BRUCE LAMONT

Yakuza vocalist/saxophonist Bruce Lamont released his first solo album, Feral Songs for the Epic Decline, on the At A Loss label in January. That's the cover art above. He did some killer performances to promote it at South by Southwest this past week, and Mike Williams of Eyehategod showed up to help out:





I wrote the liner notes to the CD. Here they are:

Those of you who’ve picked this album up because it’s the solo debut by the frontman for Chicago avant-rock band Yakuza should be aware that you are not holding a metal record in your hands. Of course, if you think Yakuza, Bruce Lamont’s primary creative outlet, is just a metal band, well, I don’t know what to tell you about that. Yakuza makes some of the most absorbing ultra-heavy psychedelic post-rock around, but calling it “metal” would be awfully reductive. You’ve got the Tibetan-style chants, the drone interludes, the saxophone…Yakuza’s got more in common with Hawkwind than High On Fire, is the point here. And apparently, Bruce Lamont is the kind of guy who finds even Yakuza’s expansive musical vision just a little bit constricting.

Most folks who know his work know Lamont has one foot in out-jazz (he’s performed and recorded with saxophonist Ken Vandermark, and stood up to the full hurricane force of upstate New York sax-sax-guitar trio Borbetomagus) and another in out-rock (in addition to Yakuza, he’s been an in-studio guest with fellow Chicago bands Nachtmystium and Minsk). But now they’re gonna get to know Bruce Lamont, singer-songwriter. He wrote all the songs on this disc, and played every instrument: guitar, saxophone, keyboards, percussion, all of it. And as recorded by Sanford Parker in Chicago’s Semaphore Studio, it’s got all the warmth and humanity of the best music to come from that city in recent years.

The first track, “One Who Stands On The Earth,” is also the longest by a good five minutes, and it’s like a buffet, laying out every sound you’re gonna hear for the rest of the album’s 43-minute running time. Acoustic guitar, saxophone, hypnotic tribal percussion, rhythm loops, bursts of static, and Lamont’s own trance-like vocal chants…imagine if Peter Gabriel had invited Michael Gira to collaborate on Passion, his soundtrack album for The Last Temptation Of Christ, and you’re getting there. There’s a strong desert vibe to tracks like “The Epic Decline” and “Disgruntled Employer.” Other pieces, like “The Book Of The Law” and “Deconstructing Self-Destruction,” blast from the speakers full of industrial/black metal fury, while the detuned guitar of “Year Without Summer” could be a nod to the Texas-based outsider-folk recluse Jandek. Feral Songs For The Epic Decline is multifaceted, is what I’m saying. Like its creator. Come in with open ears, and they will be filled in a very pleasing manner.

Buy Feral Songs for the Epic Decline from Amazon

MID-JANUARY AMG UPDATE

Here are my 10 newest All Music Guide reviews.

The Absence, From Your Grave
Borbetomagus, Both Noises End Burning
Gerald Cleaver, Be It As I See It
Crystal Viper, Legends
Ehnahre, The Man Closing Up
Ehnahre, Taming the Cannibals
Fushitsusha, Live
Fushitsusha, I Saw It! That Which Before I Could Only Sense
Hour of 13, The Ritualist
Praxis, Profanation (Preparation for a Coming Darkness)

MORE NOISE OFFSTAGE THAN ON

There's been a lot of discussion in jazz circles this week (I've noticed it filling up my Twitter feed, a welcome distraction from Lebron James- and Prince-related blather) about the Laurie Anderson/Lou Reed/John Zorn trio performance at the Montreal Jazz Festival this past week. Apparently, there was some consternation on the part of the audience, with many audience members even demanding (and receiving) refunds.

There are lots of stories like this—guitarist Sonny Sharrock was famously disrupted by a German audience member who ran down front and started pounding on the stage mid-set, yelling over and over, "This is not jazz! This is not jazz!" And not long ago, a Spanish man who lived near the site of a jazz festival called the police to complain that the band onstage was not playing jazz (they were some sort of instrumental funk-fusion act, I believe), and his complaints were taken seriously. So seriously, in fact, that Wynton Marsalis, assiduous guard of the borders between That Which Swings and That Which Shall Not Pollute Our Precious Ear Canals, took the side of the complainer over that of his fellow musicians.

What makes this case interesting is the demand for (and receipt of) money back. As Peter Hum wrote on Jazzblog.ca,

The refunds just send the wrong message and set a bad precedent, I think. A music performance is not a razor blade, a software module, or any other consumer good that can be guaranteed. You wouldn't demand a refund for your hockey game ticket if your team lost, would you? It's not as if Reed, Zorn and Anderson were not living up to their part of the bargain -- they showed up and did their thing, making music in good faith. (That's a big improvement on the Paul Bley/Chet Baker show of many years ago in which Chet Baker did not make it on stage. Then, was there a 50-per-cent refund provided?)

I'm not saying that folks should have dug the Reed/Anderson/Zorn show. But that's not the point. When it comes to concerts, you pays your money, you takes your chances—that's my point. Polite Canadian that I am, the best excuse I can find for the refunds is they were a gracious reaction to Zorn's f-bomb. But if rudeness by performers merits refunds, then Keith Jarrett's promoters had better have extra money in the bank.

I'm with Hum on this one. You are not guaranteed a satisfying aesthetic experience when you buy a concert ticket. (That's half the reason I don't go out very often—I know most bands suck live, so they won't get my time/money until they've got a proven track record.) What's funniest to me about this whole thing, though, is that I can't imagine the music excerpted in the clip below inspiring such a vitriolic, "This is not jazz/I demand satisfaction!" response. I mean, listen for yourself:



That's John Zorn (and Lou Reed, for that matter) operating at about 30 percent. Imagine if the festival organizers had booked Borbetomagus:

RECIDIVISM

Cosmo Lee at Invisible Oranges is asking his readers which band or bands they've seen the most often. For me, the leaders are Iron Maiden, Einstürzende Neubauten and Cecil Taylor in a three-way tie. I've seen each four times, with my fifth Maiden concert coming up on 7/12.

Right behind them are the groups or artists I've seen three times each: Amon Amarth, Arch Enemy, Borbetomagus, Clutch, Fishbone, the Flying Luttenbachers, High On Fire, Isis, Machine Head, Motörhead, the Rollins Band, Slayer, Slipknot and Social Distortion.

Then there are those I've (only) seen twice: AC/DC, Black Sabbath (once with Ozzy, once with Dio), Butthole Surfers, Ornette Coleman, Dio (as a solo act), Exodus, Ice-T, Jane's Addiction, Judas Priest, Megadeth, Metallica, Nine Inch Nails, Orthrelm, Pantera, Iggy Pop (once solo, once with the Stooges), Radiohead, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Sword, and Rob Zombie.

I'm probably forgetting some, too—bands I saw open for several different headliners, or other unmemorable circumstances. If you're reading this, are you a recidivist? Do you see the same bands over and over? Are you always happy you went?

LORD BYRON

It's like that Ernest Borgnine-Lee Marvin movie Emperor of the North Pole. Who's gonna be the king of the fanzines or the king of the rock critics or something like that? And it's NOTHING. You're king of nothing! Dean of Rock Critics? It's like being Dean of Shitville. Being a rock critic is like the lowest fucking peg on anybody's poll. So I've never understood... although it's fun to get in fanzine wars and all that stuff but I don't really get why... There's no turf. What's the pay off of being master of this particular universe? I don't believe that there is one. Maybe unless you really get a lot of free records but you don't even get that anymore- you get downloads. So there's not even that inducement. It's not like chicks dig rock critics. What ELSE is it? Band you don't like will be friendly to you? You do it because you have to and it's really a liability more than anything else, more than a vocation.

Jason Gross has just published an awesome, absurdly wide-ranging interview with legendary underground rock critic Byron Coley, from which the above quote comes. I've been reading Coley since the mid-'80s in Spin, Forced Exposure and then (after years when it didn't seem like he was doing anything but sell records) The Wire. His "Underground" column in Spin was where I first heard of Borbetomagus.

This is a serious, thoughtful, in-depth conversation with a guy who's never had his life and work analyzed in this depth before. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4. Go. Read. Learn.

THIS WEEK ON ALTPRESS.COM

RHINOCEROS
They Are Coming For Me (Eulogy)
This Buffalo, New York-based straight-edgers like their hardcore old school. Their sound predates the Hatebreed worship of their Eulogy labelmates, all the way back to the glory days of Sunday matinee shows at CBGB. Vocalist Joe Riverside has a harsh, ranting style descended from East Coast legends like Agnostic Front's Roger Miret and Breakdown's Jeff Perlin--every word is a perfectly enunciated accusation. Guitarist Greg Styliades offers buzzsaw riffs, pick slides and shards of feedback and distortion in the mold of Sick Of It All and Gorilla Biscuits, while only rarely heading into the downtuned territory far too many of their cookie-cutter peers call home. Bassist Ian Pless even gets a solo intro on "Choices Made," and Aaron King's drums sound like wooden boxes filled with cement. This band's only been together since 2006, but their sound is straight from '88.

SHINING
Blackjazz (The End)
Norway's Shining mix industrial and metal into an unholy screech that takes elements from Nine Inch Nails' Broken EP, Meshuggah's Nothing and the collected works of Magma and King Crimson (this album includes a hellish version of KC's "21st Century Schizoid Man"), plus ultra-distorted, shrieking vocals and skronking saxophone. It's a major leap into the abyss for the band; their last two discs, 2007's Grindstone and 2005's In The Kingdom Of Kitsch You Will Be A Monster, had their ferocious moments, but there were stretches of gentle, jazzy melody, too. Blackjazz, by contrast, is fierce and unrelenting, a slavering beast of an album with the complexity and dissonance of the Flying Luttenbachers and the head-down intensity of upstate New York ultra-power trio Borbetomagus. Absolutely not for the faint of heart--or people with cranky neighbors.