T-Bone Burnett in 2010

Maybe this makes me sound like a Grammy delegate or an old, clueless man - but T-Bone Burnett has had quite a great year so far. Dude has been reviving tired acts and producing albums that all in the top-tier of Americana/Country records I've heard in 2010. Good for him, making me excited about roots music again.

It started with the much talked about soundtrack to "Crazy Heart" which suddenly threw Ryan Bingham into the spotlight and showed off a talent that we didn't know Jeff Bridges had. The originals T-Bone produced for the album are almost all excellent and the tracks he threw into the movie and soundtrack with them fit perfectly. Not a great movie, definitely a great soundtrack.
Jeff Bridges - Hold On You


He then went ahead and made Jakob Dylan relevant for the first time since the "One Headlight". Teaming him up with some of the best female vocalists in roots music and stripping the music down to a real minimal level, Jakob finally has music to accompany his voice. Simple, effective. A real surprise. I wanted to dislike "Women + Country" but it happens to be one of those albums that keeps getting better.
Jakob Dylan - Everybody's Hurtin' (Live at WNYC) with backing vocals by Neko Case and Kelly Hogan


One that slipped under my radar somehow was Willie Nelson's "Country Music". Now, if you know me, you know that Willie is probably among the 5-10 people I would consider my favorite musicians and as far as personalities go: he's probably at the very top. The last few years of Willie's music have been hit and miss, often within the same album. Two years ago he put out an "old timey" record with Asleep at the Wheel that was fun but ultimately left me yearning for something different. He put out a terrible reggae inspired record, another tin-pan alley inspired record, etc. He's still great when he's great. but his source material just isn't working - he's not quite in Rod Stewart territory, but sometimes he might get a little close. This album though, with only one of his own songs puts him back into that great 70s era Willie. Obviously it's not as classic as some of those early 70s releases, but by today's standards and the fact that it was cut by Willie Nelson at his age: this is definitely an album that deserves a lot more attention than it's getting. If you like country music and it's history - you should probably find this album.
Willie Nelson - Freight Train Boogie (Delmore Brothers) Live on Letterman


I don't really care for Robert Randolph & The Family Band on record (nor do I really care about them live) but he also produced their latest record which is gathering mixed reviews as those records always do. I didn't like it - you might.

The real surprise of the year and maybe the best of all the records T-Bone has produced this year is "No Better Than This" by none other than John Mellencamp. Yes, the Cougar. Now, Mellencamp has had a comeback lately, Rolling Stone gave his last album like the 5th best of 2008 or 2009. But the thing that is truly cool is that I've never really liked Mellencamp. I respect him, what he stands for, the content of many of his songs - but he just came off as a cornball most of the time. But this album works for one reason: mono. Recorded in mono, with vintage equipment, Burnett makes Mellencamp sound like old folk 78s. It's a novel concept that will turn a lot of people off, but really works for me. The songs are good - the sound is awesome. It's just a lot of fun and suits Mellencamp's voice a lot better than the glossy productions he is usually backed by.
John Mellencamp - Love at First Sight


Lastly, T-Bone has reconnected with up and comer Ryan Bingham and produced the given him the finest, most cohesive album of Bingham's career. I've liked Bingham a lot since he came out a few years ago - "Mescalito" was a bright spot in 2007; a really strong year for country and folk music. His followup "Roadhouse Sun" was a mixed bag, with shades of future genius intespersed with cheesy production and songs that tried a little too hard. But "Junky Star" is his best album yet. It's dark, it's pretty minimal, and Bingham's gravelly voice is always at the front. His backing band is great and the songs have lyrics that quite often shock. It's a solid record and definitely worth a listen.
Ryan Bingham - Making "Junky Star"


So I'm not claiming any of these albums to be among the very best albums of the year, but as I said earlier - they're all good and all have moments of greatness. For a year where I'm not finding nor really looking for much Americana and roots music, T-Bone Burnett has stepped forward to produce some of the strongest work of his production career.

Oh - and there's still an album yet to come out by Elton John & Leon Russell which will be...interesting.

A To Z: Lemon of Pink - The Books

2003 was a bit of a revelatory year in music for me. It was the year in which I discovered indie music blogs, review sites, and discussion forums. I tracked Pitchfork reviews tirelessly, even going through their archives at the time. I followed Fluxblog updates everyday, downloading whatever new song that was uploaded. Like many teenagers of the time, I grew into adulthood at a time when information availability was expanding and knowledge of new and relevant music seemed entirely too vast to ever attempt to conquer.

Sometime during that year, I read a review about "The Lemon Of Pink" by The Books. Earlier, I had already lost much time during an obsession over the divisive "Ether Teeth" by Fog, a record that I found mentioned through Anticon message boards. A description of The Books sound seemed that it would fall in line with the abstract samples and acoustic instrumentation found on "Ether Teeth"...but you know, this record was actually critically acclaimed and deemed "good" by just about everyone. Therefore it should have been my favorite record ever.

"The Lemon of Pink" isn't my favorite ever, but it is very good. As the spring months have been approaching and the spring weather seems here to stay, I can think of few experimental records from this decade that fit the time so perfectly. The acoustic strings present throughout, the ethereal original vocals that float above the shimmering tones, the random vocal samples that seem to appear out of nowhere, sneaking up on your like a person yelling from across the street. This is a folk album that breaks all folk tradition.

There are few albums that that float by as quickly as "The Lemon Of Pink." From the first female voice stating the title of the record out through "That Right Ain't Shit" and even "PS", this album comes together best as a whole piece. It is rare indeed that one would put a song from this record on a mixtape, other than with the intention of breaking apart whatever the general theme of your mix was. As individual songs, this music is pretty - but doesn't make a whole lot of sense. As a 37-minute album, everything comes together, bleeding into one another, creating memories of past picnics, spring sports, setting suns over the beach.

Perhaps I romanticize this record too much. I don't adore or obsess over this record and rarely listen to it 7 years after it's initial release. However, when I do take the time to listen to it, to remember why I enjoyed it so much all those years ago and the positive impact it had on broadening my listening tastes in the years that came after, I am overjoyed with what The Books have accomplished with this album. It's not a perfect recording and in 2010 there are records that are similar that might do part of this sound better, but it is one of those records that can be conditionally perfect. Sometimes you just have to wait to find that condition.

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Another Electronic Musician - Inflationary

I quite like this new AEM album. Like this video too. Nothing special, but it works. States of Space is out now on n5md. Favorable review on CMG too.

A To Z: Chessa - Shuttle358

We tend to give ambient music two distinct purposes:

1. To serve as inoffensive background noise for activities like studying, sleeping or perhaps barely waking up.
2. To serve as a special soundtrack to a unique situation we may find ourselves in: weaving through travelers at an airport, riding on a morning train, watching the snow fall outside.

I know of few people who choose to listen to ambient or drone music as a means of sparking lively conversation or who elect to share their new favorite microtonal artists with their peers. It is not an entertaining music, nor is it a significantly artistic music. Yet somehow these sound sculptures can manage to be the most quiescent or the most absorptive music we listen to.

We have heard over the last 30 years of the brilliance found within the minimal compositions of masters like Brian Eno and Harold Budd. In half the time, we have been able to add artists like Wolfgang Voight, William Basinski, Christian Fennesz and Stars of The Lid to that list. What was once a genre that few tread within, dominated by tape loops, hazy guitar pedals and the tinkling of keys on a synth or piano, soon blossomed during the laptop age of the early 2000's. Anyone could be a sound musician. I tried, you tried, we failed.

And though the genre of microtonal ambient music is far from dead - it is altogether saturated by carbon copy artists, all clawing (softly) for that one standout review handed out by a major publication every year.

I love ambient music, and while I'm in no way someone who follows the actual scene (and there is a true art-based minimal scene in every corner of the western world), nor am I even learned enough to be able to write for mapsadaisical, I delve into many new releases every year that happen to catch my attention during the hyperbolic ramblings of their press releases or Boomkat reviews. Every year many of them are nothing but boring, soulless electro-acoustic meanderings that start nowhere and go nowhere. "A guy, a laptop and a guitar walk into a bedroom..."

It is funny that we can consider a music with no specific form to adhere to but whatever one hears in their own head as "soulless", yet many releases within this genre are exactly that. Dan Abrams aka Shuttle358 is anything but soulless.

All positive reviews of ambient music make reference that a particular release is good because of the "warmth" and "humanity" that the music brings up for the listener. Specific memories in time are recaptured, current moments in the present are captured for the first time. Chessa is warm, Chessa is human.

Recorded and released during the apex of the click-and-beep madhouse of 2004, Shuttle358's third album on 12k has spoken to me for 5 years now. The fuzz, the chimes, the buzzing sounds, the looped guitar - these are all elements that can be found on releases by any ambient composer - and yet, this release sticks out from the others. I listened to this album four times this afternoon as I watched the rain come and go out my window. As night set in, earlier than it should have, the music continued to soundtrack my evening. Every track seems to find itself matching my breaths as it clicks along, every track placed perfectly in context with the exact emotion I encounter upon this experience.

It is a quiet album, a beautiful album - one that has many situational uses. It just turns out that its beauty has not allowed me to tie it to one situation in particular, but many. And few albums can do that.

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Totally or Totally Not: 80's

New compilation just released by my bros over at Hipinion. 80's covers. Halfway through, its the best one they've released.

1. spaghettiandblankets - steppin' out (joe jackson)
2. overoverover(shermer) & mai - would i lie to you (eurythmics)
3. baba o rly - head over heels (tears for fears)
4. hat and beard - candy (cameo)
5. phillistine - when 2 r in love (prince)
6. nathan kozyra (ft. erik cheer) - you're the best (karate kid) (joe esposito)
7. uberwear - i'll be where the heart is (kim carnes)
8. arepa - what's inside a girl (the cramps)
9. fuckles - girls (beastie boys)
10. thrdklla - stand an deliver (adam and the ants)
11. Genius Sir - girl u want (devo)
12. sunglasses - no surrender (bruce springsteen)
13. black sandwich - dirty mind (prince)
14. eugenics - ceremony (new order)
15. buboclot - aqua (eurythmics)
16. fresh salad - love is a stranger (eurythmics)
17. legibet - orinoco flow (enya)
18. miss black america - girls just wanna have fun (cyndi lauper)
19. dragon jeans - self control (RAF)
20. sonicgabe - love is a battlefield (pat benatar)
21. nathan kozyra (ft. erik gloom) - cherry coloured funk (cocteau twins)
22. sad pandas - hey hey spaceman (guided by voices)
23. thrdklla - bark at the moon (ozzy osbourne)
24. contristo - i wanna be adored (stone roses)
25. ernie anastoz - atlantic city (bruce springsteen)

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A To Z: Bravebird - Amel Larrieux

*Note: I got a DMCA takedown notice for this, but you should still like Amel Larrieux, so I won't delete the post.*

I was 9 years old in 1995. I grew up in the first age of youth that began to make mix cds rather than mix tapes. I was of the first generation to see the MP3 and digitally available music become mainstream and readily accessible. I don't even own a cassette player anymore and I sold every single one of my cds over the 2009 holiday break. Music is as enjoyable to me in 2010 as it was in 1995, though the way I take it in is so different.

To top things off, the first time I heard Amel Larrieux was in 1995, a little song by Groove Theory called "Tell Me"



In high school I wrote a 5-page "personal" essay reflecting on my past in which I would scour my family's cds and cassettes and make mixtapes. I described the amount of time at the ages of 8, 9 and 10 that I would spend listening to popular radio stations in Portland, Oregon, waiting for the precise song to play so that I could record it onto tape at the right place. The primary inspiration for this essay and a large chunk of it consisted of me discussing my obsession to "Tell Me." I can't say that it was the first song I fell in love with, but it is definitely possible that the song was my first true, conscious musical obsession.

I didn't listen to the entire Groove Theory album until 2005, I hadn't listened to any of Amel's solo albums until 2004. I didn't even connect her to being the singer of what may have been the primary song of my youth.

I still can't really explain why I love that song. It's simple in structure, chorus and production. Amel's vocals are wonderful, but hardly hold a candle to the things found on her later solo efforts. "Bravebird", her second solo album, released in 2004 isn't my favorite work of hers, but the fact is that it is an Amel Larrieux album, and it's still very good.

The album shifts between jazzy numbers, more upbeat-almost Alicia Keys in 2007 style numbers, more traditionaly grrl-centric Neo-Soul, a song with a distinct Bossa Nova feeling, and a couple of tracks harkening back to the Acid Jazz styles of Groove Theory. Throughout the whole album, the production feels like ?uestlove and The Roots, the haze just barely hanging there.

Amel's voice sticks out though, as it should.

There is no doubt in my mind that Amel is one of the most gifted singers we have right now, with the ability to cover all the above-mentioned genres and still sound entirely herself. A more poppy Sade, a less menacingly pleading Mary J. Blige. If Erykah Badu wasn't already near perfect, Amel would hopefully be THE voice of the neo-soul movement.

The album isn't perfect and I won't pretend that it is. Some lyrics are ill-fitting, some messages are to heart-on-sleeve. Amel is trying to spread hope through her words and that works for some people, it would've worked on a younger me, maybe it'll work on you.

Regardless, it's an album you should listen to. She's a musician you should love.

Linked Removed By Request of Label

Three Matthew Shipp Albums

Y'know why not? Uploaded these recently, all 3 are great. I have other recent uploads I could post, but here are these anyway.

Matthew Shipp is one of the best/most heralded jazz pianists of the last 10+ years. He somehow fuses avant-garde with hip-hop but maintains a strong hard jazz feel in his records. He recorded with J. Spaceman as well as Antipop Consortium. He's a good guy to follow.

Equilibrium (2003)

My favorite Shipp album I've heard. Killer album. One of the few jazz albums that would make it onto a "best of 00's" list for me.
"The key to this record's success is its fearless combination of approaches: jazz in a relatively pure form, as well as blended with a hip-hop/electronica sensibility. The mixes and effects, rather than diluting the essence, enrich it. So many pitfalls avoided, so many heights reached: Equilibrium is a brilliant record which should bear appeal to an incredibly wide range of listeners." -allaboutjazz
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One (2006)

Solo piano performance.
"Without the burden of having to prove his music’s merit to an imaginary crowd of tongue-wagging purists, Shipp achieves a more subtle, truer kind of fusion. One is a space in which Bill Evans’ impressionism and Cecil Taylor’s effluvious mindfucks can coexist and disintegrate together, as Shipp leaves jazz piano behind as seamlessly as he surveys its history, readily launching into cerebral passages that owe more to contemporary chamber music than jazz or blues traditions. Here’s hoping this release marks the beginning of a more tempered sense of ambition for Shipp." - tinymixtapes
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Harmonic Disorder (2009)

One of the best jazz albums I've heard this year. Brilliant playing.
The title Harmonic Disorder may read like this is one of Shipp's more intense outings, but the truth is, while it has wonderfully fiery moments, this is an intimate recording filled with new ideas, humor, depth, and warmth. -amg
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Valentin Silvestrov - Symphony No. 6 (2007)

I don't know if anyone actually downloaded the Silvestrov I posted a few days ago, but if not, here's another. This one is a bit more traditional, yet still totally original and wholly beautiful. It's a symphony piece, so no baritone singing, just great mood music. I don't know much about it and don't have the cd to type the liner notes, but I'll post a BBC review for those interested. It's really nice. Dark, but done in a really great way. Just wonderful modern classical music, I suppose. Whatever.

If you haven’t yet encountered the music of Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov, then it’s time you did; he seems to have been writing his ‘postludes’ for symphonic musical history for a good twenty years. Silvestrov calls his orchestral works ‘symphonic poetry’, or sometimes ‘metasymphonies’ where time flows in a wholly different way. He’s not alone in this, of course: other contemporary composers such as Pärt, Gorecki, Tavener, Vasks and Rautavaara are capable of warping the passage of time, yet Silvestrov has his own fully-saturated musical language, plus a post-Mahlerian sense of scale and all-encompassing humanity.

Silvestrov’s Fifth Symphony has already been recorded several times, becoming something of a cult hit in the East thanks to a now-deleted Melodiya recording. There was a fourteen year gap before the Sixth Symphony was finished in 2000: a five movement work described in the notes as ‘a living tissue of sounds, charged with deep dynamic forces, [which] sparkles and breathes as if bathed in sunlight or caressed by gusts of wind.’ I like that…except that it gives you no real idea of the yawning chasm from which the work seems to drag itself, shuddering and groaning towards that light.

So…is the Sixth Symphony about anything? The composer talked in an interview about its ‘atmosphere of imminent disaster’, and with hindsight that seems prescient: Silvestrov’s musicologist wife Larissa died unexpectedly just after he’d finished the first draft in 1996, and he included a coded cipher of his wife’s name in the final bars.
The notes refer to the opening of the symphony as ‘primordial chaos’…churning, bass-heavy chords that rumble ominously as piano notes and vibrato-less strings pierce the gloom like shards of shattered glass. Threads begin to appear, strands of melodic DNA being pulled from the slime to shimmer on the surface of this dark pool…until droplets of pizzicato at the start of the second movement send ripples to rouse the grumbling monster in the depths. The brass becomes dominant, until a dense string chord insists on silence, and the melodic material emerges on the violins, intact for the first time. The multi-stranded layers of constantly shifting sound dwindle to a roll of timpani and a single, hushed cello.

Then comes the massive middle movement, 25 minutes long, dwarfing those around it, evoking (and quoting) the famous Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. Silvestrov constructs a breathtakingly beautiful centrepiece for his symphony, extrapolating on the sighing strings and the sense of timelessness that were already there in Mahler’s original, with a cascading string sound that would have Mantovani doffing his hat in respect. Then there’s stillness; an Intermezzo that’s all shimmering surface, glistening with harp, piano, celesta, and harmonics from the upper strings…a ghostly vision, slowly fading as tendrils of mist envelope the concluding chord. But all the time we’ve been making a slow, delicate descent…and when the brass growls and woodwind shrieks assail us at the start of the finale, the music is overpowered by a sense of horror, and desperate loss. We end where we began, with the last melodic remnants dissolving into infinite blackness.

Given Silvestrov’s personal history, his Sixth Symphony could feel as though it’s all about him, yet he transcends the autobiographical in a work that encompasses us all. The playing is superb, capturing the most delicate hues and gentlest whispers of the score, and the immaculate recording provides the inky blackness from which the music emerges and into which, at the end, it decays. Like so much Silverstov, you don’t have to know how or why it works to be deeply affected by it. It feels simple, yet it obviously isn’t; it’s profoundly beautiful, timeless, and unforgettable.

-Andrew McGregor, BBC Radio 3 Review

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Valentin Silvestrov - Silent Songs (2004)

I don't know much about Valentin Silvestrov, the 20th century composer. But based on this incredible collection and his Symphony No. 6, he is really something else. I'm horrible at writing about classical music, you know that. I'll try. What is presented here is 2 discs of music that took place in 1985. Spanning the 2 discs is primarily his four-part song cycle "Silent Songs" in which he composes beautiful music from the texts of famous poets (Keats, Pushkin, etc.). 24 songs in 4 parts for baritone and piano. It's haunting music. The last 4 songs on disc 2 is another single for the same setup. The music drifts, the singer Sergey Yakovenko has this really ethereal voice. It's singing, but not like any singing I've heard. AMG calls it the "closest thing to ambient vocal music there is" and I would have to agree. It's a very interesting concept. Best part of classical cds are the liner notes and explanations that are included, and ECM's New Series is part of this greatness, so I'll just type those out to help explain.

Ilya Scheps (Piano) Writes:
In Moscow on March 9, 1985, a special concert took place. Together with Sergey Yakovenko, the outstanding singer and musician, I gave the premiere of Valentin Silvestrov's Silent Songs. Some fragments from the cycle had been presented previously in concerts, but the complete version received its first hearing only on that day.

When performing this cycle, the singer and pianist face a challenge that has perhaps never existed on the concert stage. For two hours of very quiet music, without any outward effects or easy "fodder" for the listeners or performers, they not only have to capture the attention of the audience, but to lend expression to the incredible tension of the music, the electrifying contrasts between the very delicate and inwardly trembling and the eruptively explosive episodes of this invariably quiet work.

The music itself comes to our aid, allowing the listener to experience the world of the poems as if by magic. I have often read the poems of Silent Songs without the music and discovered, to my astonishment, that for each line of verse the composer has found the only "right" melodic phrase and inflection to express the meaning and mod of the words. As a result, a new substance, a new fuel, infuses the entire piece. The artist's task is to learn to work with this energy, to try to do justice to the music both technically and artistically.

The time spent preparing for this recital, the months of intensive and exhausting labour, as well as the concert itself, remains in my memory as one of the happy moments of my artistic life.

Paul Griffiths Writes:
We may feel we have always known these songs, and in a sense we have. The first hearing will not seem the first, though we will remember it for that slow shock of familiarity, how it awakens memories-those we knew we had, and those we did not. This is part of these songs' silence, that they make no noise of intrusion.

We feel we have always known these songs, in part because their musical language is immediately recognizable. It is the language of major-minor harmony (mostly minor) and, more particularly, of the nineteenth-century song with piano. It is a language that belongs, indeed, to former times. Here is what sounds like a folksong arrangement (No. 5). Here are turns of phrase (in No. 8, for example) that Tchaikovsky might have been proud of. Here, in so many piano arpeggios ad even in direct harmonic correspondences, are recollections of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, trailing with them the whole history of the nocturne. Here, reappearing again and again, from the third song onwards, is the gently rocking 6/8 rhythm of the berceuse. We are being sung to as we have been sung to before. We are being offered music that will go with us into the darkening. We are being comforted with lullabies.

Russian speakers will feel they have always known these songs for the special reason that the poems are among the most familiar in the language. For all of us, what we have always known, beyond the songs, is this voice. Singing almost always at a pianissimo-the marking on each song is sotto voce, and only in the Chorale (No. 21) does the dynamic level rise above the occasional mp-it is a voice that is not declaiming to an audience but singing into our ear. It is the voice of a grandfather, passing on the songs of generations.

With it is the piano, its close companion, now slowing a little, now pressing forward, breathing with the voice. "The singing voice should not be at a remove from the piano," the composer notes, "but must proceed as it were from the depth of the piano sound, now emerging, now sinking. It is as if one were hearing singing that is inside itself."

And again: "All the songs must be sung very calmly, with a light, transparent, bright sound, restrained in expression, without psychological exaggeration." The singer is not an actor, projecting the balm of Baratynsky or Lermontov, a legend from Keats or Shelley, Pushkin's solitariness or Shevchenko's farewell, the bitterness of Mandelstam or the delight of Tyutchev, the troubled aftermath in Yesenin or the assurance of Zhukovsky. The singer is here not to display emotion but to remind us of these songs we have always known, and of how melancholy and consolation go hand in hand.

Yet though we may feel we have always known these songs, we have not. They are new-startlingly new for 1974-1977, when composers in the Soviet Union were stretching boundaries. Heard in the context of other music from this period of official constraint's exhaustion-Sofia Gubaidulina's Offertorium, Alfred Schnittke's First Concerto Grosso, Galina Ustvolskaya's Composition No. 3, Arvo Part's Fratres - these songs make no claims of innovation (another aspect of their silence), in which respect they are indeed innovatory. Just when the stylistic features of Russian Romanticism were no longer being forcibly imposed, here they were, redoubled - and not by a stalwart of state music but by a young avantgardist. Just when composers could at last make big personal statements in public, here was one letting the past express itself, in the private dimensions of whispered song.

If we feel we have always known these songs, that is because they speak so much from long ago, because the singer is imparting nothing new. In his quiet retrieval, though, he is making everything new, for what we hear is his remembering. All the songs are slow; they have the pace of reflection and reverberation. They also have the space, the sense of cavernous chamber, be it only the body of the piano, within which we hear as harmony and melody the upper resonances of the extreme bass that is almost always in play. Just as the singer is asked to perform each song sotto voce, so the pianist is requested to keep the una corda pedal down through nearly every number - the single exception being, once more, the Chorale - but the fluctuating use of the sustaining pedal, also marked, keeps the resonances clear and fresh. Each song is the echo of a song, the memory.

Do we still feel we have always known these songs? The sotto voce delivery not only gives them an aura of intimacy and inheriting, it also leaves the singer naked, without the support of his training. And with this naked voice he has to cover a range of two octaves - to venture, even if the centre is solidly in a baritone's middle register, into both lower and, in particular, high regions, where the sound is bound to be impure. The resulting hazardous, tenuous communication is there by design. This is fragile music, requiring the utmost delicacy and candour from its performers.

How can we then feel we have always known these songs? The singer is placed under strain - freely places himself under strain, to search. Only one melody is immediately found: that of the "Ukrainian folksong". No. 5, a regular tune in a straightforward tonality, D natural minor. (Twenty years later the composer adapted this piece to make the middle movement of his Requiem.) Otherwise melodies stray, and end without finding their way back to the keynote, leaving the piano to complete the return or, more likely, continue the straying, until the music is overtaken by deceleration. For a while the piano rarely provides more than the briefest possible introduction, almost always there is a postlude.

So it cannot be that we have always known these songs, for most of them are still emerging, through seemingly improvised delays and changes. Often there are subtle adjustments from verse to verse - and strophic form is the norm. Even No. 5 has this feeling of tentativeness despite certainty, trying different treatments of the same basic motifs. In the postludes such self-exploration is continued to the point of self-dissolve, out of which the next song can begin. And the cycle as a whole has its postlude in the five concluding songs, among which the Chorale - almost symmetrically balancing No. 5 - presents the essential harmonies in crystalline form. For, magically distinct as many of the melodies are, they share fundamental traits, almost as if all were versions of one song.

If we have always known these songs, this may be the reason, that we know their source. It is that one song, the song we thought had been lost.

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Sam Prekop - Who's Your New Professor (2005)

I remember buying this album. *Gasp* Andy bought something?

Yes. In 2005 I was half-assing my way through community college, living at home, and not doing much.

I remember forgoing Border's (which in the town I grew up in was the sole source for anything remotely "indie rock") for Everyday Music. You see, I had worked a crazy job the summer prior, making a lot of money for a kid just weeks outta high school with no work experience. And I blew almost all that money on cd's and other things I didn't need.

I'd had some Sea and Cake albums on my computer at the time ("Oui", "Nassau" and "One Bedroom") and though I never really listened to them, I decided that Sam Prekop's album was one that I was going to buy on that trip. (I'm unsure, but the other might have been Fiery Furnace's "Blueberry Boat")

Prekop's voice is so likable, the smoothness of his music so enjoyable, I immediately fell in love with the record. It was around this time that my mom and I got close and I accompanied her on some of her sales trips for work. The cd that I brought along that we both enjoyed a lot was this. Fond memories of driving to the beach with "Who's Your New Professor" just capturing the serenity of the Oregon Coastal passages.

It's not the best album ever, but it's one that I come back to every so often. Today was one of those days.

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Mississippi Records

Mississippi Records is a store on said street in Portland. Very cool shop, but the coolest part about the owners is the label they run. Reissuing compilations of rare music and unheralded albums, the label was really taken off in the last years putting out super limited runs that get sold out almost immediately. Over at hipinion, I've (with the help of a few) uploaded most of their catalogue, and while I feel bad for bootlegging a cool label, oh well. Here's a few of their records.


Last Kind Words (1926-1953)
Great compilation of old blues from some familiar names, but mostly those unfamiliar.
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Lipa Kodi Ya City Council
Possibly my favorite compilation on the label (though actually probably not), this is a great collection of African highlife music mostly. Great for a sunny day.
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George Coleman - Bongo Joe
Some records you can't attach a label to. This is one of those records. Originally released in '69 (best year in music if you didn't know), this album is some sort of demented blues records played almost solely on steel drums. Screams, shouts, croaks, whistles, whatever. Blow your mind.
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Svarte Greiner - Kappe (2009)

In the wake of the new administration and the general feeling of relief that is being experienced by most reasonable people, it has been hard to listen to music I would categorize as "dark." However, the brand new album by Svarte Greiner sort of throws all those rules out the window and has provided me with one of the most intense and awesome listening experiences I've heard in this new, infant year. While the Animal Collective album is clearly album of the year thus far (if not decade), Greiner's album fills the gap for essential paranoid nighttime listening (which is an actual essential). While Svarte's last solo album "Knive" came out on the wings of the amazing "Dead Sea" by labelmate/head Xela, "Kappe" is something that won't keep Svarte in the shadows much longer. While "Knive" was truly unsettling and sounded like the soundtrack to the scariest movie you've never seen (it all it's minimal glory), "Kappe" provides the listener with something that is dark and frightening, but more along the lines of the sound Greiner explores in his other group Deaf Center.

The album opens with "Tunnels of Love" which is 7 minutes of howling winds carrying screeching voices across miles of hills. In the foreground we hear the constant rattling of chains and windmills, dominating the silence that surrounds them. Soon thereafter a eerie synth loop repeats over and over until the track dissolves into the sound of actually being caught in a tunnel. A statement from the beginning.

"Where Am I" sounds like something that could be used to back some of the more unsettling scenes in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The sound of paranoia is clear. With subtle noise fading in and out, this track will have you looking over your shoulder if listened to in the dark. One of those tracks that definitely captures the mood of the title.

"Candle Light Dinner Actress" is more of the same with some strong tweaks. It's not hard to imagine yourself seated in an old haunted building watching ghosts roam about you while you anxiously try to eat dinner. Ridiculous I know, but once you listen, it's hard to shake.

The album closes with "Last Light" which is an interesting track in that it is undoubtedly the loudest of the bunch, with a constant echo and synth line apparent throughout, with other sounds weaving in and out of the mix. However on it's own, parts of the song could sound like it is soundtracking something fresh, providing us with a glimpse of hope and light and life, yet such is obviously not the case. The song wraps up the album as a bright spot, telling the listener "this is it, you're going to fall prey to silence after, so take all of this in."

A great album and likely my second favorite I've heard so far this year.

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Medeski, Martin & Wood - Zaebos: Book Of Angels Vol. 11 (2008)

The last album in the series thus far. This one done by perhaps the most well-known or famous of all the musicians that have appeared in the Masada Books. MMW are definitely known around the jam band scene, which is why I avoided them for so long. I still don't know much of their material, save for a couple of albums...but where I didn't much care for previous work I'd heard, this album and their other album that has been released so far this year "Radiolarians 1" are both outstanding and innovative. Definitely enjoyable, cool stuff.

I guess I will update the blog with the other Book of Angels releases when they end up getting released, but I hope you have enjoyed them so far (they each get about 40+ downloads it looks like).

Oh yeah, over at bolachas, those dudes stole one of my links for the Fred Frith album from this year. Now that has a whole ton of downloads. Funny.

The Book of Angels, Zorn's second book of Masada tunes, has been a continuing source of inspiration for the composer and his legion of interpreters. On Zaebos: The Book of Angels Vol. 11, Medeski, Martin & Wood's intimate understanding of Zorn's working method lends their interpretations of these sturdily crafted tunes an air of cleverly inspired authority.

Embracing a wealth of genres, instrumental combinations and stylistic detours, the veteran trio brings their signature sound to this melodically distinctive body of work; the end result is one of their most satisfyingly diverse efforts.

Dispensing with preconceived boundaries, the trio ranges far and wide across the spectrum of available sound. "Rifion" utilizes classic swinging piano trio dynamics, complete with brief detours into outside playing. "Malach ha-Sopher" unveils a moody, haunting tone poem, while "Jeduthun" adopts the stunning silences, harsh angularity and pneumatic rhythms of Zorn's own jump-cut/collage oriented approach towards popular music.

Plugged-in, the trio burns white-hot as they careen through the whiplash frenzy of "Zagzagel" and the propulsive anthem "Vianuel." Medeski's vintage analog keyboards squeal and sputter, Wood ferrets out subterranean reverberations from a fuzz-toned electric bass and Martin kicks out thorny polyrhythms as the trio basks in waves of distortion and electronic sustain.

Covering familiar ground, "Agmatia" and "Chafriel" ride groovy, modal melodies driven by swirling organ washes, hypnotic bass lines and snappy shuffle rhythms. Revealing their longstanding rapport, they invest the oblique angles of "Ahaij" with a string of inventive solos and edgy interplay.

Maximizing the gorgeous melodic potential of Zorn's writing, "Sefrial" and "Asaliah" recall the dreamy exotica of the composer's lounge-inspired ensemble, The Gift, as kaleidoscopic keyboard washes, languorous bass pulses and spare trap set ruminations expand with cinematic atmosphere.

Zaebos is a homecoming of sorts for both Zorn and the Brooklyn-based trio. An endlessly rewarding listen, this session is one of Medeski, Martin & Wood's most varied and enjoyable releases, and one of the most commanding interpretations of the Book of Angels.-
-Troy Collins, Allaboutjazz.com

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Bar Kokhba - Lucifer: Book of Angels Vol. 10 (2008)

If you are looking for any one release to start with when it comes to these Book of Angels albums, you might want to start with this one. If nothing else: this is one of my favorite albums from 2008. It's a full band this time around, pulling from a lot of the musicians that graced the first 9 albums (Ribot, Feldman, Cohen, Friendlander) and adds two percussionists in Cyro Baptista and Joey Baron. Amazing set of music. A great mix of some real jazz elements with the klezmer tinge. Watching their videos on Youtube, you can see this is a body of amazing musicians. Just beautiful stuff, great for just putting on and doing your business around the house.

The album hits the ground running-- opener "Sother" splits the theme between pizzicato strings and arco ones supporting guitar. But Masada is less about themes and more about being a springboard for improvisation like any great jazz composition and we get there fast-- Feldman takes an extended, powerful, and fierce solo, completely on fire and nudged along by Ribot. And really, these are the keys to what makes this record fantastic-- great playing and great support as a band whose level of interaction is a mix between near psychic response and Zorn's unique exertions over them (everything from switching accompaniment from arco to pizzicato to not at all to conducting triangle strikes and extending brilliant solos). The disc provides some great moments of sound and contrast, recalling old western themes ("Zazel"), high cinematic drama ("Mehalalel") and a playfulness not often found on Zorn records until recently (the sing-song "Azbugah", which evolves quickly into a brush feature for Baron, who creates a gentle, playful and understatedly brilliant performance). Along the way, we get a series of staggering performances on all instruments, although Feldman seems to steal the show pretty much consistently-- from his frantic performances on the opener and closer ("Abdiel") to his Nashville strains on "Rahal". The only real exception being Ribot's blues-drenched feature "Zechriel", where he digs deep and finds some of his more powerful blues exertions with Zorn swirling the band around him.

I originally started writing reviews on Amazon because I was frustrated with the glowing fanboy commentary that every album that was released seemed to get, but really, there's been nothing but great things to say about Zorn's most recent output, and "Lucifer" is no exception. Highly recommended.
-Michael Stack, Amazon.com

Go watch them on Youtube
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Secret Chiefs 3 - Xaphan: Book of Angels Vol. 9 (2008)

Here's another one. Pretty experimental, but ultimately very rewarding. Some parts are definitely harsh, but not quite as crazy as a typical Mr. Bungle/SC3 album. Very enjoyable overall.

Spruance, best known as the guitarist for the seminal avant-rock band Mr. Bungle, has in recent years been principally absorbed with the Secret Chiefs 3, a project that, like much of Zorn's best work, defies categorization. Spruance has performed for Zorn now and again, although I have to confess that after hearing his criticism of Weird Little Boy (a little digging online will uncover details), I did not expect another collaboration.

But we did get "Xaphan", and am I grateful. Spruance takes eleven of Zorn's Masada compositions and brings them across the world and back again, stray traces of funk, surf, world (particularly Arabic), techno and a thousand other sounds blend seamlessly together to form a cinematic soundscape. The album opens with a deep groove established by bassist Shahzad Ismaily and drummer Ches Smith on opener "Sheburiel" and pretty much never lets go. It manages to be cinematic and mournful ("Barakiel"), full of stunning performances (Rich Doucette's sarangi solo on "Bezriel", Spruance's guitar leads on "Labbiel") and the expected great melodies from Zorn ("Asron" is of particular note). In many ways, the album accomplishes what I felt Koby Israelite's Orobas: Book of Angels, Vol. 4 was trying to do.

I think in the end, this is one that anyone who might be interested in it will be really happy with-- "Xaphan" is a fine example of just how extraordinary both Zorn is as a composer but also of the arranging skills of Spruance. Highly recommended.
-Michael Stack, Amazon.com

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Erik Friedlander - Volac: Book of Angels Vol. 8 (2007)

All these Book of Angels posts are probably getting old, but according to Mediafire stats, people are downloading them, so lets finish off the series.

It's actually funny I didn't get this album last year when I was obsessing over cellist Erik Friedlander's other 2007 album "Block Ice & Propane" (#17 on my top 50 of 2007). Being as that was my first solo Friedlander album, his inventive and warm cello playing definitely made me look into some of his other solo work. My excursion into the Book of Angels series led me to this one, which on a biased note, may also be among my favorites (how many times have I said that so far?).

Let's just be honest for a quick second: the cello is one of the most moving and beautiful instruments there is. Plus, my girlfriend is an awesome cello player. Friedlander brings out emotion in his pieces. Block Ice & Propane told his history of family vacations, cinematic in it's beauty and simplicity, bringing to mind striking images of a forgotten America. "Volac" like all the other volumes in this series, is based on Jewish music (though of course written by Zorn, so not necessarily traditional). Though I can't sympathize and bring up my own personal memories with this release that I could with BI&P, that doesn't prevent the release from being just as cinematic and vivid. It still tells a story through music, it's your job as the listener to put it together.

It is a wonderful, wonderful set of music and incredible edition to a nearly flawless series (Book of Angels) as well as a welcome addition to an amazing catalogue of one of my recent favorite musicians: Erik Friedlander.

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Marc Ribot - Asmodeus: Book of Angels Vol. 7 (2007)

Don't judge this album based on the first track alone. It's that crazy fucking skronk rock jazz noise shit that Ribot is known for and the groups on Rune Grammofon are making hip. It's loud and abrasive as all get out and difficult for me to listen to, but this whole record doesn't sound like that.

Which isn't to say that it doesn't have Ribot's signature all over it. It's still full of blistering guitar, jazz that goes everywhere rather than nowhere, touches all spectrums, but never really drags. Ribot further shows Zorn's diversity with his entry into the Masada Book, because this album sounds like none of the other 6 volumes before it, nor much else any music around it. Dude makes it his own, and it slays. It's crazy, it's not my favorite, but it is definitely an adventurous listen.


"Asmodeus" is the seventh installment in John Zorn's Masada Book II. In case anyone reading is unfamiliar, a brief introduction: in the early '90s, Zorn began exploring his Jewish and Jazz heritages through the composition of a songbook of themes that could serve as a sprinboard for improvisation. He composed some 200 songs for the original jazz quartet, eventually expanding the project to be performed by other acts. Over a decade after its inception, Zorn revitalized the aging (by his standards) project by injecting a new songbook into the mix-- the Book of Angels, a collection of around 300 new themes. Instead of focusing on a band this time, Zorn has had different groups perform the material. "Asmodeus" presents ten pieces from the book as performed by a rock power trio led by guitarist Marc Ribot, ably supported by bassist Trevor Dunn and drummer G. Calvin Weston.

What follows is something that, even moreso than Electric Masada did, will shake your impression as to where this project can go. From the opener "Kalmiya"-- it's clear that this is something forceful-- Ribot comes blazing out with a frantic, noisy, overdriven guitar solo over a raging rhythm section before settling into a bit of a monster groove, with the melody eventually floating above (or perhaps in opposition to) a freely associating Dunn and Weston. Quite frankly, it's like Ornette Coleman's Prime Time project on steroids.

While the record admittedly settles down a bit (the second track, "Yezriel", finds the trio slinking into a blues rock feel after the explosive opener), the performance maintains a raging intensity and seemingly endless blistering guitar pyrotechnics throughout. Admittedly, at times this causes the performance to deviate a bit, capturing this sort of performance almost universally works better in a live setting where you can really see and feel the interaction and energy between the band, and here it can cause the pieces to occasionally feel disjoint ("Kezef" where Ribot seems tentative, "Armaros" where Dunn does, at least after his solo). Sometimes I suspect this was the intent-- if the goal was to capture a live energy here, it would stand to reason that you'd avoid repeated takes and sometimes you'll end up a bit disjoint. On the other hand, sometimes you'll end up so disjoint that what you'll have its a piece that bubbles over with so much energy, you can't help but be in awe of it, and Ribot's sound, while consistent on the record, still somehow manages to be all over the map, touching on John McLaughlin ("Yezriel"), Sonny Sharrock ("Cabriel") and Blood Ulmer ("Sensenya"), not to mention literally dozens of others.

One thing I can safely say about "Asmodeus", by the time it wraps up, you can almost feel exhausted. It is an immensely powerful record, and again while perhaps not as consisently successful as other entries in the Masada Book II catalog (the Masada String Trio record comes immediately to mind), this one is so overwhelming in its dissection and deconstruction of the rock idiom that it's hard to think of it as anything short of fantastic. Recommended.
-Michael Stacks, Amazon.com

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Uri Caine - Moloch: Book Of Angels Vol. 6 (2006)

Sorry it's been awhile. Just lost motivation and have been busy and I went to Arizona for a week as well somewhere in there. Anyway I figured I might as well finish the Book of Angels series for you, now that I have 2 followers of the blog! Anyway this one is fun. Uri Caine, if you don't know, is a pretty amazing and inventive pianist. He's actually coming up here to Humboldt in January, so I'm stoked for that. This album is just him, solo piano and it's pretty interesting and invigorating. Anyway as always, I'm too lazy to write a real review so here's one for ya:

Since multi-instrumentalist/composer John Zorn added three hundred new compositions to his Masada songbook in 2004, his label has released seven volumes of Masada Book Two with players including keyboardist Jamie Saft, pianist Sylvie Courvoisier, guitarist Marc Ribot and multi-instrumentalist Koby Israelite all rendering their own interpretations.

Moloch, which translates to king, was a deity to whom ancient Middle Eastern worshipers sacrificed their first born. Thankfully, pianist Uri Caine’s album isn’t as brutal as one might suspect from something named for a god who is often depicted as a man with the head of a bull.

Not to say that it isn’t forceful. At times it’s quite aerobic. Grumbling into a tenacious opening, Caine’s playing is direct and pointed on the first track “Rimmon,” and the energetic “Cassiel”. But it also yields to graceful flirtations like on “Lomiel,” where his left hand skirts gleefully around the heavy rhythm played on the lower keys. “Harshiel” is delicate as Caine plucks out a whimsical melody dusted with Sephardic implications.

Not only does Caine have a foundation in classical music, he has released several albums where he improvises the work of a single composer. He’s tackled Mozart, Mahler, Beethoven and Bach, but never the French composer Erik Satie or Hungarian composer Bela Bartók, thoughts of whom arise as Caine scurries over the keys mingling Jewish folk fragments with classical hues.

A founder of ethnomusicology, Bartók researched the music of regional ethnic groups and incorporated it into his own compositions. What Caine provides, missing from the music of Satie and Bartók, is the element of improvisation. On tracks like “Zophiel,” which begins with a gentle flow and traipses into festive jazz realms, Caine puts his signature straight through. Moloch: Book of Angels Vol. 6 is an album that commemorates a diaspora, pledging devotion to a legacy rife with substance and belief, while presenting a vitalized palette of comfort and renewal.

-Celeste Sunderland, Allaboutjazz.com

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The Cracow Klezmer Band - Balan: Book Of Angels Vol. 5 (2006)

Probably the album in the series that is the most rooted in the traditional klezmer sound. Still fun and well done overall and another great set of tunes. Still a bit of "free" moments but not as off the wall as the Koby Israelite release.

The first striking thing about the Cracow Klezmer Band's reading of John Zorn's tunes from his Book of Angels, on Balan, is the sound -- crystalline, full of separation and space. The next is Jaroslaw Bester's bayan -- hunted, witchy, signaling from some far-off place to Oleg Dyyak's hand drums, Wojciech Front's double bass, and then the small army of strings provided by the band's own violinist, Jaroslaw Tyrala, and the DAFO String Quartet. They respond as if gathering in some hidden terrain, and begin to dance. And it is about dancing, folks. Thus begins "Zuriel," the first cut from this entrancing, ingenious, and by all means exotic recording. On the following cut, "Suria," the seemingly random guttural vocals of Jorgos Skolias enter into the mix along with Ireneusz Socha's minimal electronics. Skolias becomes an Eastern soul singer by the track's middle as the strings envelope him in ether. On "Kadosh," the track melds traditional klezmer, symphonic cadenzas, and free improvisation into the mix, but the result is no less songlike. Bester's bayan commences "Asbeel," with a single note played obsessively and repeatedly, which is answered at first by Tyrala's plucked violin and then the entire band swirling like drunken Gypsies around the lone note that has now become one song, then another, and then yet another ranging from classic klezmer and Yiddish folk melodies to manic Gypsy tunes and even French bistro pop amid crazily shifting dynamics between group play and soloists. Bester arranged all of this material, and has done something utterly unexpected -- something, ironically, that listeners have come to expect from this entire series of recordings -- in pushing the klezmer genre to its limit and then past it, letting in a flood of other musical approaches and ideas. While all of Zorn's Book of Angels recordings have been wonderful thus far, Koby Israelite's beautifully intoxicating Orobas and this volume push the Masada material into entirely new sound worlds. Beguiling.
-Thom Jurek, Allmusic.com

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Koby Israelite - Orobas: Book Of Angels Vol. 4 (2006)

This album is fucking bizarre dudes. Another set of Zorn tunes, but this one is definitely one of the most far out from the Book of Angels series. The album is all over the place. One song will be Jewish/Turkish electronic fusion stuff like Balkan Beat Box, the next will be traditional, the next will sound like heavy metal, the next traditional, the next jazzy, the next fusion etc. It's a fucking blast and definitely NOT background music. Not for everyone, but if you are a fan of bands like Secret Chiefs 3 or whatever, this album is pretty good. Find joy in the schizophrenia.

Koby Israelite has issued two previous CDs for the Tzadik label, Dance of the Idiots and Mood Swings. Both showed a tremendous flair for composition, instrumental acumen, humor, and an ability to shift genres without batting an eye. Israelite was born in Tel Aviv, and has played everything from traditional Hebrew folk music, classical music (he was trained on piano at a conservatory from the age of nine), and he's a huge fan of heavy metal and has played in a number of metal and punk bands. This set of John Zorn tunes -- from Zorn's second Masada book -- Orobas: Book of Angels, Vol. 4 was handpicked by the composer. The results are stellar. There's the Yiddish gypsy blues that meld with funk and jazz on "Czgadi," where accordions engage in contrapuntal free form with a fretless bass before guitars and trap kits move to the center of the mix. The startling metal guitar riffing that introduces "Zafiel" is splayed out by Turkish folk melodies by mid-track. Then there are the mariachi-styled melody lines played by trumpets, electric guitars, Farfisa organs, and a drum kit on "Khabiel"; the mood changes, the genres smash and meld effortlessly (klezmer melodies and reggae enter and leave seamlessly and the track is taken out by a kind of prog-surf metal before it ends), and the music becomes hypnotic while remaining exciting, even breathtaking. The other musicians who lay here -- trumpeter Sid Gauld, Stewart Curtis on recorders, piccolos and clarinet, and Yaron Stavi on bass, (Israelite plays no less than eight instruments himself) -- are in top-flight, and this feels more like a band than an individually directed effort. And perhaps that too is a strength Israelite possesses, to place his imprint on Zorn's music in an idiosyncratic way, and still give his ensemble an individual identity. As for the series, Orobas: Book of Angels, Vol. 4 is another essential Four-for-four and counting. This is the most exhilarating set of recordings Tzadik has offered in quite some time. For those who haven't yet checkout Israelite, this is a fantastic opportunity.
-Thom Jurek, Allmusic.com

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