From Jazziz, May 2006 issue:
WILLIAM PARKER
Long Hidden: The Olmec Series
(AUM Fidelity)
This is a multifaceted disc, unusual for Parker, who tends to record using his working bands rather than assemble musicians for a studio date. There are solo bass pieces, tracks for unaccompanied doson n'goni (an eight-stringed African instrument that sounds like a slightly out-of-tune guitar plucked by his thickly calloused fingers) and several cuts featuring a full band playing a mixture of free jazz and merengue. This "Olmec Group" features Todd Nicholson on bass (freeing Parker up to play the doson n'goni), Dave Sewelson on alto and baritone saxes, Omar Payano on congo and guiro, Gabriel Nunez on timbale and bongos, Luis Ramirez on accordion, and Isaiah Parker on alto sax. Sewelson takes a terrific, scorchingly free solo on "El Puente Seco," as the band churns and wheezes behind him. It's a totally unexpected combination - merengue groove and free shriek - but under Parker's able direction, it works beautifully.
The title piece is divided into three sections, each a solo for doson n'goni. These run out of order throughout the album: Part Two, only 45 seconds long, is track two, Part Three is track five, and Part One is track 10. Parker reprises a few favorite songs, taking the spiritual "There Is A Balm In Gilead" as a bass solo to open the disc and reworking "Compassion Seizes Bed-Stuy," originally recorded by his In Order To Survive quartet, in the disc's second half. The final track, "In Case Of Accident," is a similarly vintage live recording of a 14-minute bass solo, originally released on cassette through Parker's own label, Centering Music. It provides a long-winded but intermittently thrilling coda to this surprising and masterful disc.
Saturday, April 29, 2006
Friday, April 28, 2006
ONE READER WRITES
I have a fan!
------ Forwarded Message
From: [redacted]
Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2006 05:09:36 -0700 (PDT)
To: editorial@altpress.com
Subject: to who wrote the hank III review
Are you serious with the Hank III review?? The new time you think about writing a review of a band/style you obviously know nothing about you should go back to jacking off...(insert hip emo band of the week here) to keep your hands busy away from a pen,pencil,keyboard,crayon or whatever it is you use to write your jerkass reviews.
The review in question:
HANK WILLIAMS III
Straight To Hell
Curb
Hank III, who divides his time between honky-tonkin’ and thrashing with Superjoint Ritual, hasn’t put out a country record in three years. It’s too bad he’s only written three genuinely good songs in the interval – “The Pills I Took,” “My Drinkin’ Problem” and “Angel Of Sin.” The other ten tracks on the first disc of this 2CD set are rants about how much he hates pop country, festivals of name-dropping (he drinks with David Allan Coe, listens to George Jones and thinks Kid Rock is a poseur – impressed?) and cartoonishly clichéd drunken-hillbilly pseudo-anthems that veer close to minstrelsy. His psychobillyish strum ‘n’ twang is occasionally improved by some psychedelic production tricks, reminiscent of Butthole Surfer pals the Bad Livers. Disc 2, a 40-minute sound collage with occasional songs, wallows in such excesses. At this rate, he’s the GG Allin of country, and no matter who your grandfather was, that’s disappointing.
I admit it - when I saw that e-mail in my box, I kinda hoped it was from ol' Hank III himself. I'm a bit shocked his fans read Alternative Press, too...
------ Forwarded Message
From: [redacted]
Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2006 05:09:36 -0700 (PDT)
To: editorial@altpress.com
Subject: to who wrote the hank III review
Are you serious with the Hank III review?? The new time you think about writing a review of a band/style you obviously know nothing about you should go back to jacking off...(insert hip emo band of the week here) to keep your hands busy away from a pen,pencil,keyboard,crayon or whatever it is you use to write your jerkass reviews.
The review in question:
HANK WILLIAMS III
Straight To Hell
Curb
Hank III, who divides his time between honky-tonkin’ and thrashing with Superjoint Ritual, hasn’t put out a country record in three years. It’s too bad he’s only written three genuinely good songs in the interval – “The Pills I Took,” “My Drinkin’ Problem” and “Angel Of Sin.” The other ten tracks on the first disc of this 2CD set are rants about how much he hates pop country, festivals of name-dropping (he drinks with David Allan Coe, listens to George Jones and thinks Kid Rock is a poseur – impressed?) and cartoonishly clichéd drunken-hillbilly pseudo-anthems that veer close to minstrelsy. His psychobillyish strum ‘n’ twang is occasionally improved by some psychedelic production tricks, reminiscent of Butthole Surfer pals the Bad Livers. Disc 2, a 40-minute sound collage with occasional songs, wallows in such excesses. At this rate, he’s the GG Allin of country, and no matter who your grandfather was, that’s disappointing.
I admit it - when I saw that e-mail in my box, I kinda hoped it was from ol' Hank III himself. I'm a bit shocked his fans read Alternative Press, too...
Thursday, April 27, 2006
POSSIBLY THE GREATEST METAL VIDEO EVER
I don't love Hammerfall, but I watched a shitload of curling this past Winter Olympics (it was practically all they showed). So enjoy...Hammerfall vs. the Swedish Olympic Curling Team.
THIS MONTH IN ACROSS-THE-POND HACKERY
Here are the two CD reviews I have in the May 06 issue of The Wire, the one with the icily lovely AGF on the cover. (I also have a lengthy Invisible Jukebox with William Parker in the issue, but I'm not reprinting that whole thing here.) May these guide you well on your next trip to the wrecka stow.
LEVIATHAN/SAPTHURAN
Leviathan/Sapthuran
Battle Kommand
A photo of a drum kit and a guitar is prominent in Leviathan’s half of this CD’s booklet. Being a one-man Black Metal outfit means proving or at least asserting that you played ‘real’ instruments at some point during the recording process. Laptops are not Metal. And indeed, part way through the first Leviathan track here, “Odious Convulsions (They Are Not Worthy Of His Name),” a bass is heard, dominating the mix in almost post-punk fashion, a gesture quite shocking in Black Metal, which usually prides itself on a hissy, treble-soaked sound. The drums still sound programmed, though, photographic evidence be damned. At one point, the guitar gets slightly out of phase with the blast beats, creating a whop-whop effect like a helicopter and a pavement saw in competition. The vocals are typically indecipherable, and no lyrics are provided. The confident newcomer Sapthuran, who offers three tracks here, plays acoustic guitar, but also incorporates the sound of wind through trees (presumably at midnight, in a long dead forest) along with the usual blast beats and inhuman growling and screeching. With Black Metal, small differences are everything. An acoustic guitar or a Big Black bass break keeps the diehards coming back for more. Count me in.
SHOT X SHOT
Shot X Shot
High Two
Shot X Shot’s two saxophonists, Dan Scofield (alto) and Bryan Rogers (tenor), interact with grace and consideration, never grappling at centre stage like John Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders (to whom they’re inaccurately compared in the booklet) or Borbetomagus’s Jim Sauter and Don Dietrich (to whom they’re somewhat more accurately not compared). If anything, Shot X Shot recall the New York group Test, whose music, gentle and introspective, belies the amount of time its creators spend playing in crowded subway stations. The group’s debut, recorded in a Philadelphia church, documents a battle between the participants and their environment. Natural reverberation is the fifth instrument – delicate horn duets shimmer away into Ambient haze, as Dan Capecchi’s drums thump and rattle and bassist Matt Engle struggles manfully to make an impact.
Things begin slowly, with Capecchi eliciting sounds very much like feedback from his cymbals, before the horns come in РRogers droning, Scofield playing slow, beautiful sequences of notes that seem only tenuously connected. But each sound chosen is indisputably right. From that moment on, the five tracks are more similar than different. All stride purposefully beyond the ten minute mark, but stop shy of becoming the 15 or 30 minute blowouts credulous audiences continue to endure from older free jazz groups, like parents sitting indulgently through school talent shows. And all leave an impression, upon completion, of being neither solipsistic nor beholden to clich̩ Рa small miracle, these days. This calmly assured debut bodes well for the future of all involved.
LEVIATHAN/SAPTHURAN
Leviathan/Sapthuran
Battle Kommand
A photo of a drum kit and a guitar is prominent in Leviathan’s half of this CD’s booklet. Being a one-man Black Metal outfit means proving or at least asserting that you played ‘real’ instruments at some point during the recording process. Laptops are not Metal. And indeed, part way through the first Leviathan track here, “Odious Convulsions (They Are Not Worthy Of His Name),” a bass is heard, dominating the mix in almost post-punk fashion, a gesture quite shocking in Black Metal, which usually prides itself on a hissy, treble-soaked sound. The drums still sound programmed, though, photographic evidence be damned. At one point, the guitar gets slightly out of phase with the blast beats, creating a whop-whop effect like a helicopter and a pavement saw in competition. The vocals are typically indecipherable, and no lyrics are provided. The confident newcomer Sapthuran, who offers three tracks here, plays acoustic guitar, but also incorporates the sound of wind through trees (presumably at midnight, in a long dead forest) along with the usual blast beats and inhuman growling and screeching. With Black Metal, small differences are everything. An acoustic guitar or a Big Black bass break keeps the diehards coming back for more. Count me in.
SHOT X SHOT
Shot X Shot
High Two
Shot X Shot’s two saxophonists, Dan Scofield (alto) and Bryan Rogers (tenor), interact with grace and consideration, never grappling at centre stage like John Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders (to whom they’re inaccurately compared in the booklet) or Borbetomagus’s Jim Sauter and Don Dietrich (to whom they’re somewhat more accurately not compared). If anything, Shot X Shot recall the New York group Test, whose music, gentle and introspective, belies the amount of time its creators spend playing in crowded subway stations. The group’s debut, recorded in a Philadelphia church, documents a battle between the participants and their environment. Natural reverberation is the fifth instrument – delicate horn duets shimmer away into Ambient haze, as Dan Capecchi’s drums thump and rattle and bassist Matt Engle struggles manfully to make an impact.
Things begin slowly, with Capecchi eliciting sounds very much like feedback from his cymbals, before the horns come in РRogers droning, Scofield playing slow, beautiful sequences of notes that seem only tenuously connected. But each sound chosen is indisputably right. From that moment on, the five tracks are more similar than different. All stride purposefully beyond the ten minute mark, but stop shy of becoming the 15 or 30 minute blowouts credulous audiences continue to endure from older free jazz groups, like parents sitting indulgently through school talent shows. And all leave an impression, upon completion, of being neither solipsistic nor beholden to clich̩ Рa small miracle, these days. This calmly assured debut bodes well for the future of all involved.
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
...NOTHING, NOT EVEN PRISON, STOP[PED] HIM FROM SINGING ABOUT SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD PUSSY
Last week I bought Chuck Berry's Gold, which is the Anthology from 2000 with new cover art and liner notes. It's got 50 tracks spread across two discs, and all but a handful are ass-rapingly great. I hadn't heard Berry in years and had forgotten how scorching his guitar playing is. On "Carol" and particularly on "Roll Over Beethoven," he sounds like Marc Ribot half the time - startling to realize that Billy Zoom, while consciously aping Berry on X's "Johny Hit And Run Paulene," was actually playing cleaner than the man himself! Plus, the rhythm section speeds up and slows down and lurches in and out of the groove - basically, just like a real band interacting in real time. Shocking, that. These are some of the most punk rock songs you'll ever hear in your goddamn life, and if you're too young or too historically ignorant to have spent time seriously wallowing in the classic Berry singles, or even if you're just looking to re-acquaint yourself after years away, like me (I owned The Great Twenty-Eight years ago, but it went out the door in a particularly misguided purge), you oughta do it right away.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)