Odd ends

[James Ensor's "The Skeleton Painter," from 1895 or 1896]

A quick roundup before I head down to D.C. with Laal for the weekend.

*Here is my Volume review of two Loyal Label CD-release parties I caught earlier this week: Jon Irabagon/Mike Pride at Cornelia Street Cafe and Seabrook Power Plant at Zebulon. Largely based on these new offerings, Loyal is becoming one of my very favorite contemporary jazz labels.

*Here is a very cool compilation of videos featuring the ever-awesome Zs. The gentleman responsible for the footage, Torsten Meyer (check out his amazing trove of recent NYC show clips), asked me to provide a brief intro/reminiscence re: checking out Zs over the years. I dipped into the DFSBP archives for this one.

*Here is a whole bunch of fun material related to the Jonas Brothers' recent visit to Time Out NY. (The Bros served as guest editors for this week's TONY Music section.) Yes, I was actually in the same room with them--for about 45 minutes, no less. Without a hint of sarcasm, I can say that I really enjoyed the opportunity to meet them and to rap about music.

And a few brief raves.

*The James Ensor show at MoMA. Macabre, vivid, grotesque, hilarious. As you can see above, never have skeletons seemed funnier, more poignant or more personable than in this Belgian artist's work. And dig this sketch title: "The Devils Dzitts and Hihahox, Led by Crazon, Riding a Wild Cat, Accompany Christ to Hell."

*Hamlet 2. Did not stop laughing during this entire film, which came highly recommended by my awesome sis, Caroline, who was in town for the 4th of July. Wickedly offbeat Steve Coogan vehicle from last year. Incredible turns by Catherine Keener, Elisabeth Shue and other Hollywood eccentrics.

*The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. Terrible title; incredible doc about Donkey Kong obsession. At bottom, it's a real-life unpacking of "Good guys finish last."

*Mid- to late-era Led Zeppelin. I become more and more of an obsessive LZ devotee with each passing second. The sheer scope of Physical Graffiti floors me, especially the tender songs like "Ten Years Gone" and "Down by the Seaside," as well as the relentless "Wanton Song," which foreshadows the Jesus Lizard in a very significant way. Presence owns on the WEIRD-riff front. Coda is action-packed, breathtaking and probably the most coherent odds-and-ends record ever assembled. Oh, to have seen this band live...

I remember 1973-1990: Jarrett and Jack // Etc.

Notes on some recent listening.

*Keith Jarrett - Shades, Eyes of the Heart, Byablue, The Survivor's Suite

When the whole 1973-1990 revolution went down in aught six, probably the two most passionate and convincing calls-to-arms were Steve Smith's paean to John Carter's Roots and Folkmore and Ethan Iverson's plea on behalf of Keith Jarrett's American Quartet. Both bodies of work have been on my to-do list for pretty much the entire interim, but as we all know, stuff happens: Thus I'm still not as up on this stuff as I'd like to be. Lately, I've been taking my first serious crack at the Jarrett works in question, and boy, are they weird. Sometimes stubbornly diffuse (e.g., the ubiquitous lengthy intros with Jarrett on soprano sax--after a period of suspicion, I'm coming around to his reed playing), sometimes simple and almost gospelish due to the inexplicably ever-present auxiliary percussion, sometimes remarkably loopy and complex (see "Diatribe" from Shades, which boasts a way-thorny and peculiar head) and sometimes just straight-up violent (the beginning of the second section of Survivor's Suite), this work couldn't really be more singular. I have no idea whether I even like it, but I'm fascinated by it. The players just seem so incongruous together, what w/ Dewey Redman's raging muscularity, Jarrett's showy and flamboyant soulfulness and Paul Motian's wholly alien sense of time. I'm pretty blown away by how well-documented the band is and I can't wait to hear more.

*Jack Dejohnette - New Directions, Special Edition, Special Edition Live in Baltimore (1980), Inflation Blues; and w/ Wadada Leo Smith: America (new duo sesh on Tzadik), Golden Quartet (s/t), The Year of the Elephant

Speaking of well-documented, Jack Dejohnette has been really lucky in that department, esp. in the late '70s and early '80s. I've loved his drumming for a long time--I kind of look at him as the most capable and convincing heir to Tony Williams, even though Tony will always be my gold standard--but I'd never really spent that much time with his records as a leader. [Ed.'s afterthought re: previous sentence: I don't mean "heir" in terms of chronology, b/c Dejohnette and Williams were basically contemporaries--though Williams established himself as the Shit a few years earlier--but more in the sense that Jack assumed the mantle of "absolute best state-of-the-art jazz drummer alive" after Tony moved into other areas.] A lot of variety here, depending on the personnel. The s/t debut (1979) by the Special Edition band was the first one that caught my ear. You can't beat the sax tandem of David Murray and Arthur Blythe and the writing on this session goes anywhere it wants to (playful to elaborate to creepy to lush) and succeeds in all ventures. The improv is gritty and gutsy. Also check out the live Special Edition session linked above, which subs in Chico Freeman for Murray. Really nice, long reading of "Zoot Suite" from the studio date. Inflation Blues, from '82, features a totally different band (including trumpeter Baikida Carroll, whose work I've been digging majorly of late) but continues in the same vein of extremely elegant, nimble, diverse and just generally ENGAGED inside-out jazz. When I hear these Dejohnette sets, I realize what the key property was that made this sort of late-'70s/early-'80s jazz so great: Player-composers like Dejohnette simply knew it all and they had nothing to prove. They knew how to swing, they knew how to play free and they knew how to groove out on some fusion, but they weren't beholden to any of those styles. Without such open-minded virtuosity, you'd never get a record as weird and awesome as New Directions ('78), pictured above. I can't express how cool and unexpected this jam is. Lester Bowie and Ralph Towner together? And check out what Dejohnette has them doing: Some sort of unclassifiable trance-jazz. They just kind of zone out on these expansive, dreamy grooves. There's definitely an electric-Miles vibe, but Davis's stuff in a similar vein always had these sort of tense, sinister overtones. This music just DRIFTS in a very handsome way. There are definitely echoes of the Gateway material w/ John Abercrombie on here, but New Directions seems a lot more mysterious and grown-up to me. Definitely check out this record. And also check out Dejohnette's work with Wadada Leo Smith, which is clearly some of the best jazz of the current millennium. Like Jack, Leo can play it all, and frequently does. The first two Golden Quartet records are basically like the latter-day apotheosis of fusion: They're unafraid of funky groove but never hemmed in by it. You can't really go wrong with Dejohnette, Anthony Davis and Malachi Favors on your record, but this stuff is really every bit as good as you'd want it to be with that lineup. Structures are very skeletal, but the melodies are heartbreaking. What I love about this band is how unabashedly romantic it is. Smith is often associated with the free jazz movement, but I think of him more as a very personal kind of heart-on-sleeve player. As with so much of the best post-first-wave free jazz, there's nothing self-consciously chaotic here. Just grand, flowing sumptuousness--a very sturdy kind of abstraction. Speaking of which, America, the new Dejohnette/Smith duo on Tzadik is fucking killer. Totally unadorned, totally unhurried--just the two dudes, vibing together. And god bless Tzadik's production values. Jack's kit just sounds so perfect and special. Get with Jack, and also get with Jack and Wadada. They're still alive and they're still tapping into the profound on a consistent basis.

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Recent links of note.

*The new Jon Irabagon/Mike Pride record, which I reviewed for this week's Time Out NY, is stupefying. Totally balls-out.

*As expressed on the Volume, last week's Tim Berne/Ethan Iverson hit at the Stone was subtly peculiar and intriguing, especially in light of the two musicians' enlightening recent online chat.

Recent reading/viewing/more listening.

*The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi. Great, grisly true-crime yarn that features some amazing Zodiac-style menace.

*The Bride and the Bachelors by Calvin Tomkins. More art profiles by the longtime New Yorker scribe, about whom I've often gushed on here. Great, plain-spoken narratives. Loved delving deeper into Duchamp than I ever had, and was very psyched to make the acquaintance of Tinguely and especially Rauschenberg, the latter of whom I've seen a few key works by but never had any real sense of. Seems like a really fun, fiercely smart, bright-eyed dude.

*Dear Zachary. You'll start watching this documentary and think it's a little cheesy, and then soon you'll be sobbing like a baby. This story of murder, custody and injustice is unreal.

*Zeppelin's In Through the Out Door. Am just now getting to know this one for the first time. Had no idea there were so many keyboards! It's like Bonham gone disco. I love it.

*Dave Pajo's Misfits-covers album Scream with Me. I'm not feeling this. I love Slint and some of the Papa M stuff, but I have never gotten with this guy's too-quiet-and-not-expressive-enough singing. He's not doing these songs a favor the way his bud Will Oldham often has (I have an amazing Oldham version of "Die Die My Darling"). Also, he cops out on the lyrics to my fave Misfits tune, "Hybrid Moments," and sings, "When you breed you make your bed" (which apparently originated in the bastardized No Use for a Name version of this song) instead of the much more bonkers "When do creatures rape your face." There's no way to tell for sure what Glenn is actually saying, but my go-to source, Misfits Central, opts for the latter.

*Era Vulgaris by Queens of the Stone Age. Picked this up used a few days ago. On a first cursory listen, it's nowhere near as impressive as Songs for the Deaf or the s/t QOTSA, both of which are staggeringly good.

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And how could I forget! Here's the cover art and credits for the Marooned EP by STATS, which is still available gratis here. My bud Remi Thornton did a phenomenal job, much as he did for Windpipe. Click on the images for the monster-size versions. (In other STATS news, we open for the mighty Keelhaul--featuring drummer Will Scharf, of Craw fame--in Brooklyn on 8/2/09, as part of the Show No Mercy series.)

Brand new god: Rest in peace, MJ

Check out this latter-day "Billie Jean," a stunning piece of conceptual theater. The exaltation-of-the-Glove bit at the beginning is like some sort of bizarre occult ritual. (Note the insane sensitivity of the mikes--the unlocking of the case is deafening!) Now that I think about it, I had no real sense that MJ was still bringing it this hard onstage in '01. The only time I saw him live was when I was five, and as I recount in the Volume's collective tribute, I was absolutely terrified by the loudness. He's obviously lip-synching in the clip above--as he is in almost every live vid I've checked out last night and today--but it doesn't really matter. What's amazing about this is how clearly it illustrates what he was in the minds of fans: They literally appear to be beholding a deity. Every audience member's expression indicates a sublime mixture of disbelief and sheer joy that you'd never get to see in an everyday context. It makes you realize that no one but a pop megastar can elicit this sort of adoration. Kind of a weird thought, maybe even a disheartening one--if MJ's music weren't so staggeringly awesome. All proper respects to him, and farewell.

Punk's not dead: Bone Awl and friends at Fontana's

[Bone Awl frontman He Who Gnashes Teeth; photo by Laal Shams.]

As you can read over at the Volume, I was mightily impressed by Bone Awl's set at Fontana's tonight. Grim, driving and exceedingly creepy, without even a hint of tedious theatrics. Having only heard a few of the records (and having generally been way more impressed by the song titles--"Meaningless Leaning Mess," "Tollund Man," "Pentagram Clitoris," etc.--and lyrics than by the actual music), I was previously at a loss re: this band's gargantuan cachet within the metal blogosphere. It made sense tonight: This stuff may be rudimentary as hell, but these guys really, really mean it. I got a very passionate and sincere vibe from them.

One thing Bone Awl drives home is that black metal at its essence isn't really metal: It's punk. Obviously Darkthrone has made that notion very explicit on several of its recent albums. But seeing Bone Awl live really made me realize what a huge gulf there is between this sort of primitive black metal and other styles of extreme metal, namely death metal. In the popular imagination, the two styles are linked via satanic imagery and the like, and they did both come into their own right around the same time (late '80s/early '90s), but black metal is ALL mood while death metal is about half mood and half chops (or in Morbid Angel's case, ALL mood and ALL chops, simultaneously).

Chopswise, these Bone Awl guys would barely be able to hold their own in a middle-school hardcore band let alone a big-league death-metal outfit. In particular, I was struck by how unpolished the drummer was. He utterly lacked the economy of motion that even the most minimally trained player would exhibit. Just pure, awkward energy, muscling through these caveman oompah punk beats. No blasting, just midtempo chug. And yet, virtuosity is a dumb measuring stick in the face of something as evil and vibe-heavy as Bone Awl.

Can't wait to re-spin my "Undying Glare" 7", or the "All Has Red" cassette I picked up at the show, the latter of which features tonight's awesome closing number, entitled--wait for it--"I Feel Tension."

P.S. Didn't have much room to mention the other bands on the bill at the Volume, so I thought I'd at least name-check them here. Ashdautas sported some very garish corpsepaint and tapped into a respectably raw and evocative atmospheric-black-metal vibe--at times it reminded me of a more primitive-sounding Krallice. (Check out the oft-aforementioned Volume review for a pic of Naeth, the amiable Ashdautas frontman, showing off his spiked armband.) While Canada's Akitsa just kind of sounded like a cross between Ashdautas and Bone Awl, but less convincing than either. Re: the latter band, I'm afraid I was more interested in the members' uniformly short and angular haircuts than by their music. I'd like to hear more on record, though, because I know many folks dig 'em.

Space case: Marshall Allen, EWI-toting magician

As you can see above, Marshall Allen is a blast live. Via the Volume, here is my review of his performance at Vision Festival XIV on Wednesday, augmented by a collage of pics by Laal Shams.

Creeping death: Goodbye Khanate

There's been a fair amount of eulogizing/stock-taking/tying-up-of-loose-ends going on re: Khanate and if this were a lesser band, I might be a little fatigued by the hubbub over the demise of a project that only really existed for five years. But the devotion evident in both Phil Freeman's killer Voice homage and this remarkable interview with bassist/sound-manipulator James Plotkin are wholly justified. This was a special entity.

Strolling after work today, I took in the entirety of "Every God Damn Thing," the sprawling 33-plus-minute concluding track off Clean Hands Go Foul, a new posthumous Khanate album on Hydra Head that seems to officially close the book on the band. I struggle with words here. I want to say things like "horrifying" or "scary" or "fucked up" or what have you, but those seem like placeholders for what I really think and feel about this music.

There is a very heavy element of abstraction to what Khanate did, zeroed in on and unpacked excellently in the Plotkin interview above. He discusses how the band's utter abandonment of tempo made it unique in the metal universe, and indeed, it's a herculean thing these musicians did, to just toss meter out the window. Again I struggle, though: What is the unique achievement? What is it that makes this stuff feel so bone-deep? Because it's not simply the freeformness. You could call "Every God Damn Thing" a "soundscape," I guess, peg it as some sort of ambient-metal drift piece. But that's just a bummer as well.

Let's call it cave music, then. A feeling of humidity, of sad, sad delirium in Stephen O'Malley's absent-minded wisps of melody. And these creaking, dragging sounds in the background. Like a mind limping. There's that line in Apocalypse Now, when Martin Sheen's character recalls entering Kurtz's chamber: "It smelled like slow death in there." That's what "Every God Damn Thing" sounds like. (Another movie that springs to mind is Blair Witch Project. A line from the Clean Hands track "In That Corner"--"I made that corner for you to stand in!"--makes me think of that film's unforgettable last shot. O'Malley's humid guitar again sets the mood: a grisly, epic sadness.)

I also think of the phrase "horror vacui," for some reason. Not really a fear of open space, but rather a fearful open space, this awful sparseness, a drift of crazed thoughts, shouting. Nothing to respond. You imagine vocalist Alan Dubin, brilliantly one-dimensional on "Every God Damn Thing" as always, locked in a basement, just clanking toward madness. Raving. Shrieking things about people, roaches, hell. Some sort of ubiquitous blackness. The instruments creak and moan terribly.

Considering how visceral and haunting Khanate's music is, they make me think a whole hell of a lot. First, I ponder the notion that Khanate is widely considered a metal band. "Every God Damn Thing" bears even less relationship to metal than most Khanate, which is really saying something. There's nothing remotely resembling a riff here. Just that murmuring guitar, stray drum thumps, zapping feedback and ugly string scrapes. It's like this canvas of lulling mania. The sounds drift, and they'd really mean very little if it weren't for the vocals and the words (Dubin's screaming being really the only element signifying "metal," or any genre whatsoever). Amazing, considering that the instrumental track was, apparently, entirely improvised, with Dubin layering on his part afterward. The shrieking and the cruel, horrified monologue--"It's all bad! It's all bad again!"--somehow renders the weird stasis of the music profound, makes you hang on every little gesture. If you saw an improv group perform this background track, you'd think "eh." The reason this is so great is because even in a freeform setting like this, Khanate is a band--the music animates and responds to (or at least seems to respond to) the vocals. And also they are a metal band, which means they care deeply about atmospherics and mood-setting. Improv musicians could learn a lot from an outfit like this, specifically about how to make abstract, gestural playing feel enormously weighty.

If Dubin wasn't so hugely evocative, he could ruin the music. Instead he makes it. The music becomes a manifestation of the diseased consciousness of this man-monster-poet that he portrays in pretty much every Khanate song. And the players give voice to the feelings. It's music about a sick mind, totally adrift, music that doesn't let you do anything other than be mesmerized by it. You can't put Clean Hands, or any of the other Khanate records, on and just do something else. You're either listening to it fully or you're not. There's a lot of avant-garde metal floating around these days, but very little of it deserves and commands your undivided attention the way this does. It's a sickening kind of hovering suspense with no payoff and for those of us with masochistic listening tendencies, it's something like heaven.

Things Viral ('03) was the first Khanate disc that grabbed me, and it grabbed me hard. I never spent much time w/ the first, self-titled disc, or '05's Capture and Release, but I always retained these very strong memories of sitting alone in the dark in my former apartment, an East Village studio, just tripping out to Things Viral. I saw them around the same time at Tonic. I remember a lot of splintering drumsticks and tense anticipation. In a way, though, Khanate is more something you deal with alone. It's music about solitude and it's best experienced in that state.

I've read that there are military torture methods where the perpetrators isolate the feeling of panic or terror and simply extend it ad infinitum in the victim. "Every God Damn Thing" is sort of the same thing, but with pure dread. "Even flowers disgust!" Dubin yowls. There's nothing to make of this but what it is: a revolution in scaring the living shit out of you via sound. Pick up Clean Hands Go Foul and go somewhere where you won't be disturbed and just live with "Every God Damn Thing" in its entirety. It's a chore to stumble back to reality afterward, but it's worth the trauma. There's a very delicious kind of madness on display here. In other words, hail to these guys: Don't take for granted the magnitude of what they did.

Object lesson: The story of Marooned

I've announced through various channels--i.e., channels other than this blog, that is--that my band STATS (above) has completed its latest recording, an EP (like all of our other releases) entitled Marooned. The three-song set is now available as a by-request, free/pay-what-you-feel-like download via statsbrooklyn @ gmail.com. In other words, if you want to hear the music, just write to that address and we'll hook you up.

Of course, there's a basic news angle to this post: Yes, the aim is to get the word out about this chunk of music that I'm very proud to have had a hand in producing. But there's also an aspect of meditation on making and releasing music in the digital age.

Dear God, am I ever not the first one to muse on such topics, but this is the first time I've ever really lived through an episode that caused me to do so. The last time this band made a record--under the name Stay Fucked--it was way back in 2007, when manufacturing and duplicating CDs seemed like a prudent thing to do. We sent out CD-R demos to a whole bunch of labels, and fortunately one of them, Unfun (not to be confused with Not Not Fun and/or No Fun), decided to take a chance on us. We pressed up a modest amount of discs (that was the Windpipe EP, still available from various online channels, including Amazon) and sold them on tour in November/December of '07. Since then, we've sold a few at shows, but honestly, most of them are still piled up in my closet. If anyone wants one, please do write to statsbrooklyn @ gmail.com, and we'll cut you a deal.

Anyway, flash forward to now. My bandmates and I recorded three songs last September at the studio/crashpad of our friend John Delzoppo (Clan of the Cave Bear) in Cleveland. Various logistical hang-ups intervened and it wasn't until early '09 that we were able to get the thing mixed. We went through several passes of that with the patient and generous Ben Greenberg (Pygmy Shrews, Zs, etc.), and then we finally got it mastered by James Plotkin (Khanate, OLD, etc.) in April.

In a sense, we had the same big plans for this EP that we did for the last one. We figured we'd give the whole label thing another shot and so we gathered up a list of the target imprints, plus a good amount of press contacts and anyone else we thought might want to hear the music. Logistics continued to intervene and it was only in the past several weeks that we started disseminating the disc.

I sent out a few packages, but mostly I began Sendspacing the tracks to various reviewers, labels, friends, colleagues, etc. In most cases, I referred to the set of music as a "demo." But people started asking me for the name of the EP, for track order and song titles, for cover art, for recording credits, etc. Reviews started to trickle in. I quickly realized that Marooned was no longer a demo--it was officially RELEASED into the world, whether I or my bandmates liked it or not. So we scrambled a bit and decided to deem it a proper something or other, albeit for now a digital-only one, distributed to pretty much anyone who asks on a by-donation basis.

A weird feeling. A feeling of anticlimax, I guess. I remember how proud and psyched I was to post the official release date of Windpipe, and how thrilled I was when the box came in the mail with the first batch of CDs. I really enjoyed the object-ness of it. That EP was the first THING I'd ever been involved with that someone had deemed worthy of mass production.

I would humbly say that I think Marooned is a whole lot better than Windpipe, mainly just because we've had more time to play and write together. And so I'm a little unnerved that we've just thrown this thing out there so wantonly. I think it's worth $5 or $10 or however much someone might pay for something like this these days. But I guess the bottom line is that it doesn't do us much good to sit on this music. In the grand scheme of things, we're an utterly unknown band. What we need right now--far more than money (or, for that matter, fancy packaging)--is exposure. I believe in this music and I just want people to hear it. Ergo, it's actually a very healthy and smart thing for us to be flinging it far and wide, to let go a little in the name of spreading the STATS gospel.

That's not to say that I don't in some sense still consider this a demo. I'd love it if a label decided they wanted to pick it up and release it "for real" with perhaps some extra tracks and nice artwork and the whole bit. But for now, it is what it is. It's not an incomplete thing, really, or at least if it is, it's only really that as far as the band is considered. For anyone who's downloaded the tracks and spun them on their PC or iPod or whatever, it's simply the new batch of recordings by STATS. If they'd bought it on CD, they'd have just imported the tracks anyway and consumed it in digital form. And if they'd bought it on LP (which I hope they someday have the chance to do), they'd have just looked at it a while, maybe spun it once or twice, filed it away on their shelf and then redeemed the inevitable digital-download code. MP3s sitting on someone's hard drive are as actual and tangible as you're going to get these days. Honestly, we should be honored that people are even taking the time to ask after the thing.

Is all this an irresponsible position to be taking? i.e., should I feel weird about coming to terms with giving this thing away in a compromised medium? Perhaps, but as I said before, that is what's most expedient and useful for THIS band at THIS juncture. That could easily change in the future and maybe the next time we do a recording, I'll sit the tracks until the day they are issued in some tangible, purchasable form. But for now, I'm just happy Marooned exists and that a few people want to hear it and that a few of those people have enjoyed it enough to respond to it, either verbally or in print. As I said, I'm extremely proud of it, even if it's not something you can hold just yet. It's starting to feel more real to me, day by day. If you'd like to take a listen yourself, please get in touch via statsbrooklyn @ gmail.com. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Below are some reviews/writeups:

@Built on a Weak Spot
"...sprawling, knock-you-down math rock." And dig this comment someone left: "It's like some fantasy land where Killdozer is playing King Crimson covers."

@The Obelisk
"...a solid balance between nerdy tech-core and the unrepentantly vicious."

@Impose Magazine
"...tangled, precise guitar-rock instrumentals somewhere around the fulcrum of math rock and metal."

@Spaceship Bastille
"...bloody-nose-inducing. Groovy math."

And here are all the pertinent credits:

STATS
Marooned
2009

1) Yo King [streaming here]
2) Sadcap
3) Crowds Press

Written and performed by STATS.

Tony Gedrich - bass
Joe Petrucelli - guitar
Hank Shteamer - drums

Recorded September '08 by John Delzoppo: Cleveland, OH; mixed over the first few months of '09 by Ben Greenberg: Brooklyn, NYC; mastered in April '09 by James Plotkin: Hoboken, NJ.

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Thank you for indulging this somewhat self-serving blab sesh. Make sure to check the Twitter feed (upper right-hand corner of this site), which is quite likely to be updated more frequently than DFSBP itself.

Billy bang

Bonnie "Prince" Billy slayed at Santos tonight (technically last night, but I'm still up). Visit The Volume for a review, with pics by myself (as above) and Laal.

For my fellow Oldham nerds, here's my best stab at a set list:

"I Am Goodbye"

"Lessons from What's Poor"

"Gulf Shores"

"Lay and Love"

"My Life's Work"

"Easy Does It"

"64" [from Get on Jolly]

"The Brute Choir"

"I Don't Belong to Anyone"

"Cursed Sleep"

"All Around"

"Where Is the Puzzle?" [I think]

"Death Final"

"Beware Your Only Friend"

"[???]" [lyrics about following a "shrouded figure"; anyone?]

"[???]" [think I caught the lyric "The purpose of this life is to live"]

"What Are You?"

"[???]" [hard-rockin' song; didn't catch any lyrics]

"I Called You Back"

Encore:

"Ease Down the Road"

"Careless Love"

"Even If Love"

"Hard Life"

Live and dangerous // Recently...

Wanted to round up a few live reviews I posted recently on The Volume, all photographically (and/or videographically) enhanced by myself and/or Laal, who snapped the Black Pus pic above.

*Positive Catastrophe at Jazz Gallery - 5.8.09

*Mastodon at the Fillmore - 5.9.09

*No Fun Fest at MHOW - 5.17.09
[choice live video of the aforementioned Black Pus, a.k.a. the solo project of Lightning Bolt's Brian Chippendale, on this one]

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Also, a list of recent delights:

















*Precious Metal
I am so psyched about this book. PSYCHED. What this is, is a compilation of the so-called Hall of Fame features from Decibel magazine, i.e., the best metal publication currently on the market. The HoFs are oral-history-style making-of pieces on the purported best extreme-metal albums of all time (don't get me wrong, I basically agree with the choices). I've read many of these in their original form, but--much as was the case with Ben Ratliff's excellent The Jazz Ear, discussed within this post from January--they're all expanded here and they're just so amazing. Such a variety of personalities and motivations, from the uber-enigmatic and neurotic (Kyuss) to the arch and sardonic (Carcass) and the on-another-planet visionary (Morbid Angel, of course) and the thoroughly demented/zonked (Eyehategod). As much time as I've spent listening to metal, I've never heard some of these records and I'm really enjoying spinning them as I read. If there's one quote that, more than any other in the book, should convince you that this is an essential compendium of knowledge, it's this, from one of my personal heroes, Mr. Trey Azagthoth, who discusses the making of the killer Altars of Madness:

"That record has so many riffs, and the way they're played today has a little more fullness. Back then everything was kinda rushed and fast, so it didn't really come together as well, I guess, as far as the atmosphere and trippiness. I really wanted a feeling of like going backward or playing sideways and dragging--just all these weird feelings that I wanted to put in the music that I think later [Morbid Angel] albums have. But I think that record had more cool riffs than any other record anyone's ever done, if you count 'em. There's probably, I don't know, 50 or 100 riffs on that record, it seems like to me. I didn't want just a couple of cool riffs and a bunch of filler in each song--I wanted parts where there's actually singing over complicated riffs rather than an easy riff for the vocals."

Re: "dragging," "sideways" riffage, YES. I know *exactly* what he means about M.A.'s compositions, though I've never known quite how to articulate it. Re: AoM having more cool riffs than any other record, I'm sort of inclined to agree. Though I far prefer Covenant overall, you can beat M.A.'s debut full-length for sheer part-by-part awesomeness. Anyone got any other favorite riff records they'd like to cite? For me, another biggie is Mastodon's Remission, which has a gargantuan riff quotient. And Sabbath Volume 4, obviously. Anyway, if you are into metal, you won't want to do anything but obsess over this book once you get ahold of it. Here's hoping for a volume two, with some more obscure choices! (I pitched a Hall of Fame once that I thought was great, but I never heard back. How 'bout it, Decibel, wanna give me a shot?)

So a lot of my recent listening has sprung from this book, namely:

*Kyuss s/t a.k.a. Welcome to Sky Valley
Loved this one as a teen. Holds up much, much better than I'd expected, probably due to the formidable pop element in many of the songs.

*Dillinger Escape Plan Calculating Infinity
Oddly, I've never really gotten to know this album, though I've heard many bits and pieces over the years. The hardcore aspect of D.E.P. has always been tough for me to relate to; as far as math-rock and -metal, I've always related much more to the Midwestern tradition (Craw, Dazzling Killmen, etc.), in which there was no macho-ness, only sublime eccentricity and outsider rage. But you can't deny that there's a special kind of savagery going down here.

*Carcass Necroticism - Descanting the Insalubrious
What a fucking great album. I loved Necroticism's successor, Heartwork, in my adolescence, but for some reason, I never went back and bought this. Carcass might be the funniest death-metal band; they've got a real sick and sardonic sense of humor and an extremely distinctive writing style. Very sophisticated stuff that doesn't sound dated at all (like, say, roughly contemporaneous discs such as Obituary's Cause of Death and Cannibal Corpse's Tomb of the Mutilated, both of which are featured in Precious Metal and both of which sound pretty weak and primitive--in the pejorative sense--to me today).

And then there's other stuff, like:

*Propagandhi Potemkin City Limits
Not quite as good as the best album of 2009 so far, but still incredible. What a brave and revelatory band. Prog-punk poetry forever!

*The 1966 Carla Bley tracks currently spinning over at Destination Out.
As the D.O. dudes indicate, this material does present a kind of parallel-universe free-jazz aesthetic that has no real point of comparison in that time period. Bewitching stuff.

*AMM Generative Themes
Pulled this off my shelf randomly the other day. Very, very cool. Not as profoundly austere as some of their later stuff and actually more akin to clattery free jazz than I thought they ever got. Very singular group; every fan of experimental audio stylings should check out at least a few of their discs.

*Melvins Pigs of the Roman Empire, The Maggot and The Crybaby
Ah, the Melvins' early Ipecac years, before the current Big Business-abetted Renaissance. Some spotty stuff indeed, but with amazing high points. (An investigation obviously spurred on by Friday's awesome Webster Hall show.) Pigs, a collaboration with Lustmord, has some great shit on it. Was bummed out by it at first, but if you give it time, it sinks in. "The Bloated Pope" and the title track both kick hard and the soundscape stuff sounds way cooler to me now than when I first got ahold of this. The Maggot is... a little shaky and nondescript in spots, but it's worth a listen for the awesomely glammy and hammy and doomy cover of the early Fleetwood Mac tune "The Green Manalishi with the Two Prong Crown." The Crybaby is also a tough listen, but the Tool collaboration "Divorced" is very intriguing as are the team-ups with Jim Thirlwell of Foetus and Kevin Sharp of Brutal Truth.

*Genesis The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway
I've had this for like two years and I STILL haven't made it all the way through, which is more a testament to my short attention span than to the way I feel about this record, because I absolutely love it. Totally undated prog, right here, with steely urban themes and mountains of wit and eclectic ambition. I'm late to the party on this one by decades, but if anyone hasn't dug into Genesis's Gabriel years, pick this up pronto.

*And lastly, two tracks from the first Thin Lizzy album (self-titled) that Tony e-mailed to me. So lean-sounding and peculiar. Rhythm section is like the perfect midpoint between the Jesus Lizard and Zeppelin. Lyrics are arcane and suffocatingly British, in a good way.

Heavy sounds: Melvins stomp through their history at Webster Hall

As much of a Melvins freak as I am, I was oddly not all that psyched for the band's 25th-anniversary show at Webster Hall last night. A lot of that probably had to do with the gig's gimmicky conceit: King Buzzo (above, in long-ago adolescence) and Dale Crover, along with guest bassist Trevor Dunn, would play 1993's Houdini in its entirety, preceded by a "Melvins 1983" set with Crover on bass and original member Mike Dillard on drums.

This might seem blasphemous to some, but I've never considered Houdini to be a totally satisfying album. The first two tracks, "Hooch" and "Night Goat," are indisputably among the finest heavy-rock songs ever composed, but after that, there's quite a bit of what sometimes feels to me like filler. Re: the 1983 stuff, I'd only had minimal exposure to it via Mangled Demos, and though I found it to be a charming time capsule re: the band's snotty punk origins, I wasn't too impressed.

Fortunately, the show surpassed my expectations in every single way. It was completely phenomenal, rivaling the other pinnacle of my scant few years of Melvins concertgoing, the debut of the Big Business–abetted quartet lineup on the 2006 (A) Senile Animal tour. (Here's a TONY preview/interview I wrote at the time.) At Webster, the band took what seemed like a formulaic and predictable concept and made it genuinely suspenseful. I was hoping to take pictures but I stupidly forgot to charge my camera battery. Instead, I humbly offer this detailed recap.

Introducing the 1983 lineup, Buzz joked a bit re: Dillard being just out of prison, but otherwise the frontman was surprisingly warm and gracious. The ensuing set was brief (maybe 25 minutes or so) and a great warm-up to the show. Dillard isn't a great drummer by any standard, but he seemed thrilled to be onstage with Buzz and Dale, the latter of whom was surprisingly capable on bass and backing vocals. The straightforward, hardcore-era songs, like "Forgotten Principles," came off as solid and catchy. Another highlight was "Set Me Straight," which dates from that period but was re-recorded for Houdini. (It made another appearance in the later set, with the Cream cover "Deserted Cities of the Heart" tacked on.)

At the end of the last 1983 song, Dillard quickly switched places with Crover. The latter kicked into a thunderous march rhythm, which the former mirrored on a miked-up snare near the front of the stage. The drum pattern settled into "Second Coming/The Ballad of Dwight Fry," a set of Alice Cooper covers from 1992's Lysol. Dillard then exited, giving way to the highlight of the show: a Buzz/Dale mini duo set that surveyed their entire career, via tunes from 1991's Bullhead ("It's Shoved"), 1989's Ozma ("Oven"), 1996's Stag ("Black Bock") and 2008's Nude with Boots ("Suicide in Progress"). This part of the show struck me as a badass declaration of independence for the frontman and drummer. Melvins have gone through countless incarnations since the early '80s, but Buzz and Dale have been the twin anchors of the band that whole time. (This is something I can relate to a little, given that two thirds of my own band have remained stable for about seven years, during which time we've gone through something like five bassists.) Last night, they proved that they were more than capable of going bassless.

After an insanely tight version of Ozma's compact avant-metal opus "Let God Be Your Gardener," Dunn came out and the Houdini run-through began. The set kicked off with an ultramenacing "Hag Me" and proceeded through the album in shuffle mode, a strategy that added a key element of surprise to what could've been a mere recital. Interestingly, the band dispensed with the album's three "hits"—"Hooch," "Night Goat" and "Honey Bucket"—early, which afforded the more obscure songs a nice bit of breathing room. (I expected an agonizingly drawn-out "Night Goat," as heard on the live-Houdini album, A Live History of Gluttony and Lust, but the trio served up a concise, no-nonsense version.) The concluding drum jam on "Spread Eagle Beagle," with Dillard and Dunn joining in on auxiliary percussion, was pretty spiffy and the Kiss cover "Goin' Blind" was every bit as sublimely anguished as on Houdini, but the song that really got me was "Joan of Arc." An effective track on the record, this one was an absolute heaving monster live, with Buzz and Dunn aligning for the chthonic vocal squeal that signals the thunderous drum kick-in. The third time Crover bashed his way in, I heard someone next to me say to his buddy, "This is the heaviest thing I've ever heard in my life." I'm inclined to agree: utterly massive and gut-churning. There is no band that grinds so slowly with such a glorious sense of groove.

After "Spread Eagle," the Houdini trio offered a two-song encore (though without any sort of break) that was slightly victory-lap-ish but nevertheless awesome. First was the Lysol closer, "With Teeth," an immensely poignant tune, trudging and soulful. Then, "The Bit," Stag's Crover-penned opener and a true classic of Melvins' Atlantic period. Buzz sent everyone off with a lounge-act-style band intro, complete with a cheesy Dunn bass solo. All in all: two solid hours of artful heaviness and a stern reminder not to take these national treasure for granted ever again.

Here's my attempt at a setlist:

FIRST: [1983 material, including "Forgotten Principles" and "Set Me Straight," and, I'm pretty sure, "If You Get Bored" and "Snake Appeal."]

THEN: [Buzz/Dale duo]
1) "Second Coming"/"The Ballad of Dwight Fry"
2) "It's Shoved"
3) [slow unknown blues - cover? Crover sang; chorus sounded like "let me roll it"--anyone know what this was?]
4) "Suicide in Progress"
5) "Oven"
6) "Black Bock"
7) "Let God Be Your Gardener"

LAST: [Buzz/Dale/Dunn]
8) "Hag Me"
9) "Pearl Bomb"
10) "Hooch"
11) "Honey Bucket"
12) "Night Goat"
13) "Lizzy"
14) "Joan of Arc"
15) "Set Me Straight"/"Deserted Cities of the Heart"
16) "Sky Pup"
17) "Teet"
18) "Goin' Blind"
19) "Copache"
20) "Spread Eagle Beagle" [Crover, Dillard, Dunn]
21) "With Teeth"
22) "The Bit"
23) [band intros/loungey outro]