Orkhêstra Releases
4 Walls
"AND THE WORLD AINT SQUARE"
Orkhêstra ORK 001
Ferdinard
EN AVANT, EN FORME!
Orkhêstra ORK 002
Bruno Meillier
ONZE BONBONS
Orkhêstra ORK 003
After several years as one of France's leading distributors, the folks at Orkhêstra have launched their own label with three fine releases. 4 Walls (Phil Minton on voice, Luc Ex on bass, Veryan Weston on piano and Michael Vatcher on percussion) takes up where its predecessor Roof left off, with Weston replacing the late Tom Cora (one imagines that if someone else leaves, the next incarnation will be called Floor), in proving that improvised music can incorporate strong rhythmic drive and even conventional harmony into its wildest excesses with utter conviction. Minton's vocals on "The Anarchist's Anthem", a setting of an old and stirring poem by John Henry Mackay, are guaranteed to make hairs stand up where you didn't know you had any, and the interplay between the musicians is astounding. Vatcher shows himself once more as one of the most inventive percussionists around, Weston's wide knowledge of diverse idioms is used to great effect, and Luc Ex brings the raw energy of his veteran punk outfit The Ex to bear on proceedings throughout.
Ferdinand Richard and Bruno Meillier were both in the late lamented French RIO group Etron Fou Leloublan, and "En Forme" was originally released on Celluloid in 1980, "En Avant" dating from five years later. Both albums sound as strikingly original today as they must have done back then, with their wacky mix of languages (the lyrics for "En Avant" are printed in English, French and German, but the songs themselves are also sung in Vietnamese, Arabic, Polish, Spanish and Dioula - an African dialect) and odd instrumentation ("En Avant" features two basses and cello - Tom Cora, as it turns out). In the predominantly insipid if not downright dull world of French pop, albums as good as these stand out a mile - those interested in how the intricacies of prog rock fused with the raw punch of punk owe it to themselves to check this out.
Since his Etron days, saxophonist / flutist Meillier has followed a singular path, releasing several duo albums with Ferdinand Richard and a steady flow of solo projects of which "Onze Bonbons" is the latest. Using a Sherman effects box, a Roland synthesizer and a small mixing desk, Meillier crafted the eleven tracks on offer here at home outside Saint Etienne between 1996 and 2001, and their diversity reveals his love for and understanding of musicians as diverse as Pan Sonic and Toshi Nakamura (with whom he recorded the album "Siphono" on his SMI imprint a couple of years back). Though thoroughly familiar with the latest developments in improv, "Onze Bonbons" also reveals an abiding affection for harmonic structure and song form along with a lightness of touch and sense of humour sadly lacking in much contemporary electronica. Sweet.
THE KING OF NOTHING HILL
Barry Adamson
Mute 117-2
Since his stint as a Bad Seed from 1984 to 1986, Manchester-born bassist and songwriter Barry Adamson has released ten solo albums which basically revisit the same territory (and "The King of Nothing Hill" - after "The Man With The Golden Arm" and "The Taming of the Shrewd" one would have thought he'd have had enough of lousy puns - is no exception to the rule): imaginary film noir soundtracks (I wish I had $10 for every time I've seen the word "noir" on or associated with Adamson - I could buy a car), well-versed in studio tricknology, positively revelling in the hyperbole of early Blaxploitation movie scores, from the wicka-wicka rhythm guitar to the top-heavy horn arrangements. Thirty years down the road from "Superfly" though, it's rather hard to take a track like "Black Amour" seriously, with its adapted "What's Going On" samples and sub-bass sexy vocals (is that Uncle Isaac or the other Barry?) - what makes matters worse is that Adamson's talents as a lyricist aren't on a par with his arranging skill, and this time there aren't any guest vocalists to save the day, as there were on 1996's excellent "Oedipus Schmoedipus". Unless a real major box-office soundtrack proposition comes his way (and the brief appearance of one of his pieces in David Lynch's "Lost Highway" doesn't count, I'm afraid), it's hard to imagine this music appealing to anyone other than those who grew up with his earlier work with Howard Devoto and Nick Cave.
THE DISINTEGRATION LOOPS
William Basinski
2062 NO NUMBER CD
Though completed before the infamous 11th of September, "The Disintegration Loops" features a cover photo of the downtown NY skyline taken that day from Basinski's Brooklyn apartment, and the dedication of the music "to the memory of those who perished as a result of the atrocities" more or less rules out any purely objective judgement of the musical content of the album. The story goes (and its inclusion is also an essential part of package, giving the album a quasi-mythical/mystical status it doesn't deserve) that Basinski was transferring some old pieces from reel-to-reel tape to digital format when he noticed that the tape itself was cracking up. ("Tied up in these melodies were my youth, my paradise lost, the American pastoral landscape, all dying gently, gracefully beautifully.") The album contains two tracks, respectively 63 and 11 minutes in duration (the second, more harmonically complex and sinister track is richer), which are essentially, as one might expect, slowly decaying loops of orchestral music which sound as if coming from far away, even from underwater (Gavin Bryars' "The Sinking of the Titanic" comes to mind, as does his "Jesus' Blood.."). It's quite touching if you're in a meditative frame of mind, though I seriously wonder if it would have attracted the attention it has without the 9/11 connection.
SANNYASI
Paul Flaherty / Greg Kelley / Chris Corsano
Wet Paint 3001 (Wet Paint Music, POB 1024, Manchester CT 06045)
After years recording in relative obscurity for specialist labels, saxophonist Paul Flaherty has, after two extraordinary releases on Boxholder ("The Ilya Tree") and Byron Coley's Ecstatic Yod label ("The Hated Music"), taken the plunge and set up his own Wet Paint imprint, run from his home base in Manchester, CT. Trumpeter Greg Kelley, who partnered Flaherty on "Ilya Tree" and drummer Chris Corsano, who tore it up with the saxophonist on "The Hated Music", return to the fray for the seven tracks that make up "Sannyasi". The excellent recording makes it abundantly clear yet again that Flaherty is an absolute monster, with a wide range of sonorities on alto and tenor and a deep-rooted knowledge of jazz that can't resist making its presence felt - on form, he's easily as impressive as Sabir Mateen and the late Glenn Spearman, and it's a mystery why he isn't playing the William Parker circuit with the rest of them. Corsano is a powerhouse of a drummer and Kelley demonstrates once more that he's a master at creating beautifully structured solos (on "Blood Whisper" his fragile upper register flurries recall Don Cherry) as well as pushing the envelope of trumpet techniques to the limit (check out "Cloud of Unknowing"). Flaherty too can take it way out when he wants to: "Secret Stair" finds him doing the kind of thing with the mouthpiece we normally associate with Kelley's nmperign sparring partner, Bhob Rainey. Yet, for all its experimentalism, fire and fury, there's much lyricism here, a great sense of space (perhaps due to the absence of a bass to anchor the music), and genuine warmth all too often lacking in the latest offerings from the young lions of Chicago. Daub yourself with the paint before it dries.
ROOTS CONTROLLER
Misty In Roots
Realworld 7087 6 17408 2 0
With typical press razzle-dazzle, billing this as a new Misty album when barely half of it features new songs is pushing it a bit. Any new material by the group (John Peel's all-time fave reggae outfit and something of a UK cultural institution) is cause for celebration though, and Walford Tyson's vocals still make the hairs stand up. The production and arrangement, especially on "Cover Up", documenting the racist of murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence (the Nazi thugs responsible were known to the police, but they still walked) is superb. Elsewhere, the group redo "How Long Jah!" from their first (and best) album, "Live at the Counter Eurovision 79" (People Unite, PU 003.. reissues anyone?), but for some reason don't rework "Follow Fashion" and "New Day" (from the "Earth" album, PU 102), opting instead for the original version complete with woefully out-of-tune piano. The inclusion of "Man Kind" and "Ghetto of the City" from their 1979 debut (personally I would have preferred "Judas Iscariote" and "Sodome and Gomorra") is nothing short of a cop-out, and the absence of their best-selling single "Jah Jah Bless Africa" is curious, given the album's retrospective leanings. It's a shame they couldn't have cut four or five new tracks instead of having to fall back on old repertoire, but that's the way it goes.
The Stockholm Monsters
ALMA MATER PLUS
LTM CD 2330
THE LAST ONE BACK
LTM CD 2335
ALL AT ONCE
LTM CD 2337
"I loved them and couldn't sell them," Factory records guru Tony Wilson moaned in the liner notes to the 4CD retrospective box set "Palatine" documenting the rise and fall of his label in the 1980s. It took me five years of patient trudging around Manchester record stores before I finally tracked down a copy of the Stockholm Monsters' one and only album on the label, "Alma Mater" (FACT 80, 1984.. the group also released just a handful of singles on Factory and its FBN sublabel), so the release of the group's entire catalogue including demos, pre-release mixes and live tracks, and a splendid essay by James Nice, is cause for celebration, at least in my house. The Monsters (who, of course, never got anywhere near Stockholm in a brief career which fizzled out in 1987) found themselves in the right place - Manchester - at the wrong time: they arrived too late to ride the cold wave of Joy Division (the influence of Ian Curtis is present in Tony France's gloomy lyrics and the raw sound of the nascent New Order is the obvious reference point for "Alma Mater", produced as it was by Peter Hook) and fell apart just before the short-lived blaze of Madchester glory spearheaded by label mates Happy Mondays. Though it can't be said that they were highly original (who was in the mid 1980s?), the Stockholm Monsters produced a music that was a fascinating if flawed synthesis of the English pop music of the period. Their early demos are fine examples of how punk metamorphosed into new wave - the stodgy two-chord, two-note riff of "Copulation" (Buzzcocks on downers) evidently derives from the inanity of the former, while the brutal electronics and the Lydonesque vocals of "Catch Me In Confusion" clearly reflect the influence of the latter. As a singer, Tony France was just as lousy as New Order's Barney, but the perverse tendency to record in keys which pushed his voice way above its natural register adds a poignant desperation to his lyrics: "Decalogue", from "Alma Mater" would easily rival the best of Joy Division if it had that extra touch of production magic (Martin Hannett, perhaps - though he didn't do so well on the earlier "Fairy Tales"). That the group's sound bore the indelible stamp of Factory is also perhaps responsible for their demise - had they had access to opulent production and classy string arrangements, a song as truly magnificent as "Partyline" would have taken its rightful place as one of the great anthems of 1980s British pop music. They might even have played Stockholm.
A helluva salsa band, right?
Sei Miguel
STILL ALIVE IN BAIRRO ALTO
Headlights H05
Manuel Mota
FOR YOUR PROTECTION WHY DON'T YOU PAINT YOURSELF REAL GOOD LIKE AN INDIAN
Headlights H04
Carlos Zingaro
CAGE OF SAND
Sirr 2007
Sei Miguel plays muted pocket trumpet, sounding at times not unlike Chet Baker, and the rest of his band consists of Fala Mariam on alto trombone, Manuel Mota and Tiago Brandão on guitars (Mota taking on more of a solo role), Margarida Garcia on twin (which on the photograph seems to be a two-string electric bass), and two percussionists, Monsieur Trinité and César Burago. Looks on paper like the line-up for a helluva salsa band, right? You couldn't be further from the mark: I am prepared to bet that trumpeter Miguel's music is unlike anything you've ever heard. Like his earlier earlier "Showtime" (Fabrica de Sons, FS 100.002, 1996), there's just one piece on "Still Alive..", a 40 minute track entitled "Favourite Places in Time". Miguel's working method, as described in a letter to Rui Eduardo Paes published in Revue & Corrigée in September 1999, is to work individually with his musicians to familiarise himself with their personal "micro-traditions" before incorporating their individual virtuosity into a "personal and transmittable" score. Although the instrumentation inevitably recalls jazz (which Miguel describes brilliantly as "a trans-idiomatic music with a cosmic vocation whose relatively mysterious origins lie in the explosion of various traditional musics, 'deported' and later 'magnetised' by the blues"), the structure of the music has more in common with Cage. There are no themes as such, no strong unifying pulse element, and never a sense of solo and accompaniment, since each musician effectively solos all the time. Players have their own material (quite restricted in nature for the bass and percussion) and their own space/time to articulate it in, and the piece as a whole admits the resulting polyphony without questioning, managing to sound both intelligently cool and emotionally sensitive at the same time. The fact that all the band members are photographed wearing cat masks may be significant: they all know how to purr contentedly while remaining inscrutable and fiercely independent.
The sense of space in Miguel's music is also evident on Manuel Mota's "For Your Protection.." (on which the guitarist is joined by Margarida Garcia on bass). Most improvised music these days ends up either as a frenetic prestissimo or a chillingly minimal lento molto: there's no andante, no mid-tempo, if you will. Mota and Garcia take up where Derek Bailey's 1970s solo albums left off - they take their time to explore technical and structural problems without any apparent desire to be virtuosic for its own sake. Mota's playing recalls Bailey at times (inevitably), but there are also touches of Joe Morris, Roger Smith, and Sonny Sharrock (in his quieter moments) and a host of others - it reminds me of saxophonist Sam Rivers' line about listening to as many other players as he could "to make sure he didn't sound like any of them". The music the duo produces is as tangy as a glass of freshly-squeezed orange juice in the Jardim d'Estrela on a sunny summer morning.
Violinist Carlos "Zingaro" Alves may be something of an elder statesman in the world of Portuguese improvised music, but his mastery of real-time electronic transformations is as state-of-the-art as you're likely to need. "Cage of Sand" is the most impressive solo work he's produced since "Carlos Zingaro Solo" back in 1989 (and that was notable principally for the seven second echo of the monastery where he recorded it). Don't let Marc Behrens' austere cover photography and track titles like "Logic and Ordered Space" and "Sedimentary Deposit of Suffering" put you off: this is real from-the-gut playing, beautifully recorded and it richly repays repeated listening.
COAGULATION
V.V.
Note
C.I.P. / Crank Satori
Panicsville / Vertonen
COAGULATION
C.I.P. 010 7"
The first of the six (unnamed) tracks on Ven Voisey's "Note" starts out cutting and splicing between various field (street?) recordings and eventually gives way to a slow crescendo of buzzing drones leading to a white noise blowout at 7'23". It can be quite atmospheric: track five's slowmotion sinewave loops pulse gently in a desolate rainswept landscape, but much of the album is given over to vast, imperceptibly evolving noisescapes which sound like what you'd expect to hear coming from your TV speakers if you tried to watch it a mile underground. In the context of an installation, heard in a gallery space where listeners are free to move around, this might be more impressive - when listened to as a humble CD, with or without headphones, there inevitably comes a time when the attention wanders. In contrast, the 7" collaboration between Panicsville (aka A. Ortmann, on keyboards, electronics and, er, packing tape) and Vertonen (Blake Edwards, metals, guitar, turntable, electronics) is a livelier affair, with mangled opera, eerie clangs, and some rather nostalgic Moog swoops (the locked grooves sound great). It's stylistically a bit scattered - intentionally so, one presumes - but fast-moving enough to keep you guessing.
Where are they now ?
Former PTM correspondent and critic writes us the following...
Mi Amigos y Amigas -
Hello!
As you know, I can't seem to stay in one place. I go here, there, and everywhere. Such is the lot of my life. I am living in Seattle right now, working as an Internet developer. But my contract ends September 13th. So I needed to find a new job.
Guess what?
I have a new job. I am now a bartender, un barman, el cantinero.
Where? Ou? ¿Donde? At the Hotel Poseidon, in Jaco, Costa Rica!
http://www.hotel-poseidon.com
I will start my new job November 1st. My cousin owns the hotel and it's going to be a blast. I have lived in Costa
Rica before, and Jaco is a lot of fun. Hotel Poseidon has the best restaraunt in town:
I know, some of you are thinking to yourselves - "Jethro, you have never been a bartender!" That's why I need your help! You must come visit and show me how to make your favorite drink if I do not know it. You know it will
be COLD and DARK this winter. Costa Rica is really your only choice.
You can always contact me by this email, of course. So, I am waiting to see your pretty face in sunny, beautiful Costa Rica. ¡Pura vida!
- Jethro
Pax Recordings
rev.99
TURN A DEAF EAR
Pax Recordings PR90251
EVERYTHING CHANGED AFTER 7-11
Pax Recordings PR90255
rev.99 is a collective featuring 99Hooker on "chaos poetry / electrified sax" (it says here), along with various Bay Area notables, Ernesto Diaz-Infante (guitars, piano..), Chris Forsyth (guitar), Akio Mokuno (computer, electronics) and Ross Bonadonna (credited rather interestingly as "mix master").The magnificently-titled "Everything Changed After 7-11" also features contributions from other musicians, ranging from Donald Miller and Bob Marsh to a clarinettist called m_ and someone called LX Rudis on "electric detritus and discarded things". As projects go, it's as American as apple pie - the tradition of marrying poetry and jazz goes back to Rexroth, Ferlinghetti and Kerouac (and later spawned John Giorno's GPS label), the incorporation and ironic misuse of snippets of white-bread redneck FM radio fuelled 1980s American hardcore, the inspired instrumental "fuck technique" amateurism recalls the furious saxophony of Beefheart and the lunacy of the Sun City Girls, and the general patchwork quilt polystylistic collage aesthetic includes figures as diverse as Ives, Sun Ra, Mayo Thompson and Mr Bungle. Hooker's declamation is far from the demented machismo of Henry Rollins, but has the same flair for anecdote and comes up with some memorable lines (it's a shame the track "Britney Spears Autopsy" had to be removed from "Everything Changed.." for legal reasons - I hope a bootleg will soon be circulating). The accompanying music runs the gamut from all-out improv to perverted ambient and sinister cocktail piano, and if you enjoy the music of the artists cited above, this is probably right up your street, though the sheer stylistic diversity coupled with the length of the albums tends to try the patience - probably intentionally so. A bit of judicious pruning wouldn't have gone amiss.
The Sonorous Landscape
Opus One CD 162
Contact Info: Box 604, Greenville, Maine 04441 USA
Reviewed by Nico Sharyshkin
Music of George Boziwick, Mary Jeanne van Appledorn, and Reed Holmes
Opening with a beautiful piano and marimba work by George Boziwick, this CD is a little gem of recent American chamber music. Boziwick’s First Dance sparkles with energy: Loretta Goldberg and Kory Grossman play beautifully, and make the most of the rhythmic fun in a back-and-forth dialog.
Mary Jeanne van Appledorn’s Incantations for Trumpet and Piano could have stumbled against the all-too-obvious bombastic sounds inherent in this combination...but in fact it almost transcends the genre. Squarely solid writing with a touch of humor make this a very successful and worthwhile piece, and show off both the pianist’s and trumpeter’s chops to good advantage.
Reed Holmes is represented by one solo cello piece which leaves us wanting more gravitas, and two electronics-only works, which are catchy but lacking in substance...a certain type of minimalism which just riffs on in a jumble of nice tonal chords. What’s this trying to say? But keep listenning : Electric Symphonies has a surprise and compelling ending. Unfortunately Drumfire has no good ending to justify its beginning nor its middle for that matter, nor anything else.
Listen to a Real Audio Clip: George Boziwick: First Dance (excerpt) Loretta Goldberg, piano and Kory Grossman, marimba.
James Tenney
FORMS 1-4
hat[now]ART 2-127
James Tenney, after many years of fruitful contact with the many diverse branches of American 20th century avant-garde and experimental music, settled in the 1980s on a compositional method using pitch material derived from the overtone series (a frequent way out of the pitch-deaf impasse of total serialism), and the "Forms", dating from 1993, use this in conjunction with the rhythmic time-bracket notation developed by John Cage for his late "numbers" pieces (the duration of individual tones is determined by performer/instrument-dependent criteria such as bow and breath length). The four works present slowly shifting tonescapes of great harmonic coherence and simple beauty, and are performed with dedication and precision by the Musikfabrik Ensemble. They make an interesting comparison with both the French musique spectrale (whose proponents, notably Tristan Murail and Gérard Grisey, remained, despite themselves, anchored in the sound world of Debussy and Messiaen) and the more rugged and harmonically acerbic spectralism of Giacinto Scelsi and Horatiu Radulescu. With their clarity of timbre and purity of harmony, Tenney's "Forms" are also logical continuations of the American tradition; not surprisingly, each is dedicated to the memory of one of the four composers who arguably have had the most influence on 20th century American composition - Edgard Varèse, Stefan Wolpe, John Cage and Morton Feldman - and Tenney's works are interleaved with representative examples of their work. The reading of Varèse's "Octandre" (1923) is correct but curiously lyrical, somehow at odds with the structuralist hard edge of the music, but Wolpe's 1971 "Piece for trumpet and seven instruments" is more ebullient, and features fine playing from trumpeter Marco Blaauw. Also included are Cage's "Seven" and the world premiere recording of Feldman's "Numbers", written back in 1964, whose rich chromaticism complements Tenney's spectral harmonies to perfection.
Lonnie Liston Smith
EXPLORATIONS: THE COLUMBIA RECORDINGS
Columbia Legacy C2K 86588 2CD
This double CD is a reissue of pianist Lonnie Liston Smith's four albums for Columbia, "Exotic Mysteries", "Loveland", "Love is the Answer" and "Song for the Children", originally released between 1978 and 1980, when the razzle dazzle of disco was starting to flatten out the hard edges of funk into something more dancefloor-friendly. After the warmth of his classic albums for Bob Thiele's Flying Dutchman label, some smart alec at Columbia teamed Smith up with Bert de Coteaux, whose rhythm arrangements, often doubling Marcus Miller's bass and Lino Reyes obtrusive kick drum, managed to stomp nearly all the magic out of Smith's material, effectively walling it up in a 4+4+ (ad infinitum) metrical prison. When the tempo slows, instead of the genuine lyrical beauty of tracks like "Beautiful Woman" and "Naima" (on 1974's vintage "Cosmic Funk"), we get the airbrushed elevator music of "Quiet Moments" (hands up who hasn't heard this one before?). Harmonically, Smith was still playing around with the same chords as he was back with Pharoah Sanders and Gato Barbieri, but the thrill has gone - his spacey solos on "Exotic Mysteries", "Mystical Dreamer" (and any number of other similar tracks spread across these four albums) wander around aimlessly like bored teenagers in a shopping mall. Mark trees and flexatones shimmer and swoop gently in the background, Afro-Brazilian percussion hoots and pops amiably along, David Hubbard's sexy sax slinks around the mix, and Marcus throws a few thumb slaps in now and then to raise the temperature from cool to tepid. Perhaps these albums had some demographic impact at the time (one wonders how many babies were conceived while listening to this, the quintessential "leg over" music), but their reissue now is something that only obsessive Lonnie fans and nostalgic forty-year old bachelors can get enthusiastic about.
HEAVY META
Greg Goodman / Henry Kaiser / Lukas Ligeti
Ecstatic Yod e#76/FYPC22
Recorded back in 1996 and originally intended for release in 1998 on the K'EY label, "Heavy Meta" is hailed as a welcome return to recording of pianist Greg Goodman (though "They Were Gentle and Pretty Pigs" with Mats Gustafsson and George Cremaschi, on Goodman's Beak Doctor label, is more recent). He's joined by guitarist Henry Kaiser (the two have been playing together for over two decades) and drummer Lukas Ligeti in eight tracks that will push your CD player to the limit (total duration 79'50" - beware those with older machines). In the good old days this would either have been a double album or some serious selection would have taken place - I'd have opted for the latter. Goodman is an agile and inventive pianist with a great ear and killer technique, but more than an hour's worth of the equally loquacious Kaiser and Ligeti is exhausting. I suspect Ecstatic Yod's Byron Coley just couldn't bring himself to axe a track like "Tasurim", with its four minutes of remarkably Garcia-like electric guitar. Kaiser's acoustic playing prompts inevitable comparison with Derek Bailey - Kaiser makes no secret of his admiration for the Englishman - but his fabulous rubbery bass playing on the opening "Logical Types" is in a world of its own: only Jamaladeen Tacuma on Blood Ulmer's "Tales of Captain Black" comes close. Ligeti is an impressive and stylistically wide-ranging drummer, but he doesn't seem to leave himself (or anyone else) much space to breathe. Complex polyrhythms don't have to be exhausting - maybe Lukas could bum a lesson or two from Milford Graves. Goodman throws himself into the fray with gusto and good humour - this is fun to listen to, certainly not an exercise in angst-ridden piano bashing - and if you've got the listening stamina, there's much to enjoy.
Copyright 2002 by Paris Transatlantic
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