sun ra

Sound Of Joy does not channel the energies of Sun Ra’s cosmic, wacky space-age visions, it is early Sun Ra; late 50s Sun Ra: it is Sun Ra doing Big Band. To give you a bit of context, Sound Of Joy is the third recorded album, from 1957, although it wasn’t released until ‘68 because of record company complications. More importantly though, it swings, with tonal flourishes redolent of later, more surreal work and also of forms knocking around at the time, like exotica and free jazz. It is largely loosely conformist classic big band: juicy swing from saxophones in tandem, cymbals hissing and clacking away amongst it all; the play and counter-play between fancifully blasé jazz hands darting across the piano and the rich, easy brass arrangements.

Sun Ra - El Is A Sound Of Joy

 He was well into the space-stuff by this time though, having already been abducted and given a mission by aliens from Saturn in his teens. The year before recording Sound Of Joy he was quoted as saying:

“In tomorrow’s world, men will not need artificial instruments such as jets and space ships. In the world of tomorrow, the new man will ‘think’ the place he wants to go, then his mind will take him there.”

This view of an imminent Star Trek-like space-age is hard for us to hear in Sound Of Joy now, from our post-millenial standpoint, but it is there, quietly present in the sci-fi minor tones of the progressions and the mild instrumental divergences from conventional Big Band jazz. Most of all, it’s easy and free, and positively bounces at times. There’s a hint of exotica in the tympani and the top end of Sun Ra’s jangly Wurlitzer too: the slinky come-ons of “Paradise” sounds like those Martin Denny bikini-clad girls wafting around their beaded curtains and bamboo furniture. At other times it gets a bit loose, muscles flexed by each instrument in dancing refrains:

Sun Ra - Paradise

Sun Ra - Reflections in Blue

I must say though, my favourite parts are those with Sun Ra singing - his voice possesses a springy fullness, a wide mouth of vocals full of charcoaly tones. Take the CD release extra track “Dreams Come True”: a dinky vocal-led, Wurlitzer-dominated swing ditty, sung with charmingly irreverent inflection:

Sun Ra - Dreams Come True

I’m besotted by this album, which I bought on the whim of a recommendation. It’s varied but smooth, a dalliance in lots of styles but with a coherence running through it. You can buy it all over, so maybe get it at the record shop you’d least like to see go under - keep them in business another week.

jack penate

Just before Jen left for her trip out to Asia she told me to look after the blog. “Don’t just go posting loads of Jack Penate or something”. Oops. Well, it’s just too good not to. I know, I know, but keep reading.

This is now looking like the unlikeliest coming-good scenario of the last few years. Previously Penate was some horrendous blend of anachronistic East End barrow boy and Kate Nash’s high school sweetheart, dressed by a George at Asda focus group who’d watched last night’s Skins. Now he’s in videos that look like Helmut Newton doing mumblecore, and writing songs that are the best pop music of 2009. I already waxed lyrical about Tonight’s Today; new single “Be The One” matches it.

A driving beat and some twinkly sounds are all that’s needed to back up a fantastic verse vocal melody, that undulates along some rolling countryside before paragliding into an equally fantastic chorus. It goes even more heaven-wards with the soaring middle eight, which sees him in unexpectedly fine voice, before crashing and rolling down a hill in a jumble of broken trumpets. But hey, he’s alright, because here comes that chorus again.

Jack Penate - Be The One

Roll on the album!

gavin bryars - the sinking of the titanic

It’s been a while from me, have had a lot of work on at day job Bad Idea, and also been doing some writing for the Guardian’s music blog among other things; latest on that is about PIAIL fave Johnny Jewel. Prior to that I wrote about Gavin Bryars’s piece The Sinking Of The Titanic - I interviewed both Bryars and Titanic performer Philip Jeck for it and jolly nice they both were too. Read that feature here.

Me and Jen went to see Titanic performed as part of Touch’s night at the Roundhouse last week, alongside the awesome Hildur Gudnadottir and BJ Nielsen, and the thoroughly tedious Biosphere, the less said about the latter the better. But Titanic was fantastic. It opened with a prologue from Jeck - “what I’m trying to set up, it’s like an empty ocean, with bits that are like a premonition for things that are going to come”, as he told me - which teased out booming tones and strange squeaks from battered old records, gradually Bryars’s ensemble started to play the mournful hymn “Autumn”, the piece played by a string sextet on the deck of the ship as it went beneath the waves.

Adding in some great electric guitar that sounded like an iceberg cracking, and another quartet made up of his kids (to represent “women and children first”), and it became a massive reverberating eddy of sound. Little sampled choral motifs were brought in, a new addition to the score, as well as the bass clarinet and euphonium that have been used before. We both found it very moving, and although I don’t know how long it lasted, it was long enough to have you completely submerged in it.

There’s been a number of recorded versions of this - one on Eno’s Obscure label, one on Philip Glass’s Point, and perhaps the best is a 2004 recording on Touch. Another excellent version is from Belgium’s Crepuscule label in the early 90s, which is getting reissued on LTM Records next month; it’s a live recording of a performance done in a water tower. The echoing space allows a reverberent performance, even more impressionistic than usual. Fans of Rhys Chatham’s A Crimson Grail will love it. Here’s the first six and a half minutes of the hour-long performance:

Gavin Bryars - The Sinking Of The Titanic (Bourges version)

Jen’s buggered off to South East Asia for a month by the way - she says she’s living on a musical diet of J-Pop boybands on MTV Asia. Expect some crazy Thai cassette posts when she returns.

nomo

Nomo are a raucous nine-plus piece band from Ann Arbor, Michigan. They’ve been knocking around on the periphery for a while, covering the Newsom and releasing a couple of albums on Ubiquity, getting a bit of blog coverage last year for Ghost Rock. The next offering is Invisible Cities. They describe themselves as “post-afrobeat dance explosion”. Although I’m not sure about the ‘post’ bit, as I think it’s really lashed inextricably to Fela, not really diverging to go ‘post’ his tried and tested afro-swagger. The afrobeat dance explosion however, is very accurate.

Aside from Fela, they also remind me of Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, the Brooklyn based band of brass playing brothers, who we featured here a while back. But where Hypnotic Brass Ensemble are indebted to hip-hop, Nomo owe more to world jazz, to Miles Davis circa Sketches of Spain maybe, and yeah, most importantly Fela Kuti at his most infectious, best heard on something like “Expensive Shit”. But flimsy comparisons aside, Nomo are great. Listen first to “Invisible Cities”, the title track from the forthcoming album. It’s got the most of everything in it:

Nomo - Invisible Cities

My favourite is “Banners On High”, which (I think) features the electric mbira and crushed home made percussion most prominently - the ‘electric sawblade gamelan’ and ‘nu-tone cymbals’. These primitive electrified instruments have a invigoratingly dirty sound, mushy and thick - a milkshake slop of bright crushed colours crashing and tearing about, lifted by percussive rumblings and the cohesive force of sharp brass. 

Nomo - Banners On High

“Bumbo” has that low kicking brass on the melody line, a heavy gutsy drawl pouring forth the funk on a slow rythmic roll. It’s small basement rooms, hot with sweat and booze, swaying skin wall-to-wall, with brass glinting in the lowlights. 

Nomo - Bumbo

And for anyone who missed it all those months ago, here’s the Newsom cover - a swinging, swaying version of “The Book Of Right On” that’s just oozing with attitude, and tipped with romance.

Nomo - Book Of Right On

As usual, the tried and tested retailers on the right would love to fill your ears with Nomo in exchange for cash/debit cards.

wenge musica bcbg

Wenge Musica BCBG  are French-speaking, from the Democratic Republic of Congo. I picked up their album Pentagone in the library on a whim, drawn in by the artwork, which is a bit Word ‘96, with powder blue jewel case and all the guys dressed up in army gear, replete with warpaint and stars and stripes neckerchiefs. Plus, they printed the words “Nouvel album” on the cover, which I presume is not now true.

I expected some terrible demo-button synths when I got home, which is often the case with modern soca, but instead found what I’ve now learnt falls under the categories of Soukous/N’dombolo - which means it sounds quite a bit like high-life, with twinkly electric guitar melodies, but less frantic; it’s all about dancing, grooves and melodies favouring enthusiastic hip-swinging.  

They formed in the late 80’s, and are national faves back in Congo, playing a major part in defining Congolese soukous styles. They’re a bit difficult to draw lines around though, and have an ever-rotating line-up, plus a host of offshoot groups. These include one called Wenge Musica Maison Mère, who split in the 90s, and are now the main competition, since what Africasounds.com describes as “J.B. M’Piana’s (the BCBG leader and main vocalist) megahit 1997 album, Feux de l’Amour.” It’s all a bit confusing, as there’s not much info around, and is all in Google-unfriendly dribs and drabs, despite them being a major force in Congolese popular music.

However, what aren’t not confusing are the sunshiney, sugar-coated polyrhythms:

Wenge Musica BCBG - Pentagone

Wenge Musica BCBG - Dizoizo

Or the whooping ululations:

Wenge Musica BCBG - Filandu

I wish I could tell you where to buy it. Instead, watch the video to ‘Pentagone’ after the jump. it’s pretty great.
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flaten + kornstad

Slowly I’ve been rediscovering the pulse, reinvigorating myself with some heavy listening time. This week, through a string of links which began with Destination:Out, I’ve been brought back to life by Ingebrigt Håker Flaten & Håkon Kornstad’s Elise. The entire thing can be streamed efficiently from here. Elise was released last year on Swedish label Compunctio, and pretty much the only place to get it if you reside in the UK is iTunes, which I generally object to for the crappy cut of profits that reaches the artist. Alas, I was left with no choice, but was pleased to find it was at least high-quality.

It’s Norwegian: a collaboration between saxophonist Håkon Kornstad, who plays bass and tenor saxes plus the flutonette, and double bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten,  of songs picked from the Haugian (that is, relating back to Scando legend Hans Nielsen Hauge and his associates) psalmbook of Flaten’s grandma. You may also know Flaten as one part of three piece Scorch Trio.

The sax is incredible, particularly in “Ak, Mon Jeg Staar I Naade” (which is translated - probably wrongly - by Google as ‘Ah, I wonder if I stand by grace’). It switches from irregular feathery undulations to sonorous noir-ish tones; cabaret swing after hours. The bass holds the rhythm together, a looped sequence of notes tying the leaping sax down, adding warm bassy hues to the occasional sharpness of the sax.

Ingebrigt Håker Flaten & Håkon Kornstad - Ak, Mon Jeg Staar I Naade

“Dagen Viger Og Gaar Bort” is a playful ditty, with ethnic signatures in clipped minor tones. In other places the duo follow more conventional lines, which (I think wrongly) calls to my mind John Zorn’s News For Lulu. Kornstad gets quite loungey at times; smooth and easy, and Flaten skews it just a touch.

Ingebrigt Håker Flaten & Håkon Kornstad - Dagen Viger Og Gaar Bort

Ingebrigt Håker Flaten & Håkon Kornstad - For Himmerigs Land Maa Man Kjempe

The pairs interaction is flawless, and pulls together free, lounge and more tribal sounds, plus a haunting vocal-only rendition of “Ak, Mon Jeg Staar I Naade” by Elise Flaten. It curves in a high arc of immersive, interesting and accessible jazz. The key feature is its soulfulness, which flows; meandering unsuspected around the empty spaces, or obviously, in a light hand on the double bass, or in the gentle caresses of the sax.

tussle

Tussle swagger and stumble somewhere in the rafters of haggard and excited clanging about, flirting with the outer fringes of cosmic disco. I myself stumbled upon them somewhere in a web-mist earlier in the week, finding them solid and refreshing; just a step away from the familiar.

It’s unclear where this eight year old four piece see themselves in terms of style or genre, but their crisis of identity, when it shows itself, is becoming. A new release in the pipeline with Smalltown Supersound may give us some clue as to where alliances really lie, but in lieu of that, it’s worth a jaunt around some old material.

They say they sound like a “bullet-proof tiger”, but for the Prins Thomas version the reality is somewhere closer to a robotic pedigree cat, working a pared down sleekness against the heavy percussive smatterings of their two drummers:

Tussle - Night Of The Hunter (Prins Thomas edit)

This on the other hand, showcases the side of Tussle which enjoys lolloping about with clumsy tribal beats, clambering around on a crooked primary-coloured playpark, which seems a more befitting natural habitat. Most pleasingly though, it retains a heady rhythm which conforms; organic and creative but not needlessly confusing - scatty about the details but essentially decisive. It reminds me of EYE’s Lindstrom remix.

Tussle - Elephants

What first grabbed my attention is this video (I’m pretty bad for not watching videos online from start to finish, so the fact I finished means it somehow sidetracked my short attention span to reach my imagination). It’s a simple pots-and-pans ditty for the creatures; the tip tap and drop drop of found sounds, crockery and rocks, visualised through a kaleidocope of filters…watch it after the jump…

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richard swift

Picked up some Richard Swift back cat last week - two double albums for £6 (Music and Video Exchange in Notting Hill is full of second hand Secretly Canadian bargains left by, I like to wonder, west London journos with no taste). Have been getting acquainted with the second half of one of them, Walking Without Effort, and it’s a great conflation of Elliot Smith melancholy leavened with wryness and sealed with an effortless grasp of melody. It’s a brilliant whole-album experience that eases from song to song with a daydreamers meandering and I urge you to get it all, but here’s a taste:

Richard Swift - In The Air

Richard Swift - Losing Sleep

My interest in Swift wasn’t so much piqued as grabbed and pinned down by this song, probably my most listened to track of the last six months:

Richard Swift - Would You

And as coincidence would have it, just as I’m getting into the guy, he brings a new album out, The Atlantic Ocean. It features a collaboration with Mark Ronson, and he’s supporting The Fray on a tour to places like the DTE Energy Music Theatre(?!). He describes it as “Prince sitting in on John Lennon’s Plastic Ono sessions”, but unfortunately it often veers to far towards Lennon’s taste for whimsical piano-led oompah than the Prince end of the spectrum for my taste. But the aforementioned Ronson collabo, which also features Ryan Adams, Sean Lennon and Wilco’s Pat Sansone, is lovely: a very Adamsian soft country stomp with some spring-evening brass and vocal harmonies.

Richard Swift - The Ballad Of Old What’s His Name

fever ray

On my birthday trip record shopping I bought Fever Ray. At first, I couldn’t find Karin Dreijer Andersson quite so punchy and wonderful as The Knife, like the Knife with something missing, which of course, is exactly what she is.  And yet, with repeated listens I’ve found the beauty is subtler, more detailed and fascinating than the Knife. I haven’t found it instantly loveable, or loveable at all in fact -  it’s a dark insight into a shadowy and surreal psyche. And yet I’ve become mesmerised by this pervading darkness, confessionals and streams of consciousness wrapped in slick electronics and deep down autotuned vocals, blowing in from icy plains.

Since the release, there’s been a good few remixes knocking about, and they’ve got me thinking. Each one of those featured below takes a distinct approach in their dealing with the track. Fuck Buttons thicken the soup, not digressing from the style already in evidence. They conform to their characteristic euphoric synths-over-synths sound, which flows seamlessly with Fever Ray’s acutely electronic vibe.

Fever Ray - If I Had A Heart (Fuck Buttons remix)

Dan Lissvik, of Studio however, picks up on an entirely different angle. The frightened side of the vocals is juxtaposed against pan pipes and a slow balaeric grind, drawing out the hopefulness you never realised was there; langorously plucking shards of light-filled fragments to shape into curling, glowing sandcastles.

Fever Ray - When I Grow Up (Version by Lissvik)

Tiga on the other hand, pits the track against itself, in a hard driving beat where vocals attack instrumentation. It is jerky and fractious, the vocals are transformed from a blurry paranoia to a fidgeting panic, as if strapped down to the 4-4 beat. I love this, it’s wonderfully uncomfortable.  

Fever Ray - Traingle Walks (Tiga’s 1-2-3-4 remix)

It’s great to see how these different remixes all pick out entirely different moods, despite the album’s sonic coherence. It adds a depth to the standalone album I didn’t appreciate before - a complexity I hadn’t fully recognised, which means that the three different outcomes above are all entirely in keeping.

born under punches

Me and Jen went to see David Byrne in Sheffield last week, and it was top class, quite unlike the merely “cute” spectacle the New York Times criticised. Sure, it was slick, but that didn’t preclude constant thrills - “Strange Overtones” all smooth and liquid-hipped, “Help Me Somebody” startlingly funky, and classic Talking Heads material rendered with all its Stop Making Sense big band might. It reminded me of Brian Eno’s assertion that most successful popular music has an element of call and response in it - the three backing singers provided a stunning counterpoint and conversation with Byrne throughout, as well as splendidly regimented chatter during “The Great Curve”. And Byrne himself was in very fine voice.

Something that is made plain throughout is the steadiness of the Byrne backbeat - the funk comes from the rhythm guitar licks, and occasionally the percussion, with the drums opting for a metronomic pulse often with sections ending in a colossal pair of on-beats (”Take Me To The River”, “Crosseyed And Painless”). Except for “Born Under Punches”, for which I was caught between an almost primal need to move somewhere to start dancing and an equal desire not to allow my concentration to break for a second. This is a song that itches - its beat prickles with heat before settling on four solid thwacks, and then back to the unsettled paranoia of before. Byrne’s ranting city-dweller (”Drowning cannot hurt a man!”) shakes his fist from his soapbox at the sedate domestic troubles happening above him (”All I want is to breathe / Won’t you breathe with me”), while a Greek chorus looks down on it all, shaking their heads: “The heat goes on, the heat goes on”. The live version brought out all of these levels and fully evoked its sweaty, mournful frustration.

Talking Heads - Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)