Happy New Year, and welcome once again to this little corner of the internet. As ever, if you're reading this, I appreciate your kind attention and do not take it for granted. Cheers to you. Onward!
Here are:
*A rundown of my 2019 Winter Jazzfest faves. I only caught a tiny fraction of what went down at the fest, but still managed to hear a broad array of world-class groups. I'm happy that WJF is now a firmly entrenched annual staple of the NYC concert calendar, and I look forward to many more.
*A piece on the Jawbox reunion, with commentary from three of the four members. I'm a huge fan of this band, and have been for around 25 years, so this was simply an honor and a pleasure to put together. See also an older DFSBP piece in which I delve into some of the reasons I find their music so inspired/inspiring.
*A brief write-up on the latest from Krallice, which I would not hesitate to name one of New York's, and the world's, premier avant-garde ensembles, regardless of genre. More on them, and what they mean to me, here.
Showing posts with label krallice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label krallice. Show all posts
Monday, January 14, 2019
Thursday, December 07, 2017
Best of 2017: Metal
[Updated 12/26/17: Added Power Trip's Nightmare Logic, which I recently went back to and loved, to the albums list below. Also added a short list of metal-related sites/publications I dig, and a link to the RS 100 Greatest Metal Albums list, at the end.]
Rolling Stone's year-end metal round-up is now live. Happy as always to help put this one together with my colleagues Chris Weingarten and Kory Grow. It was an interesting year for the genre in that there weren't quite as many mainstream/-ish tentpole releases to consider (like, for example, the Metallica album that rightly topped last year's RS metal list), so we were able to make room for a good amount of fringier picks like Oxbow, Pyrrhon and Krallice.
Likewise, my own listening ranged a little farther afield (emphasis on "a little"). Some of my favorite underground bands put out new records this year, including longtime DFSBP faves Suffocation, Immolation and Incantation, but these albums didn't really grab me like I was expecting or hoping. Same goes for the new Cannibal Corpse album, Red Before Black, though it wouldn't surprise me if I have a real moment with this one somewhere down the line, as always seems to happen with their LPs.
This set of circumstances opened up the field a bit, so I spent a good amount of time with Code Orange's Forever, for example, an album that represents a sub-scene I really don't follow closely (I guess I'd call it metalcore, for lack of a better term?). The band's over-the-top machismo often borders on the corny, but their obvious skill as players and writers — and, just as importantly, as overall architects of texture; the album is filled with industrial/ambient interludes that make the whole thing flow together like one long song — wins out. They really take the craft of extremity seriously, and conversely, they seem to think hard about the way their moodier, more dynamic elements only make the punishing climaxes hit that much harder. Speaking of those moody elements, the album's obvious crowning jewel to me was this extraordinary track, a song that nailed a sort of 1994–alt-metal sweet spot for me and rarely left my brain all year:
I certainly wouldn't have minded if all of Forever had sounded like that (if I'm remembering correctly, guitarist Reba Meyers only sings lead on one other song, the awesomely eerie closer "dream2"), but the fact that the track felt like an odd, alluring detour only made it stand out more.
Another album I blurbed for the list, Morbid Angel's Kingdoms Disdained, has been making me giddy since I first heard it a month or so back. We may never know the real backstory of this record, as Morbid Angel mastermind Trey Azagthoth isn't doing anything but goofball email interviews this time around (I tried hard to line up a feature based on a phone or in-person chat, to no avail), but the band's saga over the past few years (an almost universally reviled reunion-ish album that they all but ignored on tour, Azagthoth's subsequent parting of ways with classic-era frontman David Vincent and reunion with mid-period growler/bassist Steve Tucker, etc.) has been the stuff of a death-metal soap opera. Amid all the drama, I'm honestly shocked at how quickly Trey and Steve were able to right the course; in the absence of a return to the band's Vincent-era glory, which, it now seems clear, was never going to happen anyway, Kingdoms is better than any fan could have hoped for, a vicious, efficient and suitably batshit record that might just be stronger than any of the three albums from Tucker's initial tenure in the band. This track in particular is, as far as I'm concerned, a new Morbid classic:
(Check that nasty, writhing waltz riff that starts around :32.)
Moving on to metal's retro-prog, neo-gatefold wing, which seems to be really booming at the moment, thanks to high-profile bands like Mastodon and Pallbearer, Elder's Reflections of a Floating World was the one that really did it for me this year. Mastodon's Emperor of Sand is a very fine record, though a somewhat predictable one, proceeding in orderly fashion from their last couple LPs; in my opinion they still haven't quite figured out how to balance their sprawling-prog inclinations with their streamlined-FM-rock ones in a way that feels really wholesome and fully satisfying. And like their last record, the new Pallbearer LP didn't fully grab me the way I was hoping, considering how much I loved 2012's Sorrow and Extinction, though I admit I need to spend more time with Heartless.
But that Elder record is just pure majesty, total class. It's very rare to hear a fundamentally throwback-ish band whose channeling of various vintage sounds comes across as so natural and ingrained. It's like they've steeped themselves so thoroughly in the song- and riffcraft lessons of the past that they're able to just speak the Tongue of Epic Rock with utter fluency, almost as if these sounds and textures originated with them. Behold:
Speaking of pure majesty and total class, what to say about the no-nonsense creative dynamo that is Krallice, which released two more staggering statements within the past couple months? Doug Moore, a fellow writer and musician (and onetime DFSBP contributor), whose own band Pyrrhon made the RS list with the excellent What Passes for Survival, a mind-shreddingly intense and complex album that I feel like I'm just beginning to get some kind of firm grasp on after a few pleasurably bewildered listens, recently summed up Krallice's singular position in the metal underground in this sharp essay for the November edition of Stereogum's "Black Market" metal round-up. And it's a singularity that deserves to be celebrated, that of a group operating in essentially, to use Doug's phrase, "hobby band" fashion but producing such a great volume of rich, high-quality work that they put most "career" metal bands to shame.
Krallice's albums are, simply, oceans of content. I have become such an ardent fan that when they put out something new, it typically prompts me to trawl back through their entire, now pretty sizable catalog so that I can properly place the latest release in context. (I did this when Loüm, the first of their 2017 albums came out, and even kept a list of my favorite "holy fuck" moments from throughout the discography, of which there are many.) There is simply a grandness of scale to their music, coupled with a resolutely unbounded aesthetic, that I find deeply inspiring. They frankly make the idea of metal subgenres (and even the now-familiar "extreme" tag) seem deeply idiotic. It's clear from these two new albums, specifically Go Be Forgotten — at the moment I'm ever-so-slightly more in awe of this one, with its mystical, trancelike, often synth-bathed aura, than the gruff, frenzied, dauntingly technical Loüm, which features Neurosis member Dave Edwardson, though I stress that both are towering works that might take years to process — that they're simply making visionary art, period, with the style (and maybe even the very medium) being essentially incidental. In an attention-starved world, these exquisitely detailed, marvelously transporting sounds are a blessing to get lost in, and I can't wait for the next dispatch.
("Ground Prayer" is a phenomenal track, but make sure to hear it at some point in its proper album context, coming after the lengthy ambient piece "Quadripartite Mirror Realm.)
On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, in aesthetic but not quality, is Unsane's Sterilize, which, like pretty much all their records, is a lean, brutally efficient smack upside the head. As discussed recently on DFSBP, I simply cannot stop playing this thing, along with Wreck, Visqueen, Occupational Hazard and the rest.
Though I didn't have quite as much of a prolonged moment with Obituary's self-titled LP, pretty much the same principles apply: This veteran band does one thing extremely well and their late-career, "cavemen of metal" cruise-control stage, which I wrote about for Rolling Stone, is a joy to behold in either its live or studio manifestations.
Other 2017 metal (and related styles) I liked a lot, had a moment with, etc.:
Rolling Stone's year-end metal round-up is now live. Happy as always to help put this one together with my colleagues Chris Weingarten and Kory Grow. It was an interesting year for the genre in that there weren't quite as many mainstream/-ish tentpole releases to consider (like, for example, the Metallica album that rightly topped last year's RS metal list), so we were able to make room for a good amount of fringier picks like Oxbow, Pyrrhon and Krallice.
Likewise, my own listening ranged a little farther afield (emphasis on "a little"). Some of my favorite underground bands put out new records this year, including longtime DFSBP faves Suffocation, Immolation and Incantation, but these albums didn't really grab me like I was expecting or hoping. Same goes for the new Cannibal Corpse album, Red Before Black, though it wouldn't surprise me if I have a real moment with this one somewhere down the line, as always seems to happen with their LPs.
This set of circumstances opened up the field a bit, so I spent a good amount of time with Code Orange's Forever, for example, an album that represents a sub-scene I really don't follow closely (I guess I'd call it metalcore, for lack of a better term?). The band's over-the-top machismo often borders on the corny, but their obvious skill as players and writers — and, just as importantly, as overall architects of texture; the album is filled with industrial/ambient interludes that make the whole thing flow together like one long song — wins out. They really take the craft of extremity seriously, and conversely, they seem to think hard about the way their moodier, more dynamic elements only make the punishing climaxes hit that much harder. Speaking of those moody elements, the album's obvious crowning jewel to me was this extraordinary track, a song that nailed a sort of 1994–alt-metal sweet spot for me and rarely left my brain all year:
I certainly wouldn't have minded if all of Forever had sounded like that (if I'm remembering correctly, guitarist Reba Meyers only sings lead on one other song, the awesomely eerie closer "dream2"), but the fact that the track felt like an odd, alluring detour only made it stand out more.
Another album I blurbed for the list, Morbid Angel's Kingdoms Disdained, has been making me giddy since I first heard it a month or so back. We may never know the real backstory of this record, as Morbid Angel mastermind Trey Azagthoth isn't doing anything but goofball email interviews this time around (I tried hard to line up a feature based on a phone or in-person chat, to no avail), but the band's saga over the past few years (an almost universally reviled reunion-ish album that they all but ignored on tour, Azagthoth's subsequent parting of ways with classic-era frontman David Vincent and reunion with mid-period growler/bassist Steve Tucker, etc.) has been the stuff of a death-metal soap opera. Amid all the drama, I'm honestly shocked at how quickly Trey and Steve were able to right the course; in the absence of a return to the band's Vincent-era glory, which, it now seems clear, was never going to happen anyway, Kingdoms is better than any fan could have hoped for, a vicious, efficient and suitably batshit record that might just be stronger than any of the three albums from Tucker's initial tenure in the band. This track in particular is, as far as I'm concerned, a new Morbid classic:
(Check that nasty, writhing waltz riff that starts around :32.)
Moving on to metal's retro-prog, neo-gatefold wing, which seems to be really booming at the moment, thanks to high-profile bands like Mastodon and Pallbearer, Elder's Reflections of a Floating World was the one that really did it for me this year. Mastodon's Emperor of Sand is a very fine record, though a somewhat predictable one, proceeding in orderly fashion from their last couple LPs; in my opinion they still haven't quite figured out how to balance their sprawling-prog inclinations with their streamlined-FM-rock ones in a way that feels really wholesome and fully satisfying. And like their last record, the new Pallbearer LP didn't fully grab me the way I was hoping, considering how much I loved 2012's Sorrow and Extinction, though I admit I need to spend more time with Heartless.
But that Elder record is just pure majesty, total class. It's very rare to hear a fundamentally throwback-ish band whose channeling of various vintage sounds comes across as so natural and ingrained. It's like they've steeped themselves so thoroughly in the song- and riffcraft lessons of the past that they're able to just speak the Tongue of Epic Rock with utter fluency, almost as if these sounds and textures originated with them. Behold:
Speaking of pure majesty and total class, what to say about the no-nonsense creative dynamo that is Krallice, which released two more staggering statements within the past couple months? Doug Moore, a fellow writer and musician (and onetime DFSBP contributor), whose own band Pyrrhon made the RS list with the excellent What Passes for Survival, a mind-shreddingly intense and complex album that I feel like I'm just beginning to get some kind of firm grasp on after a few pleasurably bewildered listens, recently summed up Krallice's singular position in the metal underground in this sharp essay for the November edition of Stereogum's "Black Market" metal round-up. And it's a singularity that deserves to be celebrated, that of a group operating in essentially, to use Doug's phrase, "hobby band" fashion but producing such a great volume of rich, high-quality work that they put most "career" metal bands to shame.
Krallice's albums are, simply, oceans of content. I have become such an ardent fan that when they put out something new, it typically prompts me to trawl back through their entire, now pretty sizable catalog so that I can properly place the latest release in context. (I did this when Loüm, the first of their 2017 albums came out, and even kept a list of my favorite "holy fuck" moments from throughout the discography, of which there are many.) There is simply a grandness of scale to their music, coupled with a resolutely unbounded aesthetic, that I find deeply inspiring. They frankly make the idea of metal subgenres (and even the now-familiar "extreme" tag) seem deeply idiotic. It's clear from these two new albums, specifically Go Be Forgotten — at the moment I'm ever-so-slightly more in awe of this one, with its mystical, trancelike, often synth-bathed aura, than the gruff, frenzied, dauntingly technical Loüm, which features Neurosis member Dave Edwardson, though I stress that both are towering works that might take years to process — that they're simply making visionary art, period, with the style (and maybe even the very medium) being essentially incidental. In an attention-starved world, these exquisitely detailed, marvelously transporting sounds are a blessing to get lost in, and I can't wait for the next dispatch.
("Ground Prayer" is a phenomenal track, but make sure to hear it at some point in its proper album context, coming after the lengthy ambient piece "Quadripartite Mirror Realm.)
On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, in aesthetic but not quality, is Unsane's Sterilize, which, like pretty much all their records, is a lean, brutally efficient smack upside the head. As discussed recently on DFSBP, I simply cannot stop playing this thing, along with Wreck, Visqueen, Occupational Hazard and the rest.
Though I didn't have quite as much of a prolonged moment with Obituary's self-titled LP, pretty much the same principles apply: This veteran band does one thing extremely well and their late-career, "cavemen of metal" cruise-control stage, which I wrote about for Rolling Stone, is a joy to behold in either its live or studio manifestations.
Other 2017 metal (and related styles) I liked a lot, had a moment with, etc.:
Oxbow, Thin Black Duke
Luxurious and unsettling. Haven't even begun to reckon with this band's decades-long legacy, but this one (and the live show I saw) really pulled me in.
Converge, The Dusk in UsEven having really dug Converge's prior LP, All We Love We Leave Behind, as with Oxbow, I still feel like an outsider with these guys because I'm a late convert: That legendary early stuff (Jane Doe, etc.) just isn't in my blood the way I know it is with many people. But I find their recent output, this new record very much included, remarkable in its poise, power and effortless variety. Kory Grow's write-up for the RS list really nailed it.
Mutoid Man, War Moans
A party-time spazz-prog-thrash blast. Lead track "Melt Your Mind" is an absolute stunner and one of
my favorite metal tracks of the year.
my favorite metal tracks of the year.
Memoriam, For the Fallen
Rumbling, elegiac U.K. death metal from former Bolt Thrower frontman Karl Willetts, who helped invent that style, and friends.
Loincloth, Psalm of the Morbid Whore
A second, and sadly final, full-length helping of obsessive math-doom wizardry from an American underground treasure. (Can't wait to hear what's next for longtime DFSBP favorite Steve Shelton, also of Confessor.)
Mayhem, De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas Alive
Honestly, this one got more play time from me than the original ever did. I love being able to hear these gnarled and creepy epics in something resembling higher fidelity. Read Kory Grow's essential feature on the band and the album. (Note: This one came out very late in 2016, but what can you do.)
The Lurking Fear, Out of the Voiceless GraveSort of like the Memoriam of Sweden: proudly regionally flavored death metal (in this case, cold, nasty, unrelenting) from At the Gates' Tomas Lindberg and other dudes who have been around the block.
Husbandry, Bad Weeds Never Die I wrote the bio for this one, FYI — you can read that on the Aqualamb website — but I was already a huge fan. This band sounds like no one else in NYC right now and I hugely admire their unabashed ambition to write badass, fearlessly eclectic post-hardcore that's as catchy as it is jarring.
Couch Slut, Contempt
Friends of mine and another one of the best bands in town. Seething, explosive and sicker than just about any other music on the planet right now.
Quicksand, Interiors
This is a strange one. One of the most treasured bands of my youth finally returns (sans their vital lead guitarist Tom Capone, who ran into some personal issues that kept him from participating), with mixed results. I admire how Walter Schreifels, Sergio Vega and Alan Cage pushed their sound into newly reflective areas here, but I admit that this record's sometimes sleepy, downbeat, almost post-Radiohead-ish vibe — in light of the taut fury of their classic work — left me a little stumped. Still, I'm glad it exists and I'm curious to see if it'll bloom a little more over time. (Wrote a few words on this one for a November new-release round-up at RS.com.)
Power Trip, Nightmare Logic
I may have snobbishly underattended to this one in light of all the praise it got, which I fully admit is just plain stupid. As you may have heard, this record completely smokes. An unabashedly unoriginal sound — thrash meets hardcore in the 1980s; retro to the point that its almost cosplay— done extremely well. Gorgeously full, crisp, monolithic throwback production and killer songs, especially "Executioner's Tax (Swing of the Axe)." Rock!
/////
Shout-out to some outlets and writers that keep me inspired and informed:
Last Rites
Stereogum's Black Market
Revolver
Decibel
Metal Bandcamp
Invisible Oranges
Andy O'Connor
Kim Kelly
Adrien Begrand
Burning Ambulance
Ian Christe
Lastly:
So glad I got to work with Kory Grow and various other folks on this dream project. And that I finally got to see Iron fucking Maiden live.
So glad I got to work with Kory Grow and various other folks on this dream project. And that I finally got to see Iron fucking Maiden live.
Friday, February 05, 2016
Moment's Greatest Hits 2
Another survey of recent faves.
Damon Che
The great Don Caballero drummer speaks in this essential Brad Cohan interview of "[learning] how to breathe behind the trap set over time." Quite an understatement, given that the style he developed in the early '90s and perfected on albums such as Don Caballero 2, What Burns Never Returns and American Don amounts to one of the most beautifully aerated percussive achievements I know. A true punishing caress. If you can watch this (dip in at, say, 3:20 for a quick taste) without weeping, inwardly or outwardly, at the raw poetry of each flail and bash, we have very different listening brains.
I only very recently gave Thee Speaking Canaries—the band in which Che plays guitar and sings—a close look, which seems like some kind of travesty. The '93 Songs for the Terrestrially Challenged album in particular is a triumph of muscular, offbeat indie rock. It has sort of this grandstanding classic-rock swagger about it (thanks to Nick for helping me spot the cover of Van Halen's "Girl Gone Bad" sandwiched into track 5), some incredibly tasty and eccentric riffing and the general sense of sprawling, indulgent abandon that makes the period of Don Cab I cite above so wonderful.
I highly recommend the tracks "Houses and Houses of Perfectness" and "Terrestrial/Famous No Space." Drumming in Damon Che's band must be a little like playing bass in Charles Mingus's (as Doug Watkins did here), but Noah Leger does a hell of a job of it on this record.
Also: shout-outs to Chunklet for their valuable work unearthing gems from the Che archive, e.g., Thee Speaking Canaries' Platter Base Must be Constructed of Moon Rock (on which Che plays all instruments) and Don Cab's Five Pairs of Crazy Pants. Wear 'Em (a sort of pre- and post-history of Don Cab's burly debut, For Respect).
Krallice
This album continues to be an object of fascination and awe. Not to take anything away from the overall architecture of the songs and the LP, but the sheer amount of insanely cool moments on Ygg Huur is frankly obscene. (Let's start by talking about the crazed fanfare that breaks out around 5:20 into "Over Spirit.") Am also digging the new EP, Hyperion, which actually predates YH recording-wise, and I had a blast seeing them live at Saint Vitus last week.
Leonard Cohen
Cohen is a genius, and I hang on his every word. Been digging into a few of the '70s albums that I never knew as well as I wanted to. I've loved, and very often feared, Songs of Leonard Cohen and Songs From a Room for ages, but there's something about the period that follows (Songs of Love and Hate, New Skin for the Old Ceremony, Death of a Ladies' Man and Recent Songs) that's really speaking to me right now. The early stuff has that beautiful austerity, but during this phases, he's really letting it rip in an appealing way, getting as bawdy ("Don't Go Home With Your Hard-On"), mythic ("The Guests"), depressive ("Dress Rehearsal Rag"), ominous ("Avalanche"), sardonic ("Is This What You Wanted") or straight-up manic as he pleases. To exemplify that latter quality, let's focus for a second on the final minute or so of "Memories":
Bruce Springsteen
A younger and more populist singer-songwriter hero. I'm all in with The River, thanks in part to the recent reissue, and I can't wait to see Springsteen and Co. play it live on March 28. On paper, everything about this period of Springsteen seems contrived: the portraits of small-town love, heartbreak and socioeconomic struggle. But in execution, it's sublime. You don't even have to suspend your disbelief when listening to a master like this—you simply soak up the conviction and dramatic truth radiating from the songs.
Jon Theodore
Picking up on the Che thread from above, another one of the great drummers of our time narrates the story of his life and music in this extremely valuable Dean Delray podcast episode. I find the accounts of him joining the Mars Volta and Queens of the Stone Age—probably the two greatest Big Rock Bands of the past 20 or so years—to be particularly thrilling and inspiring. Bonus: This is probably the closest we'll get to a thorough examination of Theodore's incredible, hopefully not-defunct One Day as a Lion project with Zack de la Rocha.
Mastication of Brutality Uncontrolled
Yes, you read that right. In recent years, I've developed a serious soft spot for the lunatic sub-sub-genre of death metal known variously as "brutal" or "slam." You often find this stuff coming out of Europe and Asia, and labels such as Willowtip, New Standard Elite and Unique Leader are always reliable outlets for the freshest and sickest offerings. (The connoisseurs at Burning Ambulance, Isolation Grind and Invisible Oranges also help keep me in the loop.) Anyway, the below—the 2015 debut LP by Germany's MOBU—was just something I stumbled across on YouTube while browsing for new delights in this genre. Skip the first track and dive right into "Mother Earth Abortion."
I find the over-the-top, almost giddy quality of this music to be profoundly life-affirming. It wears its off-the-charts technicality lightly and practically begs you to scoff at how absurd it comes off by any normalized standard of what music ought to sound like. And yet, brutal death metal is an extremely narrow niche, with its own rules of production, technique, etc. As with any example of such a tightly defined style, the pleasure is in the details—here, it's those laser-gun guitar strobes and rapid-fire "He can't possibly be saying words" grunt/squeal/retch vocals. Turn off your brain and savor the splatter.
Earth, Wind and Fire
Respect to Maurice White. I need to get to know this wonderful music much better than I do.
P.S. I invite you to enjoy this recently launched craw website, expertly designed by my dear friend Drew.
Damon Che
The great Don Caballero drummer speaks in this essential Brad Cohan interview of "[learning] how to breathe behind the trap set over time." Quite an understatement, given that the style he developed in the early '90s and perfected on albums such as Don Caballero 2, What Burns Never Returns and American Don amounts to one of the most beautifully aerated percussive achievements I know. A true punishing caress. If you can watch this (dip in at, say, 3:20 for a quick taste) without weeping, inwardly or outwardly, at the raw poetry of each flail and bash, we have very different listening brains.
I only very recently gave Thee Speaking Canaries—the band in which Che plays guitar and sings—a close look, which seems like some kind of travesty. The '93 Songs for the Terrestrially Challenged album in particular is a triumph of muscular, offbeat indie rock. It has sort of this grandstanding classic-rock swagger about it (thanks to Nick for helping me spot the cover of Van Halen's "Girl Gone Bad" sandwiched into track 5), some incredibly tasty and eccentric riffing and the general sense of sprawling, indulgent abandon that makes the period of Don Cab I cite above so wonderful.
I highly recommend the tracks "Houses and Houses of Perfectness" and "Terrestrial/Famous No Space." Drumming in Damon Che's band must be a little like playing bass in Charles Mingus's (as Doug Watkins did here), but Noah Leger does a hell of a job of it on this record.
Also: shout-outs to Chunklet for their valuable work unearthing gems from the Che archive, e.g., Thee Speaking Canaries' Platter Base Must be Constructed of Moon Rock (on which Che plays all instruments) and Don Cab's Five Pairs of Crazy Pants. Wear 'Em (a sort of pre- and post-history of Don Cab's burly debut, For Respect).
Krallice
This album continues to be an object of fascination and awe. Not to take anything away from the overall architecture of the songs and the LP, but the sheer amount of insanely cool moments on Ygg Huur is frankly obscene. (Let's start by talking about the crazed fanfare that breaks out around 5:20 into "Over Spirit.") Am also digging the new EP, Hyperion, which actually predates YH recording-wise, and I had a blast seeing them live at Saint Vitus last week.
Leonard Cohen
Cohen is a genius, and I hang on his every word. Been digging into a few of the '70s albums that I never knew as well as I wanted to. I've loved, and very often feared, Songs of Leonard Cohen and Songs From a Room for ages, but there's something about the period that follows (Songs of Love and Hate, New Skin for the Old Ceremony, Death of a Ladies' Man and Recent Songs) that's really speaking to me right now. The early stuff has that beautiful austerity, but during this phases, he's really letting it rip in an appealing way, getting as bawdy ("Don't Go Home With Your Hard-On"), mythic ("The Guests"), depressive ("Dress Rehearsal Rag"), ominous ("Avalanche"), sardonic ("Is This What You Wanted") or straight-up manic as he pleases. To exemplify that latter quality, let's focus for a second on the final minute or so of "Memories":
Bruce Springsteen
A younger and more populist singer-songwriter hero. I'm all in with The River, thanks in part to the recent reissue, and I can't wait to see Springsteen and Co. play it live on March 28. On paper, everything about this period of Springsteen seems contrived: the portraits of small-town love, heartbreak and socioeconomic struggle. But in execution, it's sublime. You don't even have to suspend your disbelief when listening to a master like this—you simply soak up the conviction and dramatic truth radiating from the songs.
Jon Theodore
Picking up on the Che thread from above, another one of the great drummers of our time narrates the story of his life and music in this extremely valuable Dean Delray podcast episode. I find the accounts of him joining the Mars Volta and Queens of the Stone Age—probably the two greatest Big Rock Bands of the past 20 or so years—to be particularly thrilling and inspiring. Bonus: This is probably the closest we'll get to a thorough examination of Theodore's incredible, hopefully not-defunct One Day as a Lion project with Zack de la Rocha.
Mastication of Brutality Uncontrolled
Yes, you read that right. In recent years, I've developed a serious soft spot for the lunatic sub-sub-genre of death metal known variously as "brutal" or "slam." You often find this stuff coming out of Europe and Asia, and labels such as Willowtip, New Standard Elite and Unique Leader are always reliable outlets for the freshest and sickest offerings. (The connoisseurs at Burning Ambulance, Isolation Grind and Invisible Oranges also help keep me in the loop.) Anyway, the below—the 2015 debut LP by Germany's MOBU—was just something I stumbled across on YouTube while browsing for new delights in this genre. Skip the first track and dive right into "Mother Earth Abortion."
I find the over-the-top, almost giddy quality of this music to be profoundly life-affirming. It wears its off-the-charts technicality lightly and practically begs you to scoff at how absurd it comes off by any normalized standard of what music ought to sound like. And yet, brutal death metal is an extremely narrow niche, with its own rules of production, technique, etc. As with any example of such a tightly defined style, the pleasure is in the details—here, it's those laser-gun guitar strobes and rapid-fire "He can't possibly be saying words" grunt/squeal/retch vocals. Turn off your brain and savor the splatter.
Earth, Wind and Fire
Respect to Maurice White. I need to get to know this wonderful music much better than I do.
P.S. I invite you to enjoy this recently launched craw website, expertly designed by my dear friend Drew.
Saturday, January 16, 2016
Moment's Greatest Hits
A while ago on Twitter I used to roll out what I called Weekly Greatest Hits—a round-up of anything new or old that was currently hitting me hard. In that spirit, here are a few current faves. (This may or may not become a regular DFSBP feature.)
James Brandon Lewis
Days of FreeMan
As I indicated in my 2015 round-up, I slept on a lot of music last year. Here's a late-breaking head-slapper. Days of FreeMan would've been an obvious, high-ranking inclusion on my jazz top 10, at the very least, if I'd heard it in time. (Seems like this flew under a lot of folks' radars; Phil Freeman and Seth Colter Walls were among those looking alive.) Little needs to be said—the appeal is immediate. Lean funk- and hip-hop-informed jams with tons of swagger and soul. I'm not sure I've heard backbeat-oriented jazz done this well before. Missed JBL at Winter Jazzfest last night, but I plan to remedy that soon.
David Bowie
Live 1973 (from D.A. Pennebaker's Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars)
Speaking of swagger. The level of charm, charisma and peacock-ish sass oozing off this man in this performance is basically terrifying. I'm not a Bowie completist, but I am a fan, and I've been filling in knowledge gaps during the past sad, intense week. My Rolling Stone colleague Andy Greene is a real Bowie authority, and I learned a lot from this list, which tipped me off to the above.
P.S. Blackstar is a trip as well.
Iggy Pop
"Some Weird Sin" (from Lust for Life)
This Bowie-co-produced track is just staggering. (Note: It also sounds exactly like the Strokes at their thickest and most sensual.) I'm not crazy about what I've heard from the Idiot album, but Lust for Life lives up to its audacious title. Nasty, glammy brilliance; rough, sneering conviction. Listening to this, you can hear Bowie reckoning with Iggy's genius and framing it in just the right context where it can shine in a new, post-Stooges way. It's feral but theatrical too.
Tony Williams
New York Live (1989)
More on the idea of swagger... Tony Williams is one of my very favorite drummers, but I know less than I should about his later years. I've read a lot about his brash attitude and confidence (in Bill Milkowski's essential interview compilation Rockers, Jazzbos and Visionaries, the author describes Williams at a mixing session for the 1992 Story of Neptune album: "Pacing around the control room with a fat cigar jutting out the side of his mouth, Tony Williams is a portrait of swaggering intensity"), and those traits are on full display in this outstanding video. The effect is very different to hearing him during his '60s heyday. There was a brashness at play during that period, too, obviously, but here it has ripened into a sort of bullish, cocky, unabashed, Muhammad Ali–like badassery. This is hardbop as take-no-prisoners combat, the embodiment of what Damión Reid calls the "[showing] up to crush" mentality.
P.S. It's downright pathetic that much of the recorded output of the band in the video above is out of print. I've been scouring the 'net for days looking for Neptune and its predecessor, Native Heart.
P.P.S. Vinnie Sperrazza is all over this period of Tony's output.
Mark Turner Quartet
Live at Winter Jazzfest 2016
I'm currently under the weather so I'm sparing myself the full-on marathon WJF experience, but I have to call out the outstanding set I saw by this band at the ECM showcase last night. Lathe of Heaven, from 2014, is a great record, but this group has apparently been gigging a lot since then because the set I saw last night made that album sound tame and undercooked. If there's another current working small group that can rival this band for attunement among the members, high-wire interactivity, and overall poise and alertness and excitement, I'd really like someone to tell me about it. They just sounded so dialed-in. And Marcus Gilmore, dear God... It's been no surprise for years, since he works with so many great bands, but this guy is simply operating on an elevated plane.
Bonus tracks:
Chris Dave with Robert Glasper
Thanks to the aforementioned James Brandon Lewis for reminding me that I need more Chris Dave in my life. What starts to happen—percussively, and with the entire band, really—around the 6:00 mark here is simply obscene.
There's all kinds of hoopla re: the jazz/hip-hop crossover thing. Robert Glasper is obviously a key conduit and has been for some time. I'd love to see him get the kind of attention Kamasi Washington has gotten, but for his trio work like this (and this), which speaks to me way more than his Black Radio output. The message I get from a performance like this is that you don't have to "cross over," in blatant genre-splicing ways, to engage meaningfully across traditions.
P.S. Contrary to the title, this video was not filmed at the Village Vanguard.
Krallice
This band is still getting tons of plays around these parts. Not just the amazing Ygg Huur (discussed here) but also its predecessor and brand-new follow-up (which was actually, confusingly, recorded before Ygg Huur). You need to be paying attention to Krallice if you care about what is called the "progressive" spirit in music.
Joe Maneri Quartet
This group—the late Joe Maneri on various reeds, piano and the occasional vocal, with his son Mat on violin and viola, Randy Peterson on drums, and a revolving cast of bassists—had such an unmistakable sonic fingerprint. Jazz smeared into near-oblivion, unfolding in a slo-mo Butoh dance that can feel both tortured and whimsical. My favorite album is the hard-to-find Get Ready to Receive Yourself, but was digging In Full Cry recently.
P.S. Hearing Randy Peterson live last week with Tony Malaby's Apparitions band is what got me thinking along these lines.
James Brandon Lewis
Days of FreeMan
As I indicated in my 2015 round-up, I slept on a lot of music last year. Here's a late-breaking head-slapper. Days of FreeMan would've been an obvious, high-ranking inclusion on my jazz top 10, at the very least, if I'd heard it in time. (Seems like this flew under a lot of folks' radars; Phil Freeman and Seth Colter Walls were among those looking alive.) Little needs to be said—the appeal is immediate. Lean funk- and hip-hop-informed jams with tons of swagger and soul. I'm not sure I've heard backbeat-oriented jazz done this well before. Missed JBL at Winter Jazzfest last night, but I plan to remedy that soon.
David Bowie
Live 1973 (from D.A. Pennebaker's Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars)
Speaking of swagger. The level of charm, charisma and peacock-ish sass oozing off this man in this performance is basically terrifying. I'm not a Bowie completist, but I am a fan, and I've been filling in knowledge gaps during the past sad, intense week. My Rolling Stone colleague Andy Greene is a real Bowie authority, and I learned a lot from this list, which tipped me off to the above.
P.S. Blackstar is a trip as well.
Iggy Pop
"Some Weird Sin" (from Lust for Life)
This Bowie-co-produced track is just staggering. (Note: It also sounds exactly like the Strokes at their thickest and most sensual.) I'm not crazy about what I've heard from the Idiot album, but Lust for Life lives up to its audacious title. Nasty, glammy brilliance; rough, sneering conviction. Listening to this, you can hear Bowie reckoning with Iggy's genius and framing it in just the right context where it can shine in a new, post-Stooges way. It's feral but theatrical too.
Tony Williams
New York Live (1989)
More on the idea of swagger... Tony Williams is one of my very favorite drummers, but I know less than I should about his later years. I've read a lot about his brash attitude and confidence (in Bill Milkowski's essential interview compilation Rockers, Jazzbos and Visionaries, the author describes Williams at a mixing session for the 1992 Story of Neptune album: "Pacing around the control room with a fat cigar jutting out the side of his mouth, Tony Williams is a portrait of swaggering intensity"), and those traits are on full display in this outstanding video. The effect is very different to hearing him during his '60s heyday. There was a brashness at play during that period, too, obviously, but here it has ripened into a sort of bullish, cocky, unabashed, Muhammad Ali–like badassery. This is hardbop as take-no-prisoners combat, the embodiment of what Damión Reid calls the "[showing] up to crush" mentality.
P.S. It's downright pathetic that much of the recorded output of the band in the video above is out of print. I've been scouring the 'net for days looking for Neptune and its predecessor, Native Heart.
P.P.S. Vinnie Sperrazza is all over this period of Tony's output.
Mark Turner Quartet
Live at Winter Jazzfest 2016
I'm currently under the weather so I'm sparing myself the full-on marathon WJF experience, but I have to call out the outstanding set I saw by this band at the ECM showcase last night. Lathe of Heaven, from 2014, is a great record, but this group has apparently been gigging a lot since then because the set I saw last night made that album sound tame and undercooked. If there's another current working small group that can rival this band for attunement among the members, high-wire interactivity, and overall poise and alertness and excitement, I'd really like someone to tell me about it. They just sounded so dialed-in. And Marcus Gilmore, dear God... It's been no surprise for years, since he works with so many great bands, but this guy is simply operating on an elevated plane.
Bonus tracks:
Chris Dave with Robert Glasper
Thanks to the aforementioned James Brandon Lewis for reminding me that I need more Chris Dave in my life. What starts to happen—percussively, and with the entire band, really—around the 6:00 mark here is simply obscene.
There's all kinds of hoopla re: the jazz/hip-hop crossover thing. Robert Glasper is obviously a key conduit and has been for some time. I'd love to see him get the kind of attention Kamasi Washington has gotten, but for his trio work like this (and this), which speaks to me way more than his Black Radio output. The message I get from a performance like this is that you don't have to "cross over," in blatant genre-splicing ways, to engage meaningfully across traditions.
P.S. Contrary to the title, this video was not filmed at the Village Vanguard.
Krallice
This band is still getting tons of plays around these parts. Not just the amazing Ygg Huur (discussed here) but also its predecessor and brand-new follow-up (which was actually, confusingly, recorded before Ygg Huur). You need to be paying attention to Krallice if you care about what is called the "progressive" spirit in music.
Joe Maneri Quartet
This group—the late Joe Maneri on various reeds, piano and the occasional vocal, with his son Mat on violin and viola, Randy Peterson on drums, and a revolving cast of bassists—had such an unmistakable sonic fingerprint. Jazz smeared into near-oblivion, unfolding in a slo-mo Butoh dance that can feel both tortured and whimsical. My favorite album is the hard-to-find Get Ready to Receive Yourself, but was digging In Full Cry recently.
P.S. Hearing Randy Peterson live last week with Tony Malaby's Apparitions band is what got me thinking along these lines.
Friday, December 18, 2015
2015 in review
This year, I often felt like I was sneaking new music in. I started a new job, put out a record and saw a two-decade obsession finally bear fruit. Honestly, there wasn't all that much room for anything else. But as I look back through the year's releases, I see quite a few that made an impression.
Genre pretty much went out the window, which is the way it ought to be. Last night, my wonderful girlfriend, Alex, and I spent some time sharing our current pop obsessions, which seem to be everyone's current pop obsessions. I love all the songs making the rounds: "Hotline Bling," "The Hills," "Here" (the latter is probably the single of the year for me). Bieber's "Sorry" is another in-the-air favorite that will not leave my brain. I did file jazz, metal and general-purpose year-end lists for various polls, but looking back, none of them feel definitive to me. That orderly, fenced-off approach doesn't reflect how music fits into my life. The other night, some friends and I sat around spinning vinyl ranging from the latest Sheer Mag 7" (my album of the year, even though it isn't an album) to the new Fleetwood Mac Tusk reissue, the stellar Laddio Bolocko box set and, just because, Bob Dylan's Infidels. It's all sitting by my turntable, along with a ton of other records that captivated me at one point or another recently: Sonny Rollins's The Bridge, the Eagles' One of These Nights, Keelhaul's Triumphant Return to Obscurity, Pat Metheny's 80/81, Blue Öyster Cult's Tyranny and Mutation, Roky Erickson's The Evil One, Joni Mitchell's Hejira, the Stooges' Fun House, etc. (I'm proud to say that the craw set and STATS LP are there too.) Music.
It's all in play at all times. It has to be a free space. In that spirit, here are some of the records that I enjoyed this year, that happened to come out this year, in no particular order—10 of them will eventually make up my Pazz and Jop ballot. Links to Bandcamp only, because that's where online music really lives
Krallice Ygg Huur (self-released)
This record to me is pure astonishment. It's my favorite thing Krallice has ever done—and that's saying a lot because I love much of their prior work, especially the self-titled debut and 2011's Diotima—and one of my favorite things that either Mick Barr and Colin Marston have ever done, which is saying even more. (Close call with Annwn and Skullgrid, respectively.) The amount of musical information here is staggering, as is the confidence and majestic flair with which it is rendered. This is art music, plain and simple, the vanguard of contemporary composition, that happens to be transmitted in a format we might refer to in shorthand as metal.
Sheer Mag II (Wilsuns/Katorga)
Probably the release I really and truly felt the most of any that came out in 2015. It's a four-song EP, but as an aesthetic statement of purpose, it's as weighty as any album I heard this year. The soul, the smarts, the wounded swagger. This is just pure rough rock-and-soul attitude filtered through an at times dauntingly complex sophisto-pop aesthetic. And vocals to melt your heart and cut through whatever distraction might be unfairly monopolizing your spirit on a given day. This just kicks so, so, so much ass.
Henry Threadgill Zooid In for a Penny, in for a Pound (Pi)
Zooid just keep pushing. One of the most insular bands on earth, and one of the most fascinating to stand outside of and cast one's listening gaze upon. I heard this music at Roulette a year ago, and it seemed like a new high bar for the group. The album completely does the set justice. So much beautiful detail, either when the band is cooking in its trademark oblique-chamber-funk mode or stripping back for mini sonic dioramas of curious detail and staunch refinement. Oddities and wonders abound, and they're only amplified by heightened attention. When you put on a Zooid record, you listen, and you listen to the members of Zooid listening, each playing their part in Threadgill's imaginative wonderland.
Mayday Parade Black Lines (Fearless)
Not a new band, but a new one to me. Mainstays of the Warped Tour scene and exponents of an emo offshoot that's near and dear to my heart and probably best exemplified by Say Anything's 2004 masterwork, …Is a Real Boy. Hugely passionate and anthemic pop-oriented rock music with a belt-to-the-rafters theatrical bent and an undercurrent of showy self-laceration. This album is totally, knowingly over-the-top and, if you're as into this sound as I am, eminently replayable.
Milford Graves and Bill Laswell Space / Time • Redemption (TUM)
I saw these two play duets at the Stone last year, and the chemistry was lacking. They find a groove on this album simply by coexisting. This is basically an ambient release, elevated above the mundane by the primeval thump of one of the mightiest and most mysterious percussionists on earth, and Laswell's melodic and textural know-how, which can blur into wallpaper-ism but here seems subtle and right and soothing and benevolent. To me, this is a logical sequel to Sonny Sharrock's Guitar (one of my very favorite records of all time), and not just because a) there's a track named for Sonny here and b) Laswell produced Guitar. Mystical, swirling, churning tone baths.
Jeff Lynne's ELO Alone in the Universe (Columbia)
I'm not an ELO completist, but I aspire to be one someday. Jeff Lynne's lifelong project, i.e., crafting Beatlesque pop music of limitless accessibility that doesn't apologize for its sly surreality and lyrical eccentricity, is a worthy one, and judging by this album, and by the outstanding live show I saw at Irving Plaza last month, he's still operating at a very high level. There are a handful of songs here ("When I Was a Boy," "One Step at a Time") that feel like future greatest hits, which, given the depth the ELO greatest-hit pool, is really saying something.
Stanley Cowell Juneteenth (Vision Fugitive)
I spent a fair amount of time with this one but it didn't feel like anywhere near enough. I hear Juneteenth as a cousin of Dave Burrell's breathtaking 1979 solo-piano version of Windward Passages, one of those albums where a pianist translates the vast orchestral universe inside their head to the keys. This feels like a magnum opus for Cowell and an important reminder that this giant continues to do great, vital work. Further thoughts here.
Voice Coils Heaven's Sense (Shatter Your Leaves)
Another EP that delineates an entire sonic world. This, like the Krallice record, seems to me to be a state-of-the-art example of not exactly where music is at this moment, because nothing else really sounds like Heaven's Sense, but of a sort of speculative future of music, where pop could end up if diligence and wisdom and higher instincts prevailed. Demanding, yes, but so sensuous and pleasurable and coherent at the same time. There are hooks in "An Atrium" that have run through my head for days. If you consider yourself a fan of so-called progressive music of any kind, or of pop that aims at a kind of ethereal complexity and sweeping and refined emotional heft—I'll throw out Kate Bush and Yes as two inadequate touchstones—you must, must, must hear this. The descriptor "haunting" has been drained of most of its meaning, but it applies here.
Mary Halvorson Meltframe (Firehouse 12)
Another release with a kind of fierce beauty and interiority to it, but while the Voice Coils EP is all about high-wire ensemble dazzlement, this is stripped back and close to the bone. A simple description of what Meltframe is—meditation on and deconstruction of melody—feels way too clinical. This is an album that sings with emotion. A personal language on a common instrument, spoken plainly—sort of the rule for how all jazz ought to feel but rarely does. All the approaches to the gorgeous and carefully selected source material work equally well: harsh, subdued, dense/effects-heavy, sparse/unadorned or one melting gradually into the other.
Tau Cross Tau Cross (Relapse)
A debut album that sets forth a strikingly well-formed band concept. Shades of Killing Joke, Motörhead, recent Prong and, yes, mid-to-late-period Voivod (that band's Michel "Away" Langevin is Tau Cross's drummer). Gloom-painted postpunk–meets-thrash-meets–hard rock with outstanding hooks and tons of variety; surprisingly, the folky tracks work as well as the ragers. Rob "The Baron" Miller's impassioned delivery brings real grizzled pathos. Further thoughts here.
Black Star Riders The Killer Instinct (Nuclear Blast)
The group that began life as the Band Once Again Known as Thin Lizzy but Without Phil Lynott is now, thankfully, rolling up their sleeves and doing it the hard way: forging ahead and making new music. This album sounds like it could have been made anywhere from about 1983 through 1989, but no one for whom music like this—hook-forward, arena-scaled, cheese-oblivious hard rock—holds any appeal is going to care about its "relevance." This album completely, wholeheartedly rocks. The Riders pay homage to Lizzy, yes, but really they're just honoring the tough-guy songwriting tradition in general; there's just as much Bon Jovi in here, and that's fine by me. Fantastic songs—well, on the first half of the album, at least—and a frontman, Ricky Warwick, who's easy to believe and root for.
Title Fight Hyperview (ANTI-)
There's apparently some sort of subgenre-oriented skin-shedding going on with this record—hardcore-gone-shoegaze, I believe—but since I'm not familiar with Title Fight's past work, I'm taking this at face value. Hyperview is simply a lush and enveloping melodic indie-rock album, undergirded with post-hardcore muscle and glistening with a melancholy emotional mist. The color field of guitars and the raw-throated cries that burst out from beneath them lead to a kind of mood-drunkenness that's a pleasure to get lost in. It helps that the songs themselves are as strong as the atmosphere.
Jack DeJohnette Made in Chicago (ECM)
As I indicated here, the quintet heard on this album has evolved considerably since they recorded this album at the Chicago Jazz Festival in 2013, but Made in Chicago still holds up as a supergroup effort that capitalizes on every bit of its enormous potential. The stars here, and I think Mr. DeJohnette would agree, are Muhal Richard Abrams, Roscoe Mitchell and Henry Threadgill, and the presence of a master drummer-leader who also happens to be one of the best listeners in jazz only makes their contributions—both as composers and improvisers—sound that much sweeter (or nastier or more otherworldly, depending on the moment). Not just great artists sharing the stage, but the sound of a group aesthetic crystallizing, and the stage being set for future wonders.
Laddio Bolocko Live and Unreleased 1997–2000 (No Quarter)
Post-hardcore colliding with funk, free jazz, sound collage and psychedelia in a totally organic way. The prog impulse channeled into fiercely danceable body music, fueled by one of the greatest drummers of our time, Blake Fleming, who I first came to know through the illustrious and incredible Dazzling Killmen. I'd always felt that I hadn't quite gotten the complete picture regarding this band from its earlier No Quarter compilation, The Life and Times of…, and this release confirms it. A heady barrage of archival material, some quizzical and fragmented, some gorgeously dialed in and fleshed out. (I adore the groove-science "Afrostructure" series, which falls somewhere in between these two poles.) The final stretch of this sprawling set, with the studio version of the two-part cosmic-groove-prog opus "How About This For My Hair?" and a live set from Slovenia that's so intense it feels like it could leave scars (but is also wonderfully subdued and sensitive in spots), is the reason why archival releases like this are essential to the musical ecosystem: to bring to light bygone marvels you never knew existed.
Sonny Rollins Quartet With Don Cherry Complete Live at the Village Gate 1962 (Solar)
Speaking of bygone marvels. We maybe had a clue with this one in the form of Our Man in Jazz, but did we really know the enormity of what went down until now?
Blind Idiot God Before Ever After (Indivisible)
BIG share Laddio Bolocko's NYC-via–St. Louis trajectory, as well as their wide-open conception of what rock-based post-hardcore music can sound and feel like. Another Laswell production, and a balletic, rumbling behemoth of a comeback album. Everything about Before Ever After sounds to me like an improvement on the already-intriguing formula that BIG advanced on their late-’80s/early-’90s work. Can't wait to see where they go from here.
Revenge Behold.Total.Rejection (Season of Mist)
J. Read is like a gigantic mutant rat that leaps out of the darkness, chomps on your leg and refuses to unclench its jaws as you flail about in agony. The man is a driven psychopath behind the drums and one of metal's truest, most original underground voices. On days when I lose faith in the idea of metal, grow weary with its self-straitjacketing conventions, I can still reach for a Revenge album—and specifically this, which is easily the band's most compelling record to date—and feel something. Pure, seething soul and fire, and the deft commingling of chaos and precision. Just when you think this album is a total blastbeat blur, it snaps back into focus with a skull-rattling rawk breakdown or cave-prog precision attack. If you want to know my "metal album of the year," it's a tie between this and Ygg Huur—despite what my ballot says below; again, feelings change and evolve, which is why polls are just arbitrary snapshots in time—albums that represent two very different extremes of "extreme metal" that actually feel, you know, extreme. Further thoughts here.
The Bad Plus and Joshua Redman The Bad Plus Joshua Redman (Nonesuch)
This album didn't top my 2015 jazz ballot, but if I were casting said vote right now instead of a few weeks back, it probably would. The Bad Plus Joshua Redman is a near-perfect record, an exemplary illustration of everything we already know the Bad Plus does well—at this point, their sonic fingerprint is as instantly recognizable as that of, say, the Who—given a smart tweak/kick-in-the-ass via the presence of a contemporary tenor-saxophone master. This quartet was already great four years ago, but here, there's a sense of shared purpose that feels hard-earned through hours and hours spent together onstage. Instantly memorable compositions, performances that move with convincing emotional purpose and with utmost concern for the musical material at hand, whether it's crisp, refined and determinedly melodic or sprawling, choppy and, well, determinedly melodic. Jazz always needs more song-focus, more band-focus, and the Bad Plus keep showing us how handsomely those philosophies can pay off. Here, they have some very able assistance. Not really measuring by length here, but this is the 2015 "epic" for me.
Interlude:
So yes, maybe I'm getting in a small dig at Kamasi Washington's The Epic there (and also, more explicitly, in the Stanley Cowell blurb linked above). The Epic certainly wasn't an album I disliked, but nor was it was one I connected with on any deep level. I heard glossy, tastefully updated retro bombast with strong melodies, some truly ass-kicking post-Coltrane/turbo-bop moments and long stretches of not-much-happening. I'd hold up any of the jazz albums listed above as far better examples of "where jazz is at" than The Epic any day. But then again…
Kendrick Lamar To Pimp a Butterfly (Top Dawg / Aftermath / Interscope)
The Kamasi-wave wasn't really about Kamasi. It was about Washington's role in this thorny masterpiece, which topped every poll both because of its sociopolitical urgency in a year where the topics Lamar dealt with on To Pimp… were not only impossible to ignore but impossible not to despair over, and because, well, it was an enthralling LP, period, a searing self-interrogation that balanced every menacing boast with a choked-up sniffle. Everyone seemed to want to tell me that the album I just described was actually D'Angelo's Black Messiah. I didn't quite connect with that one, either, but I believed every last second of this.
Iron Maiden The Book of Souls (Parlophone/Sanctuary)
Same goes for this. I like Iron Maiden, which seems weird to say, since they're a band beloved by their fan base in an uniquely rabid way and ignored by pretty much everyone else. Honestly, I just don't know the catalog that well, but The Book of Souls was an instant "yes, please" for me. I love the way the visceral, bottom-heavy production sound combines with Bruce Dickinson's heroic yet endearingly strained-sounding vocals, and I love how itself this band remains, how committed they sound to this thing called metal that is really, for them, simply Iron Maiden Music. Like the Black Star Riders album, The Book of Souls rocks in a timeless way. I didn't once make it through the entire LP in a single sitting, but whenever I checked in with it—from archetypal single "Speed of Light" to that hammy yet genuinely touching 18-minute finale, "Empire of the Clouds"—I felt uplifted and inspired.
Weather Report The Legendary Tapes 1978–1981 (Legacy)
This hits me in a similar way: a supremely confident band, doing its thing. As a group, Weather Report had a strange magic—virtuosic daredevilry, yes, but also festive melody and childlike wonder and a certain kind of zany party-prog verve. None of the truly great acts that we label as "fusion" (ahem…) really sounded anything alike, and this release helps us see Weather Report for the style-transcendent anomaly that they were, and adds to the welcome hoopla surrounding the Jaco documentary release (and my own private hoopla surrounding a recent deep immersion in the Jaco–Joni Mitchell collaboration).
Morgoth Ungod (Century Media)
Deactivate brain. Rage. Repeat. (For those who related to this, as well as my Obituary and Asphyx gushing over the years, you need to hear Ungod.)
Kirk Knuffke Arms and Hands (Royal Potato Family)
This cornet specialist continues to record in all kinds of interesting contexts, bringing fresh ideas to each situation. I agree with the core mission statement of Arms and Hands—that bringing together Bill Goodwin and Mark Helias was a fantastic idea. (Lamplighter, another 2015 Knuffke session featuring Goodwin, is also well worth your time, and from what I've read and the samples, this sounds awesome.) Another example of jazz-as-personal-sonic-signature, in personnel, mood, repertoire.
Update, 12/28/15:
David S. Ware / Apogee Birth of a Being (Aum Fidelity)
Heart-burstingly passionate trio music—perhaps the single most convincing document of post-Ayler free jazz I've heard—from 1977, reissued here with extra material. Apogee, a working band with Cooper-Moore (then Gene Ashton) on piano and Marc Edwards on drums, is, to me, every bit as compelling as Ware's later, better-known quartet with Matthew Shipp, William Parker, etc. Massive.
Update, 12/29/15
Killing Joke Pylon (Spinefarm)
The only reason this one wasn't on here before is that I hadn't yet had a chance to spend good time with it. As with ELO, I'm not a Killing Joke completist, but I aspire to be one. I adored KJ's 2010 album, Absolute Dissent, but sort of slept on 2012's MMXII. I need to go back and remedy that, because this new one is another monster. Menace, beauty, relentless momentum, enthralling texture. Few bands can conjure such a pervasive, well-shaded sensation of gloom.
Update, 12/30/15
Elder Lore (Armageddon Shop)
Whoo boy, does this thing kick ass. A few people (one being my friend and former colleague Steve Smith) had tipped me off to Lore during the course of the year, but I didn't really dig in till just now. I'll reprise a line I just tweeted, because it sums up my thoughts well: This is like recent Mastodon gone full prog, with vastly better production. I'm still digesting this, but it seems to me that the quality of the songwriting on Lore matches the enormous ambition on display here, which is sort of insane given how high these guys are clearly aiming.
Jaco
A documentary that aims for and achieves definitive status via its smart balance of the personal and the musical. Watching this, you feel like you're seeing Jaco from all sides. Moving and insightful testimony from collaborators (Peter Erskine, Joni Mitchell, Wayne Shorter, et al.) and confidants (Bill Milkowski's contribution is particularly valuable). Breathtaking footage. A complicated life, dealt with sensitively yet unflinchingly.
Update, 12/31/15
Napalm Death Apex Predator — Easy Meat (Century Media)
Namechecked below but deserves a special shout-out. What I love about newer Napalm Death is, paradoxically, how clean it sounds. The current incarnation of this band is miles away from state-of-the-art extremity; by comparison, the Revenge album above makes 2015 Napalm (at least the recorded version) sound like Chuck Berry. But I'm fascinated by the way they've refined their craft for maximum accessibility and coherence, while remaining committed to speed and abrasiveness, and a genuine sense of purgative rage, embodied by Barney Greenway. You can hear everything that's going on in this music, and there's great care taken in the composition, pacing, mood. Extremity isn't really the issue: Napalm Death is, at this point simply, a great, adventurous rock band.
P.S. Phil Freeman's guide to the ND discography is essential for those of us who know bits and pieces of the band's long, complicated history but not the whole thing.
*****
The nitty-gritty
2015 Jazz Ballot (with regard to this poll)
1. Milford Graves and Bill Laswell Space/Time • Redemption (TUM)
2. Jack DeJohnette Made in Chicago (ECM)
3. Henry Threadgill Zooid In for a Penny, in for a Pound (Pi)
4. Mary Halvorson Meltframe (Firehouse 12)
5. The Bad Plus and Joshua Redman The Bad Plus Joshua Redman (Nonesuch)
6. Stanley Cowell Juneteenth (Vision Fugitive)
7. Wadada Leo Smith and John Lindberg Celestial Weather (TUM)
8. Kirk Knuffke Arms and Hands (Royal Potato Family)
9. Jon Irabagon Behind the Sky (Irabbagast)
10. John Zorn Inferno (Tzadik)
2015 Metal Ballot (with regard to this list)
1. Revenge Behold.Total.Rejection (Season of Mist)
2. Black Star Riders The Killer Instinct (Nuclear Blast)
3. Iron Maiden The Book of Souls (Parlophone/Sanctuary)
4. Tau Cross Tau Cross (Relapse)
5. Blind Idiot God Before Ever After (Indivisible)
6. Krallice Ygg Huur (self-released)
7. Morgoth Ungod (Century Media)
8. Royal Thunder Crooked Doors (Relapse)
9. Napalm Death Apex Predator — Easy Meat (Century Media)
10. Embodied Torment Liturgy of Ritual Execution (New Standard Elite)
10 Best Shows I Saw in 2015
1/13 - Celebrating Charlie Haden (The Town Hall)
2/13 - John Zorn, Steve Coleman, Milford Graves + Marc Ribot, Trevor Dunn, Tyshawn Sorey (Village Vanguard)
2/26 - Xylouris White (Bowery Ballroom)
3/15 - Charles Lloyd Quartet (Village Vanguard)
5/10 - Morpheus Descends (Saint Vitus)
6/11 - Feast of the Epiphany + Travis Laplante (IBeam)
6/20 - Dead Moon + Borbetomagus (Pioneer Works)
6/29 - Rush (MSG)
8/21 - Krallice (The Stone)
10/5 - Jack DeJohnette’s Made in Chicago (Cornell University)
With a special honorable mention for Ayahuasca, Godstopper, Couch Slut and Pyrryon at BRIEFCASEFEST 2015.
SONGS/2015
Saturday, August 22, 2015
Always has been: Krallice at the Stone and a decade in NYC
I do not like to mythologize, but there is something to this time that I have lived through, in this place.
Last night, I went to see Krallice at the Stone, performing their head-spinning new album, Ygg huur, in its entirety. (If you're reading this on August 22 or 23, 2015, the Mick Barr residency is still in full swing.) A vanguard underground metal band, playing in a tiny black box. A seated show, polite clapping in between songs. It all made a certain amount of sense, if you had access to the proper context.
Before the show, I was talking to Torsten Meyer, the indefatigable videographer—and generally funny, friendly, down-to-earth dude—whose archive of heavy, extreme and otherwise underground shows in NYC during the past nine years or so stands as a definitive document of the aforementioned time and place. Torsten moved to NYC in 2006, which we both agreed was a sort of golden age for NYC music. The dates are fuzzy, but I do in fact remember a kind of heyday being in full swing at that time. For the listener engaged with not just, as Torsten pointed out, a certain kind of lawless DIY environment (shout-out to Todd P) that encouraged wildness, fun, creativity, but also the fuzzy but unmistakable idea of progress, a petri-dish environment where you felt like you were actually witnessing the birth of something unprecedented, this time, and the years before and after it, felt electric.
I will never forget what it was like to witness Orthrelm performing their avant-metal-minimalist masterpiece, OV, in full while seated several feet away from Josh Blair's kick drum at a repurposed Tribeca firehouse in 2003, or Lightning Bolt turning a roomful of buzzed, rowdy showgoers into a maelstrom of sweaty, ecstatic chaos at a foul-smelling loft in a part of Brooklyn that then seemed like an industrial frontier town, or Coptic Light erupting, billowing out waves of exuberant and cathartic free rock at the Lucky Cat on Grand St. (later Bruar Falls and the Grand Victory), or the sextet lineup of Zs setting up in a circle at Tonic, poised in front of music stands, redefining "new music" as a kind of punk-minded aggression mixed with ruthless, scholarly precision, or a fledgling Behold… the Arctopus plying righteously maximalist tech metal in front of a tiny audience on an even tinier stage at Williamsburg's late-lamented Rock Star Bar (a.k.a. the Local), or Peter Evans gurgling and sputtering demented, virtuosic madness through his pocket trumpet in the back room of a Chelsea café, or Vaz ripping through their haunting noise-punk blasts-that-felt-like dirges in a series of deep-Greenpoint dive bars.
I was also a participant, was there on drums when Aa would play at packed lofts on Johnson Ave or S. 5th St., setting rooms off, rooms that didn't need much of a push because they were already filled with the buzzed and deliriously happy. Or with Stay Fucked in the basement of Micheline's in Bushwick, the living room of 248BS, the back of Coco 66, the checkerboard room at Death by Audio. Uncle Paulie's, Dead Herring, Cake Shop, the Charleston, rooms whose names I can't recall but whose layouts and sensations I remember intensely well. That feeling that I got then and still get now when my drums are stacked up in the corner and I'm watching the opening band and gearing up, setting my mental dials to "Destroy."
There was something happening during these years. I worked at Time Out New York, doing my best to document and publicize it all at the same time as I was participating in it. I remember interviewing Mick Barr (of Orthrelm and later of Krallice) in 2005 and feeling like I was speaking to a mythic figure, not because he had any airs of being in any way superior, but because everyone who saw Mick play during that time, witnessed the fire and endurance and invention flying off him, that turbocharged picking hand, that unassuming commitment to going all the way, to the heart of the sun, or somewhere further, more alien, knew they were privy to something historic. Getting to know musicians like Colin Marston, Kevin Shea, Mary Halvorson, Kevin Hufnagel. Extremely nice, genuine people who, underneath, were absolutely driven to greatness and newness. Progress, virtuosity, grabbing their creative moment by the throat.
Last night, I felt a palpable sense that even though this community, this current has in some ways dispersed, as these artists and others have continued down their paths or shot off into other ones, the mythic not-that-long-ago New York, the signal community of my life as a person engaged with and active in the arts—aside from the Kansas City post-hardcore scene in which I came of age as a music lover but not yet a player—is still very much intact. There were Mick and Colin, together on "stage." There were Hufnagel and Mike Pride and Marc Edwards in the audience. There were friendly faces newer to me, luminaries of a slightly later wave: Mario Diaz De Leon, Nick McMaster, Andrew Hock, Chris Pitsiokos. The ones that, when the history of all this is written, when Tonic circa 2006 or the Stone circa 2015 is remembered by those who had their minds blown at these places—just as jazz musicians and their fans did at Minton's in the ’40s—will be known as the Cats.
Seeing Krallice play, the currents that have made up this disparate, ever-changing scene all converged. Conservatory-level complexity coupled with the gritty DIY spirit. This band, constructors of labyrinths, many-tentacled octopi of sound, filled with strange lurches, epic vistas, harsh and sour notes, ear-bending chords, tectonic tempo displacement—pummeling, doomy bliss. Krallice have always concerned themselves with a certain kind of sci-fi sprawl, way beyond language and genre—"years past matter," to quote one of their album titles. The currents of Colin Marston and Mick Barr's countless former and current projects—a short list would have to include Behold… the Arctopus, Dysrhythmia, Gorguts, Orthrelm, Crom-Tech, Ocrilim and the Flying Luttenbachers—converging into these heaving, hurtling planets of sound. To reduce their art to something like "black metal" would be silly. Krallice is cosmic, a mother brain alive with ideas, afire with a certain kind of harnessed madness. It's brutal and balletic (qualities embodied in the playing of Lev Weinstein, one of the most genuinely powerful, precise and exciting extreme-metal drummers I've ever seen, a player who restores the centrality of actual full-body engagement to an art form that can sometimes seem like mere spasm-ing of the extremities), visceral and composerly, so finely wrought, so clearly avant-garde and, whatever you happen to think of it, so obviously accomplished.
Again, if you've been paying attention, Krallice at the Stone—these musicians, with these backgrounds, in this place, with these influences and aspirations and track records of greatness, performing a metal album named after a Scelsi piece at a seated show in an LES black box owned by a giant of disparate experimental musics—made a certain kind of perfect sense. New music is metal is jazz is avant-rock is progress is challenge is virtuosity is newness is New York; always has been.
This hybridization, this blurring and mingling, is straightforward, and, except in the minds of those who put the classification before the idea and the intent, fairly obvious and really not that big a deal. This is not a trend; it's not even an organized movement, though you could draw a sort of family tree, charting the countless interactions among those named (and not named) above. You could call it a scene if you wanted to. It's a collection of committed people, really. Those who were there last night and those who have been there on countless nights like it (shout-outs to my friends Joe and Tony, John and Aron and Julian and Mike and Josh and Nick L. and Nadav and Judd and Sean, and Nick P.). There were, and are, all kinds of New Yorks. I'm proud to say that this has been, and still is, mine.
Friday, June 06, 2014
Suspension of self: Mick Barr and Marc Edwards
Last year, I wrote about the jazz/metal intersection for The Daily Note. One of my case studies was the Mick Barr / Marc Edwards duo. By that time, I'd seen Barr play many times—with Orthelm, Ocrilim, Krallice and various other projects—and caught at least one show by Edwards, in collaboration with Weasel Walter (I believe it was the 2011 Death by Audio performance that ended up on Solar Emission), so I had good sense of each player. At least one of their duo sets up to that point was on YouTube, so I spent plenty of time with that document as well. In short, I did my best to get close to the music.
Last night, I saw the Barr/Edwards duo live for the first time, standing front-and-center at Saint Vitus, and I realized that before that, I hadn't been anywhere near it. I'm doing my best to recall it now, after an intense night of music that also featured sets by Many Arms and Dysrhythmia (respective leaders in the zones of what you might reductively call punk fusion and prog metal), and again, I don't feel like I'm anywhere near it. Last year, I wrote about the nowness of witnessing, respectively, Milford Graves and J. Read. To have your mind around those players, fully, you do, literally, have to be there, as the saying goes. I think it is the same for Mick and Marc.
There is this cliché of finding common ground. With Barr and Edwards, what they do is something closer to finding common purpose. Their backgrounds are distinct, tied to their respective ages and geographies—Mick coming of age in the Connecticut and D.C. hardcore/post-hardcore scenes of the early-to-mid-’90s, and Marc in the jazz avant-garde of early ’70s Boston and New York. Edwards made his name with Apogee, a sadly underdocumented trio with David S. Ware and Gene Ashton (later known as Cooper-Moore), brilliantly recollected by Cooper-Moore here and heard on Ware's outstanding debut, Birth of a Being, recorded in ’77 and released in ’79. (Cooper-Moore shares a priceless account of the group's appearance at the Village Vanguard, opening for none other than Sonny Rollins, at Rollins's invitation. "For you see, we had the endorsement of the master… We mounted the stage as if it were a spacecraft, and blasted off.") Barr came into his own with Crom-Tech, an insular prog-punk duo that famously wowed Ian MacKaye and the rest of the D.C. underground.
Edwards, along with Ware, eventually worked his way to Cecil Taylor's band, a collaboration documented on the mighty Dark to Themselves, from ’76. (As Edwards told me on a postshow chat last night, Birth of a Being was sort of the afterlife of Apogee; the band was most active in the early ’70s, and it reunited post–Dark to Themselves to record what would become Ware's debut.) Barr cofounded Orthrelm, which reached its apex with the 2005 minimalist-metal opus OV. Edwards was born, in ’49, more than 25 years before Barr, but the players' trajectories, their respective pursuits of free jazz and extreme post-hardcore/-metal—musics built on intensity and endurance—were leading them to a very similar place. These underground movements aren't quite unified—the crowd at Saint Vitus last night wasn't the same crowd I'll see next week at the Vision Festival, give or take a few fellow overlappers—but the two scenes have, thankfully, become entirely simpatico.
Barr and Edwards have developed a shared language, or more accurately, they've discovered—after being introduced by Weasel Walter, a key facilitator and catalyst of this new jazz/metal moment, as well as an integral participant in it—that they had each arrived separately at a variation on the same dialect. As Mick told me last year, the purpose and method of their duo is clear and straightforward: "I think we’ve done three shows now or four, and every time it’s basically the same thing; we just play a solid 20 minutes to a half-hour, and afterwards, I always feel like I got my ass kicked."
And so it was last night, yielding an experience (probably closer to 45 minutes, on this particular occasion) that I wished afterward and still wish now that I could bottle. Edwards epitomizing a style of free drumming that I think of as coaxing or conjuration, enacting what is more or less a perma-roll around the kit. (You can hear him engaging with both blast-beat-centric metal and what I hear as a very specific sort of ’65–’66 free-jazz approach—think of the undulating, rubato sweet spot between Elvin Jones on Sun Ship and Rashied Ali on Interstellar Space. But in the end, Marc Edwards isn't playing style; he's playing drums.) Employing a loose grip, allowing for the multi-attack strokes that are his signature, and using a double kick pedal to add extra density. (The latter is a recent addition to the Edwards arsenal; Marc told me that after spending roughly four decades as a single-pedal drummer, he made the transition to double kick after seeing Bay Area the extreme-free-jazz duo Ettrick play.) Edwards knows when to add in a gut-punching crash cymbal / bass-drum bash for punctuation, but mostly he's all about the snowball effect, the gradual accruance or invocation of a primal rumble that's maximalist (in terms of the sheer density of notes) and minimalist (in terms of the overall effect) at the same time. Barr is after something similar. His famous cyborg-level picking and fretting chops yield a firehose of sonic information.
The agreement between the two players seems to be, simply, faith in endurance. It's not just some sort of athletic act, what they do, but nor is a self-important "spiritual" exercise. Very plainly, and without making a fuss of it, when Marc Edwards and Mick Barr play duo, they're showing you that there's no distinction between these two pursuits once you reach a certain level. You work for decades to hone what we call chops; then you find a sympathetic partner and enter this free space, this lingua franca of—do we call it avant-garde? I think there's a language pretty well established at this stage, so maybe it's better to say that you willingly step into a kind of DIY sublime, where the extreme volumes and densities of niche styles such as post-hardcore and free jazz blur together, and steadily and deliberately and mostly without pause, you're conjuring and nurturing a vibration. I think of a rubber-band ball being assembled in fast motion or a wave form gradually increasing in amplitude. Whatever the metaphor, it's about starting somewhere, hitting the ground, as it were, and just maintaining, stoking, pushing, pushing, whipping this musical whitewater into a glorious, room-engulfing froth. It's harsh, yes, but also benevolent, loving.
There were several brief pauses in last night's set, and a few of what I'd call chapters. During one segment, Edwards shifted to more of a fractured fusion groove on the bass, snare and ride—as heard here—ceasing the multi-strokes for a period and opening up space in the music. Barr responded shrewdly, using his volume knob to bring his sound in and out. But on the whole, the set was a sort of sonic static—and I mean "static" descriptively, with no pejorative connotation—a statement of either relentless macro-level sameness or infinite micro-level variety.
It's a gift to step into that space with two players this accomplished. Afterward, as I'm doing now, you might step back and ponder the marvel of the circumstance, the years and miles and communities and struggles—all the facts of life in underground music, the way it stubbornly plants itself and endures, cultivates a small, devoted following and persists with a more or less willfully oblivious or even antagonistic relationship to the wider world of art—that brought Mick Barr and Marc Edwards to share a stage at a metal bar in Greenpoint. But there, in that time, in their presence, you're just communing with what they're conjuring. The contrast with say, a work day spent in front of the computer, is total: a welcome blizzard after a day of dry, blazing heat. You don't ever want it to stop, and that feeling persists when it's over. You carry it with you, a seemingly superhuman, yet ultimately so humble and generous, musical act such as this. It doesn't matter what you call it—jazz, metal, improv, minimalism; what's important is the net effect, for listener and—I expect—performer: a temporary and very deliberate suspension of self.
P.S. Videos of Barr/Edwards in action: 2011, 2013 and (wow, just discovered this!) last night.
P.P.S. Went looking for new/recent Edwards recordings last night after the show and came across this late 2013 release, Sakura Sakura (3 variations). Just bought it; can't wait to check it out. Solar Emission, linked above, is highly recommended.
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