#justin cober

[spilladabalia]

Yoo Doo Right - Eager Glacier [Official Video]

A short film by Stacy Lee, featuring music by Yoo Doo Right.

[dustedmagazine]

Listening Post: Nick Cave

Nick Cave got his start in the punk clubs of Melbourne, as the shirtless, skeletal and incandescent front man for the Birthday Party, an outfit once dubbed “the most violent live band in the world.” That band split up in 1983, but not before, arguably, launching the goth punk genre with their single “Release the Bats.”

Cave’s next project, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds launched in 1982, bringing together a core group of collaborators — Warren Ellis, Martyn P. Casey, George Vjestica, Jim Schlavunos and Thomas Wydler — that continues to back him today. (As well as a couple, notably Mick Harvey and Blixa Bargeld, who no longer participate). It was with the Bad Seeds that Cave began to explore a driving blues-based psychedelia. The harder rocking Grinderman project branched off from there in 2006.

Cave’s last few albums, starting with Push the Sky Away and continuing through Skeleton Tree and Ghosteen, are very different from his work with the Birthday Party, or, indeed, early Bad Seeds. They are quieter and more uneasy. Ghosteen, produced after the tragic death of Cave’s teenage son, incorporates lavish orchestral arrangements and lacerating imagery.

In some ways, the 18th and latest Cave album, Wild God continues that trajectory, surrounding visionary lyrics with the sounds of a full orchestra and gospel choir. Yet this one, unlike the past two, again brings in the Bad Seeds, girding whipped cream heaps of violin glissandos with the muscle of bass, drums and rock guitar.

The album also marks a departure from the preceding two by focusing on joy. Despite the untimely death of two of his sons, the passing of colleagues, the pandemic and all the uncertainties of politics and climate and war, Cave fixes resolutely on the beauties of the world, like frogs jumping heaven-ward in the rain or brown horses grazing peacefully in the grass. It’s a bold stance in 2024, but a welcome one. We could all use some joy.

Intro by Jennifer Kelly

Jennifer Kelly: So, I think my very favorite thing in Wild God is the way that “Conversion” kicks into high gear about halfway through, with the gospel choir and all, and it just picks you up and takes you away. What are you all liking or not liking here?

Justin Cober-Lake: I’ve liked nearly all of Cave’s recent work, but this one is probably my favorite of the era. You mention it continuing the trajectory of the past three, which work as a sort of trilogy (ignoring Carnage). Cave’s taken the orchestral and atmospheric approach from those albums, but used it here to fill out a Bad Seeds album. This album returns him to his rock sounds, but it’s still an album that comes out of the trilogy. Though they’re fairly different, it’s hard to imagine this sound arriving without Ghosteen. It brings together a wide stretch of musical thought to create something very focused tonally. It means that forays like the gospel moments make sense even if they’re surprising.

Similarly, it mixes his older sense of storytelling with his more recent confessional sort of writing (admitting that there isn’t a clear era divide for these approaches, just that the personal, emotional sketches are more prominent since Push the Sky Away). Cave’s always been masterful, but Wild God feels like the album where all the elements of his art came together in a unified and powerful way.

Jonathan Shaw: Justin points to gospel moments on Wild God, and yes, I got two-thirds of the way through my first listen and thought, “Oh, it’s a gospel record.” Scans with all the writing and chatter about Christianity and religiosity Cave has done over the past bunch of years, but it still surprised me. I have been away from his music since the early 1990s, save for that first Grinderman record, which I found sort of charming, a return to the grime and squalor of the first few post-Birthday Party records (I still listen to From Her to Eternitysometimes). So, this is a strange place to land as a listener. I am still getting my footing, as it were, but I really like “Frogs” and I really don’t like “Joy” and “O Wow O Wow” is just sort of embarrassing.

So much seems to be in those first two tracks, which I am ambivalent about. I sort of like “Song of the Lake.” As a middle-aged dude, I can identify. But the grandness of the music feels of a piece with Cave’s characteristic grandiosities, which is what drove me away from his stuff in the first place. I’m going to keep listening.

Ian Mathers: For me, I wasn’t so much driven away by Cave’s grandiosities as kept away in the first place. I still have the Birthday Party on my (long, ever expanding) list of bands to get around to checking out one day, but his solo/Bad Seeds stuff never seemed that appealing. The most exposure I got was working in a record store where coworkers played the then-newer Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus and first Grinderman records a fair bit. I was never annoyed by those records, but they did confirm and kind of cement my perception of him as very full of himself.

I don’t mean that in a dismissive or diminishing way; I think being full of himself is kind of the key to both what I find appealing in Cave and what I find kind of risible (including his advice column, which in my experience veers between genuinely very good and frequently moving, and making me roll my eyes and sigh). It feels like Nick Cave is as Nick Cave as he can possibly be at all times, and even when I’m not enjoying that there’s something wonderful there.

That being said, Ghosteen in 2019 marked the first time something I heard from Cave really landed with me. Yes, I appreciated his writing around the death of his son (and felt for him and his family), but that alone wouldn’t have gotten me to check it out. Something about the way people were talking about it made me think I had to check it out. And it grabbed me from the first listen. I think it’s a really beautiful record with a lot to talk about... that we’re not really focused on right now. But it did make me feel like I wanted to check out whatever Cave did next.

Something about the opening “Song of the Lake” made me think this was going to be another Ghosteen for me, where I feel like I got it and liked the record right from the first listen. For better or worse the rest of Wild God (at least after my first couple of listens) doesn’t sound much like it, and didn’t land as immediately for me. I remember liking “Frogs” as well, and those two are the ones that most seem to tap into a similar vibe as the one I liked so much on the previous record (despite this being about very different things, as far as I can tell). But of course, that’s coming from someone who’s never sat down with the vast majority of the records Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds have put out.

Tim Clarke: Ian’s description of his relationship with Nick Cave closely aligns with my own. I always found his self-righteous preacher persona to be annoying, and none of the music that I’ve half-heartedly tuned into over the years has piqued my interest. This changed with Skeleton Tree, which I found very moving. The music closely aligned with the intensity of emotion in the vocals, rather than just being a platform from which Cave would perform atop, if that makes sense. Skeleton Tree led me to Ghosteen, Push The Sky Away and Carnage, all of which I enjoyed.

This one is a harder sell for me. The prospect of “happy Nick Cave” doesn’t resonate with my musical taste, so a gospel-leaning record about finding joy was already going to be a slightly uncomfortable experience... There are a few moments here that I enjoyed, many of which have already been flagged by you guys, but mostly this just makes me want to listen to Mercury Rev’s Deserter’s Songs, which works with a similar musical palette, but with much greater emotional resonance.

Justin Cober-Lake: I may be on the opposite side of the Cave listening spectrum than most of us. I listen to the Birthday Party less than any of his music, and I like the grandiosity. I think he does something unique (or at least in a unique way). He’s trying to make art — which plenty of rock musicians are — but in a way that doesn’t correlate to the usual paths for that. His lyrics tend to be either smart and poetic or simply pretentious, probably depending on your starting point. The excess and bombast is part of the statement (differing from either emo or show tunes or prog or whatever, though maybe Tom Waits’ blend of stage and, well, whatever he does, is a good conceptual pairing). I don’t see him doing either advice or preaching in his music or his “Red Hand Files.” I’m not sure what it is, maybe just talking to fans. It’s the Q&A part of a reading.

My stance on all that sets up my listening to Wild God, which while ostensibly “happy Nick Cave,” only sort of is. It’s an album full of violence, death, and the acknowledgement of not just our mortality, but of our decline on the way to the end. From that ground, Cave finds places of transcendence, none of which fully hold up, but all of which get us through. There’s some kind of peace tucked into these emotional swells, a steadiness within the surges. That strained position gives the album much of its power. Freed of innocence but willing to be open allows the album to find real, earned hope and joy; and “joy” here doesn’t scan as a synonym for “happy,” but for something deeper, maybe closer to “at peace with all the destruction,” like a reed bent but always returning to its upright position, even knowing the next storm is coming.

Jonathan Shaw: I hear that, Justin. There are moments in earlier Cave that are big, emotionally and musically, that work really well. “The Carny” from Your Funeral... My Trial is a good example, and I have a long-running and passionate attachment to that whole record. When it’s an interesting musical move, I can get with opulent bombast (Klaus Nomi’s “Total Eclipse,” for instance).

I hear the reading of joy you provide in the song “Wild God” — a variety of “late style” Cave, in Edward Said’s sense of the phrase. It’s one of the stronger tracks on this record, not as good as “Song of the Lake” (lotsa bombast, and I have come to really like the tune) or “Frogs,” but good. On “Joy,” I don’t hear strain or struggle or even cussedness in the face of loss and decline. It’s too close to schmaltz, and the references to his recent grief strike the wrong tone for me. Can’t handle the part about “angry words” and “stars.” It’s true that we can’t subsist on anger alone, but exhausted metaphor ain’t gonna do the trick, either.

Jennifer Kelly: It’s interesting to me that choir music is not something that Cave discovered recently and in fact he was in the choir at his church growing up. This Ann Powers interview explores his connection with church music.

Justin Cober-Lake: My thoughts are starting to diverge with the conversation, so let me throw out points related to the last two comments and we can go whichever way it takes us.

Jonathan, I took a listen to “Joy” out of context with your thoughts in mind, and I think you make some fair points (even if I do like the song on its own). The album really works best as an album, though, and “Joy” has its slot there (notice for example how many songs include lines that reference previous songs). Even alone, though, the joy is entirely couched in an awareness of death, and teenaged death at that (assuming my reading of “giant sneakers”). I realize that doesn’t make the rest of it treacly, but it provides an essential element that keeps it from getting stupid, at least for me.

Jenny, thanks for sharing that interview, which is absolutely fascinating. I’ve long been interested in Cave’s relationship to religion. His spiritual language, even in unbelief, carries a particular potency that isn’t just shared Christian literacy. There’s an existential element to his work that really resonates, and Wild God feels like a particular manifestation of that, more openly... agnostic? Curiously agnostic? Maybe the religious work here, both in the words and in the choir, help direct the bombast and potential schmaltz into something that I find incredibly effective.

Tim Clarke: Thanks for sharing that interview, Jenny. I had no idea Dave Fridmann worked on the album. I can really hear it now. That epic, overblown, overwhelming quality that he achieved with The Flaming Lips’ The Soft Bulletin back in the late 1990s.

Bryon Hayes: I honestly thought I’d have more to say about this album since I consider myself a Cave fan and have dipped in and out of his canon over the decades. Judging by the profound discourse thus far, many of you have fairly strong feelings about Wild God, whether they be positive or not. My own response has been surprisingly muted. Cave’s albums usually stir emotions in me; I’m usually quite moved by his lyrical themes, most obviously on Skeleton Tree and Ghosteen. This album just seems to sit in my head and doesn’t really punch me in the gut. Maybe I’m turned off by “happy Nick Cave,” as Tim mentioned previously. The thing is, I keep going back to it. I enjoy listening to Wild God, I'm just not immersed in it. I do think that Dave Fridmann’s work on the album is bringing up some nostalgia for those classic Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev albums, though. His influence is one element that I find to be endearing on Wild God, and I would definitely be interested in hearing Cave and Fridmann work together more.

Christian Carey: Here’s a quote from Cave to close things out: “All my songs are written from a place of spiritual yearning, because that is the place that I permanently inhabit. To me, personally, this place feels charged, creative and full of potential.” — Nick Cave

[thejoyofviolentmovement]

New Video: Montréal's Yoo Doo Right Shares Stormy "Eager Glacier"

New Video: Montréal's Yoo Doo Right Shares Stormy "Eager Glacier" @MothlandSounds

Deriving their name from one of Can‘s best known — and perhaps most covered — songs, Montréal-based experimentalists Yoo Doo Right — Justin Cober (guitar, synths, vocals), Charles Masson (bass) and John Talbot (drums, percussion) — pair noisy and melodic guitar lines, effects-laden synthesizer soundscapes, deep bass grooves and furious and driving percussion into sprawling, cathartic musical…

[burlveneer-music]

yoo doo right - A Murmur, Boundless to the East - if you’re after music inspired by Can, a band named after a Can song is a good place to look

Inspired by the pounding rhythmic improvisations found in krautrock, experimental trio YDR wed noisy, melodic guitar parts, effect-heavy synthesizer soundscapes, nonchalant bass grooves and patented percussive furies into a literal wall of sound. Solemn, chin-to-chest vocals dance in and out of the primordial sonic spectrum, creating a warm pillow to rest a weary head upon. A Murmur, Boundless To The East, recorded with visionary producer Radwan Ghazi Moumneh (Suuns, Ought, Fly Pan Am) at Hotel2Tango and mixed by Seth Manchester at Machines With Magnets (Battles, Lightning Bolt, Lingua Ignota), is all at once a heartfelt salute to infinity and a critique of one’s shortcomings. Justin Cober: Vocals, Guitars, Synthesizers Charles Masson: Bass John Talbot: Drums Jessica Moss: Violin on tracks 1 and 5

[mare-sanguis]

Winston/Monty pt. 11 part 1 out of 2 because its loooong

Scott cleaned the dishes while Winston took his medicine.

"You should visit his grave. You know... I dont think you failed him. He's not disappointed in you- but proud of thta you tried."

"Maybe."

"He really trusted you to do that. Did he told you that?"

Scott nooded.

"Then you already know that he wont be disappointed in you."

"You really think so... right?"

"Yes. He's your friend."

Scott sighed and looked down in the sink.

"Jeff was really a nice guy- he had a huge heart and supported so many. The funeral was the absolute worst. So many people crying, disturbed. He died to young."

"You really liked him."

"Well of course I do."

Winston smiled.

"No."

"'No' What?"

"I didnt mean it like that. Not as your best friend."

Scott didnt responds to that directly.

"He was just a friend. I told you."

"Would you say the same if you'd look at me? Almost everytime you talk about him you won't look at me. You're hiding something."

"Theres nothing to hide."

Winston sighed and stood up.

"Maybe you'll tell me later. I wont pressure you into something you dont want to say. I'll go to sleep now. You can chose one of the quest rooms. One is near mine, the other ones are on the 3rd floor. Good night."

Winston left and leaves Scott alone in the kitchen.

"Fuck it. I wasnt in love with him." He whispered to himself.

"He was my best friend, not my first male crush:"

Why would he even think about that if he wasnt?

He stood there for some seconds more until he decided to go to one of the guest rooms.

He choosed the one near Winstons.

They didnt saw each other until the next day.

Scott checked on Winston- He'ss still asleep- all the stress and probably the medicine knocked him out pretty hard.

He took a shower and got dressed- after that he decided to drive hom to grab some stuff. He left Winston a note in case he would wake up while he was gone.

He took Winstons car to drive home where he packed up some clothes and put on new ones.

Scott looked at he clock. Must be lunchtime at Liberty now. There was still some unfinished business in this school for him. And since he was in town now anyway he could visit this hellhole.

He get back into the car and drove to the school. He went there long enough but after 8 month and the second visit... it still felt weird.

He was the one the school chose to give Montys stuff to since his parents didnt care enough for it.

After he arrived at school he parked his car in a parking lot near by the school, then he stepped out and took a deep breath.

No one was around so he felt at least a bit more comfortable. All that changed after he entered the school building. The halls were filled with students. People he know and some he dont.

But no one seemed to notice him. Luckily. At least he thought so.

Without any further thinking he walked straight towards the principals office- but stopped after someone grabbed his arm and some other called his name.

"Scott!"

He got dragged away by the one who grabbed his arm.

"Long time no hypocrite. Didnt expect to see you around here anymore after you buggered off after the whole Bryce "rape" thing."

Scott tried to stay calm.

"What do you want?"

"We just wonder why you're here and that you still have the courage for it."

"Why? Should I feel afraid of you?"

"Maybe."

"I dont. Let me go, I have somethng to take care of."

"What is it?"

"Non of your business."

"You know whats our business?"

"What?"

"Why are you walking around with a fucking faggot?"

"I dont understand."

"We saw you with hime- the last days. The one guy with pale skin and black hair. The faggot."

He just looked at them.

"The faggot? Yeah?" taking this word in his mouth made him feel disgusted.

"Dont you think its time to stop using thie word? How old are you? 10?"

"Why are you defending him? Are you one of them now too?"

The other guys laughed.

"I mean look at him- hes probably going back to him. Thats why hes wearing his bes clothes."

The guys continued to laugh.

"And even if I am- it not your problem anymore. I'm not your friend anymore. So I can do what ever the fuck I want."

"So youre fucking him. Disgusting. Monty would have beat the shit outta you. Sadly he died because someone rat about what he did."

Scott laughed this time.

"I bet he would have. Totally. Except I was a trued friend of him and he never judged me."

He turned around and pushed past between the other students- he still could hear them shit talking.

Scott didnt glanced over his shoulder and turned left around he almost ran Alex over.

"Scott."

"Alex."

"What are you doing here?"

"Taking care of Montys stuff."

"Hm. Jeard you talk with these guys over there. Are you staying with Winston."

"Maybe."

"How does it feel to be around someone whos fighting against us?"

"I dont care. You did something wrong and have to pay for it. Why are you even so angry about it? At me? You can stop that now. Its getting annoying."

Scott walked down the hall and Alex followed him, he entered an empty room.

"I am because I want to."

Zach appeared behind Alex, out of knowhere. As well as Clay, Justin and the rest of the group.

"So childish. You know I didnt sell out Montys trust so the next moment you could pin the murder of Bryce on him. I'm not your friend- The only one I actually just cared about in thsi whole group was Clay. And because I dont owe you anything I can do what I want. Step up for what you did wrong. You cant serve justice while cobering up a murder."

Alex blood boiled with every word he siad.

"Why do you even care? I mean Monty was a criminal. Murder or not."

"Because- surprise- he was my friend."

"Why are you helping Winston?"

"Because he thinks the same:"

"Yeah? Really?"

Zach grabbed Alex arm ad whispered a silent "Lets go". But Alex didnt want to stop.

"You're just helping him because you think hes hot."

Scott blinked in confusion.

"And I think you just killed Bryce because he wanted to fuck up Zachs life. The person you love so much but wont admit it because you're a coward. Wont even notice hiw much he liked you back."

Alex got furious and shoved Zach away from him, angrily.

"How dare you?"

Scott laughed.

"Thank me later."

Zach looked back and forth between them and started to blush.

"Wha... not true!" and he rushed away.

Alex looked afte him.

"You're gonna pay for this" and then he followed him.

Clay stared at Scott for some seconds.

"What? Do you want to complain too? Because I really dont eanna end up in a fight with you."

"No I .... who told you to look after me?"

Scott rolled his eyes.

"Should be pretty obvious. Dont it? It was Jeff."

"Oh... really...?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"I dont know. Maybe bevause he knew you neeede help or something."

"But he was around most of the time."

"He was but it was for the time he couldnt be around."

Clay nooded to that.

"So... do you really think Winston is hot?"

Justin started to laugh.

"Dude dont ask that."

"But..."

"What the fuck Clay?" Scott said in confusion.

"I'm sorry."

"You know..." Scott started. "Everyone finds Winston hot- even the most hetero guys alive."

Clay laughed at this and pat him on the shoulder.

"Good joke man. You looked so serious saying that."

"Thats beause I was being serious.

He shook his head slightly and then walked away. Grabbing Montys stuff from the office.

After that he took the emergrency exit and rushed to the car- with it, he drove home.

He entered the house and went straight to the kitchen- the box with Montys stuff still in his hands. He placed it on the counter.

Scott made some coffee and was about to open up the fridge as he heard steps that stopped right in the doorframe.

Winston stood there- with a bit of a shocked look on his face.

It made him worrying.

"Somethings up?"

Winston just hsook his head, still kinda tired because oth the meds.

"I just..." he rubbed his eyes."

"Its just the... look on you. The clothes. Monty used to ear the m all the time."

"Oh...yeah... I can change it for something else if you want me to. If its more comfortable for you."

"No." Winston shook his head. "Its fine. Really."

He noticed the box on the counter.

"Whats that?"

"Montys last belongings. I thought you might wanna have them. Its not much but enough for you I hope..."

Winston took a seat and grabbed the box.

"You were in school right? How was it?"

"Seems like everyone of my former so called "friends" hate me now. But I dont really care. Met Alex and his friend again to. Had a little fight. But wasnt that bad. Still feels weird going back there..."

"I can imagine that."

"Anyway Winston... how are you feeling?"

"Good. Better than yesterday."

They had breakfast together as Scott received a message.

Sheri. She wanted to meet them.

"Hey Winston?"

"Hm?"

"Gotta problem coming with me to visit Jeffs grave?"

"You really think I should come with you? Why do you even want to visit him now?"

"Sheri just wrote me - she wants to go there. And she invited you."

"Oh really? If she wants me to come I'll say yes."

He wrote her back, that they would meet at 2pm.

Sheri: "It really didnt sound like you want to visit him yesterday.

Scott: "That was yesterday. Now is today and my mood is better too."

 

Scott took the bag with his clothes out of the car after they finished eating and headed upstairs as Winston stopped him.

"Already feeling like home here dont you?" he siad, pointing at the bag.

"Oh- I just thought that I should stay for some days more. Just in case."

"Right. I know that." Winston smiled.

 

He carried his bag up the stairs and placed it on the bed, he sat down next to it. He choosed some dark clothes for that occasion even though he knew that Jeff probably wouldnt like that.

Winston watched him from the door frame silently. Scott ddint notice him because he was stcuck in a daydream.

"Are you ready?" Winston said finally and Scott almost jumped.

"I am - I think."

They got into Winstons car and drove the long way to the graveyard.

There he parked the car in an empty spot and togther they walked up the way- Sheri was already waiting for them there.

"Finally here- I think I was to early." She laughed and looked at Winston.

"Nice to see you again- now we'll introcude you to our best friend." she whispered quietly, not to disturb the other visitors.

Together they walked to Jeffs grave - which was decorated with many flowers.

"Looking good." Scott said, after seeing all these flowers.

"Obviously it must be. Jeff was such a sweetie."

Sheri claimed, Scott secretly agreed to it.

"So why'd you chose to come? Yesterday you sounded a bit stressed."

He looked at Winston for some seconds.

"Well... Winston helped me to understand that I shouldnt feel resposible for Montys death."

Sheri tilted her head slightly.

"What does that has to do with Jeff?"

"I...." he looked at Winston again. "I guess... I ahve to tell you something."

And he told her. About everything. About what Jeff told him- what he ased him for. About Monty. About Clay. That Scott flt like the burdern was all on him.

He strayed calm through all of it.

"He had to much hopes in me- Monty and the others dragged me deep into their darkness. That non of theri fault. If only, thene mine. Because I knew what would happen."

"Oh damn... But... he should've never left it all on you. Ther was no chance of you to handle it all alone."

"I did it anyway- I wanted to."

Sheri and Winston both waited for a clear answer.

"I wanted to make him proud. Ther are still things I will always deny. For the fact that its now to late and never was about any relevance."

Sheri laughed.

[444names]

POST NUMBER 500

german and french forenames + norwegian fjords BUT excluding "fjord" and similar to "Alaska"

Adicka Adidse Adinado Adine Agandrina Agaéta Albeante Aldalen Alfrandan Algjea Aloïc Alphie Amelind Amillrice Andalien Andik Andtgunne Angen Angothel Ankarg Annic Antiam Arcelph Arcus Arden Argitia Arosl Ascast Astelte Audria Aulen Auridt Barick Bassimst Bassinrie Baste Bathélène Beimic Beine Bellein Bellien Berie Berne Berry Bervia Bette Bjøssas Briegaph Brikolda Briona Calfrentz Calieu Camne Carielien Catterta Chaete Cheid Cheniamut Chilieb Chistia Chricie Chris Claulique Claus Cober Colia Coliaste Colice Dagord Dalin Dalteille Dandrig Didlene Dietherna Dikse Dolip Donne Duste Dylairès Eiddenée Eimorde Ellette Elphel Emald Emanz Emarc Emarik Emart Emine Emirkda Emmaxis Erith Erndalmue Ernstra Ersaure Erøya Etcharob Ethole Ewalierre Ewalwin Fabel Faben Faninne Fanne Felle Ferth Finharden Fisloé Florden Floïc Fogne Fossa Framic Frana Frand Frandine Franic Frard Fratruden Freang Frete Frich Friegandt Frien Friername Frédrin Frøya Fustia Førgulles Gabine Gabrinn Gabris Gante Garfjorno Garines Geide Gencilien Genne Gentiant Gentz Gerden Gerna Gerne Gerreth Ghiddan Gildo Gilinèse Giste Gistéph Gotth Grart Grean Grettempe Grine Grionden Grélaete Guliaste Gulien Gullen Gundre Hadeni Hadenia Haele Halémilie Hanasve Hanikaria Hanpauren Harandald Hariane Heidle Heine Heinger Heinnice Heirchie Helien Helister Hellen Helles Hermarich Hernell Hervérick Hilie Hilte Homarl Huben Hugnès Hugulari Hugulia Hunoît Hylar Hélinne Ilden Illen Imeden Inaline Isefjoël Islof Istfjorna Istomred Jached Jachel Jachrie Jachriete Jacque Jamefjona Jamélo Jançois Jeance Jeand Jeandrie Jeane Jeank Jeatn Jeatriden Jeatrie Jelik Jorden Jordene Jorette Julaureda Julfga Julip Justaden Justines Jérine Jörgervé Jøssaksen Jürga Jürgabren Kalie Kargeord Karta Keharden Kerhanne Kevickas Kilbert Kilippe Klaudomat Klete Koben Konah Kuromstie Kveline Kvesteidt Kvine Kvågfra Kvåself Laine Laingese Lanne Lantin Larden Lauda Laudin Laudinas Lauren Laurs Laust Laustines Lefjoste Levine Leximo Livikt Loisla Lorden Louidse Louidt Luciammer Lucina Ludines Ludrika Lukeu Lydin Lütois Malaus Malgervé Malinia Malip Maliquel Malsan Mandana Manna Manne Mannest Maraine Maramunne Marden Margisen Marianic Maricka Marines Marlhe Marmilie Marna Marond Marster Maximelle Meliona Michiert Miermild Mileve Mille Milleno Milte Minden Minel Minfrin Minieran Miraustia Mondald Moria Myrissine Mélia Mélotte Nadrig Nandt Nianka Nianne Nifelein Nisebken Nissic Nordenna Nordernd Odine Olemillen Oliether Olippas Olter Orden Osanich Ostimo Otharden Othiette Otnelydi Pastina Pathilles Paudia Paudwil Pauka Paula Pette Phance Pharah Pheris Philhuber Porde Ramalle Ramne Ramurt Ranette Raurid Rausten Reclancie Reiline Rette Roben Rolen Rollaurée Rolle Rolte Romand Romarc Roniamira Rudenne Rédériel Régister Saber Sanden Sanne Sanueste Sançois Selmarie Sephia Sicelf Similie Sjorey Sjory Skjené Skjord Skjorden Snfjoël Snique Sogeid Sogne Soldam Soniquele Stord Sunne Sykke Syland Sylvantz Sylvian Sørdel Talistert Thillen Tianis Timone Tjorden Tophanne Trarden Tyanne Vaine Valind Valtonia Valvine Vandale Vanlord Varich Vatris Velie Verns Vette Viellrinz Vikaromre Vikfjola Vitsther Volphim Vonien Værah Værangen Vérès Walouel Werdenel Werger Wield Wigild Wigista Wigisteid Wigman Wigsfjoce Wiloïc Yrichria Yvden Yvolin Åfjose Åkronane Éliand Éliebker Éliquel Élivicola Élène Émirc Éries Érômen

[audiofuzz]

Canadian Electronica Fuzz: yoo doo right – “Marche Des Squelettes” yoo doo right "Marche Des Squelettes" EP2 What an album, what a great band.  Coming from Montreal, yoo doo right is made up of Justin Cober - vocals, guitar; Charles Masson - bass; John Talbot - drums; and Charles Bourassa - synth, programming, these guys kick ass. 

[xavierneszvecsko]

Justin Cober del rock band yoo doo right xaviern.com

[dustedmagazine]

Listening Post: Kim Gordon

Kim Gordon has long been one of rock’s female icons, one of a tiny handful of women to get much play in Michael Azzerad’s underground-defining Our Band Could Be Your Life and a mainstay in the noise-rock monolith Sonic Youth. It’s hard to imagine that quintessential dude rock band without Gordon in front, dwarfed by her bass or spitting tranced out, pissed off verses over the storm of feedback.

Yet Gordon’s trajectory has been, if anything, even more fascinating since Sonic Youth’s demise in 2011. A visual artist first — she studied art at the Otis College of Art and Design before joining the band — she continues to paint and sculpt and create. She’s had solo art shows at established galleries in London and New York, most recently at the 303 Gallery in New York City. A veteran of indie films including Gus van Zant’s Last Days and Todd Haynes I’m Not There, she has also continued to act sporadically, appearing in the HBO series Girls and on an episode of Portlandia. Her memoir, Girl in a Band, came out in 2015.

But Gordon has remained surprisingly entrenched in indie music over the last decade. Many critics, including a few at Dusted, consider her Body Head, collaboration with Bill Nace the best of the post-Sonic Youth musical projects. The ensemble has now produced two EPs and three full-lengths. Gordon has also released two solo albums, which push her iconic voice into noisier, more hip hop influenced directions. We’re centering this listening post around The Collective, Gordon’s second and more recent solo effort, which comes out on Matador on March 8th, but we’ll likely also be talking about her other projects as well.

Intro by Jennifer Kelly

Jennifer Kelly: I missed No Home in 2019, so I was somewhat surprised by The Collective’s abrasive, beat-driven sound though I guess you could make connections to Sonic Youth’s Cypress Hill collaboration?

The more I listen to it, though, the more it makes sense to me. I’ve always liked the way Gordon plays with gender stereotypes, and “I’m a Man” certainly follows that trajectory. What are you guys hearing in The Collective?

Jonathan Shaw: I have only listened through the entire record once, but I am also struck by its intensities. Sort of silly to be surprised by that, given so many of the places she has taken us in the past: noisy, dangerous, dark. But there's an undercurrent of violence to these sounds that couples onto the more confrontational invocations and dramatizations of sex. It's a strong set of gestures. I like the record quite a bit.

Bill Meyer: I'm one of those who hold Body/Head to be the best effort of the post-Sonic Youth projects, but I'll also say that it's very much a band that creates a context for Gordon to do something great, not a solo effort. I was not so taken with No Home, which I played halfway through once upon its release and did not return to until we agreed to have this discussion. I've played both albums through once now, and my first impression is that No Home feels scattered in a classic post-band-breakup project fashion — “let's do a bit of this and that and see what sticks.” The Collective feels much more cohesive sonically, in a purposeful, “I'm going to do THIS” kind of way.

Jonathan Shaw: RE Jennifer's comment about “I'm a Man”: Agreed. The sonics are very noise-adjacent, reminding me of what the Body has been up to lately, or deeper underground acts like 8 Hour Animal or Kontravoid's less dancy stuff. Those acts skew masculine (though the Body has taken pains recently to problematize the semiotics of those photos of them with lots of guns and big dogs...). Gordon's voice and lyrics make things so much more explicit without ever tipping over into the didactic. And somehow her energy is in tune with the abrasive textures of the music, but still activates an ironic distance from it. In the next song, “Trophies,” I love it when she asks, “Will you go bowling with me?” The sexed-up antics that follow are simultaneously compelling and sort of funny. Rarely has bowling felt so eroticized.

Jennifer Kelly: I got interested in the beats and did a YouTube dive on some of the other music that Justin Raisen has been involved with. He's in an interesting place, working for hip hop artists (Lil Yachty, Drake), pop stars (Charli XCX) and punk or at least punk adjacent artists (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Viagra Boys), but nothing I've found is as raw and walloping as these cuts.

“The Candy House” is apparently inspired by Jennifer Egan's The Candy House, which is about a technology that enables people to share memories... Gordon is pretty interested in phones and communications tech and how that's changing art and human interaction.

Andrew Forell: My immediate reaction to the beats was oh, The Bug and JK Flesh, in particular the MachineEPs by the former and Sewer Bait by the latter. Unsurprisingly, as Jonathan says, she sounds right at home within that kind of dirty noise but is never subsumed by it

Jennifer Kelly: I don't have a deep reference pool in electronics, but it reminded me of Shackleton and some of the first wave dub steppers. Also, a certain kind of late 1990s/early aughts underground hip hop like Cannibal Ox and Dalek.

Bryon Hayes: Yeah, I hear some Dalek in there, too. Also, the first Death Grips mixtape, Ex-Military.

It's funny, I saw the track title “I'm a Man,” and my mind immediately went to Bo Diddley for some reason, I should have known that Kim would flip the script, and do it in such a humorous way. I love how she sends up both the macho country-lovin’ bros and the sensitive metrosexual guys. It's brilliant!

This has me thinking about “Kool Thing”, and how Chuck D acts as the ‘hype man’ to Kim Gordon in that song. I'm pretty sure that was unusual for hip hop at the time. Kim's got a long history of messing with gender stereotypes.

Bill Meyer: Gordon did a couple videos for this record, and she starred her daughter Coco in both of them. The one for “I'm A Man” teases out elements of gender fluidity, how that might be expressed through clothing, and different kinds of watching. I found the video for “Bye Bye” more interesting. All the merchandise that's listed in the video turns out to be a survival kit, one that I imagine that Gordon would know that she has to have to get by. The protagonist of the video doesn't know that, and their unspoken moment in a car before Coco runs again was poignant in a way that I don't associate with her work. And of messing with hip hop!

Tim Clarke: “Bye Bye” feels like a companion to The Fall’s “Dr Buck’s Letter.”

Bill Meyer: From The Unutterable? I'll have to a-b them.

Tim Clarke: That’s the one.

Jonathan Shaw: All of these comments make me think of the record’s title, and the repeated line in “The Candy House”: “I want to join the collective.” Which one? The phone on the record’s cover nods toward our various digital collectives — spaces for communication and expression, and spaces for commerce, all of which seem to be harder and harder to tell apart. A candy house, indeed. Why is it pink? Does she have a feminine collective in mind? A feminine collective unconscious? The various voices and lyric modes on the record suggest that's a possibility. For certain women, and for certain men working hard to understand women, Gordon has been a key member of that collective for decades.

Jennifer Kelly: The title is also the title of a painting from her last show in New York.

The holes are cell phone sized.

You can read about the show here, but here's a representative quote: “The iPhone promises freedom, and control over communication,” she says. “It’s an outlet of self-expression, and an escape and a distraction from the bigger picture of what’s going on in the world. It’s also useful for making paintings.”

Gordon is a woman, and a woman over 70 at that — by any measure an underrepresented perspective in popular culture. However, I’d caution against reading The Collective solely as a feminist statement. “I'm a Man,” for instance, is told from the perspective of an incel male, an act of storytelling and empathy not propaganda. My sense is that Gordon is pretty sick of being asked, “What's it like to be a girl in a band?” (per “Sacred Trickster”) and would like, maybe, to be considered as an artist.

It's partly a generational thing. I'm a little younger than she is, but we both grew up in the patriarchy and mostly encountered gender as an external restriction.

As an aside, one of my proudest moments was when Lucas Jensen interviewed me about what it was like to be a freelance music writer, anonymously, and Robert Christgau wrote an elaborate critique of the piece that absolutely assumed I was a guy. If you're not on a date or getting married or booking reproductive care, whose business is it what gender you are?

There, that's a can of worms, isn't it?

Jonathan Shaw: Feminine isn't feminist. I haven't listened nearly closely enough to the record to hazard an opinion about that. More important, it seems to me the masculine must be in the feminine unconsciousness, and the other way around, too. Precisely because femininity has been used as a political weapon, it needs imagining in artistic spaces. Guess I also think those terms more discursively than otherwise: there are male authors who have demonstrated enormous facility with representing femininity. James, Joyce, Kleist, and so on. Gordon has always spoken and sung in ways that transcend a second-wave sort of feminine essence. “Shaking Hell,” “PCH,” the way she sings “I Wanna Be Your Dog.”

Jennifer Kelly: Sure, she has always been shape-shifter artistically.

The lyrics are super interesting, but almost obliterated by noise. I’m seeing a connection to our hyperconnected digital society where everything is said but it’s hard to listen and focus.

Bill Meyer: Concrete guy that I am, I’ve found myself wishing I had a lyric sheet even though her voice is typically the loudest instrument in the mix.

Andrew Forell: Yes, that sense of being subsumed in the white noise of (dis)information and opinion feels like the utopian ideal of democratizing access has become a cause and conduit of alienation in which the notion of authentic voices has been rendered moot. It feels integral to the album as a metaphor

Christian Carey: How much of the blurring of vocals (good lyrics — mind you) might involve Kim’s personal biography, I wonder? From her memoirs, we know how much she wished for a deflection of a number of things, most having to do with Thurston and the disbandment of SY.

Thurston was interviewed recently and said that he felt SY would regroup and be able to be professional about things. He remarked that it better be soon: SY at eighty wouldn’t be a good look!

Andrew Forell: And therein lies something essential about why that could never happen

Ian Mathers: I know I’m far in the minority here (and elsewhere) because I’ve just never found Sonic Youth that compelling, despite several attempts over the years to give them another chance. And for specifically finding Thurston Moore to be an annoying vocal presence (long before I knew anything about his personal life, for what it's worth). So, I’m in no hurry to see them reunite, although I do think it would be both funny and good if everyone except Moore got back together.

Having not kept up with Gordon much post-SY beyond reading and enjoying her book, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this record. After a couple of listens, I’m almost surprised how much I like it. Even though I’m lukewarm on SY’s music, she’s always been a commanding vocal presence and lyricist and that hasn’t changed here (I can echo all the praise for “I’m a Man,” and also “I was supposed to save you/but you got a job” is so bathetically funny) and I like the noisier, thornier backing she has here. I also think the parts where the record gets a bit more sparse (“Shelf Warmer”) or diffuse (“Psychic Orgasm”) still work. I've enjoyed seeing all the comparisons here, none of which I thought of myself and all of which makes sense to me. But the record that popped into my head as I listened was Dead Rider’s Chills on Glass. Similar beat focus, “thick”/distorted/noisy/smeared production, declamatory vocals. I like that record a lot, so it's not too surprising I'm digging this one.

Jennifer Kelly: I loved Sonic Youth but have zero appetite for the kind of nostalgia trip, just the hits reunion tour that getting back together would entail.

Jonathan Shaw: Yeah, no thanks to that.

RE Christian's comment: Not sure I see deflection so much as the impossibility of integration. We are all many, many selves, always have been. Digital communications interfaces and social media have just lifted it to another level of experience. Gordon sez, “I don't miss my mind.” Not so much a question of missing it in the emotional/longing sense, more so acknowledging that phrases like “my mind” have always been meaningless. Now we partition experience and identity into all of these different places, and we sign those pieces of ourselves over, to Zuck and the algorithms. We know it. We do it anyways, because it's the candy house, full of sweets and pleasures that aren't so good for us, but are really hard to resist. “Come on, sweets, take my hand...”

Bill Meyer: I would not mind hearing all of those SY songs I like again, can’t lie, although I don’t think that I’d spend Love Earth Tour prices to hear them. But given the water that has passed under the bridge personally, and the length of time since anyone in the band has collaborated creatively (as opposed to managing the ongoing business of Sonic Youth, which seems to be going pretty well), a SY reunion could only be a professionally presented piece of entertainment made by people who have agreed to put aside their personal differences and pause their artistic advancement in order to make some coin. There may be good reasons to prioritize finances. Maybe Thurston and/or Kim wants to make sure that they don’t show up on Coco’s front door, demanding to move their record or art collection into her basement, in their dotage. And Lee’s a man in his late 60s with progeny who are of an age to likely have substantial student loan debt. But The Community is just the kind of thing they’d have to pause. It feels like the work of someone who is still curious, questioning, commenting. It's not just trying to do the right commercial thing.

Justin Cober-Lake: I’m finding this one to be a sort of statement album. I’d stop short of calling it a concept album, but there seems to be a thematic center. I think a key element of the album is the way that it looks for... if not signal and noise, at least a sense of order and comprehensibility in a chaotic world. Gordon isn’t even passing judgment on the world — phones are bad, phones are good, phones make art, etc. But there’s a sense that our world is increasingly brutal, and we hear that not just in the guitars, but in the beats, and the production. “BYE BYE” really introduces the concept. Gordon’s leaving (and we can imagine this is autobiographical), but she’s organizing everything she needs for a new life. “Cigarettes for Keller” is a heartbreaking line, but she moves on, everything that makes up a life neatly ordered next to each other, iBook and medications in the same line. It reminds me of a Hemingway character locking into the moment to find some semblance of control in the chaos.

Getting back to gender, there’s a funny line at the end: one of the last things she packs is a vibrator. I'm not sure if we're to read this as a joke, a comment on the necessity of sexuality in a life full of transitory moments, as a foreshadowing of the concepts we’ve discussed, or something else. The next item (if it’s something different) is a teaser, which could be a hair care product or something sexual (playing off — or with — the vibrator). Everything's called into question: the seriousness of the track, the gender/sexuality ideas, what really matters in life. Modern gadgets, life-sustaining medicines, and sex toys all get equal rank. That tension really adds force to the song.

Coming out of “BYE BYE,” it's easy to see a disordered world that sounds extremely noisy, but still has elements we can comprehend within the noise. I don’t want to read the album reductively and I don't think it's all about this idea, but it's something that, early on in my listening, I find to be a compelling aspect of it.

[dustedmagazine]

Catherine Lamb — Curva Triangulus (Another Timbre)

Catherine Lamb composes complex, heady music. She explores how we perceive music, playing with harmonic structures and intonation, challenging our typical sense of sound. For Curva Triangulus, she joins with Ensemble Proton to investigate not only compositional drama, but the use of unusual instruments in creating (and limiting) the timbral possibilities of her work. The piece has an undeniable and immediate beauty to it, its leisurely place allowing room (or, better, time) for the experiments that Lamb conducts. It provides opportunity for deep listening challenges — interesting moments and unique developments arise everywhere — but it also makes for accessible pleasure, despite the novel and sometimes unsettling tonal work.

Bern's Ensemble Proton offers Lamb the ideal group for this project. The octet includes musicians hungry for the new and experimental with a penchant for playing unlikely instruments. Coco Schwarz's arciorgano — an extinct but resurrected keyboard instrument — might be the rarest and most unusual. The instrument breaks and octave in more than the usual number of divisions. Lamb uses the arciorgano's tonal options as a sort of sonic adhesive, holding the ensemble's varied sounds together. In a context with not only that instrument but also a lupophone, clarinet d'amore, and others, a violin or bassoon could sound downright pedestrian; instead, they sound otherworldly, part of the strange brew that makes up Curva Triangulus.

Lamb writes in her notes, “Elemental concepts around melody and harmony are reconsidered, blurred.” For listeners less attuned to prime qualitative harmonics and the modal challenges developed across “triadic counterpoint” (whoever those people might be), the blur of melody and harmony becomes the most fascinating aspect of the record. Melody remains subordinate to harmonic movement, but in the interplay of sounds and tones, melody peeks through in unexpected ways. The sonic shifts never become linear, but essentially melodic movements arise, occasionally passed between musicians. The lead “instrument,” might be a harmonic instead of a violin, but those structures give shape to musical phrases that cohere into, if not melody, at least melodic sensibility.

The deep concepts of Curva Triangulus make the album's nuances difficult to access, but the album never relies on its intellectual demands if listened to as a straightforward album. The tonal structures and uncommon instrumentation give it a particularly idiosyncratic feel, but everything sorts itself out into a spellbinding aural geometry. When the ensemble hints at a church organ six minutes in, no one will anticipate a turn toward hymnody, but when it drops into alien space informed by triple harp, no one will feel jarred either. Lamb's work provides a series of intellectual tests, but also a memorable stretch of focused wonder.

Justin Cober-Lake

[dustedmagazine]

Dust Volume 10, Number 5

Arab Strap

It’s lovely out. The lilacs are in bloom. The weather is warm enough to make a sweater/sweatshirt/coat redundant, and the bugs are swarming happily all over the garden. And yet, here we are, inside, ear buds in place, music on high, because however nice the weather, what if we missed something? What if, you, our readers missed something? Well, fear not, because we’re back with another set of short, impassioned reviews. Scottish lifers obsessed with their phones, South African jazzmen nearly forgotten, mumbling rappers, untethered improvisers—it’s all here for you. What, you were going out? Too nice to stay inside? Well, okay, it’ll be here when you get back.

Contributors include Ian Mathers, Justin Cober-Lake, Ray Garraty, Bill Meyer, Bryon Hayes, Jonathan Shaw, Andrew Forell, Christian Carey, Alex Johnson and Jennifer Kelly.

Arab Strap — I'm totally fine with it 👍 don't give a fuck anymore 👍 (Rock Action)

Even more surprising than this Scottish duo’s perversely triumphant return a few years ago is that in 2024 Aidan Moffat is writing more about the internet than about cheating and booze. (He’s still writing about those things too though, don’t worry.) Less shocking is that his laceratingly keen eye is no less effective when turned on his own relationship with his phone, or the way women are treated by the “fathers, husbands, sons and brothers” around them as soon as the deniability of a screen is in place, or the psychology of someone who turns to QAnon. And not just technology; with songs addressing those who’ve never recovered from the early-pandemic hit to their ability to go outside and those capitalism leaves to die in solitude, this might be the least relationship-y Arab Strap LP to date. Malcolm Middleton roughs up their sound again to match the bruised, heartfelt brutality of Moffat’s subject matter and the result is one of the most simultaneously empathetic and unsettling records from a band who’ve never been short on either quality.

Ian Mathers

Bad Nerves — Still Nervous (Suburban)

For their second album Still Nervous, punk rockers Bad Nerves take their ready-made formula and just amp everything up. Everything's loud and fast; the band clearly descends from the Ramones, but they've gone more manic. They secretly mix in flourishes of power pop. Underneath all the ruckus, they have a knack for catchy melodies, guitar solos and even vocal harmonies. Then Bad Nerves rough up the pop elements to make sure their disaffection comes through with enough spite to keep everything properly punk. The record does little to vary mood or tempo, but it doesn't need to. The band does one thing, but they excel at it. The Strokes comparisons the band's received mostly work, but the lo-fi production keeps everything sounding as if it's in an actual garage. “Plastic Rebel” offers a youthful rampage, bubble gummy enough to touch on Cheap Trick, but continually plowing forward. The Essex quintet closes the album with “The Kids Will Never Have Their Say,” an evergreen sentiment for the young and irritable. The point doesn't break new ground, but it's beside the point. Bad Nerves tap into something long running and rush the tradition on with plenty of verve and a hint of bile.

Justin Cober-Lake

Conway the Machine — Slant Face Killah (Drumwork \ EMPIRE)

If it wasn’t for Conway’s name on the copy to the album you’d think this was a long solo producer tapes with 40 guests on it, each mumbling about something nobody’s interested in except for the mumbler himself. It is not an exaggeration: it really lasts more than an hour, has close to 20 guests (depends on how you count) and even though Slant Face Killah is produced by a dozen of people the beats all sound the same. If it already sounds awful even for the diehard Conway fans, grip for the worst part of it. It ain’t even worth the trouble to skip all the tiring guest verses for the Conway verses because they are not good anyway. A total failure.

Ray Garraty

Alex Cunningham — Rivaled (Storm Cellar)

Remember October 2020? The time of still-subdued traffic, no shows and a looming election? Rivaled is an artifact of that moment. Nowadays, Alex Cunningham is an intensely active improviser, based in St. Louis but active all around the middle of the USA. Back then he was stuck at home and moved to make some noise. “Faith” and “Void” offer two paths to obliteration. The former is pretty plugged in, with electronic effects and appropriated radio noise turning Cunningham’s violin into a full-on electrical storm. The latter is unreliant upon electricity, but maybe even more dogged and savage. Originally released as an edition of 20 cassette, Rivaled is now a CD with a bonus remix that mashes both tracks together, both vertically and temporally, like a piggybacked highlights reel. Of noise relaxes you, you’ll want this close at hand when the next election rolls around.

Bill Meyer

Dun-Dun Band — Pita Parka Pt. 1: Xam Egdub (Ansible Editions)

Dun-Dun Band is an all-star cast of characters comprising some of Toronto’s most creative musicians and led by musical polymath Craig Dunsmuir. Dunsmuir is a shape shifter, trading guises and styles for decades: a guitar loop conjuror known as Guitarkestra, a purveyor of mutant disco vibes alongside Sandro Perri in Glissandro 70, a welder of minimalism, dub, and avant-garde weirdness as Kanada 70. His Dun-Dun Band collects members of Eucalyptus and Badge Époque Ensemble along with stalwarts Colin Fisher, Karen Ng, Josh Cole and Ted Crosby. Pita Parka is the group’s debut on vinyl and features three extended cosmic jazz jams that fuse multi-horn interplay to African-inspired polyrhythm. The music slyly winks at 1970s fusion but is more akin to that of modern ensembles such as Natural Information Society. The extended nature of the pieces allows the reedists to stretch their lungs and roam around, and for the rest of the ensemble to engage in creative interplay. Pita Parka is a stellar offering from some of Toronto’s finest players and one of the city’s most inquisitive and inventive minds.

Bryon Hayes

Roby Glod / Christian Ramond / Klaus Kugel—No ToXic (Nemu)

The three participants in this session are all veterans of middle European jazz that’s free in spirit, if not always in form. Bassist Christian Ramond and Klaus Kugel are from Germany, and soprano/alto saxophonist Roby Glod is from Luxembourg; their collective cv includes work with Kenny Wheeler, Ken Vandermark and Michael Formanek. Online evidence suggests that they’ve played together as a trio since 2015, which explains their easy rapport and nuanced interaction, but this is their first CD. Freedom for these folks means having the latitude to linger over a tune or to settle into nuanced timbral exchanges, but if you carded them, they’d all have jazz driver’s licenses. This music swings, often at speed, which is a very important aspect of their shared aesthetic; the excitement often comes from hearing Glod invent intricate, evolving lines that are lifted off by fast walking bass lines and kept in the air with light but insistent cymbal play. While the album is named No ToXic, the sheer pleasure of hearing these guys lock in could truthfully be labeled counter-toxic.

Bill Meyer

Göden — Veil of the Fallen (Svart)

Longtime listeners of death doom will recognize the name Stephen Flam, guitarist and co-founder of storied band Winter whose Into Darkness (1990) concretized the subgenre in the US; the record was great, and still is. For his recent work with Göden, Flam has dubbed himself “Spacewinds,” and his bandmates follow suit, with stage names that are equal parts risible and ridiculously gravid: vocalist Vas Kallas performs as “Nyxta (Goddess of Night)” (those parens seem to be her idea…) and keyboardist Tony Pinnisi appears as “The Prophet of Göden.” Okay. This reviewer’s inexhaustible appetite for Winter’s slim output disposes him to think kindly of Flam, and there’s nothing especially terrible about Veil of the Fallen — but that’s only because there’s nothing all that special about the record. The sound of the title track is appealingly austere, and the NyQuil-chugging riffs of “Death Magus” are sort of fun. But any listeners hoping for flashes of the inimitable, awesome awfulness of Winter would be well advised to recall the meaning of inimitable. Not even Flam, it seems, can provide a convincing replica of those energies and textures.

Jonathan Shaw

Mick Harvey — Five Ways to Say Goodbye (Mute)

Former Birthday Party and Bad Seeds member Mick Harvey looks back at his life on his autumnal new album “Five Ways to Say Goodbye.” Although he contributes only four original songs, his skill as an arranger and interpreter reaches its zenith. Harvey imbues his own and others’ songs with intense emotion that never tips into melodrama or histrionics. Augmenting his acoustic guitar with evocative string arrangements which provide counterpoint and color to his lyrics “When We Were Young and Beautiful” may be the finest song he has written; poetic in structure, elegiac in feeling, Harvey faces his past with dispassionate empathy for lost friends and acceptance of where he is now. His version of David McComb’s “Setting You Free” locates a Faustian menace in the song, using the strings to carry the dynamic thrust and emphasize the turbulent ambivalence of the original. “Like A Hurricane” becomes an intimate, piano ballad. By changing the tense from present to past and stripping the song of its rock roots, Harvey creates an emotional impact missing from Neil Young’s original. On “Demolition” Harvey replaces Ed Kuepper’s funereal drums with an off-kilter drum machine that clatters like an old projector to evokes the disconnections inherent in the lyrics. Harvey’s treatment of songs from The Saints, Lee Hazelwood, Lo Carmen and Marlene Dietrich are beautifully rendered. A wonderful summation of Harvey’s often underrated talent and an album that deserves a wider audience.

Andrew Forell

I Like To Sleep — Bedmonster’s Groove (All Good Clean Records)

This combo from Trondheim, Norway started out bridging the sound worlds of Gary Burton and Sleep. That’s a canny move if you’re looking for relatively untrodden ground, and as it turns out, a successful one. On Bedmonster’s Groove, which is album number four, the trio has dialed back the heaviness; you won’t hear a power chord until the beginning of side two. Instead, they have taken a turn towards experimentation. The microscopic applications of filters and effects give confer a variable glitter to Amund Storløkken Åse’s vibraphone, squeezable padding to Nicolas Leirtrø’s six-string bass, and some texturable variety to Øyvind Leite’s drums, which are all shown to good effect by some lean grooves and uncluttered melodies. Åse has also added some instrumentation; synths flicker and swirl in the empty spaces, and a mellotron heads a deliberate charge towards prog territory.

Bill Meyer

Kriegshög—Love & Revenge (La Vida Es un Mus)

Throughout the long existence of Kriegshög, it’s been customary to identify the band as a d-beat act. Love & Revenge is Kriegshög’s first release since 2019 and only its second LP in their (at least) 16 years of playing in and around Tokyo. Prolific, they ain’t, but the music is always worth waiting for. On this new record, the band rolls back the pace a bit and amps up the crusty, metal textures. Less squall and rampant chaos, more muscle and riffs that roll up in well-worn biker leathers — but all those qualifiers are relative. There’s still a raw edge to the production (if that’s the term we want…); the bass is laced with so much fat crackle that you’ll want to fry it and eat it. Sort of fun that one of the most volatile tunes on Love & Revenge is titled “Serenity.” Make of that what you will, but don’t spend too much time thinking about it. You’ll miss the next couple songs.

Jonathan Shaw

Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard and Quatuor Bozzini — Colliding Bubbles: Surface Tension and Release (Important)

Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard is a composer based in Copenhagen. On his latest EP he joins forces with the premiere Canadian string quartet for new music, Quatuor Bozzini, to create a piece that deals with the perception of bubbles replicating the human experience. In addition to the harmonics played by the strings, the players are required to play harmonicas at the same time. At first blush, this might sound like a gimmick, but the conception of the piece as instability and friction emerging from continuous sound, like bubbles colliding in space and, concurrently, the often tense unpredictability of the human experience, makes these choices instead seem organic and well-considered. As the piece unfolds, the register of the pitch material makes a slow decline from the stratosphere to the ground floor with a simultaneous long decrescendo. The quartet are masterful musicians, unfazed by the challenge of playing long bowings and long-breathed harmonica chords simultaneously. The resulting sound world is shimmering, liquescent, and, surprising in its occasional metaphoric bubbles popping.

Christian Carey

The Ophelias — Ribbon EP (self-released)

Ribbon is stormy, scathing and often quite beautiful. “Soft and Tame,” the EP’s emotional center, is all three. It begins wistfully: easy acoustic guitar strums and Andrea Gutmann Fuentes’ layered violin, nostalgic and close to sweet. Vocalist Spencer Peppet also starts slow, talking us through the aimless sensory motions of missing someone – “the sun on my cheek/as I walk around/I pick up a pear/I put it down/the radio plays a song we loved.” It doesn’t take long, however, for the skies to darken and the scene to become bleaker. By the line “the hollow sound/my jugular makes as it rolls around,” Mic Adams’s foreboding drums and a percussive creep of electric guitar have stalked in. And by the time Peppet has shown us “an overturned bus on the highway,” heard a“tornado warning” and told her subject to “stay the fuck away” for the second time, the band has built to a blown-out, climactic frenzy, the violin finding operatic heights over mammoth cymbal crashes.

In her review of The Ophelias’ last album, Crocus, Jennifer Kelly described Peppet as sounding “like she’s tilting her chin up and squaring her shoulders.” Likewise on Ribbon, where the band seems resigned to but also quite prepared for a fight. If “Soft and Tame” is aimed to knock “love in southern Ohio” down for good, then “Rind,” the final song, may tell us why they’re in the ring at all. At a brief break in the dynamic, flowering arrangement — it could be a particularly bucolic Magnetic Fields instrumental, especially in Gutmann Fuentes’ spry riffs — Peppet bursts out, “There you go!/On tour with my hometown friends/fucking score/they must have all forgotten!/Look back at what I tolerated.” There’s more to the story, but Peppet pulls back from the fray, settling things ominously: “to name it/makes your life/a little complicated.” Whatever “it” is, The Ophelias seem to have landed their punch. I don’t think I’ve heard more cutting, triumphant “Oohs” than those that end the song and Ribbon’s multifaceted fury with it.

Alex Johnson

Paperniks — Oxygen Tank Flipper 7-inch (Market Square)

Jason Henn is a master of catchy psychedelic punk. Honey Radar, his highest profile outfit, has unfurled a constant stream of hook-laden gems for well over a decade. Paperniks is his newest guise, a solo home recording project that amplifies the Guided by Voices meets Syd Barrett vibe of Honey Radar and doses it with nuggets of guitar noise. This tiny slab of wax is the sophomore Paperniks outing, following a single-sided lathe cut that strayed toward the clamorous edge of the octopus’s garden. On display are a pair of tunes that bear a striking resemblance to Honey Radar. “Oxygen Tank Flipper” is a groovy dose of psych replete with a catchy riff and a roller coaster bassline. Handclaps up the catchiness factor, as does Henn’s honey sweet sigh. “Essex Poem Dial” is a punky, garage-inspired tune. Henn’s reverb-soaked vocal hides inside the propulsive guitar chime. A noise interlude leads to a mellow vignette that slowly fades away. Paperniks showcases Henn’s boisterous side, and the music is certainly engaging, so hopefully there are more songs on the way soon.

Bryon Hayes

Ribbon Stage — Hit with the Most (Perennial/K)

Ribbon Stages hits the giddy sweet spot between punk and pop, their raucous guitar-drums-bass racket pounding on sweet, wistful little songs. The mixture varies with some cuts veering into the snaggle-toothed dream pop of, say, the Jeanines, while others rage harder and more dissonantly. “Stone Heart Blue,” the single, pulls the drums way up in the mix and lets distorted guitars and murmured vocals do battle attention behind them. The result is an uncanny balance of urgency, angst and solace, which is exactly what you want from pop-leaning punk. “Hearst” pushes slashing tangling guitar racket up to the foreground, letting a billowing squall spill over crisp drums and shout-sung vocals, while “Sulfate” lets a sighing romantic croon loose over boiling lavas of rock mayhem. Nice.

Jennifer Kelly

Rio Da Yung OG — Rio Circa 2020 (Boyz Ent)

This is exactly what the title says: a compilation of Rio songs stashed on the label’s HDD, no more, no less. No filler but no hits either. The tape has a “Circa 2020” feel to it, reminding us of when Rio did what he wanted with no shades of doom hanging over the songs. It’s unlike the music he wrote after the trial when he knew he had to do some time. There’s a little bit of everything in here: three songs with RMC Mike, two tracks featuring Louie Ray, a song on a Sav beat, a song on an Enrgy beat and a song on a Primo beat. Yet it’s hardly enough to last us until Rio is free.

Ray Garraty

Spirits Rejoice—S-T (Fredriksberg)

Spirits Rejoice! by Spirits Rejoice

A remastered reissue of a 1978 recording, Spirits Rejoice captures boundary-crossing South African jazz scene, which touches on fusion, rock, funk, soul, disco Latin and African sounds. The ensemble includes some of that time and place’s pre-eminent jazz musicians, Sipho Gumede of the fluid, loping bass lines, breezy, insouciant reeds-man Robbie Jansen, South African pioneering percussionist Gilbert Matthews, keyboardist Mervyn Africa and a very young Paul Peterson on electric guitar. The music is ebullient and clearly tilted towards pop accessibility, and the gleaming sheen of 1970s often dilutes its heat and fury. This is especially true on “Happy and in Love” which could double as a lost Earth Wind and Fire cut. Elsewhere, though, as in “Woza Uzo Kudanisa Nathi,” fervid polyrhythms, tight squalls of sax and an exhilarating call and response light up the groove, fusing African chants with a swaggering samba rhythm. And “Papa’s Funk,” is just what it sounds like—a slithery, stuttery, visceral bass-led swagger that bubbles and smolders and twitches in a universal funk.

Jennifer Kelly

Various Artists — GmBH: An Anthology of Music for Fashion Shows 2016 – 2023, Volume 1 (Studio LABOUR)

GmbH: An Anthology of Music for Fashion Shows 2016-2023 Vol. 1 by Various Artists

LABOUR is a multimedia project of Iranian musician Farahnaz Hatam and American percussionist/composer Colin Hacklander. Based in Berlin, the duo has collaborated widely and eclectically to produce soundtracks for sustainable, underground fashion house GmBH. This compilation collates 12 examples and showcases a variety of work from an international roster of artists including Iraqi-British oud player Khyam Allami, Turkish born DJ Nene H, Kuwaiti musician Fatimi Al Qadiri, American performance artist MJ Harper and Indonesian noise duo Gabber Modus Operandi. The thread that runs through all this is cross pollinations between genre, geography, and chronology. Allami’s oud plays against LABOUR’s electronic washes and synthetic percussion with each element emphasizing and interrogating differences in modality and structure. On “White Noise” LABOUR contrast a 16th century harpsichord piece with static and effects dissolving into a robotic club beat which ends up evoking a cyborg Hooked on Classics. Their collaboration with Harper on the spoken word “ablution” is a reflection on love, religion, and abnegation with elements of gospel, eastern and creeping doom ambience. The Anthology has much of interest but is essential for Belgian composer Billy Bultheel’s “YLEM” featuring German countertenor Steve Katona who soars incandescent from a backdrop of industrial grind. The contrast between earthly weight of the music and radiant purity of the voice is breathtaking.

Andrew Forell

Vertonen — taif’ shel (Oxidation)

taif' shel by Vertonen

Give the Oxidation label credit for radical truthfulness. One of the bummers of our time is the frequency with which folks on BandCamp and elsewhere will call a short-run, blue or green-faced disc a CD when they are selling you a CD-R. Oxidation, on the other hand, is named after the process that will eventually render its products unplayable. On to the sounds. Vertonen is Blake Edwards, who has been working around the edges of sound for over 30 years. On taif’ shel, he displays absolute mastery over the combination of collected, electronically generated and carefully edited sounds. His skill rests on three qualities; knowing where to place sounds, knowing how long to let them carry on and having some pretty good ideas about which ones to use in the first place. He can make a drone of infinite (but never unnecessary) complexity, or punctuate flipping film-ends with a precisely situated, never repeated sequence of chops and splices, to name just two examples found on this impermanent but thoroughly rewarding disc.

Bill Meyer

Villagers — That Golden Time (Domino)

That Golden Time is Villagers’ sixth album. The Conor O’Brien led project presents its most eclectic outing to date. A number of the songs are afforded pop treatment, consisting of memorable tunes and gentle, polished arrangements. The double-tracked vocals on “First Responder” is a case in point, about a relationship fragmenting while the singing coalesces, an interesting tension. “No Drama,” initially pared down to piano and O’Brien’s laconic vocals, eventually adds a coterie of Irish traditional instruments. “Keepsake” veers closer to mid-tempo electronica, with overlaid synth repetitions and treated vocals. The title track employs sustained violin lines, played by Peter Broderick, and an intricate form with supple harmonic shifts. “Brother Hen,” on the other hand, recalls the folk influences present from Villagers’ beginning. The diversity is diverting, even though That Golden Time feels like a collection of singles instead of an album statement.

Christian Carey

[dustedmagazine]

Dust Volume 10, Number 1

Finnoguns Wake

Wow, it’s been 10 years since we started Dust, our monthly collection of short reviews. During that time, we’ve covered hundreds of records that might have otherwise slipped through the cracks — from obscure CD-Rs handed off at live shows, to long-lost reissues dug out of attics and basements, to the maniacally focused output of the micro-labels we love to even, occasionally, semi-major releases.  Our conclusion: It may be hard times for music criticism, especially the paid variety, but it’s an excellent era for listening to music.  Here’s what we’ve uncovered to kick off the next decade.  Contributors include Bill Meyer, Jennifer Kelly, Ian Mathers, Andrew Forell, Justin Cober-Lake, Bryon Hayes, Patrick Masterson, Alex Johnson and Christian Carey.

Dave Bayles Trio — Live At The Uptowner (Calligram)

Good things are happening around Milwaukee. That’s where Dave Bayles practices his crafts as a jazz drummer and educator (actually, he teaches in Kenosha). This recording documents his foray into band leadership, which was hosted by the Uptowner, a neighborhood tap that’s been serving drinks since the 1880s. The recorded evidence suggests that despite it being the kind of place where you can holler at the Packers on a screen, when the music’s playing, people listen. Bayle, trumpeter Russ Johnson and bassist Clay Schaub justify their attention throughout this collection of mostly original, bop-aligned themes, which they execute with a little early-Ornette flexibility and healthy servings of direct, swinging lyricism. Johnson in particular does yeoman’s work, drawing out nuanced, patient solos that are likely to induce you to forget to open your mouth, just like the audience on this entirely ingratiating live recording.

Bill Meyer

Cy Dune — Against Face (Lightning Studios)

Very late on Seth Olinsky (from Akron/Family)’s dance/noise/punk experiment, but holy wow, what a belching, squelching, head-whipping sharp turn it is. If Akron/Family took gentle folk songs right off the rails, Cy Dune starts in chaos and ends in angsty cyber-age freefall. The trip typically takes one or two minutes, though the unironically named “Don’t Waste My Time” extends for three. Within that time frame, bass note bobble, snares snap, guitars twist and Olinsky shouts in terse syncopation, breaking occasionally for non-Jude-like “na-na-na-nahs.” “Against Face” wallops hard and fast, pounding toms tethering wild squalls of guitar. “No fun, no fun, no fun,” howls Olinsky periodically, but it definitely is. Fun.

Jennifer Kelly

Dual Monitor — HARD19 (Hardline Sounds)

Say what you might about Rinse FM, the station’s leadership (read: they of the coffers) continues to do a service to the UK’s ecosystem of independent radio by way of keeping afloat other institutions. One such example was its buyout and relaunch of the old pirate station Kool FM; another was its unshuttering of beloved Bristol station SWU.FM last April. Part of the latter’s reinvigorated lineup is the duo of Fliss Mayo and Zebb Dempster, aka Dual Monitor, and their latest release caught my ear for its attention both to percussion amid propulsion and to its high-grade bass weight. “Level Up” might be the winner for me, but the pitch-black plunge of “Left/Right” and “Quattros Oxide” are grooves to behold, too. The airy D&B twist of “Switch It” is also unmissable, a lovely bit of work to close out the four-tracker. Good for a run of 200 from a label worth watching, it looks like you’re still not too late if you do a little running of your own to go grab it.

Patrick Masterson

Eluvium — (Whirring Marvels In) Consensus Reality (Temporary Residence Limited)

Matthew Cooper has made and released plenty of music since 2016’s False Readings On (much of it under the Eluvium name) but in some ways the compact, masterful (Whirring Marvels In) Consensus Reality feels like the first capital A Eluvium Album since that one. As with 2007’s Copia, it leans into the orchestral side of Cooper’s work (this time remotely collaborating with various musicians over the last couple of years), resulting in everything from the phantasmagorical choral/vocal work on “Void Manifest” and the dense arpeggios of “Vibration Consensus Reality (for Spectral Multiband Resonator)” to the solo piano miniature of “Clockwork Fables” and the whirling swells of the closing “Endless Flower.” At this point Cooper’s work is often too varied and colorful to be described as drone, and too active and involving to really be ambient; it’s just Eluvium music, and it’s wonderful to have more of it.

Ian Mathers

Finnoguns Wake —Stay Young EP (What’s Your Rupture)

Stay Young is a debut four-track EP from Australian songwriters Shogun and his mate Finn Berzin who rejoice in the name Finnoguns Wake. You’ll find no knotty linguistic experiments but for lovers of energetically melodic indie guitar bands, there are joys to be had. The pair, who share vocals, guitar and lyrics, meet somewhere between the concise attack of Shogun’s former band Royal Headache and the anthemic end of Britpop. The first three songs zip by with guitars abuzz, the rhythm section driving hard and the voices high in the mix. “Blue Sky” manages to feel satisfyingly loose atop its rigid drumbeat. “So Nice” reconfigures the riff of Husker Dü’s “Terms of Psychic Warfare” to good effect, with Berzin sounding tonally like young Dylan. “Lovers All” moves along like a rougher version of The Buzzcocks. The one misstep “Strawberry Avalanche” aims for Britpop grandeur with the misguided self-belief of late Oasis. Shogun takes his “melting ice cream” metaphors as seriously as Liam treats even his most absurd attempts to top big brother. Thing is you can picture the song working for an audience, so hats off. Stay Young is a promising introduction from a band that feels it like has more and better coming.

Andrew Forell

Lamin Fofana — Lamin Fofana and the Doudou Ndiaye Rose Family (Honest Jon’s)

New York-based producer, DJ and visual artist Lamin Fofana had a big 2023, with two releases on the famed Honest Jon’s imprint and a third for the illustrious Trilogy Tapes in addition to a Resident Advisor mix. That second Honest Jon’s album came in the form of this collaboration in early December with the Doudou Ndiaye Rose Family, an mbalax group of some notoriety in Senegal and descendents of the Dakar drummer, composer and band leader best known as master of the sabar drum family. It fits, though the exact nature of the collaboration is unclear — this is very much a percussion workout of the highest order with only a deft tinge of Fofana’s electronics providing light, cosmic buoyancy to the music, a quartet of meditations ranging between four and 12 minutes long. The most frenetic of them, at least for a spell, is “Bench Mi Mode III: Spectrum,” but even that one has its share of field recordings to lend a more immersive, consuming quality to the listen than pure rhythmic impulse. If you’re unfamiliar with any of the parties involved, you’ll thank yourself in short order for giving this a go.

Patrick Masterson

Fortunati Durutti Marinetti — Eight Waves In Search Of An Ocean (Quindi (ITA) / Soft Abuse (USA))

Dan Colussi’s latest release under the Fortunato Durutti Marinetti moniker, Eight Waves In Search Of An Ocean, is eminently listenable, engaging and, if paid proper attention, engrossing—although not always comfortably. His vocals never stray far from sprechgesang and the instrumentation tends towards warped mid-tempo. There are bright washes of keys; flute and string inflections; careful, elastic bass lines with steady, shoulder-danceable drum patterns. It’s easy to be lulled by the rosy, if somewhat baroque settings, until an ascendant burst of synthesizer or dramatic pause intrudes to break the spell. You may find yourself unsure, rewinding to find out what you might’ve just missed. In this way, the experience of the album can feel akin to a single, continuous performance with brief variations, rather than a straightforward collection of songs.

One such variation, adding perhaps the most friction to Eight Waves… is “Smash Your Head Against the Wall,” which, while not concussive, does make your ears perk up at its clawing guitar chords and the stark imagery that Colussi nearly spits out: “it’s a nest of vipers pissing on each other…and anyone else who’s around/would love to fuck you over if they can/and this community’s request/for the presumed benefit of all/is smash your head against the wall…a delta of corrosion/disorder/and decomposition.” I quote at some length, but there’s plenty more. Though a sonic departure from its surroundings — think Bill Callahan’s “Diamond Dancer” dropped into Destroyer’s Kaputt — “Smash Your Head…” is emblematic of a record that rewards the delayering effect of multiple listens.

Alex Johnson

Ghost Marrow — earth + death (The Garrote)

There is a patience to the songs on Aurielle Zeitler’s third record as Ghost Marrow, but it’s the patience of a predator stalking its prey. All seven songs here started as improvisations on the Juno-60 synthesizer, but by the time they’ve been arranged into these shapes (almost entirely by Zeitler, who adds effects and guitar as well as her voice) they feel focused and intent on the listener. The Bladerunner-esque sweep of “mother of the end” and the increasingly un-gentle blasts of static breaking into the title track both land somewhere between unsettling menace and a kind of holy severity. By the time the closing, ten-minute “microcosm” erupts into clouds of guitar and distant screaming, suddenly sounding a lot more like Sunn O)))’s Black One than the rest of the LP might make you expect, it’s clear that Ghost Marrow is intent on honoring both sides of her title.

Ian Mathers

Brian Harnetty — The Workbench (Winesap)

Composer Brian Harnetty has created memorable work by digging into cultural archives. Shawnee, Ohio (2019) uncovered layers of memory from Appalachia, while last year's Words and Silences drew on recordings of Thomas Merton for sustained contemplation. For his brief EP The Workbench, he takes a different approach, mining deeply personal moments for a individual revelation. He begins with items that his father had repaired — a watch, a radio — and adds in voicemail messages, all in conversation with an evocative quartet. Eventually he ends the piece with his father's breathing as he sleeps in hospice, a quiet outro that finds mournful but understated peace.

The 11-minute track moves so smoothly that singling out key moments almost misses the point; it's a single movement to honor a relationship while reflecting on the brevity of time and the artifacts that persist amid mortality. When a repaired music box overtakes the musicians for the final lift, it feels natural, because of course the reparations done in life will outshine our ability to articulate their meaning. Harnetty's compositions before that never falter. His use of bass clarinet (here played by Ford Fourqurean) provides the essential gravity. Violin and cello weave through the piece with his own piano lightening the composition as needed. A reworked instrumental track allows for a wordless exploration of the same topics. An accompanying video covers the workbench itself, the artifacts presented in themselves, a tangible and visual part of the legacy. It's a short statement from Harnetty but one that lasts.

Justin Cober-Lake

 Nailah Hunter — Lovegaze (Fat Possum)

Nailah Hunter plays lots of instruments on this lush and twilit debut full-length, but two define its sound. Her voice, to start, is cool and effortless and strong, prone to flowery embellishments and capable of soaring crescendos without strain. She might remind you of Sade, in the poised, unruffled quiet bits, but she can belt, too, filling cavernous sonic spaces with bright untethered flourishes. The other instrument is the harp, more common certainly in classical music but not as unusual as it once was in rock and soul. But unlike Joanna Newsom who laces her tunes with folk-echoing arpeggios or Mary Lattimore who finds a celestial drone, Hunter employs the harp to scatter pizzicato shards of crystal in velvety nocturnal textures. The harp litters her moody atmospheres with star light, cold, glimmering pinpoints of sound. It contrasts in a striking way with the warmth of her voice and the pulsing, irregular syncopations of dance-like drums. These are oddly shaped elements that ought not to fit as snugly or as wondrously as they do, but they do.

Jennifer Kelly

Ernesto Diaz Infante — Bats In The Lavender Sky (Ramble)

Bay Area guitarist Ernesto Diaz Infante has always been a restless sort. Nonetheless, this album feels like a bit of a curve ball, albeit a welcome one. The improviser ensconced himself in a San Francisco recording facility named Next Door To The Jefferson Airplane Studios, but did not take the trip you might expect given a choice like that. Instead of a west coast psychedelic vibe, he has gone natural, nocturnal and New Zealand-ish. Put another way, this album mines territory similar to Roy Montgomery’s mid- to late-1990s work, with a little bit of user-friendly Mego thrown in. Repetition leads to contemplation; this music won’t move you at bat velocity, but if you happen to be floating on a slow-moving air mattress while they fly overhead, it’d make just the right soundtrack.

Bill Meyer

Joy Orbison — “Flight FM” (XL)

flight fm by TOSS PORTAL

Getting married and having a kid really seems to have opened Peter O’Grady up over the past few years. After starting his own label in 2017, he came out with an album (2021’s Still Slipping, Vol. 1), has dropped a handful of singles exploring various strains of UK dance music, and even mined the archive of his glory days for a comp of loosies long thought lost or forgotten (last year’s Archive 09-10). Far from the reserved, elusive producer he broke so big with “Hyph Mngo” as, Joy O has instead blossomed into an approachable, seemingly well-adjusted guy who just wants you to enjoy music the way he does — and what better way to do that than with this heavyweight cruiser that rolls as deep as his best material from the SunkLo days. Concocted in a car on the way to a festival, it took some badgering from Four Tet (who has some unreleased work of his own to wrap up, while we’re on the subject) for him to finish it… but thank goodness he did. The best part about this is that we skipped the Aliasizm radio rip and the endless speculation on what it was called and got straight to the release. A simple, speaker-wrecking ode to the pirate station from which it takes its name, you couldn’t start 2024 (or 2012) any better. Variation on an oft-repeated refrain lately: It’s a shame Fact isn’t around to report on it.

Patrick Masterson

Matt Krefting — Finer Points (Open Mouth)

Finer Points by Matt Krefting

Students of the northeastern U.S. freak scene know Matt Krefting for his endeavors both written and aural. His critical ear has spilled ink across the pages of The Wire magazine and Byron Coley’s Bull Tongue Review, and his sonic exploits harken back to the turn of the millennium with the studied quietude of Son of Earth. These days, Krefting makes surprisingly musical constructions using cassette decks and other tape-adjacent curios, coaxing murky melodies from spools of ferric material. Finer Points comprises layers of dusky fuzz, sandblasted environments and warmly lit instrumental passages. A lonely organ features prominently across many tracks, its doleful moan warbling slightly as Krefting’s malfunctioning tape deck motors strain to maintain a constant speed. Standing out from the nocturnal scenery is “A Double Request,” in which multiple plucked string instruments coalesce into a swampy dirge. There’s a sense of evolution at play as the parts cycle through, forming melodies that shift and tumble before falling apart entirely. This is a common theme throughout Finer Points: Krefting subtly and gradually alters the scenery. The slow unfolding creates an intoxicating glow that permeates the entire experience.

Bryon Hayes

Thomas K. J. Mejer / Uneven Same — Saxophone Quartets 1 2 5 6 7 (Wide Ear)

Uneven Same – Saxophone Quartets by Thomas K.J. Mejer

If you’ve heard of Thomas Mejer, it’s most likely because he is a rare specialist in the contrabass saxophone. In that capacity, he’s contributed tonal heft and textural complexity to the music of Phill Niblock and Keefe Jackson. But for this album, which was mostly performed by the all-female saxophone quartet, Uneven Same, he applies a nuanced comprehension of the potentialities of other saxes founded upon the advances made by improvisers to composed music that operates that is carefully textured and glides more than it grooves. Manuela Villiger, Eva-Marta Karbacher, Vera Wahl and Silke Strahl realize his long, layered lines and carefully buffed sonorities with exquisite poise. Mejer also uses overdubbing to realize four more pieces, all part of a series entitled “Resonating Voids,” on his own. By turns rough, thick, and aquatic, its elemental earthiness balances Uneven Same’s more airborne performances.

Bill Meyer

Melted Men — Jaw Guzzi (Feeding Tube)

Melted Men are an enigma that no amount of online sleuthing can crack. The only information about them online is their Discogs page and a live show review from 1997. In that bizarre performance, Melted Men was a duo from Athens, Georgia. Apparently now, 25 years later, they’ve swollen their ranks, even roping in members from as far afield as continental Europe. With Jaw Guzzi, the anonymous outfit offers up a pair of side-long audio head trips. Warped, heat haze-distorted cassette detritus sidles up to blown out exotica and disjointed Martian funk beats. There’s a hefty dose of collage on display, with mutant vignettes that serve as rickety bridges between more tuneful passages. It’s these doses of song form that will extract bobbing heads and wobbly bottoms from the most adventurous listeners. Melted Men imagine a world where the jump cut jumble of Seymour Glass intersects the ethno-punk chaos of Sun City Girls and the junk shop proto-industrial bleat of early Wolf Eyes. It’s a world that this writer wouldn’t mind visiting frequently.     

(Note: Melted Men are such a mysterious bunch that they’ve asked Feeding Tube not to post any audio on Bandcamp or elsewhere on the internet.)

Bryon Hayes

Nehan — An Evening with Nehan (Drag City)

Nehan is all-star Japanese noise/drone/experimental ensemble led by Masaki Batoh and drawing members from Ghost, Acid Mothers Temple and the Silence. The disc in question presents two side-long improvisations which use as a starting point the 9hz brain wave emitted from a test subject. You can get a sense in the video above of how the experiment worked, as a dancer’s synaptic impulses feed into an elaborate synthesizer set up, turning whatever was in her head into long, pulsing drones. It’s a bit austere in its pure form, but the record elaborates, adding percussion, especially gongs and bells, and a wizened-kazoo-like wind instrument, something that might be a bagpipe and other sounds. It’s not entirely clear how much of what you hear comes from the brain waves and how much comes from the free interplay of the musicians, but maybe it doesn’t matter. The result is slow-moving and mysterious, with dramatic surges of drums and wandering threads of blown sound. The human brain is a notoriously mysterious organ but who’d have thought it could general all this instrumental turmoil? If you’d told me this music was sourced from sun storms or tidal currents or tectonic shifts, I’d have believed that, too.

Jennifer Kelly

Colin Newman and Malka Spiegal—Bastard (Swim ~)

Colin Newman’s Bastard created quite a stir in 1997 when first released. This nine-track, all-instrumental album, leaned heavily on a still mostly underground drum ‘n bass aesthetic and was a far cry from Wire’s terse, melodic outbursts. It also was Newman’s first project after Wire went on hiatus, billed as a solo effort, but actually a close collaboration with his partner Malka Spiegel. This expanded reissue gives Spiegel due credit and fills out the context with 12 additional contemporaneous tracks.

The original album still sounds fairly austere, with clean, clipped drum cadences, locked-tight guitar loops and abstract surges of synthesized sound. The amusingly named “Slowfast (falling down the stairs with a drumkit)” allows the use of distorted guitar, but only in quick, percussive blots. The guitar sound becomes an element of percussion, but not the important one—an antic skitter of drum machine dominates the cut. “Spiked” strips a funk riff down to cubist blocks, a bass sliding woozily between sharp-cut breakbeat drums. None of this is so surprising now, in the wake of techno, house and all its variants, but people weren’t expecting it, least of all from a post-punk progenitor, in 1997. The reissue adds a bunch of other tracks, many of which hew much closer to how you probably think of Wire. “Automation” adds a sinuous, down-in-the-mix vocal to its pop-locked rhythms. “Voice” bristles with guitar dissonance and bobs with dubby bass. “Tsunami” floats euphorically on sawed-down guitar feedback, a good bit like My Bloody Valentine but dancier. And “Cut the Slack” sounds like a Wire song, deadpan chants running into shouted aggressions and layers of guitar shimmering around undeniable hooks. The extra tracks make Bastard sound less like a 100% departure and more like a gradual evolution—and they are very much worth hearing all on their own.

Jennifer Kelly

Ethan Philion Quartet — Gnosis (Sunnyside)

Gnosis by Ethan Philion Quartet

Here’s a welcome surprise. As a rule, bebop-rooted jazz is not the place to look for excitement in 2023, but the rules change when Ethan Philion is on stage. On this record, his second as a leader, the Chicago-based bassist helms a quartet that combines high energy with rhythmic grace and a thorough commitment to the mechanics of the music being played. The latter point might not sound so thrilling, but it is key, since it results in performances that can be appreciated for their cohesion as well as their outward-bound vibe. Philion’s debut was a tribute to Charles Mingus that felt a little too polished; this time, the soloing by all parties (alto saxophonist Greg Ward, trumpeter Russ Johnson, drummer Dana Hall) evince both vigor and rigor.

Bill Meyer

Rick Reed — The Symmetry Of Telemetry (Elevator Bath / Sedimental)

The Symmetry of Telemetry by Rick Reed

The Symmetry Of Telemetry is Rick Reed’s pandemic album. Methodologically, it’s hard to say how much that matters, since the Austin-based electronic musician’s practice already involved patiently collecting and sifting through shortwave broadcasts and then combining them with performed electronics. But the slow-motion uneasiness of “Dysania,” the alternately abraded and bulked-up bumps that introduce “Leave A Light On For Tony,” and the disconsolate, fizzling tones that occupy most of “Space Age Radio Love Song” certainly feel like that time felt. But there’s more to this music than downer vibes. Reed knows how to layer and arrange sounds so that an apparently static passage yields event upon event anytime you decide to listen into his compacted constructions. He also knows how to make waiting pay off, and while it would be spoiling things to tell you what he does, suffice to say that if you listen, you’ll know it when it happens.

Bill Meyer

Jason Roebke Quartet — Four Spheres (Corbett Vs Dempsey)

Four Spheres by Jason Roebke

When bandleaders like Mike Reed, Jorrit Dijkstra and Jason Adasiewicz have needed a bassist who could toggle easily between swing and abstraction, they’ve called Jason Roebke. Such calls, along with everything else a person has to do to maintain a life, mean that years might pass between Roebke’s turns as a leader. But when he does, you can count on them to be deeply considered and not quite like anything else going around. This quartet applies his trademarked fluidity to investigations of the tension between fixed and changing elements. Cassette recordings of electronic noise and metronome beats form nodal points within these pieces around which Edward Wilkerson Jr’s reeds and Marcus Evans’ drums surge and churn in overtly expressive fashion while pianist Mabel Kwan and Roebke shift their weight between fixity and flow. The sound is occasionally reminiscent of the more skeptical, interrogative side of the AACM, and particularly Roscoe Mitchell, but Roebke’s points of inquiry are purely his own.

Bill Meyer

Ned Rothenberg — Crossings Four (Clean Feed)

Crossings Four by Ned Rothenberg

This is some understated, shape-shifting stuff. On clarinets and alto saxophone, Ned Rothenberg matches a tone that’ll make you want to let your ear linger to phrasing sufficiently fluid to motivate them to get up and follow the music. The other three musicians in his Crossings Four are Mary Halvorson on guitar, Sylvie Courvoisier on piano and Tomas Fujiwara on drums. They and Rothenberg are well-matched in attitude, since everyone has chops to flex, but no one flashes them gratuitously. Although this is the quartet’s first recording, there are decades of shared experience and a myriad of interconnections between its members. This enables them to realize a variety of improvisational approaches, from droll and grooving to fractured and abstract, with ease. The moments when a signature lick pops out tend to be lures, inviting the listener to follow them as they disappear into matrices of brisk, nuanced interaction.

Bill Meyer

San Kazakgascar — Too Many People (Lather)

Too Many People by San Kazakgascar

The album title augurs misanthropy, but that’s not borne out by the sounds. This Sacramento seven-piece spares little time for sonic bleakness, and the sounds they choose to make reveal a robust curiosity about the music of other places. Disciplined west coast psych guitars converge with skronk-willing, souk-conscious reeds upon rhythm frameworks that suggest someone’s spent some quality time listening to Gary Glitter, the Meters and wherever it is that Chris Forsyth bottles his choogling spirits. The lack of vocals keeps them from saying anything you really wish they’d take back, and the commitment to a steady groove makes this a record you’ll want to hear on the go, so cash in that download code! But there are also lulls founded upon dust-blown acoustic picking, making this just the record to play when your Firestick won’t load and you’re back to watching that all western, all the time station, but you can’t stand to hear that bullshit cowboy dialogue anymore. Yeah, make up a Western in your own mind where the land defenders win and finish the day celebrating to the tunes of “Crockett Creek.”

Bill Meyer

Secret Pyramid — A Vanishing Touch (BaDaBing!)

A Vanishing Touch by Secret Pyramid

Amir Abbey often writes songs, but on A Vanishing Touch, he composes ambient music inspired by J Dilla’s Donuts. The two seem like strange projects to associate, but it is more the inspiration of Dilla’s jabbing beats that Abbey reconceptualizes to enliven the texture. The best track, “Whim,” is built around soaring textures amid just such rhythmic punctuation. Abbey also moved away from the long gestation period afforded his songs to greater immediacy. There is an improvisatory sensibility here that, rather than moving Secret Pyramid sideways, seems like a useful development.

A Vanishing Touch includes a wide range of synth sounds and doesn’t stint on yearning dissonance. As the ambient revival long exceeds its initial incarnation, it is up to artists like Abbey to reconceive it. Mission accomplished.

Christian Carey

Setting — At The Black Mountain College Museum (www.settingsounds.com)

at Black Mountain College Museum by Setting

Setting is Jaimie Fennelly (Mind Over Mirrors), Nathan Bowles (Pelt, Black Twig Pickers) and Joe Westerlund (Megafaun, Califone), and At the Black Mountain College Museum is the trio’s ultra-quick follow-up to their debut album. Recorded at the end of the brief string of dates that celebrated its release, it dives deeper into their blend of propulsive grooves and not-too-plush, not too rough textures in almost aquatic fashion. This music moves a bit like an otter might, drifting when the current does the necessary work, and then pointing head down with a vigorous kick into deeper and more turbulent eddies. The three multi-instrumentalists stick together, sonically speaking, so that you’re less likely to tune into their interactions than into the place the sounds take you.

Bill Meyer

Strinning & Daisy — Castle And Sun (Veto)

Castle and Sun by Strinning & Daisy

In a sax and drums duo, there’s nowhere to hide. If a musician lacks ideas, stamina or reciprocity, a duo will lay their deficit out for all to hear. Alternately, if they have what it takes, tuned-in listeners will know. The latter scenario is the case here. Swiss tenor saxophonist Sebastian Strinning and Chicagoan drummer Tim Daisy have known each other since 2019, when the former resided for a spell in the latter’s city. But they don’t have a lengthy shared history, so there’s an element of trying things on for size in this session’s dynamic. Each musician draws upon his diverse approaches in a series of mix-and-match explorations as tumbling lines meet steaming forward energy, hushed, textured tones part a curtain of metal sounds, and animal utterances confront circuitous patterns. Captured with three-dimensional palpability and spaciousness by engineer Nick Broste, their exchanges connect with both mind and gut.

Bill Meyer

Tiger Valley—The Celebration (Hausu Mountain)

The Celebration by Tiger Village

Cleveland based producer Tim Thornton’s latest album Tiger Village album, The Celebration, collects ten cheerfully constructed pieces capturing the chaotic joy of domestic life and music making under a feline regime. Random cat energy infuses Thornton’s music; languid relaxation gives way to manic activity, while parcels of affection turning into aloof, spiky demands for attention proffered with claws and cries. Both “Cat’s Up” and “Cat Chew” celebrate the beasts’ mercurial nature. The former is an insinuating strut constantly distracted by random shiny objects, sudden noises and those odd moments of fixation upon unseen emanations. The latter slinks about, looking you in the eye as it knocks your stuff off the desk and tramps across your keyboard. Across the other eight tracks, Thornton juxtaposes eight-bit squiggles, snatches of ambient melody, treated samples of his daughter’s voice, techno beats and machine detritus into a sometimes delirious delight. Quite lovely, though prone to scratching.

Andrew Forell

True Green — My Lost Decade (Spacecase)

My Lost Decade by True Green

Nine clever, loosely strung songs from Minneapolis novelist Dan Hornsby buzz and rattle like lost cuts from Pavement or Silver Jews. “My Peccaddilloes” is especially slanted and more than a little disenchanted, a rambling picaresque of guitars, drums and wheedle-y vocals. The chorus, if that’s what you call it, hits hard, though, “It’s a dog eat dog/said the dog with the taste for dogs/every man for himself/said the man for himself.” The music dissolves in your ears, mess of things that sting and bash and hum, but the lyrics are sharp and packed with reference. “You’re a hopeless diamond, and it’s rough,” yowls Hornsby in his kicked dog tenor, and that about sums it up.

Jennifer Kelly

Michael Zerang & Tashi Dorji — Schiamachy (Feeding Tube)

Sciamachy by Michael Zerang & Tashi Dorji

Sciamachy is named for the practice of fake fighting; if you make it to theater school, you might be able to take a class in it. The cover image augurs metal, but this mock battle between Tashi Dorji and Michael Zerang is improvisational to the hilt. What else can one do when faced with an instrument that’s one of a kind? Zerang is generally known as a percussionist, but on this occasion, he played something called Queequeg’s Coffin, which was devised to be both instrument and prop for a puppet theater performance of Moby Dick. It is a coffin-like box with a crank on one side, somewhat like a hurdy-gurdy without keys. It’s not precise, but it kicks up a great, raw racket of higher and lower pitches that sound like someone sawing open said coffin. Dorji’s response is to lean into texture, complimenting the coffin’s abrasive protests with Sonic Youth-like chimes, chain-in-the-skillet clanks and blinking feedback cadences. This music will have you picking imaginary splinters out of your clothes for the next week; how many records do you own that can make a similar claim?

Bill Meyer

[dustedmagazine]

Sonic Youth — Live in Brooklyn 2011 (Silver Current)

Photo by Eric Baecht

Few people would have known it at the time, but in August 2011 at Brooklyn's Williamsburg Waterfront, Sonic Youth played its final significant show. After 30 years together, the band would split up that November. The concert has been available for a while, but this release of Live in Brooklyn 2011 gives it a proper mastering job, and the sound quality is exceptional. The setlist was an odd one, seemingly prompted by Steve Shelley's whim. Rather than pull from recent albums (though The Eternal was two years old at that point), the band dove deep into its catalog, going not only far into the past but looking for surprising picks. The show has the feel of an alternate-universe career overview, tying recent releases into the group's earliest days while being almost constantly surprising and (not surprising) consistently intense.

The show starts off with a pair of tracks from 1985's Bad Moon Rising, “Brave Men Run (In My Family)” and “Death Valley '69.” Nothing feels retro or nostalgic about the cuts. While Sonic Youth continued to innovate throughout their career, the early material stayed fresh and of a piece with later work. The opener sets the tone for the show and stands out as a highlight, the mix of a heavy riff, the shift toward noise rock, and Kim Gordon's vocals make it a strange sort of classic. The band transitions smoothly into “Death Valley '69,” almost as if the two songs were parts of a suite (they were released together on a single a couple decades ago). That “Brave Men” hadn't been performed live since the mid-'80s makes it all the more impressive as an opening number.

From there, the group never lets up. Sonic Youth doesn't necessarily sound tight, but they do sound inspired, whether inspired by the novelty of the song selection or the finality of the show or, most likely, they just reach the heights they often attained as a live act. The joy of the album doesn't like simply in the rarities. The band played “Drunken Butterfly” a couple hundred times over their career, but it hits just as hard here as always.

After that, the band does a couple encores, breaking out “Flower” (another of the five Bad Moon Rising songs) and “Sugar Kane” for the first one. The second encore has the weirdest song choice of the night, Thurston Moore's solo piece “Psychic Hearts.” It's an odd shift to a song that's not particularly overwhelming nor connected to anything else the band's doing (though it fits in fine). They finish the show with “Inhuman,” going all the way back to debut album Confusion Is Sex. The song disintegrates into noisy static as the band takes its final leave from the city it's been so long associated with. The wails and feedback suit the moment, as if nobody wants to leave. Moore says, “With the power of love, anything is possible,” and with that Sonic Youth is effectively gone.

The group did play more, ending their career with a festival in Brazil that fall. Fans have, accurately or not, considered this Brooklyn set to be the group's finale, and it's certainly a powerful one to go out on. Fans will consider the show essential for its historical significance and the quality of the setlist, but the album's energy pushes it beyond a completist live album, making Live in Brooklyn 2011 a wonderful cap to one of experimental rock's greatest discographies.

Justin Cober-Lake

[dustedmagazine]

Listening Post:  John Coltrane/Eric Dolphy’s Evenings at the Village Gate

In 1961, John Coltrane was reaching a wider audience via his edited single version of the Sound of Music classic "My Favorite Things.”  He was also, although it seems trite to say given the trajectory of his career, in a state of transition. Moving away from his "sheets of sound" period to exploring modality, non-western scales and polyrhythms which allowed him to improvise more deeply within the constraints of more familiar Jazz tropes.

His personal and musical relationship with Eric Dolphy was an important catalyst for the development of his sound. Dolphy was an important presence on Coltrane's other key album from 1961, Africa/Brass and here officially joins the quartet on alto, bass clarinet and flute. Evenings at the Village Gate was recorded towards the end of a month-long residency with a core band of Coltrane, Dolphy, Jones, McCoy Tyner on piano and Reggie Workman on bass. The other musician featured here, on "Africa,” is bassist Art Davis.

The recording captures the band moving towards the more incandescent sound that made Live at the Village Vanguard, recorded just a few weeks later in November 1961, such a viscerally thrilling album. The hit "My Favorite Things" and traditional English folk tune "Greensleeves"  are extended into long trance-like vamps. Benny Carter's 1936 classic "When Lights Are Low" showcases Dolphy's bass clarinet and in the originals "Impressions" and particularly "Africa"  the quintet hit almost ecstatic grooves. Dolphy's solos push Coltrane further into the spiritual free jazz that so divided later audiences. Dolphy's flute on "My Favorite Things" and especially his clarinet on "When Lights Are Low" are extraordinary, particularly the clarity of his upper register.

The highlight for me is the 22 minute version of "Africa" that closes the set. The two basses, bowed and plucked, Tyner's chordal work and solo, the slow build from the bass solo where the music seems to meander before Jones' explosive solo heralds the return of Dolphy and Coltrane improvising together on the theme, spiralling up the register, contrasting Coltrane's long slurries with Dolphy's staccato bursts which lead to the thunderous conclusion. 

As an archivist, sudden discoveries in forgotten basement boxes never surprises and the excitement never gets old. The tapes of Evenings at the Village Gate were recently unearthed in the NY Public Library sound archive after having been lost, found and lost again. Recorded by the Village Gate's sound engineer Rich Alderson these tapes were not meant for commercial use but rather to test the room's sound and a new ribbon microphone. As Alderson says in his notes, this was the only time he made a live recording with a single mic and, yes, there have been grumblings from fans and critics about the sound quality and mix particularly the dominance of Elvin Jones' drums. For me, one the best things about this is that you hear how integral Jones is not just as a fulcrum for the other soloists but as an inventive polyrhythmic presence, playing within and around his bandmates. I know that many of the Dusted crew are Coltrane fans and would love to hear your takes on the music and whether the single mic recording affects your enjoyment in any way. 

Andrew Forell

Justin Cober-Lake: There's so much to get into here, but I'll respond to your most direct question. The single-mic recording doesn't affect my enjoyment at all. I understand (sort of) the complaints, but I think they overstate the problem. More to the point, when I hear an archival release, I really want to get something new out of it. That doesn't mean I want a bad recording, but there's not too much point in digging up yet-another-nearly-the-same show (and I have nearly unlimited patience for Coltrane releases) or outtakes that give the cuts the same basic idea but just don't do it as well. I was really looking forward to hearing Coltrane and Dolphy interact, and nothing here disappoints. Having Jones so dominant just means I get to hear and think more about the role he plays in this combo. It would sound better to have the other instruments a little more to the fore, but it's not a problem (and actually Tyner's the one I wish I could hear a little better).

I think your topic suggests ideas about what these sorts of recordings — when made publicly available — are for. Is it academic material (the way we might look at a writer's journals or correspondence)? Is it to get truly new and good music out there? Is it a commercial ploy? Is it a time capsule to get us in the moment? The best curating does at least three of those with the commercial aspect a hoped-for benefit. This one probably hits all four, but I suspect the recording pushes it a little more toward that first category.

Bill Meyer: I’m playing this for the first time as I type, and I’m only to track three, so my (ahem) impressions could not be fresher. 

First, I’ll say that, like Justin, I have a lot of time for Coltrane, and especially the quartet/quintet music from the Impulse years. The band’s on point, it sounds like Dolphy is sparking Coltrane, and Jones is firing up the whole band. Tyner’s low in the mix and Workman’s more felt than heard; the recording probably reflects what it was like to actually hear this band most nights, i.e. Jones and the horn(s) were overwhelming. 

How essential is it? If you’re a deep student of Coltrane, there are no inessential records, and the chance to hear him with Dolphy, fairly early on, should not be passed up. But if you’re big fan, not a scholar, then you need to get The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings box and the 7-CD set, Live Trane: The European Tours, before you drop a penny on this album. And if you’re just curious, start with Impressions. This group is hardly under-documented. The sound quality, while tolerable, is compromised enough to make Evenings At The Village Gate less essential than everything I just mentioned. 

I’m only just now starting to play “Africa,” so I’ll check in again after I play that. 

“Africa” might be the best reason for a merely curious listener to get this album. It’s very exploratory, the bass conversation is almost casual (not a phrase I use much when discussing Coltrane), and they manage to tap into the piece’s inherent grandeur by the end. 

“Africa” is a great example of this band working out what they’re doing while they’re doing it. 

Andrew Forell: On Justin’s points about the function of archival releases, I’ve been going back and forth on the academic versus time capsule/good music uncovered question. There is a degree of cynicism and skepticism in these days of multidisc, anniversary box sets in arrays of tastefully colored vinyl which seemed designed for the super(liquid)fan and cater to a mix of nostalgia and fetish. Having said that specialist archival labels have done us a great service unearthing so much "lost" and under-represented music. On one hand I agree with your summation and to Bill’s point, yes this quintet has been pretty thoroughly documented and yes the Vanguard tapes would be the place to start. But purely as a fan I am more interested in live recordings than discs of out- and alternative takes. I’m thinking for example of the 1957 Monk/Coltrane at Carnegie Hall and Dolphy’s 1963 Illinois concert especially his solo rendition of “God Bless the Child," recordings that sat in archives for 48 and 36 years respectively.

By contrast, the other recent Coltrane excavation, Both Directions at Once is wonderful but I’m not listening to it as an academic exercise, taking notes and mulling over the different takes, interesting as they are. I approach Evenings as another opportunity to hear two great musicians, in a live setting, early on in their short partnership. As Justin says, this aspect doesn’t disappoint. I agree with Bill that the mix is close to what you would you hear in the room, the drums and horns to the fore. All this is a long way to a short answer. A moment in time, a band we’ll never experience in person and when all is said and done, 80 minutes of music I’d otherwise not hear.

Jonathan Shaw: As a relative newb to this music, I can't contribute cogently to discussions of this set's relative value. Most of the Coltrane I've listened to closely is from very late in his life, when he was playing wild and free--big fan of the set from Temple University in 1966 and the Live at the Village Vanguard Again! record from the same year. None of that is music I understand, but I feel it and respond to it strongly. The only Dolphy I've listened to closely is Out There. So I'll be the naif here.

I need to listen to these songs another few times before I can say anything about them as songs, but I really love the right-there-ness of the sound. I like being pushed around by the drums and squeezed between the horns (the first few minutes of "Greensleeves" are delightful in that respect). Maybe I'm lucky to come to the music with so little context. It's a thrill to hear the playing of these folks, about whom there is so much talk of collective genius. Perhaps because my ears are so raw to these sounds, I feel like that talk is being fleshed out for me.

Jim Marks: I think that this release has both academic and aesthetic (if that’s the right word) significance for Dolphy’s presence alone. I am more familiar with the original releases than the various re-releases from the period, but it’s my impression that there just isn’t that much Dolphy and Trane out there; for instance, I think Dolphy appears on just one cut of the Village Vanguard recordings (again, at least the original release). In particular, I’ve heard and loved various versions of “Favorite Things,” but this one seems unique for the six-plus-minute flute solo that opens the track. The solo is both brilliant in itself and creates a thrilling contrast with Coltrane when he comes in. This track alone is worth the price of admission for me.

Marc Medwin: I agree concerning Dolphy's importance to these performances, and while there is indeed plenty of Coltrane and Dolphy floating around (he took part in the Africa/Brass sessions that gave us both Africa and a big band version of "Greensleeves") his playing is really edgy here. Bill is right to point toward the sparks Dolphy's playing showers on the music. Yes, the flute on "My Favorite Things" is really stunning. He's all over the instrument, even more so than in those solos I've heard from the group's time in Europe.

Jon, I'd suggest that there's a strong link between the albums you mention and the Village Gate recordings we're discussing, a kind of continuum into which you're tapping when you describe the excitement generated by the playing. The musicians were as excited at the time as we are on hearing it all now! It was all new territory, the descriptors were in the process of forming, and while Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra and a small group of kindred spirits were already exploring the spaceways, they were marginalized. That may be a component of the case today, but it's tempered by a veneration unimaginable at the time. That's part of the reason Dolphy lived in apartments where the snow came through the walls. Coltrane had plenty to lose by alienating the critics, but ultimately, it did not stop his progress. These recordings mark an early stage of that halting but inexorable voyage. With the possible exception of OM, Coltrane's final work never abandoned the tonal and modal extremes at which he was grabbing in the spring and summer of 1961.

Jennifer Kelly: Like Jon, I'm not well enough versed in this stuff to put it context or even really offer an opinion. I'm enjoying it a lot, and I, also, like the roughness and liveness of the mix with the foregrounded drums. But I think mostly what I am drawn to is the idea that this show happened in 1961, the year I was born, and that these sounds were lost for decades, and now you can hear them again, not just the music but the room tone, the people applauding, the shuffling of feet etc. from people who are almost all probably dead now.  It seems incredibly moving, and I am also taken by the part that the library took in this, in conserving this stuff and forgetting it had it and then rediscovering it.  In this age of online everything-available-all-the-time, that seems remarkable to me, and proves that libraries are so crucial to civilization now and always, even as they're under threat.  

Marc Medwin: A real time machine, isn't it? We are fortunate that we have these documents at all, and yes, the story of the tapes resurfacing is a compelling one! To your observations, audience reaction seems pretty enthusiastic to music that would eventually be dubbed anti-jazz by prominent members of the critical establishment!

Bill Meyer: I can imagine this music being more sympathetically received by audiences experiencing its intensity, whereas critics might have fretted because it represented a paradigm shift away from bebop models, so they had to decide if it was jazz or not.

It is amusing, given the knowledge we have of what Coltrane would be playing in five years, that this music is where a lot of critics drew a line in the sane and said, "this is antijazz."

Jon Shaw: Yes, Bill, that seems bonkers to me. I am particularly moved by the minutes in that 1966 set at Temple when Coltrane abandons his horn altogether and starts beating his chest and humming and grunting. Wonder what the chin-stroking jazz authorities made of that.

Given my points of reference, this set sounds so much more musically conventional. But the emotional force of the music is still immediate, viscerally present. Beautifully so.

Andrew Forell: In retrospect, all those arguments seem kind of crazy. Yesterday’s heresies become tomorrow’s orthodoxies but what we’re left with is, as Jonathan says, the visceral beauty of Coltrane’s striving for transcendence and his interplay with Dolphy’s extraordinary talent which we hear here working as a catalyst for Coltrane. As Marc and Jen note the audience is there with them..

Come Shepp, Sanders & Rashid Ali, the inquisitors’ fulminations only increased and you think what weren’t you hearing?

Marc Medwin: I was just listening to a Jaimie Branch interview where she's talking about her visual art, about throwing down a lot of material and finding the forms within it. I think that might be another throughline in Coltrane's and certainly Dolphy's work, a gradual discarding of traditional forms and poossibly structures based on what I hate to call intuition, because it diminishes the process.

Then, I was thinking again about our discussion of the critics. I see their role, or their assessment of that role, as a kind of investment without reward, and yeah, it does seem bonkers now! Bill Dixon once talked about how the writers might spend considerable time and expend commensurate energy learning to pick out "I Got Rhythm" on the piano, and they're suddenly confronted with... well, the sounds we're discussing! What would you do, or have done, in that situation? It's really easy for me, like shooting fish in the proverbial barrel, to disparage critical efforts of the time, especially in light of the ideas and philosophies Branch and so many others are at liberty and encouraged to play and express now, but I wonder how I would have reacted, what my biases and predilections would have involved at that pivotal moment.

Ian Mathers: The points about historical reception are really interesting, I think. There's a famous (in Canada!) bunch of Canadian painters called the Group of Seven, hugely influential on Canadian art in the 20th century and still well known today. In all the major museums, reproductions everywhere, etc. They were largely landscape painters, and while I think most of the work is beautiful, it's so culturally prominent that it runs the risk of seeming boring or staid. I literally grew up with it being around! So it was a delightful shock to read a group biography of them (Ross King's Defiant Spirits: The Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven, if anyone is hankering for some CanCon) and see from contemporary reviews that people were so shocked and appalled by the vividness of their colour palettes and other aesthetic choices that they were practically called anti-art at the time. It's not surprising to me that this music would both attract similar furore at the time and, from the vantage point of a new listener in 2022 who loves A Love Supreme and some of the other obvious works but hasn't delved particularly far into Dolphy, Coltrane live, or this era in jazz in general (that would be me), be heard and felt as great, exciting, but not exactly formally radical stuff.

I don't think I would have noticed much about the recording quality were people not talking about it. "My Favorite Things" seems to have the overall volume down a bit, but still seemed pretty clear to me (agree with the assessments above; Coltrane, Dolphy, and Jones very forward, others further back although even when less prominent I find myself 'following' Tyner's work through these tracks more often than not), and starting with "When Lights Are Low" that seems to be corrected. It actually sounds pretty great to me! Although I absolutely defer to Bill's recommendations for better starting places for serious investigations, I can also say as a casual but interested fan who tends to quail in the face of box sets and other similarly lengthy efforts this feels from my relatively ignorant vantage like a perfectly nice place to start. I like Justin's rubric for why these releases might come about (or be valuable), but if I hadn't heard any Coltrane and you just gave me this one, my unnuanced perspective would just be something like "wow, this is great!" But maybe I'm underthinking it. And having that reaction doesn't mean that others aren't right to recommend better/more edifying entry points, or that having that reaction shouldn't lead one to educate oneself.

Jonathan Shaw: Maybe it's a lucky thing for me to be so poorly versed in Coltrane's music, not just in the sense of having listened to precious little of it. I am even less familiar with the catalog of music criticism, which in jazz seems to me voluminous, archival in scale. But even with music I'm extensively engaged with — historically, critically — I try to understand it and also to feel it. I can't imagine not feeling what's exciting in this music, energizing and challenging in equal measure.

Like Marc, I don't want to recursively impugn the critical writing of folks working in very different contexts. But I don't like it when the thinking gets in the way of the music's emotional and aesthetic force, which to me feels unmistakably powerful here.

Ian Mathers: Yeah, maybe that's a good distinction to draw; I can imagine in a different time and place feeling like the music here is more radical or challenging than it sounds to us now. But I can't quite imagine not getting a visceral thrill out of it.

Marc Medwin: And doesn't this contradiction get at the essence of what we're trying to do? Those of us who've chosen to write about music are absolutely stuck grasping at the ephemeral in whatever way we're able! How do we balance the ordering of considerations and explanations in unfolding sentences with the  spontaneity of action and reaction that made us pick up a pen in the first place?! We add and subtract layers of whatever that alchemical intersection of meaning and energy involves that hits so hard and compels us to write! In fact, the more time I'm spending with these snapshots of summer 1961, the more I decamp from my own philosophizing about critical relativity to sit beside Ian. The stuff is powerful and original, and the fact that so much of what we're hearing now is a direct result of those modal explorations and harmonically inventive interventions says that the dissenting voices were fundamentally, if understandably, wrong! It could be that the musician can be inclusive in a way the writer simply can't.

I'm listening to "Africa" again, which is for me the disc's biggest single revelation in that it's the only concert version we have, so far as I know. How exciting is that Jones solo, and how much does it say about his art and the group's collective art?!! He starts out in this kind of "Latin" groove with layers of swing and syncopation over it, he goes into a melodic/motivic thing like you'd eventually hear Ginger Baker doing on Toad, and then eases back into the groove, all (if no editing has occured) in about two minutes. He's got the music's history summed up in the time it would take somebody to get through a proper hello!! Took me longer to scribble about it than for him to play it!!

Justin Cober-Lake: I'm not sure if Marc is making me want to put down or pick up a pen, but he's definitely making me want to listen to "Africa" again. (Not that I needed much encouragement.)

Andrew Forell: Africa/Brass was the first jazz album I bought. Coming from post-punk, I found it immediately the most exciting and challenging music I’d heard and it set me off on my exploration of Coltrane, Dolphy, Coleman and their contemporaries. This version of “Africa” is a highlight for me also for all the reasons Marc, Ian and Jon have talked about.

Bill Meyer: Yeah, "Africa" is quite the jam! 

A thought about critical perspective — our discussion has gotten me thinking, not for the first time, about the impacts of measures upon experience, and the limits of critical thinking when I’m also an avid listener. If I’m listening for “the best” Coltrane/Dolphy, in terms of sound quality or most focused performances,  this album isn’t it. But if I’m looking for excitement, this album has loads of it, and that might be enhanced by the drums-forward mix. 

[dustedmagazine]

The Black Watch — The Morning Papers Have Given Us the Vapours (Dell'Orso)

John Andrew Fredrick, founder and lone permanent member of the Black Watch, generally sounds irrepressible. His creative output follows that energy, following a drunken boat of Romanticism through a slew of albums over the past 30 years (and if he's bored of us talking about his prolificness, at least we aren't bored of following it). New album The Morning Papers Have Given Us the Vapours explicitly comes out of the joy of making music, but what Fredrick mostly captures is a tension in life between what could be and what is. The band's jangly post-punk has goth leanings, but it's hard to hear the act ever going that dark, even if what we often hear is the sound of Fredrick pulling himself back into the light.

The jaded hopefulness comes through on tracks like “Almost Words.” Fredrick begins by singing, “Mind you, try with all your might / To look upon the side called bright / though colored shadows cross and stop your way.” Fredrick quickly undercuts optimism here, but he can hide his earnestness in seeking it to begin with. The syntax might be Browning's influence (despite the prevalence of the term “literary” in describing pop music, few artists wear this descriptor as happily as novelist and former professor Fredrick), but it might be a wry take on poesy. Just a few tracks earlier in “Sorry So Far,” he sang, “In a lyric how much can one say? / And lyrics aren't poetry – no way,” a twisted phrase that laughs at Fredrick's own pretensions even as he discovers exactly what he has to say throughout the writing process.

What that comes to continues the tension. “What's All This Then” opens with, “Never felt like this before / Except for 13 times or maybe more.” Fredrick goes on to doubt the value of promises, jaded by the repetitive experiences of failed fairy tales. But he still “half-believes,” and that half-belief remains essential to The Morning Papers. Were Fredrick to give in to his despair, the claims of hurt or loss would become irrelevant, just part of a faded background pattern. When anger or bitterness come through, as on “Oh Do Shut Up” or “The Morning Papers,” it feels genuine, and well understood from a place that still has enough hope to produce anger.

Most of the music comes with a slightly dreamy quality, a perfect match for Fredrick's lyrics. Some touches of the Cure peak through, but the Black Watch sounds more drawn toward New Zealand or Australia (The Go-Betweens make a reliable reference point) this time, with some shoegaze textures laid over it all. It gives the album a surprising brightness among its harsher edges, so when Fredrick sings, “Just you wait till one day till my faith is restored,” it can sound like both a threat and a wish. Fredrick feels most at home in that space in between. He's comfortable in that space where he can't quite give in to one side or the other, Maybe that's where all the energy comes from.

Justin Cober-Lake

[dustedmagazine]

Greg Saunier — We Sang, Therefore We Were (Joyful Noise)

Photo by Sophie Daws

As ¼ of noisy indie-rockers Deerhoof, drummer Greg Saunier has decades' worth of experience in frenetic music as fun as it is difficult (if not more so). Across hundreds of other recordings, he's hidden himself away joyfully. Now, with the encouragement of his bandmates, he finally has his own solo outing, We Sang, Therefore We Were. Deerhoof fans won't be surprised by the sound here — it plays much like you'd expect a side project from the band to do — but they will likely be taken by Saunier's multi-instrumental prowess and songwriting glee.

The album comes from restlessness and anger, but more than anything, Saunier's wry playfulness comes through. He's witty and funny and while some of these lyrics may push toward the absurd, there's a deep seriousness running through the album, which stops just short of being a full-on concept record. Much of the record considers our relationship to the earth, or how we think about either ourselves or the natural world. Single “Grow Like a Plant” takes a somewhat comical look at the topic, suggesting that humans (and animals) aren't inherently more special than plant life. Saunier sings, “Meate only thinks it thinks” [sic], highlighting the feeling that we don't really know what we know.

As much as the album can sound wild at times, Saunier's deep thoughtfulness (unless he only thinks he thinks) repeatedly comes through. In “Not for Mating, Not for Pleasure, Not for Territory,” Saunier sets himself up as “the 500-celled creature, 500-celled creature / I am not, I am not / No 499 creature, no 501 creature.” With that phrase, he oddly posits himself as the simplest multicellular integrated organism (happily an algae and not “meate”). At that stage of development, he can play, cry and shriek, but Saunier the artist can also undermine the whole work by adding, “Goes the song ironically.” The whole enterprise of We Sang, Therefore We Were seems to undercut any sort of epistemic stability we might think we have (in which case singing outclasses thinking, because only extent beings could have sang).

All of this destabilizing comes through a musical approach not dissimilar to Deerhoof's, which makes sense. There's a manic sense of time and jagged guitars, but clear melodies run through the songs. He plays with classical music to end the record and digs into musical theory elsewhere. His own comments suggest a mix of Nirvana and Captain Beefheart, a goal he achieved. Ultimately, though, the record isn't only about theory or deconstruction, but about the joy of playing this music and of the epiphanies art can lead us to. “Playing Tunes of Victory on the Instruments of Our Defeat,” before swinging toward classical, challenges us to pause in the chaos and take stock of how we live (whether animal or vegetable). Saunier may play with irony and misdirection, but he sounds earnest when he sings, “So when you say goodbye to someone / Do you ramp down your love till the adieu? / Or, do you treasure every last moment? / Doing things healthy, fun, and rewarding?” You might not want to be meat, and you might not know if you can think what you think, but you can always sing, and you can always find the rewards in whatever this life is. Saunier blasts along to help his listeners do just that.

Justin Cober-Lake