VOTD 12/28/2023

 Fuzzhead:  El Saturn (Ecstatic Peace/Ecstatic Yod)

Purchased (used?) at Get Hip Records

So what about today's record? Fuzzhead. Knew nothing about them when I bought this, and in a sense I still don't. The cover is a mockup/parody of the BYG Actuel series, a tremendously important French label from 1969-1972 that released albums by Archie Shepp, Anthony Braxton, Sun Ra, Dewey Redman, Jimmy Lyons, among others. The back label is pasted on, reading: fuzzhead/"el saturn"/an entirely subjective visit to the sun ra musical omniverse". It also reads having been recorded August-November 1994 in Kent, Ohio. I might have bought the record anyway, but that last detail nailed it down.

With the name Fuzzhead, I expected something maybe more garage-rockish. And there's definitely that element to it, though the apparent addition of additional horns and voices it starts to sound more like El Saturn Records sessions at times. I discovered that the labels were reversed, so the well known "It's After the End of the World" and "We Travel the Spaceways" didn't occur when expected. The intended second side is more of a free-ish session, possibly recalling an even more primitive Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra or other Saturn releases.

Immediately dropping the needle, there's a haze of background noise and ambience. I'm not bothered by lower fidelity recordings, but I question them from a standpoint of "authenticity." In this case I''m recalling a conversation with Bruce Lentz, dedicated rock-n-roll fan and singer in straightforward punk/garage bands like Forbidden Five and Volcano Dogs. He was trying to produce an album at the time, and was dealing with varying opinions on the fidelity of the recording. He said that some people think that albums must have low fidelity and raw sounding to be any good; high quality ruins it for them. I told him I thought that was bullshit, that intensity does not mean it has to sound like garbage. To quote my friend Myles Boisen, "We can always make it sound shittier."

This album wouldn't have been the same if it was recorded higher quality. But, is it to evoke certain eras of Sun Ra's recordings, or just an attitude that the band needs to sound low fi? I mean, I've captured gigs on a Zoom H1 (not available to them at the time) that are noticeably sharper than this. 

As for the performances? It is unquestionably a view of Sun Ra's sound world. In that respect it is largely effective, albeit rather primitive in performance. Sun Ra always had a band with highly varied talents, often to his advantage. John Gilmore playing alongside Marshall Allen. 

I guess the world need reinterpretations of music such as this. My own instinct has been to dig into the compositions more, to continue to play some of the range of his pieces. We need more of both I think.