|
Opening rhetorical: If Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise a kid then why are we talking about manned missions to that rock?
No runner-up this month. These releases reverberated with such intensity that they deserve equal top honors. All three albums share a passion for their craft that's right there in every note. Some folks are put on this earth to make music and the few included here are among them...
Album of the month #1:
Granola Funk Express:
Bigger Than It Really Is
G.F.E. deliver the funk with a big hemp cloth bow around a box that smells all danky and nice... and what was I saying? Oh yeah, the crew comin' straight outta Asheville, North Carolina ups their ante on their second full-length. After the upward climb of solo efforts from Agent 23 and Foulmouth Jerk, one had a sense of something special on the horizon. Hard, precipitously clever word play rides a live band sound, a humping nod back to Funkadelic's metal roar and long struttin' legs. Open your mind to the rhymes that they shine and you may find your hands inexorably raised towards the rafters. They are proof positive that "conscious rap" need not be the stiff soapbox most others make it. They are the true inheritors of a mantle Gil Scott-Heron has been holding onto for years, waiting for the right young lions to snatch it. This latest harnesses the incendiary force of their live presence to a wide array of moods. Hip-hop may be the bedrock but they find time for some Specials' style Two-Tone soul ("Lamp Oil"), a Jah love hidden cut and trippy space travel ("Bio Diesel"). Don't even get me started on the pass-the-mic magnificence of Adam Strange or how Kyle Colcasure's bass takes me away like Calgon. The godfather his own self, George Clinton, anoints the session on the spark 'em up anthem "Everybody Get High." G.F.E. confirm the notion that hip-hop is no longer about where you're from. There's no one litmus test for authenticity and an open-minded listen to this should convert skeptics. If half the rap out there had this much creativity, this much free-swinging style, then the genre would be a livelier spot. Present enough to talk politics and back-in-the-day enough to understand why Donnie Hathaway always included slow burners on his albums, Bigger Than It Really Is bumps with the best of them.
Album of the month #2:
Julian Cope: Rome Wasn't Burned In A Day
Brain Donor: Too Freud To Rock 'N' Roll, Too Jung To Die
Mistah Cope has been a busy boy. Very quietly, as far as the mainstream he once swam is concerned, he's used shriveled gods and sacred overdoses to concoct sounds guaranteed to defibrillate old rock's heart. He takes us out there and by that I mean places we wouldn't find without sunshine daydream dowsers like Cope. Rome is equal measures acoustic and electric, words found written in dew on a leaf or something a mushroom wandered up and mentioned. It could be a gem unearthed from the psychedelic golden age or maybe a British Isle relative to Japan's Acid Mothers Temple. A fuzz-like spring fruit lays over everything. We enter in on a freakout already in progress and then depart for the source of the swirling lights in the sky. Practical advice slips in without warning ("Don't concrete over your garden. Don't shit in your backyard"). It can make you sigh brightly ("The-Way-Luv-Is") or it can throw loose power lines in the road ("King Minos," which chugs like the Animals minus the machismo). The Brain Donor collection moves Cope over to bass and revels in a barely contained abandon worthy of the Stooges, Detroit City rock by way of Motorhead, burning rubber on a chemical highway, a trio mélange of distorto-vocals, abused guitars and bone-on-boulder bang. It's just so 'eavy, man! Brain Donor play with the monosyllabic rightness of the Fugs or Troggs. "Messages" is an '80s metal epic built around the fewest words in the sub-genres history. "U-Know!" is the Who's maximum R&B and feels so vintage you'll swear you've heard it before. Sheets of sheer blinding white-hot noise pour down especially on the live disc (which also includes a righteous cover of Van Halen's "Atomic Punk"). Wild ass weirdness also rules the bonus disc that comes with Rome where we get a taste of future cult freakers Sunburned Hand Of The Man and Vibracathedral Orchestra amongst others. Julian Cope is going his own way, so much so that he's got his own record label to get this stuff into the world. He enlivens rock's ongoing conversation in the most delightful ways. I've got my spoon and I'm ready. More please, sire...
cLOUDDEAD: Ten
A partially successful hip-hop experiment, sort of. After the shaking inspiration of their debut one hoped the follow-up would be equally bugged-out brilliant. This sounds like someone let Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey cut a record after hearing his "Daisy" demo. A steady pulse beat makes everything feel samey despite all the wooden men and women, outer space whodunits, and small girls with cages full of goats. Even with this much acid-laced talent it may be, like a lot of underground beat science, too clever for its own good. If I want cute and clever I'll rock some Gilbert and Sullivan. The opaque distance of their first set served them much better than this more upfront approach. There's a teaspoon of madness, monkeys playing Magellan and Damo Suzuki (Can) language abuse, but the strong emphasis on unison singing is, well, no Jurassic 5 (really it sounds more like the Three Stooges crooning with Kraftwerk). As clearly creative as Doseone, odd nosdam, and why? are, there's not a lot here to draw your spaceship to their solar system.
Ric Menck: The Ballad of Ric Menck
The ballads of the Easy Rider and the Thin Man may be more familiar but not for lack of merit. For 15 years, Menck has been the skin-pounder for pop joyfuls the Velvet Crush. Along the way he's also banged out some killer singles under pseudonyms like Choo Choo Train and the Springfields. This reissue gathers together those singles and some odds-and-sods that didn't make the original release on the Rickenbacheriffic Summershine label. His sorta high, sorta nasal voice is crammed full of ache and rainbows and clever dust motes sent spinning by a lazy finger lying in the fresh green grass. A line on the back cover about this collection containing "all of Ric Menck's smash hits!" has the same playful sarcasm of Michael Nesmith calling one of his last albums for RCA And the Hits Just Keep On Comin'. Neither dented the charts but on God's jukebox these are bonafide platinum. There's the same ringing satisfaction to Menck's tunes one finds in the first Lovin' Spoonful album or the Raspberries' "Go All The Way," incitements to turn it up and ease down on the worry wrinkling your brow. It's dandelions and couples running in slow motion montage, a sprinkling of untarnished happiness that does its job in two minutes and change. A wistfulicious cover of madcap Syd Barrett's "Golden Hair" seals the deal with a nod towards one of the voices one hears off in the distance. The liner notes are full of their own small stories and Menck is baldly honest about his output, which makes you like him all the more. Bang up stuff.
Air: Talkie Walkie
Air surrounds us. From their breathy presence on Sophia Coppola soundtracks to their tumbling atmospherics, they are a band hanging around in beatnik hidey-holes, shoe stores, and Amsterdam coffee shops. They manage that rare feat of being hip AND non-threatening. Earlier efforts have featured a score of guest vocalists but this time out the pair of tres plus odd canards step to the mic with a girlish or perhaps androgynous ESL (English as a Second Language) charm. Anyone who's ever enjoyed the way words change on a foreign tongue will appreciate the breathy earnestness of Godin and Dunckel. Despite all the bells and switches and pretty flashing lights, Air always manages to feel pastoral, the product of some cabin in the woods even if they recorded this in Paris. This bears a resemblance to their early singles collection, Premiers Symptomes, more than the previous two releases. For all the softness, this new one only makes sense once you hear it loud, bouncing around a high-ceiling room. Like their fantastic live shows, Air tends to expand if given the opportunity. Elements of Satie give moments a poignant minimalism. The only unfortunate thing is the clunky, dated drum machine rhythm throughout. They could use the loose-wristed pulse of say Can's Jaki Leibezeit or session swinger Brian Blade. As organic as the rest of their oeuvre feels, the drums come across like a tree using a cell phone. Still, a nice encapsulation of this Talkie Walkie mood is surfing on a rocket towards Georges Melies' winking lunar face.
Estradasphere: Quadropus
A broadcast by pirate angel radio, offshore signals pulling ships further out to sea, gypsy rambling dressed up as black clad street fighters... E-sphere are their own men with a peculiar call to prayer that's almost Sufi in its devotion (though worlds away from any orthodoxy). They play a high-caliber mix of Greek traditionals, Beach Boys, Iron Chef acapella, John Barry 007 magic, speed metal accents and classical dynamics. It can make you feel like you've eaten too many divergent cultures from a buffet but more often their ethnomusicology works. Not as out there as the Sun City Girls or polyrhthmically stiff as "global fusion," Estradasphere see things different than the rest of us. John Whooley's beat boxing and sensuous reed work ensure an abstract energy to everything he touches. And the others are no slouch, far stronger musicians than most of the pack vying for your attention today. Unique and that's about as good a compliment as I can muster.
The Slip and Nathan Moore: Surprise Me, Mister Davis
There's a sense of setting out on a journey as a needle crackles into the groove of a scratchy 78. A tub-thumping busker's riff falls out next from the oversize speaker cone and you crank the handle to keep this Edison medicine show rolling. There's no track listing near as I can tell, which is fitting. At their bright core, The Slip is all about the nature of song, what makes music whirr and click at a structural level. With that broad codex it leaves a wide spectrum available to them. Nathan Moore is a stirring foil, deep of throat and thought, a grumble that comes from eyes that see too much. Plenty here to make a body explore Moore's solo back catalog and his band ThaMuseMeant. Mister Davis has mazurkas with hand claps, a few gentle heartbreakers, acoustic real world marching tunes for small boys, some wild hazy droning white noise, stank nasty guitar, and voices raised in a disunified unity. The knotty instrumental aspect of The Slip is mostly absent, replaced by a Waits-ian Mardi Gras in your head. More than anything else this Surprise is about the joy of playing with wood and wires, being wholly present in the creative act, four guys doing all they can to make good music. They have succeeded admirably.
Mission Players: Live And Livin' It
Funk is not a wheel you necessarily want reinvented. It rolls just fine as it is. The Mission Players slap on some fresh treads and nice rims and cover ground like champs. The burners have wriggly synths and coda sections worthy of '60s Fillmore rockin' Santana. Mike Mulqueen's guitar lives in that rich pocket you hear musicians speak of. A nice growl to the vocals keeps things from being too nice. Ever spastastic sax man Jamison Smeltz blows the soul out of his horn like Maceo Parker with a little '40s road band accent from Illinois Jacquet. The zesty playing invigorates even a basic vamp like "Shine The Light." "Bliss" is summer radio fare like they don't make anymore with an especially nice vocal and Smeltz given it his City-To-City Gerry Rafferty best. Not overly complicated but worth a spin at your next stoned soul picnic.
Habib Koit and Bamada: Foly! Live Around The World
Hailing from Mali, Koite and his superb band carry you off on Kalimba feet, steel toes digging into the earth, covering great distances, moving as a blur as you try to out race the storm at your back. The harmonica and roots-of-the-blues patterns on this two-disc live release will feel vaguely familiar. This is roots music in the purest sense, the line from which many branches have grown. Koite's acoustic guitar has the daring-do of the Johns, Fahey and Renbourn respectively, and the drive of Australia's John Butler Trio. Abdoul Wahab Berthe's has a bass snap that'd turn Oteil Burbridge's head. Their facility for stretching pieces, finding new corners in old haunts, should appeal to jam fans. They celebrate and expand on the traditions of their homeland but enlivened by a curiosity for music from all the places they've visited. Like fellow Malian Ali Farka Toure, this has the characteristic of magic, a spell cast, a hypnopompic awareness of things just below the surface of consciousness.
4 AM: Sex, Darwinism and the Jungles of Hades
Rising from the homogenous blankness of Fresno, California is DJ 4 AM, a cerebral gift that reminds us that hip-hop is more than beats and bass lines, mics and dope rhymes. He delves into prickly emotional briar patches others prefer to tiptoe around; unemployment, tears, the struggles of one's parent, relationships put under the 'scope so we can see the bump of our own protons against the neutrons of others. Rain falls down and lulls us into a semi-somnambulant haze, softening us for the blow of his continual honesty. The care put into every track is obvious, tweaked until they say what he intended. Little asides after the titles on the track listing illuminate the mind behind the boards (i.e. "I've got your number for when I get a bit drunker"). Guest Devoya Mayo gives Dana Bryant a run for poetic goddess-hood on "This Girl" while elsewhere 4 AM encourages us to take five with a good black man and wash our hair in orange blossoms. 4 AM is the strangest hour, neither wholly night nor day. Those familiar with that time will recognize the scenery here. A brave, beautiful record.
Dengue Fever: self-titled
In 1996 a collection called Cambodian Rocks containing primitive, brilliant garage from Cambodia recorded between 1967-1971. The tracks were unlabeled, culled from random cassettes and LPs and offered up with a bootleggers glee. Over time a cult has grown around this set, so much so that this group of American hipsters has formed a group plying the same waters. Their singer, Chhom Nimol, is an émigré who sings in her native Kymer with the boys chiming in right along with her. It's all giddy great guns fun, a romp through exotic cities where go-go bars and black sedan chases abound. Beck veteran and member of the woefully slept on Action Figure Party David Ralicke swings on flute and sax, often riding the tide of farfisa abuser Ethan Holtzman. Bassist Senon Williams leaves behind the languid density of his playing with regular gig Radar Bros. (a true keeper for those who like it slow and deep) to bomp along with leg-tapping vigor. Experimental guitarist extraordinaire Trey Spruance (Mr. Bungle, Secret Chiefs 3) worked the boards and threw in a few smart notes here and there. Dengue Fever first hit most folk's consciousness with a brilliant version of Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now" on the soundtrack of Matt Dillon's gritty petty crooks in Cambodia flick, City of Ghosts. This is the happy by-product of cultural mingling, the handshake across languages and differences and time.
Nucleus: The Vibe Vol. 1
A gentle hand guides you elsewhere, the first notes flickering like fireflies drawing your childlike wonder into the woods. Nucleus is one of the only largely instrumental acts in this scene that continually hold my interest. May be that there compositions, there basic zeitgeist actually takes you somewhere instead of meandering on a few skimpy ideas for a half hour. A piece can begin as a stone skipping on strangely colored water, ripples slapping against ripples, then a splash as the rock breaks the surface and sinks down. What they do could well appeal to jazz heads, Tortoise enthusiasts, fringe hipsters up on Terje Rypdal and other ECM alumni, or really anyone who likes thoughtful instrumental stylings. The dub rivers of "Cairo Bub" may be the quasi-epic high point of this strong, liquid set, subtle as a stream, full of flow. This Vibe envelops you, permeates whatever you're doing at the time, saturates things in a pleasant way.
Clear Horizon: self-titled
A line from poet Robert Bly about "eating distance" surfaces as Clear Horizon's debut unfolds. The collaboration of Toledo's Jessica Baliff and Flying Saucer Attack's David Pearce, it has an otherworldly quality, wind talking to mountains and "burning light" turning into sound. The terrain is open, twilit, and dark. Baliff's lovely fractured singing and the spare, manipulated sonics invite facile comparisons to Mazzy Star and the Cocteau Twins but this is far denser, less angled to please, truer. It may sound like a great many instruments were used but it's primarily guitars, piano and the human voice, tweaked and textured. What we hear is the product of two years of tape trading between the pair since Pearce lived in England. Since then, they've joined up to record a follow-up in the flesh but the Atlantic distance actually adds another layer of complexity here. Sometimes it's fuzzy, far off, and at others it seems they are whispering right in your ear as they sit at your heel. Once again Chicago's Kranky label has heard a new way of doing things and delivered it to those who hunger for things a few paces off the beaten path.
Hamsa Lila: Gathering One
Don't usually go for world beat, global fusion, or whatever it's called these days. The VAST majority is Gaia-centric goop, taking all the worst elements from whatever cultures it pirates. Not so with Hamsa Lila. While still a tad slick, there's the propulsion of Hassan Hakmoun's Gnawa feverism, the skin of drums rubbing against fingers, a flute nudging you to stand, twirl, live. From the cover image right on through there's a sense of fertility, the welcoming "ahh" of union, contact, creation. Good score for undressing someone with your teeth, from the flowers in their hair to the rings on their toes. No idea what they're saying since the majority of the singing is in languages other than English (and "Full Moon Flow" is far less successful for being in the native tongue and trying for a soul-hop modernity). This makes you want to dust off your Rumi and read poems to your lover, or perhaps to the creator. It is an impulse to kneel and kiss the ground we dance on.
Vintage Stash selection of the month:
Candi Staton: self-titled
It takes all of 20 seconds before your head starts to waggle like a Soul Train regular. This is so funky-dunky swell that you feel it in your bones. Staton is just about everything modern so-called soul music is not, a solid sendin' mama you can sink your teeth into and know she'll bite back. That 99 lb. bundle of dynamite Ann Peebles springs to mind but I gotta confess I like the smoke and fire of Staton's pipes a touch better. Styles run the same wild range that producer Jerry Wexler and Aretha Franklin produced at Atlantic Records, drip drop ballads and kettle cooked funk, hard swaying horn and string workouts and top-drawer confessional schmaltz. That these tracks have been mostly unavailable since the early '70s when they were first recorded is a dang shame. This beefy 26-track anthology resurrects Staton's gospel-trained goody greatness so it can take its proper place in the pantheon. Producer Rick Hall's arrangements are models of subtlety, the diametric opposite of today's slap-and-grab urban groove, a sigh versus today's constant screaming. Recorded between 1969-1973 for Fame Records in Muscle Shoales, Alabama, here's yet another reminder that town was blessed with a mighty green thumb during those magic years. Staying still isn't an option with this on the turntable. You'll either re-funkify your chicken, shaking a leg in the air, or you'll pour the Chablis and get into some slow hip-grinding movements with a partner. You can even just sway, grab a beer, and drink to all the done-somebody-wrong-songs that fit your own life like a catsuit. Candi Staton, it's real good to have you back.
Next month another mighty full plate with a killer live from Venicius Cantuaria, the sixth volume of Bob Dylan's bootleg series, Sons of Champlin, Grey Does Matter, Dr. John, the new Ninja Tune retrospective and the latest from blues marvel Otis Taylor. Our agents are out rooting through the jungles, braving the bites and clawings of wild animals, to bring you fresh new happenin' music. You can quote us on that...
C'est le huh d'uh de huh d'uh de manière que je l'aime!
Dennis Cook
JamBase | Oakland
Go See Live Music!
|
