Some years ago, I had the crazy stupid idea of writing about every album John Zorn released, kinda sorta as they appeared. So, I got to the end of 2011 and there things stalled. Given that he has released something in the vicinity of 50 albums under his own name since then, I think it is fair to say that that idea has well and truly flown the coop. (I suspect that, had I actually attempted to get back into it, the main stumbling block would have been the recordings of his ongoing tour of the world's church organs: four albums (and counting) of solo organ recitals a la John Zorn is quite possibly four more than I could handle.)
Nevertheless, I have, you will not be surprised to learn, been keeping a close eye on the continually evolving (and multiplying) "Book of Angels" series of recordings, the sequel to the magnificent klezmer-jazz fandango that went under the name of "Masada". Having, or so it would seem, retired the classic Masada jazz quartet, which has been responsible for some of the most exciting, adrenaline-rush playing ever to have appeared under Zorn's name (others may differ in this estimation; but "Live at Tonic" is the rare example of a live recording where you can actually feel the audience pushing the band to greater things and the band responding in kind: it's a hoot), with the Book of Angels he has taken a different approach, hand-picking from a wide variety of players and ensembles to conjure many and varied interpretations of some of the three hundred-plus pieces that make up the Book.
Old fuddy-duddy that I am, my own excitement levels have tended to increase with the appearance of Masada favourites like Marc Ribot, the Masada String Trio and the Dreamers ensemble, but there has been much to like amongst the many other releases (even if the big drawcard, Volume 20, with Pat Metheny at the helm, was (says me) rather disappointing).
I want to draw particular attention, right now, to Volume 27, a piano-trio setting that came out a couple of months ago. Not being especially into the contemporary jazz scene, I can't really comment on how this record fits into the output of the players involved, or even if they have worked together before, but, in a word, "Wow". The playing has a certain propulsion to it, like, well, I don't know like what. Maybe like hurtling down a very steep and long hill on a pair of roller skates without a sense that you will be stopping any time soon, or how you might even do that, picking up speed all the while. You just have to close your eyes and hope for the best. The pianist, Craig Taborn, can be as lyrical as all get-out but is also prone to flights of abstract expressionism. The drummer, Tyshawn Sorey, might be the Keith Moon of jazz, playing everywhere but on the beat (and at ten thousand miles per hour). All of which frequently leaves Christian McBride (whom you have probably heard of), on the upright bass, as the glue that holds everything else together. I discovered that it is possible to lock onto what McBride is doing and let everything else kind of flow around that. It's not the only way of listening, but it is a way. However you do it, it's a rewarding listen.
I was going to conclude by noting the possibility that this would be a good place to end the Book of Angels, given that the very first entry, eleven years ago now, was also a piano trio (featuring Jamie Saft). But, of course, in the five minutes since this record came out there has been another volume (with John Medeski on board). And so we beat on, boats against the current etc etc.
Zorn doesn't abide the streaming thing, which means you are going to have to buy his records. Consider this a recommendation.
"Alfonso Muskedunder", played live by Todd Terje & the Olsens.
Some weeks ago I said words to the effect that it is difficult to make something in 7/4 time sound funky. Difficult it may be, but not impossible, and another example was right there under my nose: "Alfonso Muskedunder", a song so frenetically funky that I had never even twigged to it being in an obscure time signature.
So witness how Todd Terje and his band of merry Swedes-with-beards tear the roof off the place at the P4K music festival. Be careful trying to dance to it, though; you will do yourself an injury. Take it from one who has tried.
"New Speedway Boogie", by Courtney Barnett.
I was speculating, the other day, how Courtney Barnett would handle the transition from painting on a small canvas to playing on a big stage. Seamlessly, as it turns out. This song, one of the 59 (count 'em) Grateful Dead covers on "Day of the Dead", is perfectly suited to her droll delivery style, while musically it carries its considerable weight effortlessly. There are some big-name players on this massive project, and Courtney, happily, sounds right at home.
"Medicine Map", by Chuck Johnson.
You may say that latter-day finger pickers who have drunk at the well of John
Fahey are a dime a dozen. Maybe so, but I won't be getting sick of listening to
their magical and mesmerising tones any time soon.
"Just Seventeen", by Raiders. The
lyrical content may be on the nose (and of its time) but this track by Raiders
(wither Paul Revere?) kicks hard and bounces high in a 1973 kind of way, although
it is actually the product of 1970 and therefore, perhaps, ahead of its time.
Nice use of brass, too.
"Can't Find My Way Home", by
Blind Faith. This proto-Led Zeppelin IV number is from the only album by Blind
Faith, aka Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, Steve Winwood and, uh, the other guy. It
features a record cover that, if you came up with it today, you would be in
jail, my friend.
"She
Said, She Said", by Lone Star. One of the reasons I persist with this
meaningless trawl through the endless morass of other people's musical
recommendations is to find the occasional moment (there is usually one just
around the corner, or the corner after that, or ...) of WTF-ness. Here comes
one now: The Beatles torn to shreds by way of the kind of overblown
overstatement that could only have come from 1976. Enjoy.
(Editor's note: the following is a BBC
session, rather than the album version. It is 30 seconds shy of the album
version, and perhaps lacks a bit of the latter's variation in dynamics, but
heck, on the one hand it's entirely off the planet, on the other hand it's yet
another example of "why punk had to happen": bloody (Welsh) hippies.)
"Soul Coaxing", by Orchestral
Academy of Los Angeles. It may not even have any words, but this is such an
emotional rollercoaster of a song that I cry every time I hear it. Seriously.
You can come to my house some time and watch me. I might charge admission.
"Pictures (Quiet Village Remix)",
by Grandadbob. I really miss Quiet Village. This helps.
"High", by Ellen Allien. It's
been a couple of years since we had anything from Ellen Allien. You know how
you sometimes feel like there's an absence in your life but you can't quite
place what it is? Now I remember. There's only one word for this track: perky.
"Lucia (John Talabot's Sunset
Edit)", by Ishinohana. What this is is a tweak of some 1980s mellow guitar
noodling. Although it actually sounds way better than you would imagine. Trust
me.
"Breezin'", by Masayoshi Takanaka
and Kazumi Watanabe. Did somebody just mention 1980s mellow guitar noodling? I
think I've got some more around here somewhere. Ah, yes, here it is. Featuring Yukihiro Takahashi on
the drums. (Bonus: album cover of the month. Not just for the
"historical" World Trade Centre photo, but for the majesty of the
font in which the album title is styled. But look closely: "Fantasic"?)
(Note: this seems not to be readily
findable on ye olde internet, so for the time being you can hit the dropbox.)
"Hold On To It (Jonny Nash
Remix)", by B.J. Smith. "Jonny Nash". "B.J. Smith".
You expect to be in country-twang territory, or perhaps in the presence of a master of the pedal
steel. But no. (Guitar shimmer does appear throughout, albeit through what
sounds like an opiate haze.) B.J. Smith was fifty percent of Smith & Mudd,
whom you might remember. Another track, as it turns out, for those pining for Quiet
Village.
"The Rhythm Divine", by Yello.
Ah, those crazy Swiss. Enlist Shirley Bassey to sing her not insubstantial
heart out. Drop in some backing vocals by the one and only Billy Mackenzie.
(One: why would you pull one of the sainted voices of modern music into your
orbit and then bury it in the mix? Two: why would he have agreed to it?
(Presumably that's easy to answer: it's Shirley Bassey. (Also: he co-wrote the
song.)) Three: do you notice how, when she sings "in my
heaaaaaaaart", she does sound like Mackenzie? It's actually kind of a neat
trick. The word "meta" comes to mind, although there is clearly
nothing meta about the result. It kills.)
"No Justice", by Astronauts, etc.
The first 12 seconds will determine whether you need this song in your life or
not. I bit.
"Chant For You", by Prequel. Here
things get a bit murky. It sounds like bits of old records stuck together in
such a way as to create a brand new song, one that is both "exotic", and
funky as heck. Which is exactly what it is. If you remember the WTF moment you (read:
"I") had when you first heard DJ Shadow, or Four Tet's
"Rounds", you will go for this. (Also: Australian content. Well
done, son.)
And finally, Mr Sakamoto tinkles the
ivories. You remember this. But when you first (and probably last) heard it you
hadn't yet immersed yourself in the world of Studio Ghibli. So now you wonder
if this piece of music, long buried in the far recesses of your brain, is one
of the reasons those movies have always felt so strangely familiar, so
comforting. Or maybe that's just the genius of Hayao Miyazaki.
"Kodama", by Kikagaku Moyo.
Kikagaku Moyo came to me in a dream. Not true. They came to me via a review of their forthcoming fourth record in this month's "Uncut" magazine, followed by some extensive Apple Music revision. I like what I hear. Yes, they have released a split record with Moon Duo, and one can certainly hear the connection. But this song makes me think of Can jamming with Stereolab in relaxed mode. As they say in the classics, what's not to like?
This may be a somewhat heretical statement, but Prince, whom we lost this week, in what is turning out to be a train-wreck of a year, was not my Bowie. I have made several attempts, starting in the late eighties, to absorb the work that lies beyond the hits, but each time I have found myself starting to gaze absentmindedly out the window. I kept telling myself I would come back to it. I still can, but it's not quite the same when the artist (or in this case, "The Artist ...") is no longer with us.
Thus, and this is highly unusual for me, my favourite Prince album is the fairly ubiquitous "The Very Best Of Prince". As greatest-hits albums go, it is a humdinger. Because, let's face it, when Prince was good, he was very, very, very, very, very good. The best, perhaps, that ever there was. Think "Raspberry Beret". Think "Kiss". More recently, at a time when I think you had to be quite tenacious to continue to give Prince your everlasting support, think "Black Sweat" (you can imagine him just tossing that one off in an idle moment, like Picasso whipping up some sketch on a restaurant napkin and making a better sketch than anyone else would ever be able to do no matter how hard they tried).
What I have found very interesting, over the past few days, is the strength of the emotional outpouring from America. Was Prince America's Bowie? I didn't see that coming. Heck, even the New Yorker has a Prince-themed cover this week. (I didn't see that coming, either.) I don't know. It's just a thought. (There are clear similarities between Prince and Bowie. You don't need me to list them. Suffice to say, they both, numerous times, pushed the listening public in directions the listening public wouldn't otherwise have gone in, and in so doing pushed music into new places; places that music didn't know it needed to go and wouldn't necessarily otherwise have gone.)
Another thing Prince could do better than just about anybody was play the guitar. The following video has been doing the rounds quite a bit this week, and with good reason. If you are going to show off (because, in a sense, this is what Prince is doing here), you had better be good if you choose to do it in a room full of seriously good musicians while they are tackling one of The Beatles' finest moments. Keep your eye on the little guy with the red hat.
Pretty happy with the music this month. It
may not hang together thematically or musically or in fact in any way at all,
but there's no need to pretend that's a problem. I mean, you don't actually
listen to any of this, do you?
"Puls", by Gunter Schickert. So
why don't we start off, then, with 15 minutes of semi-abstract German noodling
from 1979. No, I hadn't previously heard of this, notwithstanding that my ears
usually prick up at the mention of the Sky Records label, home of some of my
favourite late-seventies semi-abstract German noodling.
"Disco Computer", by Transvolta. Like the ad says, "I can't believe it's not Moroder." Actually, the person behind this
song was also largely responsible for Telex, a band that could only do one
thing, but did it so damn well, and it was manifestly such a great thing, that
nobody would be so churlish as to raise it as a point of criticism.
"Lies (Theo Parrish re-edit)", by
GQ. One of the many, many things that Theo Parrish can do is take a seemingly
workaday disco number, distil the salient parts, and extend it out for so many
minutes that at some point you stop wondering when it is going to end and start
wishing that it never would.
"Poppy Seed (Boards of Canada
Remix)", by Slag Boom Van Loon. There was a Van Loon who went to my high
school. I don't think his first name was Slag Boom. That might have been fun!
(Side note: this remix stands with the best of Boards of Canada, if you ask me.
Always check what remixes your favourite artist has done. You never know.)
"Y.M.D. (Young Michael Douglas)",
by Maya Vik. Classic pop song of the month. Produced by Lindstrom, whose hands,
in the best possible way, are clearly all over it. Who else does ascending
chords like this?
"Beach Mode (Keep It Simple)", by
Ikonika. Vocals by Jessy Lanza. I could easily have missed this. Don't you make
the same mistake.
"A Beautiful Woman", by
Deradoorian. Yet another slice of classic pop, this time bearing the mark of
sixties psychedelia as also purveyed by the likes of The Time And Space Machine and Jane Weaver. In other words, get hip to this, all you groovy cats and
chicks.
"Strassen Kaempfert", by Visit
Venus. If people were listening to the music of the sixties in the 2015s, they
were also listening in the mid-nineties. But the sixties those nineties dudes
were listening to wasn't the drug-infested morass of the end of the decade, but
the clean-living, high-production-values sixties of your Bert Kaempferts and
the like. Visit Venus capture the vibe pretty well, and with high production
values of their own. Couldn't find a version on the world wide web, so here, as long as nobody minds, is a copy on the dropbox.
"Hangdog", by Small Wigs. In
honour of Record Store Day, an actual, honest to god, seven-inch vinyl single, in a garage-rock / Gun Club vein. My scepticism about the whole vinyl revival
is hereby temporarily suspended.
"Running Away (Long Version)", by
Roy Ayers Ubiquity. By the mid-seventies, blacksploitation-soundtrack funk had
to some degree morphed into a kind of funk-disco hybrid. At least, that's a
plausible narrative to wrap around this song, given Roy Ayers' previous guise
(or one of them) as blacksploitation-soundtrack auteur (e.g. "Coffy"). This sets up an undeniably smooth groove
and runs (away) with it.
"Man Of Means", by Alan Hawkshaw.
In which the famed British library-music composer catches (albeit somewhat
late) the wave that Roy Ayers was surfing on the "Coffy" soundtrack,
to surprisingly non-"cod" effect. Featuring bonus harpsichord (or
synthetic equivalent). Bet you didn't see that coming.
"Music For Chameleons", by Gigi
Masin. Masin's name has been coming up around here a bit lately, so I thought I
would dig a bit deeper, but to little avail. It seems he is an Italian
composer, who has been doing his thing since the late eighties. This track
(nothing to do with Gary Numan's song of the same name) is taken from a
seemingly wide-ranging double-disc compilation (available for a good price on
Bandcamp). It carries with it definite resonances of David Sylvian's
mid-eighties work; I am probably thinking of the second disc of "Gone To
Earth", but then I always am.
"Usha (Daphni Edit)", by Usha
Uthup vs Alex Israel. We finish off with a couple of one-off tracks by Dan
Snaith's other alias, Daphni. Daphni tracks tend to be a slightly more
rough-and-ready version of the work he does with Caribou. This first one Snaith
claims to be a mash-up. Maybe, but heck, it sure bears the sonic palette of the
Daphni album.
"Vikram", by Daphni. This is
coming from a similar place, but with added beats. Can you have too much of a
good thing? I think not.
"Earth", by Follakzoid.
In which Chile's pre-eminent [apologies if this is not true] kraut-psych-drone-noise-space-kerblam combo go long. What's not to like?
It would have been more accurate to call this post "Sound of the day", because what specifically nails me to the wall in this song is the "New Gold Dream" synth wash that comes from out of nowhere at the 1:55 mark, and the way it stamps a rather emphatic minor-key vibe onto what you didn't expect to be a minor-key song. We haven't had an album from Tiga, Canada's number one disco imp, for some time. It is a good one.
"Fade Into You", by J Mascis.
I'll now say a thing I never imagined saying: J Mascis appears to be
growing old gracefully. Here, he tackles the Mazzy Star standard, and just for now you can't imagine it being done any other way.
"Diamond Dogs", by Beck. I can't quite
make up my mind about this version. Still. Bowie, y'know?
"TV Set", by Spoon. Being the
third in our little trilogy of cover versions, this time Britt Daniel does a
mighty fine Lux Interior impersonation. In fact, I would have a hard trouble
identifying this as Spoon in a blind tasting test.
"What She's Done To Your Mind",
by The Rain Parade. The first, self-released (or so it is said), single by Dave
Roback's earlier band (see "Fade Into You", above). It still sounds
as fresh as a daisy. Oh boy the world was ready for jangly guitars in
1982. (See also, in another part of the same continent, REM, and, on the other
side of the world, The Smiths.)
"I Know You Rider", by White
Eyes. And this is the type of music that those latter-day exponents of the
jangle might have been listening to: except that this, though it was recorded
in 1969, wasn't actually released until 2015. No, I can't believe it either.
(Curiously, delayed release (not quite that delayed, though) also happened with
The Byrds' version of this same song, which didn't appear until 1987.) Download
(at time of writing, anyway) still available here.
"Super Cool Funky Lady", by Laid
Back. Not doing a whole lot that's positive for the cause of feminism,
admittedly, but you can't deny the groove.
"I Can't Kick This Feelin' When It
Hits", by Moodymann. There is a song in here. It has been submerged by
unseen forces. Every so often it channels all its strength and pushes its way
to the surface, only to be knocked under again. On and on it goes. Will the
song drown? Will it survive? Will it survive but be traumatised for life,
spending large chunks of its disposable income thereafter on therapy sessions? It's a
worry.
"Black Dot (The Horrors' Tom Furse
Remix)", by Seeland. Seeland sits somewhere on the periphery of the Ghost
Box alternate universe. One of its members used to be in Broadcast. Some of its
record covers have been designed by Julian House, aka The Focus Group. You know
how it is.
"Aruarian Dance", by Nujabes. I
probably wouldn't have given this piece of gossamer a second listen had I not
fallen head over heels, some years ago, for a mashup of (what I now know to be)
it with Amerie's "1 Thing". They were made for each other. (YouTube comment of the month: "Is this
shit the wii console music?")
"Humpty Dumpty", by Placebo. Can
you add what sounds like a wah-wah effect to a Fender Rhodes? The heck you can.
You can also add a horn section for good measure. Go right ahead. Nobody's going
to get hurt.
"Elevator Operator", by Courtney
Barnett. If this was 25 years ago, I would be all over Courtney Barnett like
some kind of unpleasant skin condition. So I'm happy for her success, because
"kids these days" deserve the chance to be influenced by the kind of
small-scale but big-hearted music that was such an influence on me all those
years ago. (Sigh.) But I do worry about what her unexpected worldwide success
means for what she does. (We all saw what happened when Peter Jackson tried to
turn "The Hobbit" into something it was never meant to be.) Still,
for now we can be thankful for small mercies like "Elevator
Operator", a song about the elevators in the Nicholas Building. In the
mid-1980s Russell, Roger and I rented some office space on (if memory serves)
the fifth floor, and kitted it out as a studio/rehearsal space (but we were only allowed to use it on weekends). I fell by the wayside fairly early on, but the
others went on to make some really pretty good music there. (My main memory,
and perhaps a cause of my demise, was of standing around for hours on end as
the other two tinkered with equipment.) The building, back then, was tenanted
by small businesses in the nature of jewellery repairers, coin and stamp
merchants, and, you wouldn't have been surprised to find, private investigators
wearing trilby hats and chain smoking. The elevators were truly frightening:
metal cages that rattled and clanked their interminable way between floors. You
felt compelled to thank your lucky stars when you reached your destination in one piece. (There
was also the equally frightening Pipe Records, and its clientele, in the corner
of the arcade. We were still, at heart, innocent boys from the country.) Unlike the protagonist in this song, I
don't think we ever went up to the roof.
"Mainline", by Black Ivory. The
kind of string-sodden disco epic I can never get enough of.If The Bee Gees hadn't taken out a monopoly,
this could easily have found a place on the "Saturday Night Fever"
soundtrack.
"Home Is Where The Hatred Is", by
Esther Phillips. Can a song as harrowing as this also be beautiful? It would
appear so. Written by Gil Scott-Heron.
"Poupee De Cire Poupee De Son",
by France Gall. Next stop Eurovision!
"The House", by Le Volume Courbe.
I thought I could hear echoes of My Bloody Valentine's "Soon" within
the veins of this song, so it should have been no surprise when further
research revealed that Kevin Shields did indeed have some kind of a hand in it.
Nevertheless, it is a song that can be appreciated on its own terms.
"Juggernaut", by Stan Hubbs. What
sounds like an emergent transmission from the depths of some mid-seventies
drugs haze turns out to have actually been made in 1982. It was released by way of
what is now called the "private press", and disappeared without
trace. (Understandably, though; who in their right (or wrong) mind would have
wanted to hear this in 1982? (See Rain Parade entry, above.)) It goes to show that what goes around does indeed
come around: this song fits the current, ahem, zeitgeist like a slightly dishevelled glove. Bonus: album cover of the month. Obviously.
"Everywhere", by Fleetwood Mac.
It is easy to forget that Fleetwood Mac continued to release records after
"Tusk". Here is a reminder. (Warning: contains
high-eighties production values.)
"Imperfect", by Perez Prado.
Moogs on the loose. (The YouTube gives you a bonus track, "Ciliegi
Rosa", with which you may be familiar, and which is crazy crazy.)
In the blue corner: "Ljoss", by Forest Swords, from 2013 (is it really that long ago?), and very specifically the sound he conjures up around the 53-second mark.
In the red corner: "The Catastrophist", title track from the new album by Tortoise, and very specifically the sound they conjure up around the 1:35 mark.
Of course, both sounds could have been arrived at independently. But it would also be kinda nice to think that, just maybe, the Titans of the thing that gets called "post-rock" (although it is in fact neither) have been listening to the music being made by the new generation, and absorbing its lessons (some of which lessons the new generation most likely absorbed from Tortoise in the first place).
Tortoise may never make another "Djed". (Talk about building a rod for your own back.) But their music since then has never been anything less than fascinating. And, of course, highly listenable. (The new album? There are vocals! Shock! Horror! Does that make it post-post-rock? Or maybe pre-post-rock? (Would that be "rock"?))
Penman asks an important question, one that it is easy to get tied up in knots trying to answer, or at least to answer in a way that your average music obsessive can feel entirely comfortable with:
"Is it better to endure bad art for the spotless ideology it promotes, or to continue to swoon before sublime art made by awful people?"
A part of me suspects that if such people were less awful, the art they made would be less sublime. Is it worth it? I suppose I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't think it was, but heck, I also know it's not okay just to ignore the human damage that can be left in its wake. (Why couldn't I just have liked, I don't know, Perry Como? (Although for all we know, he may have had some skeletons of his own.))
Fahey might or might not have been one of the bad guys, and he would appear to have suffered a(n un)fair amount of damage of his own, but "sublime" is as good a word as I could have found to describe the sounds he was able to tease out of a guitar. Here is an example:
Or, if you want to go long, there is also this (a lot of life would appear to have been lived between 1969 and 1978):
"Four (Darkstar Remix)", by Olafur Arnalds and Nils Frahm.
The riff from "I Wanna Be Your Dog" has been put to good use many, many times, but perhaps never quite like this.
(Now is perhaps an opportune time to mention Darkstar's most recent album, "Foam Island", which might be described as social history with a musical accompaniment, but is actually much more engaging than that makes it sound. You should check it out.)
This song is my childhood. There may be more credible / "worthy" ways to acknowledge George Martin's contribution, but, heck, how many songs would have travelled through more radios and television sets?
It was also the punk rock of its day: no frills, no nonsense, no solos; it got straight to the point, and then it got out of the way.
George Martin also produced "Rain", by The Beatles, three of the most perfect minutes human ingenuity has ever created. You probably won't find that on YouTube, but the chances are you have it at home somewhere.
"So Jackson: Step In / Out (Jori Hulkkonen Edit)".
Being an "edit" of a song you might remember from the different world that was 1982. (Watch the clip. Joe comes across as a post-punk Peter Allen. Which I suppose he was, really.)
"Edit"? What it is is a simple pop song dissected, forensically analysed, and teased out for 43 minutes. Yes, you read that right. Is such a thing even possible? More to the point, is such a thing even listenable?
Well, yes, it is, actually. The mind can play tricks on the unsuspecting. By seven or eight minutes in, you find yourself starting to wonder if it might be time to move on to the next thing. But you don't, because somehow you can't, and all of a sudden you find yourself being dragged back into the light, only to discover that 30 more minutes have passed. Not only that, but by that point you can't even imagine wanting the damn thing to ever come to an end. But, of course, it does, by which point "Steppin' Out" will be stuck in your head for days. (There are worse things, believe me.)
It's not a thing you would probably -- if you are, ahem, "sane" -- want to come back to particularly often, but you will want to come back to it. Let's say once every couple of months or so. It's like colonic irrigation for the brain.
I'm not sure whether this was always a good song but I was just too dull to notice; or whether it has taken the intervening 40 years for it to become a good song; or whether I am allowing the thick fog of nostalgia to cloud my judgment.
Actually, I think I might be about to shed a tear. Nurse!
This month's playlist starts and ends with
Todd Terje, but otherwise contains no Todd Terje whatsoever.
"I Get Lifted (Todd Terje Tangoterje
Edit)", by KC And The Sunshine Band. I never had a problem with KC and the
Sunshine Band. (Well, except for misguidedly assuming, based on lack of
information/knowledge/intelligence, that KC must have also been the host of
"American Top 40".) But if I had ever had a problem with KC and the Sunshine Band? Problem solved!
"Warm Leatherette", by Suzi
Quatro. It's very difficult to accept that this even exists. If it were possible for Suzi Quatro to go up in my estimation (hint: it is not), this remarkable
cover version would do it. Leather Tuscadero vs Grace Jones: be very afraid.
(Bonus: album cover of the month. Obviously.)
"Murmur Earth", by Stealing
Sheep. I know you must get sick of me saying this, but here is another (excellent) song
that springs from deep within Raincoats territory. Outstanding.
"Tund (Ricardo Villalobos
Remix)", by Ambiq. The resident 16-year-old is presently learning about minimalism
as part of Year 11 music. (At last, something he is studying that I am not
completely rubbish at!) In a vain, and not necessarily welcome, attempt at helping, I have been throwing him records by Terry Riley, Philip
Glass and Steve Reich, of course, but it strikes me that he should also be
checking out the alchemical workings of Aphex Twin and Ricardo Villalobos, to
the extent that minimalism aligns itself with music that makes incrementally
small changes over a long period of time. This cryptic remix could be Exhibit A.
"Launch Ramp To Tha Sky", by
Levon Vincent. Never has there been a better use of the word "tha".
Respect.
"Bird Matrix", by Actress.
Actress has been playing a long game, at least insofar as his last album,
"Ghettoville", from 2014, has taken until surprisingly recently to
worm its way into my central nervous system. (I picked it up when it first came
out and have listened to it quite a bit; it's as if thin layers of onion-skin
have slowly been peeling themselves away, month after month,
until, finally, the complete project has been revealed). Notwithstanding his
somewhat ambiguous "retirement" announcement after
"Ghettoville" came out, new fragments of music have continued to seep
out; this one, all 13 glacial minutes of it, came out as part of a fascinating
but difficult DJ-Kicks mix. It is not cheerful music. In fact, it might be the
end of music.
"Dubwise Shower", by Ray I. If
Actress's sparse inversions of dub reggae leave you wanting to listen
to anything at all, it would probably be a blast of authentic seventies dub. Fortunately, we have some just here. (This YouTube clip appends a
customarily insane "Instrumental Version". Lucky you.)
"Reunion Sicodelica", by Los
Holy's. (With a big "sic" on that apostrophe. It physically hurt me
to type it, yes, but Word hasn't even come up with an admonitory red line. Boo hiss.) This song is also known
as "Cissy Strut". You know it. Observe closely how the drummer tries
his darnedest to keep up, and almost succeeds. The winner, though, as always,
is the organ. (The A side to this record would appear to be a version of "Hawaii
Five-0". Be still my beating heart.)
"Boil The Kettle, Mother", by The
Id. Almost, but not quite, as disturbing as the title-and-band-name combination
would suggest. Actually, yes it is. Honestly, you couldn't make some of this
stuff up.
"Storm Warning", by Mac
Rebennack. More punky swampy shenanigans, this time from Mac Rebennack. You may
know him as Dr John. This track pre-dates the previous two by eight years. And
the eight years between 1959 and 1967, musically speaking (at least), might as well have been an eternity.
Prescient.
"Leda", by Safe Home. From the
complete opposite end of the music spectrum from Dr John's primal swamp-rock
boogie, Safe Home conjure all the goodness that can come from a bit of
well-placed introspection.
"Nature", by Valet. I suppose you could listen to this and say, with faint but discernible levels of snark (perhaps combined with the subtlest of eye rolls), "Ah, the inevitable
return of shoegaze". You could also just sit back, relax, and enjoy the
song. Yeah, do that.
"Oban (Todd Terje Remix)", by
Jaga Jazzist. So here comes Uncle Todd again, this time lulling us all into a
kind of semi-conscious reverie as the sun sinks behind the dunes. I'm getting hints of "La Ritournelle". Or something.
I don't know anymore.
