CDOTD 5/23/2024

 Beppe Grifeo: Altri Destini (Iktius)

Acquired through trade

I know I can get obscure in my blog postings. I never want to fall into the trap of trying to like something due to its relative obscurity, nor put something down due to its popularity. The first music I really remember listening to was The Beatles. 

I write that because, who's Beppe Grifeo? I can't recall how it is he came into contact with me. This CD dates to 1998, I have another from 2000, so it would have been some time after that. This would have been the era before Facebook and Twitter (I refuse to call it X), the days of listservs and emailing lists. What details I have forgotten, the connect was made through out mutual interest in Sun Ra.

By the way: May 22 was Sun Ra's birthday (or as fans put it, Arrival Day). Marshall Allen turns 100 in a couple of days. I surely must acknowledge that.

I corresponded with Beppe a little, him in his broken English, me knowing no Italian at all. We traded CDs. There's no money in making CDs in my experience, this is the best reason to have them pressed. Being at least the year 2000 or more, Water Shed 5tet would have broken up (or nearing so) by this time. I would have played my Yoshi's (Oakland, CA) Sun Ra tribute gig, which more or less led to OPEK happening here. 

I have three of Beppe's CDs. Who knows how many of them came to the US? Whatever I sent him must be some of the only recordings of mine to land in Italy.

One of those CDs is Beppe playing a program of Sun Ra. This one is more varied: a little Sun Ra ("To a Friend"), a Walt Dickerson piece ("Astro" from his session with Sun Ra), interpretations of Ornette, McLaughlin, Coltrane, Terry Riley, and Irene Schweizer (!), plus some original Grifeo mixed in. All solo piano.

Beppe's not a particularly flashy player, though he's hardly lacking in skill. The hottest he gets is playing on Terry Riley, flashes of notes on "15/16". I get the sense that he's definitely listened to that era of jazz, late 60s free and modal jazz. 

To me, programming counts so much. Beppe sounds good here, but I'm very attracted to his choice of material. John McLaughlin's "Peace of Mind" (a Shakti piece I think) is given a relaxed reading for its 2:29 length, with some inside-the-piano playing. 

I looked up Beppe's website. The most recent gig listing was from ten years ago. Hope you're well, brother, and still playing music. 

CDOTD 5/17/2024

 Jimmy Giuffre 3: Jimmy Giuffre 3, 1961 (ECM) (disc one, Fusion)

Purchased used years ago, I don't remember where. 

Today is my wedding anniversary, #38. That has nothing to do with my listening choice today. My father told me when he entered the chapel, all the weird looking people were sitting on one side, the normal people on the other, and he knew which side he was supposed to sit on.

My choice has more to do with having gotten a COVID booster yesterday, and I ache all over. Didn't feel like a day for metal, industrial, or even Stockhausen. While there's an intensity to this group, it is quiet nonetheless.

I never really modeled my playing on anyone in particular. There have been important performances and recordings, but I never listened to anyone and thought, "I want to sound like him". That said, I love Jimmy Giuffre's clarinet playing and I'm certain some of it has rubbed off on me. I find it very interesting that, even though he was historically primarily a tenor saxophonist, he devoted himself strictly to the clarinet for a number of years. 

The three in this case was rounded out by Paul Bley on piano, Steve Swallow on upright bass. The program mostly Jimmy's works, with two by Carla Bley. Giuffre's compositions sound quasi-tonal, sort of cool and intellectual, but retain a vague feeling of the blues. The lack of drums gives the group a lack of push and drive, and places much more of the emphasis on the harmonies. The music floats but never becomes completely unmoored. Perhaps the description of highly focused is better than intense.

There's a story that this group played the Crawford Grill in the Hill District in Pittsburgh. This was the club that saw performances from John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Charles Mingus, and many other legendary musicians in the late 50s-mid 60s. It would have been somewhere approximately at the time of this album. The band played one set and the owner told them afterwards, that's okay, you're done. 

The tale points out the tension of this music (or any, really) as art vs. entertainment. The two aren't necessarily mutually incompatible, more of a sliding scale or pie graph. Even that's too simple; Duke Ellington could be said to have been an entertainer in some ways, but there's no question as to his artistry. 

Jimmy deserves more love and credit, he's one of the greats.

CDOTD 5/16/2024

 Karlheinz Stockhausen: Mantra (Accord)

Purchased in a Manhattan record store, possibly the midtown Tower Records

I have a lot of unread books around here. I'm trying to buy fewer, though I will indulge myself sometimes. I had been wanting to buy Robin Maconie's book Other Planets: The Complete Works of Karlheinz Stockhausen 1950-2007, but I decided I would not order it until I had finished several other books I have around here. Thankfully, I have access to several good libraries, and there was a fresh, barely looked-over copy in the Carnegie Mellon library. 

Karlheinz Stockhausen. There's a lot to unpack there, more than I can in a single blog post. And important and (to use a cliche) towering figure? No question. A self-absorbed lapsed Catholic quasi-mystical cult figure? Perhaps. There's nothing easy about Stockhausen, not the person or the music. 

I will credit him with created two of the truly essential works of electronic music: Gesang der Jünglinge (1956) and Hymnen (1967). The former is one of the reasons Karlheinz is depicted on the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band cover, next to W.C. Fields. 

Gesang is a topic of discussion every semester in my Electronic and Computer Music course. There are a number of reasons why: how the work figures in electronic music history, its nature as a modernist work, what the possible intentions of the composer might have been. I'm uncertain about this as a trend, but I find it increasingly difficult to solicit any reaction from my students about works such as this. I mean, do you love it, or curse my name for making you listen to it? I've been teaching at CMU for 19 years now, and I'd say I hit a plateau of being able to solicit responses from students ten years ago, maybe more. I'm thinking specifically of the composition students I see, who are largely the most opinionated on these things (good!). I loved that I could outrage some students by dropping mention of Stockhausen's Helikopter Streichquartett. "How could he do that?" "What's the point of this?" "Isn't this just a reflection of his massive ego?" I enjoy impassioned responses, even negative ones, if they're informed. These days? No passion at all. Meh.

(The Helikopter Streichquartet is a setting for a string quartet, each player in their own helicopter, connected aurally and visually. The sound is projected down to the audience. There are recordings available, and a documentary about the first staging of the work.)

Mantra is a work from 1970. Stockhausen is a mature, established (though still young) and even relatively famous artist at this time. It's a setting for two pianists, each playing occasional auxiliary percussion, voice, and shortwave radio, with two audio processing players on ring modulations. I think you need a special custom set of crotales, an octave lower than usual, to perform this work.

I associate the sound of the ring mod with Stockhausen, due to works such as this is and his ring modulated orchestral piece Mixtur. When I bought a Theremin, I knew I wanted to run it through a ring mod.

I've spent a little time with the score. Even before I did, I had a sense of the construction of this piece. It's very classical in that sense. The foundation of the piece, the formula as he puts it, is a slow, eight-measure melody that at its core is a twelve-tone row. It's not a strict row though, there are repetitions and embellishments. Some of the measures are lengths of rest. There are cross references of material between the treble and bass clefs. Each individual element of the formula is then expanded through the course of the work. For example, the first note in the treble clef is played four times, and "repetition" becomes the theme of the first expansion of the source materials. Like I wrote, very classical. 

Despite all this classicism, there are moments of surprising beauty. The most obvious example is measure 132 (the CD is tracked with the structural points of the composition) the sound processors are instructed to turn the ring modulations down to a very low Hertz, 7Hz +/-, as slow chords are played. The modulation creates a beautiful, slow tremolo effect. I'd describe it as startling, the first time you hear the piece.

If the general description of the composition sounds academic and even, to use the word again,  classical...the piece has a very clear climax. The penultimate structural section is a driving succession of notes, punctuated by cluster chords. It's not all math sounds. The ending includes a flourish on the crotales, and a slower restatement of the formula. 

The aforementioned Robin Maconie referred to this work as a "masterpiece". My friend, tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE, said....I forget. I think he found it uninteresting, preferring the Stockhausen Intuitive Music pieces. I strongly hesitate to use the same word, I think i come down closer to the former's opinion. 

VOTD 5/15/2024

 Fred Myrow & Malcome Seagrave: Phantasm OST (Mondo)

Purchased mail order, I think

Here I am sitting up late, technically it's May 15, though really late night. The 15th is my wife's birthday, many happy returns. That has nothing to do with this record I have on; the late night part does.

I was thinking about writing the Gerry Hemingway blog post yesterday, and I sometimes bristle a little, maybe I'm just a bit conflicted. I've probably written previously about an old friend and bandmate, with whom I really only have Facebook contact now. When he decides to respond to someone, it's usually in the form of "Oh I met him in such-and-such year" or "I opened for that band" or "I drove that person around." I neither like nor feel comfortable with that much me-me-me.

And yet, unless there's some brilliant point or revelation for me to make, I'm writing here about my experiences. Because what else to I have to offer? There are probably artists for whom I would have loved to have read even their scattered, disorganized thoughts. 

Even writing all of that, it's about me again. Blech. And yet, a straight-forward record review doesn't seem all the interesting either, unless again I'm blessed with some particular insight. (I have listened to a lot of Sun Ra and own dozens of his recordings, so I'll give myself a pass on that one.)

So here's another horror movie soundtrack. A few years back (it was pre-pandemic) I was asked to assemble a Spotify playlist for walking through Homewood Cemetery. Contemplative walks. I put together a collection of jazz ballads, though ones that generally moved more. (Bill Evans playing "Blue in Green" was the slowest choice.) I had to ask though, what about an all horror movie theme soundtrack? The response was very clear: ABSOLUTELY NOT.

Aw shucks, it would been good, too. No Mike Oldfield excerpt for The Exorcist main title theme for me, though much of the music probably would have been in some way inspired by that work. Some of Fabio Frizzi's City of the Living Dead, Ennio Morricone's The Thing, definitely a track from Goblin's Suspiria, and the main title theme from this work. Woulda been great!

And note, putting together the list that I did was the most time I ever spent on Spotify. I don't generally approve of it, even though I have a little music on it with more to come. I know people love the convenience, but it just seems to me to be a way to make money off of creative people's hard work and returning almost nothing. Buying a band t-shirt or purchasing a download on Bandcamp does far, far more for an artist than 10,000 plays on Spotify. 

But don't let me tell you what to do.

Phantasm the movie is a wild ride. Not to be confused with a softcore sex movie from earlier in the decade, this 1979 film is a weird horror/sci-fi/arguably Lovecraftian hybrid. There's a funeral parlor and mausoleum, a mysterious character of the Tall Man, who is reanimating corpses as half-sized people who are his slaves. There's the "Boy" who discovers this bizarre situation. To speak nothing of the flying silver spheres which are deadly weapons. Also there's a dimensional portal. Yeah, it's great and very original, I'll give it that.

The film spawned four sequels, and I'll be damned if I can tell you what happened in any of them. Phantasm II was released eleven years later, so the Boy wasn't exactly a boy any longer. No. 5 was released 2016, a full 37 years after the first. The Tall Man has clearly aged, and he's no longer with us now anyway. I can only imagine what this might have been like if it was a planned trilogy, released in 1979-1981-1983. It might have been amazing. All speculation. Most horror/sci-fi franchises make too many films anyway.

The music is pretty good. The main title theme is memorable and not unlike Fabio Frizzi, keyboard-oriented light prog rock. It's a small studio band playing, keyboards (one or two players?), guitar, bass, drums. There's just enough inexactness to the playing, that I can hear it's not sequenced in any way. Analog sequencers existed at the time, but I'm thinking more of digital software sequencers and their ability to quantize rhythms exactly. Teaching those skills as I do, I find I notice the edges of inexactness on non-sequenced music more clearly now. I'm not saying I'm bothered, if anything I'm happy to hear it's not robots playing this music. 

I'm guessing this was recorded quickly, but the sound is fine and clear.

As with all complete soundtracks, it would be fine to trim a good half of the contents, but it's all good. Not as dark as the aforementioned The Thing  or City of the Living Dead, not as intense as most Goblin soundtracks, it's still a solid piece and worthy of one's time. 

"BOY!!!"

VTOD 5/14/2024

 Gerry Hemingway Quintet: Outerbridge Crossing (Sound Aspects)

I can't remember where I bought this, it was so long ago.

Most of the posts recently, maybe in general, have been thoughts and responses to recent purchases. It's occurred to me, dig back into the archives. 

I chose this semi-randomly. I think became familiar with it because WRCT had a copy. With the release year os 1987, that would put it for me in "summer replacement DJ era". I remember that it left an impression, and I was enthusiastic to buy a copy. 

The band: Ray Anderson, trombone (and tuba); Mark Helias, bass; Gerry Hemingway, drums and steel drum: David Mott, baritone saxophone; Ernst Reijseger, cello.

Okay, where do I begin?

I saw David Mott play a work for baritone saxophone and computer-generated tape at the International Computer Music Conference in 1991. Maybe that's a story for another time. (Not regarding David, but me being there. It was in Montreal.)

Mark Helias was supposed to be best man at Lindsey Horner's wedding. He had to cancel, I guess a better gig came up. (?) Bobby Previte filled in, and he sat in with OPEK at Club Cafe later that night. I had him play on Sonny Clark's "Voodoo", knowing he had recorded it with John Zorn and Wayne Horvitz. I don't think I've ever seen Mark play, but I could be wrong.

I met Ernst Reijseger when Manny Theiner asked me to open for Clusone 3, his trio with Han Bennink and Michael Moore. Ernst was amazing to watch, he'd sometimes shift his cello onto his lap and strum it guitar-style. Ernst did the soundtrack to Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams. I sent an email to Werner's website, thanking him for the choice. The response: "You're welcome". 

Ray Anderson I met when he played with the Gerry Hemingway Quartet, another Manny Theiner show. The other two players were Michael Formanek and Ellery Eskelin. My band again opened. We were enthusiastic to talk to Ellery about his father, song-poem master Rodd Keith.

And Gerry...yes, there was the gig opening for his quartet. I think earlier, I interacted with him when he was in the rhythm section for the Anthony Davis Quartet at the Three Rivers Arts Festival. The bassist was Mark Dresser, the fourth player Mark Feldman on violin. Jeez, there's a number of stories to return to there.

So what of this record?

"Outerbridge Crossing", the opener. The start of the record is popping and crackling, I think I played it a lot. Gerry has a clear love of polyrhythms, polymeters. The time shifts in the composed sections, in the middle it's free jazz blowing.

"Not Having" follows, a study in long and low tones. 

It's two of the three pieces on the second side I remember most. (They can't all be hits!)

Side two: "Endorphin". It's again melodic, like "Outerbridge Crossing" but similarly disjunct. The time shifts, both compositionally and in the group improvisations. Big feature for the cello. 

"Threnody for Charles Mingus": Gerry on steel drum here. Though the previous "Not Having" is slow, this is the piece closest to being a ballad. Appropriately, a big feature for Mark, and again the cello.

"Junctures": this was the piece that really set the hair on the back of my neck on edge when this was new. It's highly polymensural, multiple time signatures simultaneously. Looping figures in different meters, superimposed. And it grooves. Mark is on electric bass, holding things down with Gerry. It starts to open up. break down, it's audible. Mark sneaks in with a snap-bass vmp in ten. It still grooves. And so it blows out. 

A pretty good reminder of past listening, and what I need to live up to myself.

VOTD 5/10/2024

 Billy Graham: The Man in the 5th Dimension (RCA/Camden)

Purchased at the dollar sale at Jerry's Records

Now that I have your attention...

Once in a while I post a link to my blog to my Facebook page, and my readership septuples. (35 vs 5 on average.) Huge numbers! Yuge!

Whatever. But it does remind me to not write anything too stupid or worse, libelous. 

Being something of a record collector, I enjoy my vinyl oddities. I know Record Collectors, capital letters intended. Some weird things I will spend money on, some I refuse to spend more than $1.

I'll confess...I spent $50 on this LP, an old WRCT favorite stolen decades ago: https://www.discogs.com/release/2935490-No-Artist-Fortify-Our-Freedom

I know I should digitize this wonderfully evil slab of vinyl. One track was so scandalous, the track was physically scratched out. (I think it was the first track, side two.) The WRCT copy was likewise done so. 

As I was leaving the recent Jerry's dollar sale (Sunday, so everything was 2/$1) I saw this toxic piece of landfill, and decided to rescue it. 

Billy Graham put a friendly face on the rising trend of Christian Nationalism. Jerry Falwell, that repulsive parasite, pushed it into the Reagan administration. But I don't think he'd have gone as far as he did without Billy's simple, "aw shucks I'm just a servant of God" preaching. 

You can hear how he's a clear and concise orator on this album, with dramatic studio orchestra  punchups by Ralph Carmichael. 

I didn't think much of Billy Graham growing up. He'd appear on TV once in a while and I wouldn't pay much attention. My parents didn't like him. I not only know why now, but think they were rather prescient: he was the gateway drug to what we're suffering through now, fundamentalist Christian Nationalists who overlook Trump's obvious moral and ethical failings because they believe he will give them the representatives and judges they want.

Would Billy Graham be rolling in his grave? That would suggest an afterlife. He's worm food now. Let him rot. 

A few more scattered thoughts about Steve Albini

If you read these blog posts, you might get the sense that they're written quickly with no particular plan in mind. I spend little time editing and it probably shows. I'm giving myself a break because I do not consider myself to be a serious writer.

There were some things I had in mind regarding Steve Albini I didn't include in the previous posting. Here goes:

Usually every spring semester, I have to teach an education course. "Technology in the Music Classroom" I think is the official course title. This past spring semester, I had two students; both were returning adults, both with families. Despite the 8am call, seeing and talking to them was a highlight of my week in something of a laborious semester. 

Anyway...one of these two students is deeply involved with hip hop and sampling, and interested in the historical and social ramifications of this technology. To my surprise, in a class discussion once, he said, "Steve Albini disagrees with sampling, he thinks it's cheating." My response was, "Ah, don't listen to him, he's an old crank."

I think I understand Albini's position and he's probably not entirely wrong. My position on sampling is, there are interesting and uninteresting ways to do it. There are legal ramifications though; how do you legislate interesting vs uninteresting sampling? I myself am involved with some sample-based performances, in the groups Throckmorton Plot and Sound/Unsound. I know that my cohort and collaborator David Throckmorton likes non-sequitor, disembodied voice samples. When I choose to sample voices, I try not to go for the obvious. Simpsons quotes? Trump samples? Obvious. A NASA engineer enthused about space flight? More interesting, less obvious. Or a quote that would transform if you knew the source. (As I write that, I assure you, no Fascism or illegalities.)

And what of Plunderphonics? There's an entire category of sample-based music about the rearrangement of previously existing recordings. Sampling and rearranging the results is the essential point. 

So I'm sorry Steve, if your position is that sampling is cheating, it's more complicated than that. (And I apologize, am I trying to have an argument with someone who's just died?)

---

Steve expressed his dislike or disinterest in jazz. So be it, I don't care. When acting as the master recording engineer, he urged bands to come into the studio prepared, lay down one or two takes when possible, and capture what it is that they do with as little dress-up as possible. Rough edges and all. 

Maybe the music is very different, but that approach sounds very much like jazz to me. Thelonious Monk almost never did more than two takes of anything, the notable exception being "Brilliant Corners". 

I recently took Thoth Trio into the studio, for the first time in many years. In two days we recorded 19 works, only four of which were covers. With one possible exception, we never did more than two takes of anything. Listening back on the recordings, I could be happier with how I played, but to hell with it. This is who we are. Releases to come.

---

In my previous post, I chose a picture of Steve wearing an MX-80 Sound tshirt. (Clearly, band shirts were his garb.) This was intentional. Maybe our tastes weren't as divergent as I might have described. I spent a lot of time with MX-80's first Ralph Records LP Out of the Tunnel as a college freshman. Part of it was my enthusiasm for Ralph productions in general. But...I spent far more time with that album than either of the Yello records. 

If Steve claimed to be a rock-n-roller, yes, fine. I don't either define myself that way, nor limit myself to that descriptor. He was dedicated, so as I've written before I admire that. 

---

I read notes from Steve about playing with Big Black and making a career out of it. If they were playing a smaller town, it was usually a weekday. There weren't that many events happening, and anyone would come out, thrilled to support this group in their town. Weekends were reserved for bigger cities, when there was more competition. Smart tactics. 

---

In the Marc Maron podcast, he expressed his wish to engineer albums by Neil Young and Willie Nelson. Well heck yes man, sorry that it never came to be. 

---

Maybe there were other points, I forget. The world's just less of an interesting place now. 

Some thoughts regarding Steve Albini

I assume anyone reading this blog would have some idea of Steve Albini was, and that he died yesterday from a heart attack at age 61. I'm 61. Damn. Reportedly it happened while working at his studio, so you can at least say he died doing what he loved.

I never met nor interacted with Steve, so I can speak from no firsthand knowledge. Among the descriptions of him online, I've read that he was sweet, a pussycat, dedicated to work. I also read "needlessly abrasive". That part of his reputation definitely precedes him. 

I listened to Steve conversing with Marc Maron on the latter's podcast. He seemed guarded and a little prickly, but again that was his reputation already, being a difficult interview subject. I took issue with something in particular he said, though keep in mind I'm paraphrasing something I'd heard a few years ago. Steve became defensive of his tastes, how some people decide they like jazz when they grow older, and that he'll always love rock music no matter his age. It's what he loves and there's no changing that.

My issues are these: first of all, nobody wakes up on their 40th birthday and says, "I'm an adult now, I guess I must listen to jazz." Sometimes people's tastes can shift. There's a saying that you never lose your love of what you listened to when you were 13. I say yes, maybe, to some extent. There are plenty of things I experienced around that age, actively enjoyed, that no longer appeal to me. I mean, the first LP I bought for myself was a Kansas record. I don't hate that band but Leftoverture doesn't do for me now what it did forty years ago. And there's nothing wrong with that. The idea that some people decide they grow out of rock music into something else is inaccurate, in my opinion. 

I also disagree because I have friends who are 60yo+ rockers and will never leave it. Friends who, for example, traveled to see a reunion of The Flesh Eaters some years back. Oh, maybe they might also like Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, or Thelonious Monk too, they're not strictly limited by the rock idiom. Hell, a few years back I saw Thurston Moore's band in Philadelphia and they were great. (My wife thought so too.) I don't want to limit myself to say I only like one thing, if anyone who might have seen this blog would have probably figured out.

I was thinking of Robert Crumb. Crumb's an internationally known collector of string band 78s, centering on the decades of the 1920s and 30s. It's what he loves and he's highly knowledgeable in the music. I wouldn't presume to go to him and say, "Hey man, grow up already and get more modern. You need to listen to what I'm doing." That would be rude and ridiculous. He has a well-informed opinion on things, that in itself is valuable and to be respected. Likewise Steve Albini, I would never tell him to become an adult and stop listening to that hard rock kid's music. 

Steve famously turned down in excess of $1,000,000 worth of income by refusing to declare himself producer of Nirvana's In Utero, instead only claiming to be the recording and mixing engineer. Geffen turned down Albini's mix and had the album rebalanced. Vocals were too low, the sound to metallic and abrasive. Albini's contention was that he was just there to assist in making the album that band wants to make, though I can't help but believe he had influence on the results of the first mix.

It does speak to his ethics though. It says to me, that first of all, he insisted on not stepping into roles he didn't believe he belonged. It also says he didn't need the money. That is, he was doing all right for himself, and he was doing what he loved, why collect the money just for the sake of collecting the money? It's very admirable, and no doubt upped the respect he received from others. I can't say I would turn down a $1,000,000 offer, but I know I'd be fine without it. But if I was starving, struggling? I can't say.

To make that even more interesting, Steve later became a champion-level poker player. I'm certain in that case the money did mean something, but also it couldn't have been the only reason for his involvement. There must have been something about knowing the odds, how to read the table, the intellectual part of the game, that must have appealed to him.

I thought I still had a Big Black record, but I guess I sold it off years ago. Oh well. It served its purpose then. So even if our tastes didn't largely coincide, respect to you Steve. Someone who does his job well, creatively, ethically, for decades, deserves praise.

VOTD 5/5/2024

 Godflesh: Streetcleaner (Earache)

Purchased used at The Attic

My friend Josh Wulff said to me once, the one common interest of him and Adam MacGregor was Godflesh.

It would help if you knew who both Josh and Adam are. Both play guitar. Josh studied at Duquesne University, and his interests are more jazz-oriented but he has a history of going to the old City Limits club and seeing metal bands there. We have a history playing together, as a duo, in Sound/Unsound, Throckmorton Plot, and even some pickup jazz gigs.

Adam is the more extreme metal musician, playing in Brown Angel ("Pittsburgh's Most Depressing Band" read one headline), Conelrad, Creation as Crucifixion, and bass with Microwaves. I've sat in with Brown Angel, Conelrad, and  Microwaves, and he and I have played some improvised duo and trio arrangements.

Truth told, Josh was probably exaggerating. I'm sure their tastes coincide far more than just this one band. But I also see it. I know Adam really enjoys Godflesh.

The band's arrangement is either two or three players, not including the drum machine. With three on this album, the lineup is closest to that of Big Black, though Godflesh doesn't particularly sound like them. Even if I hadn't read it on a Wikipedia page, I would have accurately guessed their fundamental influence, that being Killing Joke. A pre-Godflesh version of the band was named Fall of Because, putting a KJ reference up front and center.

Heavy, simple riffage; distorted, barely sung vocals; noisy guitars; it all checks. Song titles such as, "Like Rats" "Dream Long Dead" "Christbait Rising" "Streetcleaner" (nickname for an Uzi), have I made my point that it's not a happy-time band?

This, their second LP dating from 1989, definitely sounds of a period. Think of the time of early Swans, Big Black, Butthole Surfers. The sound seems a bit thin to me now, but maybe that's because I've heard the monsterously-huge sounding productions of, say, White Zombie. But that to me is too much, that wall of highly compressed sound, and I prefer this. 

On the one hand, I like the economy of means of Godflesh and Big Black, two or three guys making a huge sound and keeping the rhythm section stripped down with a drum machine. Not dealing with a drummer immensely simplifies logistics.

On the other hand, an essential part of the Killing Joke sound is the cavernous-sounding drums. The drum machine is reliable and will keep tempo properly of course, but I think I prefer the flexibility of a real drummer, the variety of ways the playing can be changed or mixed up while at the same time kept direct and simple.

Bands such as this in metal circles are often described as "experimental", a word I avoid in general due to its mis- or over-use. And not to sound too academic, they do have a broader sound palette than your average straight forward heavy metal band (whatever that means). There's mixed in found (?) voices at the start of the second side, for example. The first side ends with the drum machine stopping and the guitars working more of a drone texture. 

But then, I'm generally in favor of artists pushing at the conventions of their idioms. Jazz groups without a bass for example, or like this, some sort of quasi-metal band that doesn't have a drummer. 

I'm sure this one will find its way to my turntable again, especially if I'm feeling depressed and want to listen to something more bleak.

VOTD #2 5/2/2024

 Sun Ra: At the Showcase: Live in Chicago 1976-1977 (Jazz Detective)

Purchased at The Attic on Record Store Day

Between LPs, CDs, and a box of tapes I've been meaning to digitally dub for years, I have a lot of Sun Ra recordings. A lot. So many that I don't generally feel compelled to buy everything that comes around every year. 

And there seems to be at least one new Sun Ra issue or reissue every Record Store Day. This year it was not only this double LP, but Pink Elephants on Parade, a collection of Arkestra performances of Disney-related songs. I passed on that one, so far.

So why buy this one? Maybe it just caught my fancy when I hit The Attic that day; I didn't know of its release before seeing it on the shelves. I'm always specifically interested in hearing Sun Ra compositions I don't otherwise know. I'm not disinterested in the improvised works, but it's not what captures my attention most. That can be frustrating, as seeing a new title doesn't mean it's going to be a new composition to me. 

While Sun Ra's most trailblazing work probably dates to the late 1960s, it's the era of 1971-1976 that really interests me the most. It's the period of Space Is the Place (the feature film), of the Discipline composition series, and Live at Montreux. Seeing as this dates to the tail end of that time, I was a little more interested than usual. 

Record one is selections from Nov. 4 and 10, 1977. It makes me wonder what might have been left on the cutting room floor, so to speak. The personnel listing is nineteen players, including the bandleader. Hardly the largest Arkestra to have performed, but still a large group. Seeing as the recordings are culled from shows three months apart, perhaps the lineup was the same each time. That in itself is a Herculean task, getting all the people in the same lineup months apart. But then he did run the ensemble like a religious sect. (Some might say cult, but the results are too positive in my opinion.) Recording quality is hardly studio quality but not bad; don't expect to hear much bass though. 

"Synthesis Approach" on side one sounds familiar, it surely most have another title. "'Synthesis Approach', a Sun Ra composition, 'Synthesis Approach'" announces one player. 

Side two opens with "Rose Room", a pre-swing number originally from 1917 given Sun Ra's full space swing rendition here. His performances from this time on will be more and more like this, a combination of conducted improvisations, original Sun Ra pieces new and old, and relatively straight-forward swing numbers.  Also on side two is "Moonship Journey". I don't think I've heard a live version before, only the studio recording on the great album Cosmos. It's a generally relaxed, sung/chanted piece, given a bluesy reading here. As is through much of the album (and Arkestra performances in general) John Gilmore is prominently featured.

The second LP starts on relatively familiar ground: the shut out "Calling Planet Earth" leading into a brief cluster mass, and a sound-action solo from Mr. Ra. That works itself into one of the signature "The Shadow World", which itself is a springboard for wild improvising. No question about the sound of Marshall Allen turning up here (who turns 100 later this month).

More familiar territory on side four: "Theme of the Stargazers" followed by "Space Is the Place". Of course anything can lead anywhere. More strangely, "Ebah Speaks in Cosmic Tongue" is chanting followed by Ek Tal Ebah (uncredited on the cover) speaking in tongues. Everything ends with another chant I don't think I've heard before, "Greetings From the 21st Century".

How many otherwise unreleased Sun Ra pieces are lurking on people's home tapes? What remains to be discovered?

VOTD 5/2/2024

 Gunner Berg/Finn Høffding/Tage Nielsen/Jørgen Bentzon: various works (Odeon)

Purchased at the Jerry's Records dollar sale

As the price of records formerly from the Duquesne University collection are often priced at $3, I'll spend a few bucks on things I might not buy otherwise. Even then, I've found I really don't need to buy every CRI issue that comes along. Standards are even lower for the dollar sale (and the final day two for a dollar), and even then I don't need to buy them all. 

Why buy this one, which includes works by four composers I don't know at all? One title stood out, the final work listed below. Within a reasonable price range, I'll buy almost any old-school electronic music albums, though I knew that the piece in this case doesn't really qualify. Hopefully that will make sense below.

The composers and works presented:

Gunner Berg: "...pour clarinette et violin" There's some playfulness to this piece. Messiaen would be a lazy comparison, with the music neither especially tonal nor atonal. There are eight movements to this duet, but it plays continuously with only minor breaks. 

Finn Høffding: "Kammermusik op. 11" The chamber music in this case is a setting for soprano voice, oboe, and piano in three movements. As the first movement rolls in there's again the tension between tonality and atonality, as the piece sounds less tonally moored at the start, but settles into an almost minor-sounding setting. The notes read that the piece dates as far back as 1927, so it makes sense that the work as a whole takes on a chromaticized tonality. 

Tage Nielsen: "Nocturner for klaver" What exactly is a nocturne? A work that evokes the night, yes, but I mean formally? In terms of methods or structure, I can't say nor do I know that there's anything in common with any piece titled "nocturne". This has come up in class, as a piece I've assigned for listening has been Bruno Maderna's "Nocturne" for electronic sounds. Perhaps he had a dark mood that suggested the direction for him; or maybe, the results hinted to him the title. I don't know. The two movements, the two nocturnes as it were, are short and fairly compact. The work dates to 1961, making it the most recent of all the works included, though it comes closer to suggesting pre-WWII methods.

Jørgen Bentzon: "Mikrofoni Nr. 1" And now, the title that made me pick up this LP, and it's absolutely not what I expected.  It is, as the notes state, "...composed with special regard to reproduction through a microphone." For the life me of me, I don't understand why. The opening piano phrase sounds more distant than the previous Nielsen piece, so perhaps the composer was thinking that the piece would be performed very quietly? It certainly doesn't suggest Feldman. 

Though written in 1939 just as the WWII was breaking out, it sounds like music more commonly written fifty years before. That in itself is a bit of a trap. After all, The sum whole of post-WWII composition is not Cage, Stockhausen, Xenakis, and Boulez. Those are only the composers doing the newest and most original music at the time, and many composers of the same period could be tagged as being more traditional. Nonetheless, to my ears this really does evoke the late 19th century. 

Ah well, another 20th century composer compilation LP to add to all the others I have. 

VOTD 5/1/2024

 Wolf Eyes: Dead Hills (Troubleman Unlimited)

Purchased at The Attic

A week ago last Sunday I spent the better part of my evening with Wolf Eyes. Edgar Bucholtz asked me to open for them, without any expectations as to what I might do. I'm sure it's because Wolf Eyes has fostered a relationship with both Anthony Braxton and Marshall Allen. The suggestion hung in the air from a couple of people that I should join them, but I had no expectations and no intention of pushing myself on them. (I'll cut to it: I didn't sit in with them.) for my set, I developed a Max/MSP patch which would sample my playing, and loop playback at various speeds forwards or backwards. I could have as many as eight going at one time. I think the most I had was six, and that was already approaching sound mass-density. It was very well received, and the two guys from WE were very complimentary.

This is one of two WE LPs I've picked up recently. Their current lineup is of two people (Nate Young and John Olson), and it's enough. They make plenty of noise without a third member, as is the case of this 2002 LP. Aaron Dilloway was a member of the group at the time, who has had an active creative life outside of the band. I know that he had a record store in Oberlin too, but I don't know if it's still extant.

Nate told me that the band is able to play full time, and they rarely turn down gigs. I think that's pretty amazing. We talked before the gig over tacos next door to the venue.

I didn't ask them about their methods. Is it all improvised? I get the sense that maybe there are some loosely-constructed "songs" (or at least vocal pieces) and percussive loops they might set up, but that each gig is mostly improvised. I imagine for a studio session such as this, there might have been discussions. But for the most recent local live set, I saw no such dialogue between the two players.

I unintentionally listened to the B side first of this record (a picture disc) which has two pieces on it. It finds WE in a more, how can I say, "traditional"(?) industrial band mode. Pounding electronic beat, distorted/delayed vocals. The first side, with its side-long title track, starts more restrained. The ambience is sometimes interrupted by blasts of noise, but it takes some time to build in intensity. I appreciate that there's a degree of restraint, and not a barrage of noise continuously (which I'm not against, just that I appreciate the patience shown here). Long vocal sounds, growls and shrieks, and even more highly processed than the second side. The sound sneaks up before filling the room and again receding. 

While they work ins a highly synthesized sound world, I appreciate their palette of sounds. Nothing sounds out-of-the-box. From what I saw they don't use laptops, that much of their gear is analog in nature. It sounds very much like electricity crackling, running through circuits in intentional and unintentional ways (I'm probably romanticizing what they do in that description.)

Every four years, the Carnegie Museum of Pittsburgh hold the Carnegie International, their big prestigious international art show. Every time I attend, naturally I like some of the work, some of it not so much. But I often think, aren't there any good old fashioned abstract painters anymore? Someone who would have outraged patrons in the 1950s? I don't mean to suggest that Wolf Eyes is old fashioned, but I appreciate that a loosely-defined industrial noise band like this can still exist and thrive in this day and age. 

I would still like to sit in with them, though.