Happy 40 Baywatch

For you my friend...

Kiss - S/T

When you got nothing you got nothing to lose. Another bitchin' release from 1974 and still one of the most lasting and complete debut records in the last 35 years.

Bring it naysayers!

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Allmusic.com: Kiss' 1974 self-titled debut is one of hard rock's all-time classic studio recordings. Kiss is chock full of their best and most renowned compositions, containing elements of Rolling Stones/New York Dolls party-hearty rock & roll, Beatles tunefulness, and Sabbath/Zep heavy metal, and wisely recorded primal and raw by producers Richie Wise and Kenny Kerner (of Gladys Knight fame). Main songwriters Stanley and Simmons each had a knack for coming up with killer melodies and riffs, as evidenced by "Nothin' to Lose" and "Deuce" (by Simmons), "Firehouse" and "Black Diamond" (by Stanley), as well as "Strutter" and "100,000 Years" (collaborations by the two). Also included is the Ace Frehley alcohol anthem "Cold Gin," "Let Me Know" (a song that Stanley played for Simmons upon their very first meeting, then titled "Sunday Driver"), and one of Kiss' few instrumentals: the groovy "Love Theme from Kiss" (penned by the entire band). The only weak track is a tacky cover of the 1959 Bobby Rydell hit "Kissin' Time," which was added to subsequent pressings of the album to tie in with a "Kissing Contest" promotion the band was involved in at the time. Along with 1976's Destroyer, Kiss' self-titled debut is their finest studio album, and has only improved over the years.

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Rachel's - Music For Egon Schiele

Anymore it's hard to get through this entire record. Very significant/riveting/massive/moving.

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Allmusic.com: Composed for a live theater/dance production about the tragic life of Austrian artist Egon Schiele, the gentle majesty of Music for Egon Schiele is a welcome change of pace for anyone bored with popular music forms, transporting the listener's mood entirely. Rachel's weaves a delicate but highly moving musical fabric that wraps itself around you tightly and pulls you in, simultaneously cradling you lovingly while haunting you with its melancholy ambiance. At times, the emotionally rich compositions work as effectively as any ballet score to tell the artist's tragic story. It is to pianist Rachel Grimes' credit that her pieces convey a stirring sense of drama and vivid imagery that perfectly match her subject. Highly recommended.


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Etta James | Rocks the House [1963]

Here's a lady that delivers a quick belt to your belly and doesn't care if it hurts. Cue this up and get ready to go a few rounds with this lovely lady, but do watch out for that right hook, and she CAN wield a 3" heel con mucho gusto. Easily one of my favorite live releases ever, this 1963 recording at The New Ear Club in Nashville is a real bar burner. I've always been fondly drawn to the photos on the cover—talk about all business.


You don't know what Etta's got strapped in that ace bandage.


Better believe it, motherfucker.


Strap on some gloves if you can take a shot.

Urge Overkill - Strange, I...

Ah THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU Chunklet for digitizing what I've always felt was one of the best representation of that caustic, twisted late80s/early90s "Chicago Sound" (See Big Black, Naked Raygun).

Oh shut up, me. Just go to HERE and read the Chunklet bit. And you should be reading Chunklet all the time anyway, spazz.

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DJ/Rupture & Andy Moor - Patches

Atmospheres and essences.

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Pitchforkmedia says: Upon hearing that DJ/rupture is following his stellar 2008 mix, Uproot, with an Andy Moor collaboration, for a second there we worried the dude in question was the trance producer. After all, in 2009 all bets are off, and logic can basically go fuck itself: Hot Chip recently recorded with Robert Wyatt; Chris Cornell with Timbaland (although this makes a weird kind of sense for Cornell-- too pretty for Grungetown, too grungy for Prettytown, he's always been stuck between worlds). And now, this.

In fact, the Andy Moor in question is the Netherlands-based guitarist from such revered anarcho-punk bands as Dog Faced Hermans and the Ex. Patches consists of live, improvised tracks the duo recorded while touring together-- Moor on guitar, Rupture on turntables. In some ways, it's the opposite of Uproot: guitar-centric, spontaneous, and brittle. It sounds like an odd match, but if any punk guitarist is equipped for this sort of thing, it's Moor. Like Rupture, the Ex is known for incorporating a broad variety of non-Western styles into its music. Moor also has improv chops, as evidenced by the Ex's extemporaneous double-LP Instant and In the Fishtank collaborations with Sonic Youth and ICP. Rupture and Moor use different media, but their curatorial interests are alike.

Together, they've forged an often-delirious concoction of post-punk serration, dubstep duskiness, hip-hop swagger, and free-jazz texture. As a general tendency, Moor vamps on arid, precise riffs, around which Rupture weaves loose nets of manhandled breaks. Then he tightens the net as the riffs become more assertive, as if to keep them from galloping away. Some of Rupture's samples are glaringly obvious-- another shift from the arcane selections of Uproot. On the dubby "Ella Speed", Moor plays spidery figures as Rupture flips the wolf whistle from Juelz Santana's "There It Go (The Whistle Song)"; on "One Hundred Month Bloom" toneless guitar meets a tweaky version of the famous overture from Smashing Pumpkins' "Today". On "Jimmy Rogers", Diana Ross sings "My World Is Empty Without You" over disembodied vocals, shrieking pitches, and subliminal chords. Tracy Chapman shows up on "Tracy", its time-bomb riff ticking down to an echoing excerpt from "Behind the Wall". These moments feel like an unusually arty Girl Talk set, and are balanced by a ton of stealthy samples I'm helpless to identify.

The vibe is persistently chilly, the terrain merciless-- even when Moor sets controls for the heart of the sun, as on the riff-heavy "The Sheep Look Up", he can't thaw Rupture's unforgiving tundra. Some tracks are spectral and nebulous, like the watery, de-tuned "Tidal". The riddim-oriented ones are better-- on "Chisanga", Moor's string-bent squiggles gradually flatten out into a hitching riff, which Rupture surrounds with a phalanx of strafing drums. But the ones where they truly mind-meld, rather than Rupture chasing after Moor's riffs with periphery-bound FX, are best. On "Hot Pink Orleans", mercury-slick sonar blips, pinging whammy-barred guitars, and scudding bass amass into a well-balanced dubstep apparatus. On "Sometimes It Can Be Difficult To", nervous guitar skitters, nervous scratches, and reverbed snares build into something resembling a terrible car crash. "Our Enemies Have Watches But We Have Time" astonishes with its violent drum breaks, which make Moor's snarling riff sound meek by comparison.

True to its circumscribed nature, Patches lacks the awesome diversity of Uproot. But it's impressive that this improvised work packs a clandestine socio-political payload, which usually resolves in some latent irony between samples and song titles (although Tracy Chapman's lament of police uselessness is politically loaded from the start). If you know that "Ella Speed" is the title of a blues song about a man who becomes obsessed with a prostitute and shoots her to death, those Juelz whistles become less of a "hey I recognize that" gimmick, and more of an astringent comment on predatory male lust. The machine-gun drums and land-mine chords of "Our Enemies Have Watches But We Have Time" are a bit chilling if you know the title is a Taliban slogan. "The Sheep Look Up" takes its title from a dystopian sci-fi novel by John Brunner, which deals with environmental degradation in the U.S., making its party vibe rather sardonic. Careful listeners will discover other secret polemics, buried so deeply as not to disturb those who simply want to marvel at the killer instincts and catlike reflexes of Moor and Rupture live.

— Brian Howe, February 9, 2009

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MIA - Arular

Brothers & Sisters,

I slap in your lap what has got to be one of this blogger's favorite records of the past few years. I'm not a freak for grime, finding it a little provincial and limited, but this just unsnaps your jeans and give you a loving and right proper rump slap... and, hell yeah, it's got a message.

So, set aside your preconceived notion regarding the state of European dance music. Abandon your prejudice toward Sri Lankan disco auteurs and go strictly objective.

You too will be a fan... or you money back!

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Pitchforkmedia says: Arular was first expected to be released in late 2004, but instead M.I.A. gave half of its vocals away to Diplo's Piracy Funds Backlash mixtape, which married her London Sri Lankan patois to music from New York, Rio, and Kingston. The mix highlighted her big-tent approach to global rhythms and Now Sounds, an M.O. that was cemented when she professed her love for hip-hop crew the Diplomats and rap's spiritual cousins, grime, baile funk, dancehall, and reggaeton in The New York Times. Faster than you can say "galang-alang-alang," M.I.A. became the one-woman embodiment of what to some is great about the contemporary pop music landscape. All that's left is for M.I.A. to draft Seba as producer and that voice that name-stamps dancehall tracks like a heavily drugged, vocoded Just Blaze as MC: "M.I.A. on... Bionic Ras... Baile Funk... Forward Riddim..."

This transglobal express isn't new, of course: Young Jamaicans have been combining the best of U.S. hip-hop and UK dance culture for years, American rap producers seem addicted to the sub-continent, grime is actually lobbing singles into the UK top 40, and Nigeria is threatening to become the new hip-hop hot spot. "From ghetto to ghetto, backyard to yard, taking it transglobal on the aboveground, because that's where the people are," Hyperdub's Sterling Clover said of this trend a few years ago. At the time he was talking about bhangra and the Indian influences on hip-hop, but he could just as easily have been talking about dancehall or grime or baile funk. And when it comes to M.I.A., you can practically talk about all of them at once.

Unlike most musical tailors, neither she nor her mixtape partner Diplo is afraid to let the seams show. Rather than hiding up the ass of cratedigging culture, they relish sharing the spotlight with and revealing their sources, with M.I.A. dropping names in NYC broadsheets and Diplo opening two-way routes between Philly and the favelas rather than stashing all the best dubplates for himself. Northern Soul is probably turning over in its grave.

If the two are interested in creating a dialogue between different artists and sounds, they're also more than happy to allow listeners to eavesdrop, whether they're improvising (Piracy) or well-rehearsed (Arular, Favela on Blast). M.I.A.'s freedom-through-homelessness is shared by other artists (most notably dj/Rupture) but not by many of the source sounds found on her records, most of which are fiercely regional. Where Rupture's name suggests a destruction of the borders between scenes, cultures, and nations, his methods-- which include healthy doses of splatter beats and breakcore-- can also seem violently deconstructionist. M.I.A's moniker, on the other hand, appropriately suggests rootlessness. She's not exploring subcultures so much as visiting them, grabbing souvenirs and laying them out on acetate: The favela trumpet on "Bucky Done Gone", the London slang of "Galang", the disco sample on "Sunshowers", the steel drums of "Bingo", the electro-fueled vocal edits of "Hombre".

M.I.A.'s detractors claim her flirtations with terrorism and revolutionary politics reveal the biggest case of sufferer's envy since Joe Strummer but little depth of thought. But if the latter is true, so what? An in-depth examination of demonizing The Other, the relationship between the West and developing nations, or the need to empathize with one's enemies would likely make for a pretty crappy pop song. An argument can and has been made that her political lip service is unique enough to get those topics onto your tongue or into your brain, prodding listeners to at least examine them. Some might find that off-putting, but pop music that reflects uncomfortable realities and is packaged in this sonic collage beats the hell out of 1980s left-wing hand wringing from Bragg or Bono or Biafra.

And when it comes down to it, that "sonic collage" is still what's important here. With all the column inches and message board posts arguing about whether M.I.A. is an opportunist or a clever contextualist, genuine or a fraud, full of good intentions or no specific intentions at all, the closest thing to a truism about Arular is that it's a taut, invigorating distillation of the world's most thrilling music; a celebration of contradictions and aural globalization that recasts the tag "world music" as the ultimate in communicative pop rather than a symbol of condescending piety.

— Scott Plagenhoef, March 22, 2005

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J.S. Bach – Goldberg Variations (by Glenn Gould)

Listen for the hum. Played in barefeet.






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Wire - Chairs Missing

Hey bitches! These is fantastic and I'm embarrassed to admit I only became intimate with it (in the Torah sense) very recently. It's become a comforting listen while I act the common veal pen drone at the job.

This is one of those rare records that just feels super fresh 30 years post -- a dynamic mishmash of hard-edged, angular punk riffs and sparse industrial bang/clang and a good dose of theatrics, brooding & yes some melody. It's like an excellent bowl of chili, Situationalist chili!

While giving it a spin, sit down with this excellent essay.

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Wire Reviews - Released a mere ten months after the punk blaze of Pink Flag, Chairs Missing proved Wire was more than a smart-arse punk band. The abrasive nature of the earlier release is still evident in many of the tracks, but the input of Mike Thorne's keyboard arrangements adds far more depth.

It begins with the jarring, dissonant Practice Makes Perfect containing a bizarre Gilbert text: 'Practice makes perfect, yes I can prove it/Business or pleasure, the more that you do it/Please dress in your best things, this course was unplanned/'Cos you see up in my bedroom I've got Sarah Bernhard's hand'. The alarming Mercy offers yet another classic text: 'Within the institution walls in pastel blue, clinical white, slashed red lipsticked walls... in the raking torchlight with 4 am stubble, a midnight transvestite'.

Sand in my Joints shows that Wire still had a penchant for the fast punk song format, but it, along with Too Late, feels more like a leftover from the older release rather than sitting comfortably amongst the exquisite instrumentation of tracks like Outdoor Miner and the melancholy Heartbeat. One exception is Another the Letter, which at just over a minute long is the shortest piece on the album. However, instead of 70 seconds of guitar thrash, an arpeggio keyboard loop plays throughout. When guitars are allowed to surface, during what might be described as the middle eight, they all fight to be noticed in what seems like three or four overlaid solos—amusing, and musically different.

Chairs Missing is full of energy, wit and good songs. The very simple fact that it doesn't sound too dated over 20 years after its original release is testimony to its longevity. The most recent CD reissue adds three tracks: an extended mix of Outdoor Miner, the punchy A Question of Degree, and the Dome-like noise loops of Former Airline.

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Grateful Dead - Anthem of the Sun

Before the dawn of the hellish American Midwest summer we are left with a dozen or more super swell days that levitra into smooth, purple and delicate evenings. Here the stars are piquing and we sit in yards and stare upwards while fish and fowl sizafitz on grills, the dogs writhe in long grass, babies put sticks and dirt in mouths and bottles get emptied. And this gets heard. Time crawls a little bit.

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Rolling Stone (September 1968): On the Grateful Dead's Anthem of the Sun the studio with its production work dissolves into live performance, the carefully crafted is thrown together with the casually tossed off, and the results are spliced together. The end product is one of the finest albums to come out of San Francisco, a personal statement of the rock aesthetic on a level with the Jefferson Airplane's After Bathing at Baxters. To be sure, the album has its weak points, but as a total work it is remarkably successful, especially when compared to the first Dead album.

The first side of Anthem of the Sun is a masterpiece of rock, "That's It for the Other One" and "New Potatoes Caboose" being particularly noteworthy. The main theme of "Other One" is an eminently memorable quasi-county melody that starts right off with the tasteful guitar of Garcia that dominates the record; a second movement starts the confusion between live and studio (nice stereo production work here), fading into a restatement of the main theme; then there is some beautiful musique concrete leading into "Caboose." Already there is evident carefully arranged vocal work, a departure from the Dead's previous release. The end of "Caboose" is a driving solo by Garcia that builds into structured frenzy thanks to Lesh's bass, the drums of Hart and Kreutzmann, and especially Garcia's masterful playing. Garcia is that rarity among rock guitarists, a thoughtful phraser who logically constructs his solos in a manner not unlike a capable jazz musician. Together Lesh, Weir and Garcia (along with McKernan's fat globs of organ) produce a complex, tight sound that stands with the best hard rock around.

Kazoos open "Alligator," which is that kind of song, hardly dead serious. But it includes another fine Gacia solo; Lesh shows here as elsewhere that he is a fine bass player, while Hart and Kreutzmann work together to form one of the most powerful (and inventive) percussion units in rock. With "Caution (Do Not Stop on Tracks)" we are confronted with the album's most curious track, which ranges from a white-imitation blues riff vamp-until-ready to 60-cycle hum and microphone feedback. The vocal sounds like Danny Kalb (poor in other words), but this in fact is the main consistent problem with the album: the vocals. Often the voices are muddy and on blues none of the Dead sound particularly persuasive; but this is a minor quibble when so much else is right on this album. The mixture of electronic and serious music achieved by Edgar Varese on "Deserts" stands as one of the most impressive achievements in this area; on their own terms the Dead have achieved a comparable blend of electronic and electric music. For this reason alone Anthem of the Sun is an extraordinary event. It's been over a year since the first Dead album. It was worth waiting.

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Fucked Up - Hidden World & The Chemistry of Common Life

In the battle of the most unorthodox singers who somehow weasle themselves into your heart, we have a winner!

While Hidden World is a whirling devish, Chemistry is a shroomed saunter through a veritable tollbooth of emotion. Both are simultaneously gritty and sublime.

NOTE: It honestly took me awhile to get into this group but once I did the rewards have been immeasurable. Like a heaven filled with virgins!

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AMG on Hidden World: Clearly aiming for that all-important Radio Disney demographic, the full-length debut by experimental Toronto punks Fucked Up follows several years' worth of deliberately provocative singles and EPs. After a half-decade spent continually messing with the audience's heads by flirting with Nazi imagery in their record sleeves and interviews and deliberately introducing non-punk elements like 20-minute guitar jams on their previous records, Hidden World is a surprisingly "normal" record in comparison to some of their earlier provocations. Based in hardcore but with a heavily experimental bent that borrows strongly from psychedelia and Krautrock, as well as contemporary anarchist punk outfits like the Ex, Hidden World consists of 13 lengthy songs that mesh lead singer Pink Eyes' standard-issue hardcore bark of a voice and muddled anarchist lyrics to a twin-guitar attack that traffics mostly in dynamic Sonic Youth-style drones and brief spazz-outs of purely experimental noise. Somewhat unexpectedly, Hidden World makes an argument for Fucked Up as part of the thriving Canadian post-rock scene, which the band has previously willfully ignored. Cameos by members of Final Fantasy, Alexisonfire, and the Arcade Fire (adding violin, acoustic guitar, keyboards, and backing vocals) contribute to this welcome cross-pollination. Enjoy it while you can, because previous history indicates that whatever Fucked Up do next, it won't sound anything like Hidden World.


Hear Hidden World


AMG on Chemistry of Common Life: It seems that Fucked Up's primary purpose in their massive pile of releases has been to push boundaries. Thus their name. Doing away with any preconceived notions of what a hardcore album by a volatile live act should be, their second Matador release, The Chemistry of Common Life, is a lush, expansive masterpiece that dismisses the theory that punkers have to follow a concrete formula of short and fast songs with raw-edged production. Here, tracks are layered meticulously by Mike Haliechuk -- the Kevin Shields/Billy Corgan sonic mastermind and guitarist of the group -- who teamed up with their usual producer, Jon Drew, to lay down nearly 70 tracks per song. Reportedly, the band recorded bare-boned versions before going on tour for a few months, and after writing a surplus of extra parts on the road, Haliechuk returned to add dozens of guitars to each song. This technique resulted in a massively thick shoegaze feel, with billowing washes of distortion waves crashing down behind Pink Eyes, who effortlessly, but violently delivers his patented Cookie Monster growl over top. It's a unique mash of styles, and iconoclastic as always. Of course, this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who has followed their haphazard career. Year of the Pig poo-pooed directness by including a song that was 18 minutes long, a three-minute drum solo was featured in Looking for Gold, Baiting the Public spread a single song over two sides of a record, making it impossible to hear seamlessly, and Hidden World went the distinctly unpunk orchestral route by incorporating strings from Arcade Fire's Owen Pallett. From the opening piccolo solo, it's obvious that Chemistry of Common Life follows the same anti-formula.

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Good Horsey - ”Kazué” [1994]

Many recordings from the early 90's have not weathered well. It was an odd time, when "underground" had inexplicably shifted to "indie", a term I never enjoyed. I guess the underground was rising in the strata, or at least in major label marketing eyes, who were still casting about in dusty corners for the next Nirvana. Thankfully, Good Horsey never threatened ascension to MTV rotation and their sole full length release, ”Kazué”, is an uneven effort certainly tainted by juvenile and tedious moments. Still, something about this recording grabs me now nearly as much as it did in 1994. Being in my goofy mid-twenties I could relate to the plodding torment, and the slack guitar jams that could have easily fallen embarrassingly flat somehow did it for me. Your opinion may vary. Hailing from Vancouver, B.C., these fellows never got a lot of stateside press. I definitely purchased this solely on the cover painting, something about how the dog is depicted made me pony up the dough. The band wasn't afraid to get a tad experimental, some of the instruments listed include: ukulele, pie pan, xylophone, scrap metal, party favors and the infamous ratiug for the backward solo on "Like The Cute One". One bit of warning: as was de rigeur for any album in this vein in the 90's, the last track has a "secret bonus" song attached, in this case a fairly trying, long noise jam. I thought of excising it from the otherwise wonderful "Burn Up The Sun", but decided against any revisionist alterations.

Relive the wounds of that bad ex from the mid-nineties

Carmel - The Drum Is Everything

Thorn and Watt got me thinking. In '84 another jazzy pop piece showed up and made the rounds of hipsters. Carmel's debut was bombastic, kind of messy and doesn't hold up as well as Everything But the Girl. Carmel sings (hollers?) like Peggy Lee on speed (which isn't as bad as it sounds, to be honest) and the band sits in some tight grooves. The swinging numbers would carry the torch til the Big Band revival in the '90s, and the trancey cuts would inform the acid jazz that followed.

While it doesn't sound dated, it does come across as unfocused and as such it can be a love it or hate it proposition. As an artifact of the time however, it's a joyful little record and has its memorable moments. Long out of print, it deserves some space on the web.

Check out More, More, More, the title track, Stormy Weather, and the marvelously moody cover of Tracks of My Tears (Portishead's debut owes a lot to this track).

Note: The image is the LP cover. The CD had a different (read: crappier) cover altogether.

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Everything But The Girl - Eden

25 years ago this month I moved in with my first adult love. It wasn't permanent. Like all first things, it burned hot and bright, but lacked the fuel to warm us over time and flamed out quickly. Sadly we were too young to realize how cold it had gotten and took far too long to call it quits. That doesn't mean the initial warmth doesn't linger in memories of that time and place and the people we once were.

The week she and I moved in together this record was released (as a British import). Her affinity for smart pop prompted its purchase that week and it soundtracked our first year together, indelibly scoring that part of my life. That may be the reason I think of it so fondly, but I prefer to think the fondness has more to do with the music's intrinsic brilliance and its remarkable felicity for capturing the pain lovers inflict on one another, not by the things they say, but by the things they leave unsaid.

The debut of Tracy Thorn and Ben Watt, Eden, instigated the first, minor revival of all things Jobim & Gilberto and that early 60's bossa nova pop sound (interestingly, their effort two years later moved into the mid 60's and the lush orchestral pop reminiscent of Petula Clark). In a world that was filled with synth pop, the brazilian and latin rhythms that filled this record felt out of place and, simultaneously, more than welcome.

Thorn's vocals take centerstage, her crisp emotions laid out like a smoky photograph that evokes sense-memory, if not detail. But it is Watt's arrangements that hold the listener long enough to let the songs' meanings slip into the conciousness. Lazy beats, silky horns that arrive from nowhere, Charlie Byrd guitar lines, and sly, subtle lyrics that reveal too much of the pain in the one left behind; they all combine to coax you into lives where heartache gets buried in sleepless nights, desperate but unacknowledged gestures, and overflowing ashtrays.

When Nick Hornby half-satirically vents that we worry too much about the young being exposed to sex, drugs and violence through pop music, but care not one whit about the potential effects of the emotional suffering that plays out in virtually every pop song, this is what he's talking about. It is the pain of loving laid bare.

25 years on, and emotionally wracking as it may be, this record remains as soothing, assurred and lovely as it was the first time it hit the turntable. It carries memories and more. It will still stand tall another quarter century hence. A pop classic.

allmusic:

The debut effort by multi-instrumentalist Ben Watt and vocalist and songwriter Tracey Thorn took the alterna-pop world by surprise in 1985. And rightfully so. Watt's lush chamber orchestra jazzscapes, full of Brazilian bossa nova structures and airy horn charts, combined with Thorn's throaty alto singing her generation's version of the torch song, was a sure attraction for fans of sophisticated pop and vocal jazz. Featuring 12 tracks, the album has deeply influenced popular song structures since that time; this is evidenced in the work of more R&B-oriented acts such as Swing Out Sister and Tuck and Patti. The set opens with "Each and Everyone," a slow samba-flavored pop song. The song comes from the broken side of love, with Thorn entreating from the heart: "You try to show me heaven but then close the door...Being kind is just a way to keep me under your thumb/And I can cry because that's something we've always done." A trumpet fills her lines and makes them glide above Watt's Latin mix. Elsewhere, the folk bossa of "Fascination" is all the architecture Thorn needs to sink deep into her protagonist's brokenness. Guitars chime and stagger one another, slipping and sliding just above the bassline, and vanish into thin air. On "I Must Confess," a riff similar to "The Girl From Ipanema" locates Thorn next to a deep ringing upright bass and Watt's glissando guitar, played Charlie Byrd-style, before Nigel Nash punctures Thorn's vocal with a velvety tenor solo. Once again, the notion of loss, memory, and the resolve of the left half of a relationship to go on, carrying regret but not remorse, is absolutely breathtaking. Thorn continually meditated on broken relationships here, and that extended tome, which echoes through every song on the record, seems to have resonated with everyone who heard it. The set closes with Watt's vocal on "Soft Touch," a folksy pop song, illustrated with guitars, a fretless bass, and piano, that sounds like something from Supertramp in their better moments — and no, that's not a bad thing. His voice — while not nearly as dramatic as Thorn's — is wonderfully expressive, and his lyrics extend the feeling of Eden to its final whisper. This set proved itself to be an auspicious debut that testified to the beginning of a long and creatively rewarding partnership that has endured.

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Sun Ra and the Astro Infinity Arkestra - Atlantis

Sounds like it's coming from an AM radio a half block away. Or someone's garage in Mobile. Or a satellite transmission in a movie starring Jodie Foster.

If I ever DJ'd several of these tracks would end up in my mix. I will never DJ, btw.

What makes this really special is the emphasis on the groove. Not trying to do too much. However, the title track is huge, with its own narrative arc.

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All About Jazz: During his tenure on Earth, Saturnian Sun Ra created some trailblazing sounds that helped to change not only the sound of jazz, but several other genres as well. Herman Blount, better known as Sun Ra, would take a listener from the New Orleans style jazz right into trippy grooves. His space sounds helped to create the experimental music known as psychedelic and its '70s offshoot, space rock. With Atlantis, Sun Ra shows both sides of his personality, offering a side of smaller cuts and one long solid jam that helped define the sound of space jazz.

Atlantis is the first of Sun Ra's ' and probably the first jazz record as well ' to feature the brand new clavinet (dubbed the 'solar sound instrument'). Later on, musicians as diverse as Stevie Wonder and Herbie Hancock would create some of their finest compositions using the instrument. But here Sun Ra had introduced the solid funk groove of the clavinet to jazz. On Atlantis he gives an entire side to short compositions written exclusively for the instrument, including the conga-driven 'Mu' and the classic 'Yucatan' (both Impulse! and Saturn versions are featured on this CD, which underwent reissues by Impulse! in 1973 and Evidence in 1993).

His style changes give an introspective view of where Sun Ra was going with musical ideas. 'Mu' shows his interest in social, technological and musical diversity by building a track around acoustic and electronic instruments while having tenor-sax man John Gilmore lay out a raga styled solo. On the 21 minute title track, Sun Ra cuts one of his finest free (or space) jazz compositions ever. Atlantis is an amazing opus that features a larger band than the opening five tracks. Here Ra builds a masterpiece that twists and turns through many soundscapes and gives the whole track a diversity that stands apart from all of Sun Ra's other records.

Combing through Sun Ra's catalogue, there are many records that contain sounds that are so unique and original that it makes it almost impossible to choose a favorite based its ideas alone. Atlantis is not only one of Ra's most eclectic albums, but overall is one of the finest he ever released.

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Television - Double Exposure

Television is in my forever top ten. I am on the never-ending Indiana Jones quest for Television boots. There are a few dazzlers (Live at The Old Waldorf) and some duds (The Blow Up). This one's pretty nifty if only because it's a historical piece showing a more stripped down and angular Television sound and the noodling of Richard Hell on bass before Verlaine claimed King of the Hill and Hell moved on to his Voidoids thing.


Here are some small facts on Double Exposure:

"Quote of the uploader on Dime: The 1974 Demos were produced by Brian Eno and Richard Williams for Island Records, at Good Vibrations Studios in NYC. I have marked them as being recording in December, 1974, as Richard Williams did not see the band for the first time until the end of November, 1974, and these demos have always been identified as 1974 demos. So, in all likelihood they were recorded in December, 1974. "




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Tony Conrad with Faust - Outside The Dream Syndicate

At first a small and hypnotic record that quietly becomes possessive and a monster. Let it lean into you. Give it some time. Put it on. Get in your hammock and let the screws work their way in.

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AMG: Recorded over a span of three days in 1973, Outside the Dream Syndicate was Tony Conrad's first official release; though also credited to the celebrated Kraut rock band Faust, it's primarily a showcase for Conrad's minimalist drone explorations, an aesthetic fascinatingly at odds with the noisy, fragmented sound of his collaborators. Consisting of three epic tracks, each topping out in excess of 20 minutes, the album is hypnotically contemplative; the music shifts in subtle -- almost subliminal -- fashion, and the deeper one listens, the more rewarding it becomes.


Dusted: Anybody who’s reveled in the hypno-purr, clang and swoosh that typified the 1972 effort might feel, as I did, that as great as that album was, a certain push over the edge was lacking. All of the necessary components were there – Jean Herve Peron’s rippingly metallic bass, Zappi Deiarmeir’s stoically thunderous drums, Conrad’s shrill and ever-changing “eternal music” violin ruminations, all augmented by keyboard atmospheres courtesy of the late Rudolf Sosna. It all sounds just a shade too perfect now, too contrived, with every element audible without achieving the necessary blend. As a recent album title has it, “It’s magnificent, but it isn’t war.” Conrad’s Early Minimalism project came much closer to how I imagined the 1972 material to sound in Wumme – stark, full, distortion breeding difference tones which breeded three-dimensionality.


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Groundhogs - Split

Chunky, guit-driven commentary on mental health... unsung heroes are Groundhogs. Winding and dense and a real thing of beauty.

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AMG: As the Groundhogs' best example of their gritty blues-rock fire and unique form of guitar-driven music, Split reveals more about Tony McPhee's character, perseverance, and pure love for performing this style of blues than any other album. Based around the misunderstanding and mystery of schizophrenia, Split takes a raw, bottom-heavy recipe of spirited, spunky guitar riffs (some of the best that McPhee has ever played) and attaches them to some well-maintained and intelligently written songs. The first four tracks are simply titled "Part One" to "Part Four" and instantly enter Split's eccentric, almost bizarre conceptual realm, but it's with "Cherry Red" that the album's full blues flavor begins to seep through, continuing into enigmatic but equally entertaining tracks like "A Year in the Life" and the mighty finale, entitled "Groundhog." Aside from McPhee's singing, there's a noticeable amount of candor in Peter Cruickshank's baggy, unbound percussion, which comes across as aimless and beautifully messy in order to complement the blues-grunge feel of the album. Murky, fuzzy, and wisely esoteric, Split harbors quite a bit of energy across its eight tracks, taking into consideration that so much atmosphere and spaciousness is conjured up by only three main instruments. This album, along with 1972's Who Will Save the World?, are regarded as two of the strongest efforts from the Groundhogs, but Split instills a little bit more of McPhee's vocal passion and dishes out slightly stronger portions of his guitar playing to emphasize the album's theme.


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