Deutscherappen

So an Italian deckmaster (DJ Nios Siddharta) goes to Germany and checks out the local hip hop scene and gives us a mixtape like this. I am not totally sold on most of the vocal delivery, but some of the beats kick like a striker from FC Bayern München. I scoped this nugget originally from the inimitable Blentwell.

Arrested Career Development...

...is what happened to Speech after the release of Zingalamaduni, but it is unfortunate. It was his finest hour.

There is just some sweet cuts on this thing: United Front, Ease My Mind, and Pride are all big winners with these ears. Yes, Speech gets too close to Preech at times, but the grooves are impeccable and the melodies are exponentially better than 98% of the ridiculous pap that passes for hip hop and soul on the radio and Total Repulsion Live.

Uri Caine - Toys

Uri Caine
Toys
jMT /Polydor KK (Japan) /Verve
1995

Personnel:
Uri Caine - piano
Don Byron - bass clarinet
Gary Thomas - flute, tenor sax
Dave Douglas - trumpet
Joshua Roseman - trombone
Ralph Peterson - drums
Dave Holland - bass

This is a tasty release by NYC by way of Phillie MVP Uri Caine. An all around solid player, this is a follow up to his debut, Sphere Music, and like it, has more than a nod to Monk in terms of idiosyncratic playfulness and attention to dynamics. A great ensemble is behind the sounds here, with everyone a distinct stylist in their own right.

The results are laudable. A mostly post-bop affair, there are flourishes of out there fun, such as the squonky piano/bass clarinet opening to the Herbie Hancock classic Cantaloupe Island, and the brash avant ditty I'm Meshugah For My Sugah (And My Sugah's Meshugah For Me), which clocks in at under 2 minutes and moves like a piece of quick cut movie music. The opener, Time Will Tell, has hints of a latin rhythmic gallop played oddly (in a good way).

This is however, easily digestible by a jazz neophyte or someone not wanting to be taken by the scruff of the neck. Herbal Blue is a delicate ballad carried by Caine and Holland's deft basswork. Holland also anchors the uptempo Or Truth?, allowing a lot of solid foundation for others as well as giving himself a brief solo showcasing his tasteful phrasing and warm tone. No one drops the ball on this one, and Caine shines admirably. His jazz meets classical training comes off well merged, and not so much like the third stream one might expect; it swings, but with hints of Mahler and Mozart in the mix. A little segue here, a ringing chord that just doesn't sound quite blue enough. Just enough to keep the listeren engaged.

Sly and Robbie - Fatigue Chic (single)

Sly and Robbie
Fatigue Chic (single)
1999 Palm Pictures LLC

The opener Fatigue Chic remix by the Dub Pistols has a dub meets 2001: A Space Odyessy meets Vincent Price fresh off his role in The Fall of The House of Usher on vacation dark vibe. While a decent take, it actually isn't as good as the album version, which keeps the more muscular groove and flowing drones. Of the two remixes of Superthruster, the jungle style take by Flytronix is compelling. Ghostly pads and a collision course drum beat combine with gutteral bass make for incidental music to an underwater chase scene (like "What if The Hunt For Red October were done by hella funkee people in a hurry?"). The only thing lacking is once again, the driving musicular groove of the original. This is not the issue with DJ Mandrax, who builds his club mix around it, but takes some of the teeth out of it by speeding it up a hair and adding some retro 80s style keys. The track is still good, but the weakest here, at times sounding almost too much like a 12" extended mix from a random artist on the Solar Label.* Thankfully, you can also hear the album version here, and get the full effect of the real reason you picked this up. Sly and Robbie, still one of the greatest (and busiest) beat sections in music.

iPod Playlist: 2.21.06

Frank McGahon - a podcast from this month
Howard Jones - a trio of cuts from Humans Lib
A bunch of Kyoto Jazz Massive remixes
The Crystal Method - Smoked
Several selections from Melissa Auf Der Maur's solo debut.
Imogen Heap - Can't Take it In
4Hero - a bigger bunch of tracks and remixes, including the classic I Am The Black Gold of The Sun
FAMILIESdownload # 7 by Silicon Scally
A couple of Alif Tree and Leftfield remix tracks
Quincy_Essential podcast of DjKali: WarmNights mixset

Charlie Hunter Trio - Copperopolis

So a while back I entered a tongue in cheek entry to a New Years Resolution contest at Ropeadope, and by wild luck was one of the winners. Andy at Ropeadope sent me a congratulatory email and said a prize was coming. Then nothing arrived. I was sad, since Ropeadope has always been of high standards of customer care. Then I realized why nothing had arrived...the prize had not been released yet.

Last week a spiffy copy of the fresh out the oven release, Copperopolis, by the Charlie Hunter Trio arrived at my doorstep.

I have to say this is Hunter's best release in years, and possibly his finest hour, period. Chuck seems to have re-discovered distortion and rock n' roll, but what he does with it is 100% his own. Hunter has not given up his jazz gig, but has instead added a level of grit and jam-band bombast that was not as prevalent on his previous albums. But this isn't limited by the jam-band aesthetic of endless, mostly untethered-to-a-point noodling. Hunter is a true jazz muso, and his improvisiational skills are profound, even when he sticks to a back to the basics boogie or blues. This also isn't rawk! but does have some solid riff-mongering in a way that would fit well in a late 60s to mid 70s rock scene (opener Cueball Bobbin' is a great example) . It is open and free-rolling across a mix of New Orleans traditions (funk, R&B and blues), soul jazz, a little psychedelica, and riff rock. While the album is very cohesive, there are different things being offered in cuts like Swamba Redux, Drop the Rock and the title track. Of note, there is one great cover tune, that of Thelonius Monk's Think of One, which is the most overtly jazzy and abstract tune, and also one of the most swinging. There is a great midsection with a New Orleans funky martial beat going that just makes you wiggle in your chair.

Hunter plays a mutant 8 string guitar that affords him the ability to play simultaneous guitar and bass range figures, but not in a gimmick fashion. His playing is always musical, even when it is obvious that the method is highly technical. Hunter has a history of working with great drummers (including Jay Lane, Stanton Moore and Scott Amendola)*, and with this one we have Derrek Phillips, whose crisp stickwork fills out the beat section perfectly. The instrumental madness of John Ellis though, is what helps give this album some real breadth though. While primarily a brass player (tenor and alto saxes), he also gives some added colors with bass clarinet, Wurlitzer and Melodica.** They all seem to have a good rapport going on, with a relaxed looseness throughout.

If you want a fun, funky, jamming, jazzy confection for your earholes...get this. Now! Go!

* Jay Lane was an early drummer for pre-fame Primus (Hunter was initially signed to Ls Claypool's Prawn Song boutique label many years ago and before joining Blue Note and Ropeadope) and has also played in Claypool's Sausage project.

** Ellis has a decent solo disc out called One Foot in the Swamp (with guests like Nicolas Payton, John Scofield, and Jason Marsalis) that might be worth a peek in and of itself.

Living Just Enough...

...for the mortgage. It is a good little write up about making a working living as a jazz musician (particularly in the non-Marsalis camp), particularly with regards to Pi Recordings, which has my man Henry Threadgill on the roster.

I would also like to take the time to thank Alan Wilder for Recoil. But you know, you left Depeche Mode ages ago, and are clearly not putting out enough product. P.S. Please use Toni Halliday for vocals as often as possible.

Killing Joke Live DVD

So I did a write up not too long ago about the cd version of this DVD release. Well, here are a few screens and I have to say the DVD is a pretty solid companion to this, and features a few more cuts from the straight audio. Jaz still has that 1000 yard stare, even if he is a bit less mobile these days (whether that is wear and tear or current chemical additives is anyones guess), but for a band a quarter of a century in, they are still delivering the goods, and the raggedness gives the sense of animalistic immediacy an almost feral quality.

Like they have to get one last wild hunt. And you are all that they prey upon.












The camera work is solid and the staging/venue was appropo. Shepards Bush Empire has a certain regal decay to it, and KJ are post-punk/industrial royalty.

Curve - Gift

Curve
Gift (2001)
Hip-O/Universal Records

Produced by Curve with Ben Grosse

Personnel:

Dean Garcia - bass, guitar, programming and noise
Toni Halliday - words, vocals and guitar noise

with:
Kevin Shields, Geno Lenardo, Alan Moulder - guitar
Flood - bleeps and analogs
Alan Wilder - strings and ambience
and more.

Curve have been split since 2004, and the world is poorer for their absence. A duo of uncompromising focus musically but highly combustible personnally, Curve spent 15 years mapping out a sound that has been mined by many (Garbage and U2 come to mind) but never successfully duplicated. Cheekily referred to as "filth pop" Curve's name was appropriate; even when it appeared as they were going to come straight at you, they would end up swerving and swinging around you at angles. A mix of the infectiously accessible and the emphatically left of center. Early on they were often lumped with the shoegazer set, but they sat well apart with Toni Halliday's elliptically suggestive style (the woman could recite a meatloaf recipe and her delivery could turn it into a dark erotic monologue on contact) and Dean Garcia's Phil Spector Overdrive instrumental style (dirty and elastic basslines, dense walls of riffs and synths, and beats that careen and settle and rise up again to suggest all manner of sonic violence, packed under pressure and shaken) made for something a little deeper than simple pseudo-industrial pop or electronically dressed up dreary rock (a role currently owned by various post-punk derivatives whose named end in -o).

Gift was their final official studio album on a major label, and it is --to use a horrid pun-- a spectacular parting gift*.

There is a claustrophobia that sticks to you on Bleeding Heart and Chainmail, and you get your ears boxed by the opener Hell Above the Water. I am still not sure if I am sold on the processed vocals, but the track itself is like anger and vertigo in a small room trying to copulate, with extra noisy riffage by Geno Lenardo of Filter. Which reminds me, this band is connected to and has long histories with a lot of heavy hitters, which is why you can have Ben Grosse (Filter, Ben Folds), Alan Wilder (Depeche Mode, Recoil), and Flood (Smashing Pumpkins, U2) all on one track, in this case, Polaroid. Oddly enough, this album was the first that did not involve long time producers Steve Osbourne and Alan Moulder (except for the latters brief guitar contribution). But I digress....

There is some layered madness in Chainmail and Hung Up, where driving, straighforward sections give way to squalls of synths, bleeps, ponks and other technical musical terms. The almost jangly guitars of Want More Need Less (provided by My Bloody Valentine's Kevin Shields) add to the tracks anthemic feel, which is extremely similar to Curve's early EP sound. Truth be told, much of Gift sounds like a rather well crafted marriage of their earlier outings with the more corrosive sound of albums like Come Clean.

Even when the riffs are simple, it is the choice of sounds (layers and layers of them, joining and exploding apart), and an overall production quality that I would place as some of the best anywhere, that helps give an undeniable edge. The title track and Hell Above the Water are good examples.

But the opus here is the 5+ minutes of Perish, a song that might have been written as a coda to the band itself. An elegaic track, Halliday sounds even more exposed than normal, which is saying a lot, and Garcia tracks a cut so lush and rich. It is flawless from the opening note to the fade out, and a showcase for Halliday's regal lyrical prowess. Curve was never one to lean into angst and pity or impotent anger, but had a much more direct, pithy route to the darker and vulnerable parts of the person -- which made them always a bit more dangerous.

Buy this.

* Subsequent to this, Curve released a collection of tracks previously available at various times as mp3 releases from their website, called Open Day at the Hatefest, and a 2CD collection of singles, b-sides and unreleased material, the Way of Curve followed as a closing statement.


You might like this if you like:

Garbage - any
U2 - Achtung Baby
Depeche Mode - Songs of Faith and Devotion
Filter - Title of Record
NIN - The Fragile

First Houses

First House
Cantilena (1986)
Erèndira (1989)
ECM Records

Produced by Manfred Eicher

Personnel:
Ken Stubbs - alto, soprano saxophones
Django Bates - piano, tenor horn
Mick Hutton - bass
Martin France - drums, percussion

A short lived quartet that managed to pump out a pair of rather sublime records, both horribly out of print but sometimes appear in your local used jazz section. I was drawn initially by the appearance of Django Bates (and to a lesser degree Mick Hutton) of Bill Bruford's Earthworks. He and and Iain Ballamy *provided an inventive, unpredictable frontline, and Mick a solid anchor-point to Bruford in the early electro-acoustic lineups of the band. Here, Bates and Hutton provide much of the same. Even though Stubbs is not as versatile as Ballamy and France not quite in the same league of play as Mr. Bruford, this quartet plays to it's strengths, which are more ethereal, less angular, cerebral and aggressive. The sound, like many other ECM label releases, is often pastoral and very "European" in tone. But FH is less about the chamber jazz, with Stubbs and Bates having bursts of heat to punctuate the more Wayne Shorter-like meandering passages.

Either (both) albums are worth picking up.


* Ballamy is also known for his collaboration with multimedia artist Dave McKean (the Sandman and Cages graphic books and the movie Mirrormask)

Floating Detritus

Kevin Costner has a band...where he sings...and he is taking it public...at a golf tourney. Hopefully someone will slice a ball and it will embed itself in his windpipe. Apparently they play "original rock and popular music" although I fear what constitutes original from the man that gave us The Bodyguard, and I really do not want to ponder what he would use as cover tune material. Weddings and Bar-Mitzfah's, there you go (at least if your acting career keeps going the way it is).

Killing Joke have a new album pending, with a downloadable sample track --Implosion-- and a video for the title track (low quality) for streaming. Jaz looks like he is trying to relive Fire Dances, but what it lacks in originality visually it makes up for in quality of the track.

eBay auction of deep ha-ha. No musical content, just bloody funny.

There is a documentary film making the rounds called Electric Purgatory, about black rockers, including interviews/footage with Vernon Reid, Bad Brains, Questlove of the Roots, King's X, Fishbone, and quite a few others. Worth a look (trailer available).

R.I.P. JD

Detroit Hip-Hop producer Jay-Dilla has passed away.

I was never distinctly familiar with the name until hearing of his passing, and now I notice he has been with numerous artists I respect (A Tribe Called Quest, Erykah Badu) and so now I feel compelled to dig into his oeuvre...and to feel stupid for sleeping on it until now.

Here in my car...

...I am not listening to Gary Numan.

I have been listening to a triad of tapes (remember, I still have not bothered to fix the cd player), and I am enjoying how well they hold up:

Living Colour - Time's Up. I am still amazed at the sheer breadth and forward thinking of this album. It, with few exceptions, is sublime and has dated well. Thrash, delta blues, South African township jive, art-rock, spastic jazz metal and guest spots from guys like Maceo and Queen Latifah (back when she could actually craft a rhyme) make this one greatly underrated album.

Seal - Seal (debut). I remember picking this up at the Warehouse near Valley Fair mall the month it came out in the US. It had such a stellar line up; Trevor Rabin, Trevor Horn, Doug Wimbish, with Wendy & Lisa as musical directors and Horn producing, it is still his strongest effort and still is fully listenable from start to finish. Violet is total ear candy.

The Innocence Mission - The Innocence Mission. I did not realize for years that this band was essentially a CCM band, although tracks like Medjugorje should have been a hint. That being said, IM succeed because they do not conform to CCM (lack of) musical sensibilities. This is sweetly simple folk pop devoid of the kind of pretentious twaddle popular with folks like Natalie Merchant, Jewel and the like. This was produced by Larry Klein, and his ethereal, rural sound is evident.

Vernon Reid - Mistaken Identity

Vernon Reid
Mistaken Identity
1996 Sony550/Epic

Produced by Prince Paul, Teo Macero & Vernon Reid

Personnel:
Vernon Reid - guitars (both real and imagined), whispering

Masque:
Don Byron - clarinet, bass clarinet
DJ Logic - turntables
Leon Gruenbaum - samchillian tip tip tip cheeepeee, theremin, melodica
Curtis Watts - drums
Hank Schroy - bass, fretless bass

Additional personnel:
Lawrence Fishburne, Sekou Sundiata - spoken word
Graham Haynes - cornet
The Crazy Baldheads - percussion
Beans, Chubb Rock - raps

When I first picked up and listened to Mistaken Identity, I had been anxious for years. The album was Vernon's debut with his name only on the marquis, and it had been delayed over 2 years. Rumors were few, because no one had any idea what on earth he had planned. By the time it made it to shelves, no one knew what to do with it.

Had this type of album been released in 1969-1970, it would have been placed on the same footing as Bitches Brew or A Tribute To Jack Johnson, by Miles Davis. This album is a colossal explosion of power, a calamity of finesse, and an atomization of primal force suited up in the finest arrangements.

It was also an album released to no promotion, by an artist who had been laying very low for a few years, and in the beginning of the era that we have now in terms of the music industry: if we do not know how to categorize it, we will ignore it.

And no one would have known what the hell this thing is. I love this album, have listened to it from every perspective, and still have my doubts as to what it really is.

Just looking at the line-up, you have a mix of some of NYCs finest underground avant-garde jazz and funk players, some serious heavy hitters in the production chairs, and a cross section of stylists brought together into one mans kaleidoscopic musical tour de force. No style or method was taboo, and nothing was played safe. This album is one of the 10 greatest albums in my collection of thousands, and is one of the top 5 of the 1990s as far as I am concerned.

Vernon came off the then dissolution of his band Living Colour, and took fragments of what he had done within LC and instead of the tight, aggressive but coherent linear genre-spanning songs, produced a form of Attention Deficit inspired sound collage and frenetic collisions of spiralling aural chaos. This is an album for someone that wants to sample all the sections of the music store in one go, but in a way that everything works.

This album works, both in that many tracks work on their own, but that in their wildly divergent characters, they actually produce a rather interesting collective result. It is King Crimson and James Brown and Bad Brains and DJ Shadow and Nirvana and Eric Dolphy and Zappa and Blaxploitation films and Stanley Kubrick musically interpreted paranoia and the kitchen sink and some of the adjacent plumbing as well as the main line back to the city resovoir. There is some underground hip hop, campy spoken word interludes, biting situational skits (including one as a bonus track), strange noises, serrated riffing, angular solos and the only time that clarinet and industrial have been melded in a way that works. This is the ultimate indie album.

The album was never followed up with a successor. Vernon's sophomore album, while very impressive in its own right, was a much more straight ahead, linear affair. The closest you get to a natural heir to this is his debut under the Yohimbe Bros. moniker (with DJ Logic oddly enough), Front End Lifter.

Where the Good Stuff Is, Part 1

One of the advantages (among many) of living in the Bay Area is that of you are a music junkie, you have many avenues for both product and perfromance to get your fix. Almost too many, as you can easily OD (technically I have been flatline for years).

My first music store love was (and is) Streetlight Records. While I occasionally prefer going to Amoeba in SF, The Beat in Sacramento or the Virgin Megastore in NYC for their particular selection of certain genres, Streetlight is the cornerstone.

When I first began shopping there I was in my early teens and the store was in a house-style building on Bascom Ave. It was small (less than 800 Sq Ft of space) but not an inch of the store was wasted. I would spend hours pouring through liner notes of what was then a majority vinyl operation (we are talking late 80s here folks). Their bargain bin of 50 cent 12" singles and albums helped feed my desire for new sounds (now of course, the bin is $1, but it feeds my artistic jones with my Vinyl Remix series).

In the early 90s they expanded to a warehouse space a half mile down the Ave, to a 40+K sq. foot cavernous affair. They adopted a display space that housed all manner of rotating weirdness -- sometimes literally; the store features for quite some time a lifesize Elvis spinning in a coffin, often presented with images of Lisa Marie Presley and Michael Jackson when they were married.

Everyone from local heroes Janitors Against Aparteid* to Tony Levin (King Crimson, Peter Gabriel) have performed in the store. It has had some great staffers, including a woman I only knew as Sarah who always made my day by ordering the entire LTJ Bukem stable of acts from the Good Looking/Looking Good labels (which meant there was always something new from LTJ, Nookie, Blame, BluMarTen, etc to pick up) , Joey who made great recommendations to me about rockabilly (you were right, that Mike Ness solo disk was righteous), and various others who all have come to know me if not by name, than by face (including the fellow who recognized me from my one spot on the Screen Savers cable show and the low-key gal with the horn-rim glasses who always seems to have such a great disposition for someone in retail).

Thanks Guys.

Now stock more jazz, yo.




* I had a college class once with their alto-sax player,Michael Liu. I wonder what happened to him and the rest of JAA?

Odds and Ends

Looks like the Superbowl might not have an entirely asinine half-time show.

In a strange twist, a record label (Nettwerk records, home to acts as far afield as Sarah McLachlan and Consolidated) is bucking the RIAA and paying the legal costs for one file-sharer to defend himself against them.

Western Union. Stop. Age of Telegrams Now Kaputsky. Stop. What does this have to do with music? Nothing, but it caught my eye...

Kelly Osbourne thinks Paris Hilton is petty and a bad influence. Oh, the irony is pumping hard folks...

There will be a tribute show to the late Chris Whitley, with participants including DJ Logic, Vernon Reid, Doug Pinnick, Charlie Sexton and Shawn Colvin.

A limited edition release by Kino (a group featuring members of Marillion, It Bites and Porcupine Tree) is out. It has demos, live tracks and a Kevin Gilbert cover.