who was clueless.





Playing through my Cherry vinyl, I begin with the two Mu sessions, two of the few original Actuel LPs I own (I have earlier Cherry, but on on disc). They still stand out for a kind of rawness, a real in-your-face recording quality that's very bracing. Great playing, of course (Blackwell, with Roach, still my favorite jazz drummer), wonderfully wide-ranging. I'm pretty sure these discs were my first exposure to the compositions of Dollar Brand.
















"Eternal Rhythm" remains my favorite recording under Cherry's name and, imho, one of the finest jazz records of the 60s. Wild, absurdly far-reaching from gamelan to the blues, awesome work by Sharrock and Karl Berger, an olio that has no business working but does so beautifully. More thoughts in my AllMusic write up here.


















Side One of "Relativity Suite" is just about as good, a gorgeous mini-suite that features some tremendous Cherry vocals (he's really one of my fave vocalists in jazz) and the sublime "Desireless", surely one of the loveliest melodies in the music. That wonderful rhythm in the 2nd section...The second side's more of a mixed bag but not bad at all, nice Bley piano and rousing Blackwell to finish up. Is this still not available on disc? iirc, Joe McPhee participated in rehearsals for this but couldn't make the recording date, a shame.

I have "Orient" as a double LP on Affinity (can't locate an image--currently available on disc with a cover showing an ant walking around a yellow fruit or lemon drop) though I think it's shown up in various guises. The first disc is a trio date from 1972 with Han Bennink and Moki Cherry. They begin with a version of "Desireless" then go out from there, a bit ragged but much fun. It's kind of a mess but Cherry was responsible for some glorious messes and that musicality and engaging spirit almost always carries the day. The other disc is from a concert with Okay Tamiz and the great Johnny Dyani. Should have been more Cherry/Dyani collaborations, two supremely musical fellows.

I think the album I have titled "Tibet" (on Picc-a-dilly) has also been issued elsewhere under different names--currently available combined with "Eternal Now"--recorded around '74, I think with Don Cherry (piano, percussion); Christer Bothen (piano); Bernt Rosengren (taragot); Agneta Ernstrom (tibetan bell, etc); Bengt Berger (piano, mridangam, etc). Good record, Cherry venturing out into areas even further removed from jazz, not playing trumpet at all, despite the cover photo. "Bass Figure for Ballatune" is a pretty amazing piece for pounded piano a la an especially vociferous Terry Riley.

Mighty big jump, chronologically as well as stylistically, to the next and final Cherry vinyl in the house, 1988's "Art Deco". Pretty widely heralded at the time for dopey reasons--Cherry coming back to the mainstream, showing those young lions a thing or two. It's smooth, accomplished and more than a bit bland. Nice quartet with James Clay on tenor, Haden and Higgins, Cherry's trumpet work is quite pure though lacking the passion of his best playing. Overall, I found the effort disappointing though I imagine, or hope, that the deal with A&M got him a bit of money. Some of his subsequent discs, particularly "Home Boy" & much of "Multikulti" were dreadful.

But overall a unique and wonderful musician. In peak form, probably no one I'd rather hear on trumpet. Thanks, Mr. Cherry.

I set foot on Staten Island for the third time in my life today. Staten Island, for those unaware, is a borough of New York City, one of five, though in virtually every respect--geographically, culturally, architecturally--it's part of New Jersey. There's an old neighborhood, St. George, near where the Staten Island Ferry docks after its trip from lower Manhattan, that retains vestiges of New York. The rest of the island, which is quite sizable, consists largely of private, middle-class houses--large and flimsily built--, many trees, strip malls and the world's most voluminous landfill.

I came here on a group trip when I was about 15, ostensibly to watch a Wagner College football game in the freezing, damp cold, ending up gallivanting around the campus with my friend Mike and two girls from Long Island we met at the field. (Now there's a memory that's remained undredged for many a year!)

About 15 years ago, my friend David and I biked to the ferry from the Upper West Side, took it over to Staten Island and toured the place, a fairly extensive, for me, ride of about 60 miles total. There are parts of it, when you get to the higher hills, where you think you might be in the Catskill Mountains, unpaved roads winding off into the thick woods, dead quiet, etc.

That's not where I was today.

A month or so back, Kurt Gottschalk contacted me, asking if I'd participate in a project, a realization of John Cage's "49 Waltzes for the Five Boroughs", written in 1977 and, as near as he could determine, only ever performed once. I knew the event was taking place but didn't for a moment think it appropriate to contribute. However, the score for the work instructs an individual to go to one of 147 designated locations (49 groups of three) and "do something". Kurt thought I could write about what I experienced there, particularly the sounds heard. Well, how could I refuse?

Being a Cage piece, I randomly generated a number between 1 and 49, garnering 26. Kurt had asked that, if possible, participants try to choose points on Staten Island as takers for those slots were likely to be harder to find. Having a car and easily able to approach from the Jersey side, I chose the one one of three possibilities so situated and come to find myself at the intersection of Richmond and Katan Avenues, settling in to write about what I hear, which I shall now proceed to do....

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(later that same evening)

Nice day. The results of this endeavor will be posted at wfmu.org at some future date. As far as I know, people played music, made field recordings, videos, etc. Not sure if anyone else simply observed.

One amusing thing, in a dopey way, is that when I came home, I realized I'd misread my location! Staten Island is known, technically, as Richmond County and the address was listed as "Katan Ave. and Ridgewood Ave. (Richmond)" which I senilely read as "Richmond Ave." which, in fact, exists. Turns out I was four blocks away from the proper point. Ah well, nothing wrong with a bit o' randomness....

It was a purely residential neighborhood with no convenient sitting place on any of the four corners. I'd found an elementary school a couple blocks away with a nice set of stairs and almost substituted that but figured I'd play it straight. One of the odd things was that, for all the extensive car traffic, there were virtually zero pedestrians. People don't walk there, apparently. I counted two in an hour and could often look up and down Richmond, about 1/2 mile of straight road, and see absolutely no one on the sidewalks.

Very enjoyable undertaking though. I do a reasonable amount of "Cageian" listening in the normal course of things, not as much as I might but more, I daresay, than your average Joe. But it's different when you're constrained to do so for an extended period and, more, to write about it. You concentrate better, or at least I do. It's be nice to have that level of clarity at all times. Maybe some do.

Drove back into Manhattan to meet up with other participants at the north end of Madison Square Park, beneath the statue of Chester Alan Arthur, exchanging stories from around the boroughs. While in Staten Island, one of the nice, almost giddy sensations was knowing that 48 [it turned out, 61] other people were engaged in some tangentially related activity at the same time, elsewhere in New York. Something rather comforting in that.

When the results are posted, I'll let people know.

Thanks, Mr. Cage!

Ingar Zach was kind enough to send me copy of the new ECM release, Dans les Arbres, on which he plays with Xavier Charles (clarinet), Ivar Grydeland (prepared banjo) and Christian Wallumrod (piano).

A digression into my ECM history--I was a pretty early fan, coming into the label shortly after it was launched, mostly due to its presence in the New Music Distribution Service catalog in the early 70s. Maybe the first thing I picked up was the Music Improvisation Company album, entirely because of Jamie Muir's being there (I was still listening to Crimson at the time), giving me my first taste of Bailey and Evan Parker circa 1973 or '74. Was pretty well hooked for a few years thereafter, including (gulp) the first Jarrett solo albums (I still like "Facing You", dammit), early Garbarek, etc. I place the initial appearance of what would become known as "the ECM sound" (more an approach than a sound, maybe) with something like Garbarek's "Dansere" or Eberhard Weber's miserably titled, "The Colours of Chloe". It was apparent in the late 70s, somewhat assuaged by the adoption of the Art Ensemble, Reich, etc.

But by and by, I began ignoring the label as such, making the occasional purchase when an individual release warranted it. Over the last five or so years, I don't imagine I've bough more than two or three. I think the last may have been Marilyn Crispell's take on Annette Peacock (partially successful, imho).

Anyway, aside from an interest in what Charles has been up to and usually enjoying Ingar's work, I was curious if the ECM aesthetic was still in force, still tending to dominate a recording.

Well, yes and no. "Dans les Arbres" is a pleasant enough album, at a couple of points (the two longest tracks) emerging into the richly enjoyable. It's moody (the track titles, if my French serves me well, allude to various aspects of ennui), the textures have a watercolor-ish air even as they refer to Cage's prepared piano works. But there is a slight scrim over the music, a bit of the ol' gauze the label's known for. Maybe I'm bringing in past prejudices, but I did want to hear a sharper projection, a little more of the rough and tumble that surfaces briefly when Charles gets combative. A good record and I'm guessing a damn sight better than much that ECM issues these days, but I'd be curious to hear the same quartet on a different label.


Mathieu Saladin - 4'33"/0'00" - As everyone and their brother know by now, a reworking ("amplification maximum") of the Gianni-Emilio Simonetti recording of the Cage work, originally issued on Cramps in 1974. Well, pretty good I guess, especially when played loud. The variation you can pick out is interesting the effect (almost automatically) assaultive and overwhelming. Curious how much of the noise is vinyl-related, how much purely from the ambient sounds in the original situation (I haven't heard the Cramps LP). Nice idea anyway. Amused to see a price of 4.33 euros on the back of the sleeve....


An LP on Simple Geometry from Tetuzi Akiyama and Jeffrey Allport, containing two sidelong improvisations. Widely spaced guitar twangs and other sounds (the latter from Allport, I assume), with abundant ambient noise. Nice and relaxed, very casual. Not gripping, especially, but then, I doubt it's intended to be. Totally fine to leave on in the background and let blend with your neighborhood.

I've never been the biggest fan of Chadbourne (as a musician--I really enjoy his reviews on All Music, think they're among the best at that site). I remember seeing him at Environ around 1977, I think with Zorn, Polly Bradfield and a few others, maybe David Moss. He had his rake out. But in the early 80s, I picked up a few records, enjoying some aspects, not others. He's one of a sizable number of musicians who I'd prefer hearing perform straight than out, in Chadbourne's case tending to mean doing covers of folk and country favorites. His political rantings, well-intentioned though they may be, tend to be painfully shallow, obvious and naive, especially when set against, say, a Phil Ochs song. He's more Roger Miller than Ochs. Plus the fact that he's a dead ringer for the primordial grandmother.

The lo-tech approach was pretty cool then and still has its charms--abrupt edits, crappy sound, etc. "Country Music from Southeastern Australia" is the out-est of this bunch, humorously packaged as an ethnic field recording and vacillating between C&W wannabee songs and random noise. David Moss, Rik Rue and Jon Rose accompany. It's kinda fun; I could imagine hanging out in some seedy barroom, enjoying these guys farting about, chuckling at the lowbrow humor, immediately forgetting it on the way home.



"Country Protest" (surprised there's not a larger image around) is slicker, Chadbourne employing some traditional players, and it works reasonably well. This is from 1986 and you can hear the kind of ADD collage that Zorn would shortly pursue in the opening medley which, over 11 minutes, includes 14 pieces, among them "A Whiter Shade of Pale", "Misty", "To Sir with Love" and "The Shah Sleeps in Lee Harvey's Grave". His cover of Ochs' "When I'm Gone" is as stirring as his original, "Perverts on Northridge", is puerile.



Lastly is his collaboration with members of The Violent Femmes, "Corpses of Foreign Wars". For my money, the best of the three, maybe not coincidentally the most rockish. Still mucho annoying in spots, sophomoric to the extreme, but the Ochs medley that closes the album (Outside a Small Circle of Friends/White Boots Marching in a Yellow Land/I'm Gonna Say It Now) is my single favorite Chadbourne performance in my very limited listening, very strong.

Still, I gave up after this, around 1987.

For good measure, let's include an entirely obscure piece of vinyl, one which I'm not surprised at all to be unable to find an image of, Jose Chalas' "Living on Avenue F", recorded in 1986-87 for Sunjump Records. Mid-80s, Lower East Side jazz rock, notable for containing one of Dave Douglas' earliest appearances on record (also features a group photo on the back showing Douglas resplendent in a full head of wavy hair, kinda funny). Jim Mussen, a drummer who worked a bunch with Elliott Sharp, is also on hand. Chalas plays guitar; the music isn't awful but is rather forgettable, a bit of electric Miles, funk, DX-7 sounds; almost coulda been a Laswell production. Don't think I ever heard of Chalas again.

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New Books:

Thomas Bernhard - Frost
Alan Licht - Sound Art
Nathan Dunne (ed.) - Tarkovsky

An unholy mess but, in large part, a goofily, sometime brilliantly enjoyable one. Fifty or so musicians, under Keith TIppett's direction, Fripp in the control room, splayed over two LPs, mostly in free jazz mode but with nods to rock and folk. Something of a Who's Who in London jazz and prog on those three days in June of 1971, although notably without anyone from the Bailey/Parker/Stevens (aside from Paul Rutherford) axis (much less AMM). But you have the South Africans Pukwana, Feza and Miller, a few Soft Machine-ites, Maggie Nichols, Julie Tippetts and many more.

There's a lot of bluster, too much I suppose, but the piece trundles along gamely, pausing for some lovely moments like the vocal/violin/bass section at the close of Side One, as hippily pretty as you could want. The Pukwana/Stabbins feature on the rockish portion beginning Side Two is jaunty and fun then careens into a proto-metal riff that's just charming in its innocent strutting. The string of solos that follows is fine though unexceptional (Alan Skidmore's tenor run is rather strong and heartfelt) and the rhythm section slogs things down a bit, but the anthem that closes out the projects first half remains as stirring as ever. This is probably the point I began falling in love with Julie Tippetts.

Things begin to fall apart somewhat on Sides Three and Four. A march with an intriguing melody but Crimsonesquely plodding rhythm swells in volume to levels that engender murderous reactions in spouses but to no great effect other than loudness. A rather inchoate free section follows; not too bad but formless. Most of the last side is given over to a kind of Mingusian theme that segues into a lilting section that might work save for the three drummers stumbling over one another. Nice saxello work from the late Elton Dean. A chorus enters to chant the naive but inoffensive lyrics, perhaps leftover from some Peoples Liberation Music event. This section stumbles on for an ungodly length of time whilst (that's for Pinnell) the horns have at it way back in the mix. There's a fake fade-out then the vocals meander back in. It closes unexpectedly, and pretty nicely, with a duo of Charig and Tippett.

Unwieldy as hell but with enough bright spots and an obvious abundance of enthusiasm to recommend it.

(btw, always enjoyed the images of those bottles. Was that technique--coating a clear glass bottle with pigment on the inside then affixing an pic on the exterior--in vogue at some time? I don't recall seeing it elsewhere, though it's attractive enough)

Christopher McFall was responsible for a good record last year on entr'acte and here's another on Gears of Sand, "Solemn Words for a Fabled Apparatus". I'm still at something of a loss to quantify how one criticize field recordings except, obviously, insofar as one can detect the degree of construction that takes place on the part of the assembler. Even then, it likely is at least something to do with how one does it oneself, that is, how one organizes ambient sound when in a situation where one is thinking about it, say, standing on a street corner listening to what's going on. In any case, I get the sense McFall has done quite a bit of post-recording organizing here--there's more than a whiff of Ferrari--and I like what I hear. It's full, curvy, a-bubble with sounds that seem, more often than not, to derive from air, fire and hums (as opposed to clatter of one kind or another). Almost as enjoyable as doing it oneself. Good work. gears of sand


There are things that baffle me. Groups like Happy House, for instance. Presumably named after the Ornette tune, the quartet (Olivier Benoit/guitar, Julien Favreuille/saxophone, Nicolas Mahieux/bass, Jean-Luc Landsweerdt/drums) doesn't sound like Prime Time, which would be anachronistic enough, but instead sounds like a recreation of early Jan Garbarek, even earlier than the fine ECM bands, I'm talking Esoteric Circle from about 1967 (especially the Rypdalian guitar). Now that was an excellent group and what Happy House does, I guess you could say it does well, but to what purpose? Flashy, muscular, proto-jazz rock 40 years after the fact. Interesting question why Esoteric Circle remains very easy to listen to while this is a chore, but...that's the case. circum-disc

Berlin Electronics (absinth)
absinth (with Michael Renkel at the helm, from what I understand) returns to the 4-mini disc release format, though in a 5x7 inch packaging. Within which, unfortunately, the discs are overlaid in pairs, two by two and then, when the envelope is folded, atop each other. In my case, this resulted in the surface of one disc adhering to the little nubbin holding another across the way and removed a few square millimeters of CD surface, rendering the disc unplayable. So I don't know what Andrea Ermke's music sounds like. Nice hand-painted covers in indigo encaustic, though.

Two of the others, those by Gilles Aubry and Ignaz Schick, didn't do much for me either, the former consisting of computer-generated sound occupying feedback-y territory and the latter, from someone whose work I've enjoyed in the past, combines "naive" sounds (flute tones, jungle-y thing) with electronics in a gauzy, kind of insubstantial manner that never connected for me. Both are OK but didn't really leave much of an impression.

The saving Grace is Annette Krebs' "Untitled III variations/Excerpt" (Couldn't locate a cover image on-line, hence the pic of Annette above). Her sense of structure almost always syncs up well with my own so that juxtapositions which, objectively, I might consider "awkward" or jarring seem to possess some elusive naturalness that I find fascinating to attempt (unsuccessfully) to unravel the whys and wherefores of. This one features a rather disparate sequence of sound elements, sometimes overlapping but more often one after another, kind of like an array of objects on a table, allowing the viewer/listener to make connection or not. For me, it works quite beautifully and, at 15 minutes, is of perfect length.

*********
Been playing "The Breadwinner" a bunch over the last couple of weeks as well. It's a really strong recording, certainly one of the best things I've heard this year. Almost automatically, though unfairly, I mentally pair it with "Salmon Run" (I do hear it as a bit more Lambkin than Lescalleet for whatever reasons). They each have different virtues. "Breadwinner" is solider, more viscous. The earlier release is stranger, more oneiric. On a given day, I prefer one to the other. But there's not a weak track on the disc, a very fine release.

Was thinking about Rackstraw Downes this afternoon. Don't know that I've mentioned him here before but he's a big favorite of mine among contemporary painters. Born in 1939 in England (where else would he come upon an incredible name like that?), he began as an abstract-expressionist but in the mid 60s veered into a very idiosyncratic kind of realism. His paintings, both in reproduction and in life, often don't look like so much at first glance. Well enough done, but that's about it. Until you begin to see a couple of unique attributes. One is his use of multiple perspectives in a single scene. I wish there were better examples available on-line--if anyone knows, please fill me in--but often his landscapes have a wide enough aspect to require his point of view to change several times getting from the left to right edge. So you get a kind of arcing effect, including a bending of the horizon. It's something that hit home to me as I did similar experiments at Vassar, for instance doing a studio interior on a largish sheet of paper, beginning by drawing something on the far wall small enough that the top and bottom of the page would require that I look almost straight up and down. Very hard to accomplish and Downes, needless to say, pulls it off with far more subtlety than I.

The other, not always in evidence, is that one can discern, by observing shadows in the painting, that there are several hours worth of observation in play, the vertical umbrae splaying out at different angles. This plus the fine sense of air he imbues, imparts a unique kind of life into his landscapes and cityscapes.

I also love his choice of subject matter which tends toward the "mundane" and "featureless":


He did a few in Jersey City as well, at least one I can remember from underneath the Turnpike extension at Newark Ave., a great location indeed.

Last saw a show of his maybe two or three years ago in Chelsea which had a few striking works. Check him out if you get the chance.

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reading:

Lucretius - On the Nature of the Universe (Sisco recommendation)
Sebald - Austerlitz
Chomsky - On Anarchism

Record Club core member Nayland Blake received a nice feature in the Sunday NY Times today, in the article on portrayals of racism in contemporary art. The pertinent part:

Ethnically neutral? That’s just a code-term for white, the no-color, the everything-color. For whiteness is as much — or as little — a racial category as blackness, though it is rarely acknowledged as such wherever it is the dominant, default ethnicity. Whiteness is yet another part of the postracial story. Like blackness, it has become a complicated subject for art. And few have explored it more forcefully and intimately than Nayland Blake.

Mr. Blake, 48, is the child of a black father and a white mother. In various performance pieces since the 1990s he has dressed up as a giant rabbit, partly as a reference to Br’er Rabbit of Joel Chandler Harris’s Uncle Remus stories, a wily animal who speaks in Southern black dialect and who survives capture by moving fast and against expectations.

In 2001 Mr. Blake appeared in a video with another artist, AA Bronson. Each had his face slathered with cake frosting, chocolate in Mr. Blake’s case, vanilla in Mr. Bronson’s. When then two men exchanged a long kiss, the colors, and presumably the flavors, began to blend. Shared love, the implication was, dissolves distinctions between “black” and “white,” which, as racial categories, are cosmetic, superficial.

Can't believe he couldn't have gotten them to squeeze in mention of Record Club but otherwise, way to go, Nayland! btw, the slyboots mentioned nothing about this on Friday. That's Bronson pictured above, incidentally. Here's a shot of the project's denouement: