Jason Ajemian's Smokeless Heat - "The Art of Dying"

Jason Ajemian's Smokeless Heat - “With or Without the Universalator (Birdie’s Dream)” (Delmark 2008)

Jason Ajemian’s Smokeless Heat – The Art of Dying / Delmark

I want to start this review by looking at the liner notes to The Art of Dying. It seems like a nit-picky, superfluous approach though, so I really should just close this booklet and walk away. Close my eyes, enjoy the music, and write on just the sonic peculiarities. But they are just so damn weird! Ajemian rolls from baseball analogies to the formation of his trio – Smokeless Heat (see baseball analogies for reference) featuring saxophonist Tim Haldeman and drummer Noritaka Tanaka – to Scott Tuma’s homemade instrument, the Universalator, to the death of a sea lion, which of course becomes a metaphor itself, and into a little universal questioning: “Can we see an art in dying, or the great love that lives in pain, or bliss in honesty and selfless discovery?” Good question. I don’t know myself, don’t have a clue in fact. But this random assortment of ideas is telling in itself. The way Ajemian takes an idea, blends it into the next despite such off-setting subjects, tinkers with reminiscences and rhetorical questions, gets lost in his own pondering thoughts, and slips into traditional jazz gab, “Music – music, sound – sound, we focused in the moment and the fashion with which to discover, recover and sonically relate,” makes for an excellent analogy to his playing. The Art of Dying is not a singular idea. The music shifts and wanders; toys with one direction then immediately backtracks to try the other fork; spends six minutes developing a phrase and condenses the very next track to just fourteen seconds; and of course challenges, but with an approachable warmness that is the steadfastness of the underground Chicago jazz scene.

The opening track title, “With or Without the Universalator (Birdie’s Dream),” references a conversation the Chicago-based bassist had with Tuma concerning his quirkily named mechanical drone device, but the music is far from anything at all in regards to drone, mechanics, or even Tuma’s experimental Americana background. Instead, it’s a cool-toned, melodic workout right out of Blue Note’s early-60s discography with guitarist Matt Schneider playing the part of Grant Green and Ajemian providing a versatile, light-toned bass line à la Bob Cranshaw. Trumpeter Jaimie Branch extends the depth by distance miking her calmly swinging horn while marimba player Jason Adasiwicz accentuates the melodic chords and Tanaka unleashes a mid-song rant of brushed kit.

“Miss O” dons a similar set-up, but with Haldeman taking the climax. His tenor is confident, full-bodied and surprisingly tender, sounding much like the direct product of a classic middleweight saxophonist like Hank Mobley. He certainly bucks his horn when need be – see the scathing “U’re the Guy (Keith Wood)” for example – but for the most part, he remains in a patient post-bop motif. Which works well with the similar-minded Branch, as “Manisia Lynn” proves. A close-miked, room-less tune – to the point where the clicking of the tenor’s keys is clearly heard – Ajemian plays moderator to Haldeman and Branch’s phrasal conversation. Haldeman lays down his story with only a brief, quickly stifled interjection from Branch before the saxophonist gets agitated and eventually concedes with soft tonal yearns. Branch jumps in at an excusal tempo, but it must be too little too late, because the song concludes on a rather sober, sighing and inconclusive note.

The album is rounded out with a twenty-four minute piece recorded live by the Smokeless Heat Trio at WMSE Radio in Milwaukee. It’s a searching, drawn-out song with a number of twists and turns, none of which in particular stand out, but when taken at a whole makes for quite the listen. The trio is mercurial with their transitions; one second Ajemian is bowing his bass while Haldeman squeaks in the upper registers of his horn, and before you know it, they’ve set into a relaxed post-bop workout behind Tanaka’s steady cymbal rhythm. There isn’t a single out-of-step moment, which is not an easy feat for three players to achieve over the course of a twenty-plus minute piece.

The Art of Dying is a rather melodramatic name for such a welcoming set of jazz tunes. Ajemian guides his cohorts through a gamut of styles, but none of which concedes to the sensational or theatrical performance that the title might suggest. But perhaps this is his point, or at least the point of his story of the dying sea lion in the liner notes, beached and slowly drifting in and out of consciousness only to be inhumanely brought back to awareness by prodding sticks and nets. “A music that drifts in song and rhythm – loses self-reflection and awareness,” Ajemian states. And it’s true, this album does effortlessly glide along; it soothes and wanders, but just as you lose consciousness of its details, it abruptly changes its course, forcing you to find comfort in their next approach. “Can we see an art in dying, or the great love that lives in pain, or bliss in honesty and selfless discovery?” Umm, well I still don’t know the answer to that question… Music’s good though.

The Byard Lancaster Unit - "Live at Macalester College"

The Byard Lancaster Unit - "Last Summer" (Porter 2008, originally Dogtown 1972)

The Byard Lancaster Unit – Live at Macalester College / Porter

Luke Mosling's upstart label Porter Records was one of our luckiest stumble-upons in 2007. His 1500 series provided my personal favorite reissue of the year: Birigwa's self-titled debut, recorded in 1972 for the tiny Boston imprint Seeds. The then 23-year-old Ugandan, joined by a tight class of New England jazz and funk musicians including Stark Reality's Phil Morrison, created a folksy brand of Afro-jazz that I still have trouble succinctly classifying. Think a less wacky Gilberto Gil with a central African upbringing. But this apparently was just the beginning. Mosling released just three discs in 2007, he already has eleven release dates secured so far for 2008 and another eleven on deck. And what's even more impressive is the stylistic range of the upcoming releases, which includes heavy free-jazz, outside European jazz, contemporary avant-garde composing, Southeast Asian folk and gamelan, and apparently even a little experimental electronic music from Mosling himself. But we'll cross those paths when we get to them, the matter at hand now is Porter 1502: The Byard Lancaster Unit's Live at Macalester College.

Byard Lancaster is not a household name. Despite his lengthy and diverse career – beginning at the age of four in 1946 and continuing to this day as a teacher in Kingston, Jamaica – I wouldn't even venture to say he is a relatively well-known avant-garde jazz name. The proud Philadelphian did run with a well respected group of second wave free jazz musicians in the late 60s/early 70s though, and his contribution to that era and sound is known to the people who care the most. Along with Sonny Sharrok, Dave Burrell and Eric Gravatt, Lancaster one of "John's Children," a generation of African-American "new jazz" players that followed John Coltrane's ideals and music with a spiritual reverence. Even in the recently written liner notes to this reissue does Lancaster refer to Coltrane with religious respect:

"In the Bible, John Coltrane is Moses. His vision demanded that we turn away from traditional, European classical standards – noise, feelings, duration, instrumentation, limited conversation and brotherly cementing. Instead, turn towards, world-wide attention, daily improvement, constant documentation and the blessing of our future generation. Sharing the vibe was his key to monumental success. Saint John!"

And the homage to the great tenor saxophonist reaches past just ideals, Lancaster's horn playing is as equally influenced. Listen to the marathon soprano saxophone soloing on "1324," Lancaster's soulful, sprinting riffs evoke the same bluesy undertones as Coltrane. His variation on phrasing definitely follow suit as he switches from driving statements of effortless scale-gliding to swinging melodic improvisations and eruptions of atonal assertions. And that's ignoring the impressive fact that he plays four or five different horns during the epic opener.

Coltrane was not Lancaster's only influence though. After studying at the Berklee School of Music, he moved to New York with Burrell and established a loft space for all-night jam sessions that attracted the likes of Archie Shepp, Elvin Jones, Bill Dixon and Rashied Ali among many others. A few years later he found himself in Paris studying under the heavily influential avant-garde drummer Sunny Murray and was featured on 1966's Sunny Murray Quintet on ESP. As the 70s approached, Lancaster became an in demand horn player – being requested by Sun Ra and McCoy Tyner as just two examples – with a style not unlike John Gilmore or Phil Cohran.

This is the point when Live at Macalester College was captured, though the title is a bit misleading. The first four tracks come from the original live album released on Lancaster's own Dogtown Records in 1972 and – according to the liner notes – is supposedly Philadelphia's first avant-garde album. Three of the four tracks were recorded live at St. Paul, MN's Macalester College in 1971, the aforementioned "1324" is from a date in Boston in 1970.

Unlike the brazen opening number, the other three tracks are rather subdued in comparison until the final moments of "Live at Macalester." "Last Summer" – taken from Lancaster's 1966 release It's Not Up To Us – is especially enchanting with its somber, reflective tone conjured by Jerome Hunters bowed stand-up bass and Sid Simmon's patient piano arpeggios echoing the melody of Hammerstein and Rodgers' "My Favorite Things." Lancaster's unconventional and playful improvisations on flute sound like a midpoint between Rahsaan Roland Kirk and Pharaoh Sanders. "War World" rides J.R. Mitchell's continuously driving and inventive drum work. Like Murray, Mitchell doesn't as much provide a beat or rhythm for the soloist to improvise over, but creates a dialogue between the two performers. "Live at Macalester" swings heartily with a good natured, soul-inspired groove before dismantling into atonal saxophone squawks from an agitated Lancaster.

The two bonus tracks included are from a Boston concert in 1973 by the J.R. Mitchell Experimental Unit featuring Lancaster on alto sax. Incorporated much more in these pieces are electric instruments including inventive work by an uncredited guitar player. "World in Me" is stark, unforgiving free jazz while "Thought" swings in and out of a discernable groove. Both are pretty good indications of their time with comparisons that could be made to the AACM, Sun Ra or Ornette Coleman's work during this period.

Live at Macalester College is substantially more far-reaching than Porter Records' previous reissues, but no less rewarding. For those piecing together the puzzle of jazz evolution in the 60s and 70s, this is a must listen with intriguing sonic nuggets at every turn. Lancaster – as well as Mitchell – are sorely overlooked musicians from that era outside of exceedingly knowledgeable circles, but probably not for too much longer as Mosling has four more releases from him on deck to be reissued. Porter Records surprised us in 2007, and with this strong 2008 debut, we're hip to the potential quality of each of their concurrent releases. Let's see if they can keep our oh-so-fickle attention.

Ecstatic Sunshine - "Way"

Ecstatic Sunshine - "Herrons" (Cardboard 2008)

Ecstatic Sunshine - Way / Cardboard

It's interesting how much difference a year-and-a-half of exposure can make for a burgeoning music scene. I have spent very little time paying attention to the Baltimore lofts collective of noisemakers that have taken the indie world by storm in the last couple of years, but they have somehow worked their way into my immediate knowledge anyhow thanks to the rampant press coverage and onslaught of interesting albums. In September of 2006, when Ecstatic Sunshine's debut album, Freckle Wars, arrived in my office, I can just about guarantee you that most of the bands listed in the gratitude section of the liner notes were completely unknown to me. Now though, the list reads like a whose who of the musically hip from Baltimore: Dan Deacon, Wzt Hearts, Video Hippos, The Deathset, Lexie Mountain, Tall Grass, and probably a few others that are still unbeknownst to my inattentive eyes. It's pretty damn impressive in my opinion and perhaps a bit telling of how socially interactive/leech-like the indie world is currently (or perhaps just the press is to blame… though the line between fans and the press has been muddled completely with the blogs taking over and… there is not nearly enough space for this tangent). Either way, my introduction to the scene via Ecstatic Sunshine's amateurish guitar toils was understandably skeptical, but now a year-and-a-half later, my skepticism may finally be resolved and by the very same band.

While Freckle Wars may have been slightly charming thanks to its minimalist guitar tomfoolery, it was not in all honesty a very good album. The dueling electric guitar fuck-arounds were just that, and maybe there are some respectable primitive characteristics buried in the haphazard songwriting, but for the most part, it fell pretty damn short of the small hype burst that surrounded the band. Members Matthew Papich and Dustin Wong at least agreed with this sentiment to some degree as their sound began changing gears very soon after their debut's release. Including adding Kieran Gillen to the fold on electronics, 2007 saw the release of the vinyl only Living EP. In their own words, “it’s like a Glenn Branca / Black Flag collaboration.” I was intrigued. You should be intrigued. It’s not a far off statement.

From the opening moments of their sophomore album, Way, the music is decisively more promising than anything heard on their debut. “B” embarks with a faintly Eastern-tinged guitar riff that is either being simultaneously played by both guitarists slightly out of time or looped and shifted subtly out of phase. The track proceeds for thirteen minutes in this Reichian or Rileyian manner: parts shift and layer back on each other, dynamics are raised and lowered, pulsing electronic elements are introduced and evaporated into the mix, and new guitar patterns keep the song continuously evolving. This is a far cry from Freckle Wars. A far, highly matured cry. Whoever introduced these kids to 20th century classical, thanks.

The second of the three tracks – “Herrons” – introduces the Branca comparison. Gillen lays down an amoeba of harmonic synth noise, which is closely followed by the amplification of Papich and Wong’s guitars to a level of volume that crunches rather than resounds. The crackling tonal wall certainly pays dues to Branca’s guitar symphonies and Chatham’s post-minimalism experiments, but surprisingly stands up on its own.

Rounding out the half-hour of music is “Perrier,” a shimmering ten minutes of chiming guitar melodies and electronic twinkles. A pulsing guitar rhythm is pulled apart into a double helix of bright tones, each line circling the central loop and weaving a sparkling tapestry of a song. As the track progresses, momentary bass lines and wind tunnel like effects keep away any sense of redundancy, and climactic electric guitar riffs remind the listener that while this is heavily influenced by the modern experimental composers of the 60s and 70s, it also has post-rock still clearly visible in the rearview mirror.

Way is an excellent statement of maturity from Ecstatic Sunshine, and perhaps from the Baltimore scene in general. They are wholly under the spotlight at this point, so now it’s either time to present themselves as true innovators and clever musicians deserving of the attention or be prepared for an ousting by the next hip geographical movement. To Ecstatic Sunshine’s credit, they are doing their part. Now let’s see who follows suit.

Jason Kopec - "Release the Cheerfulness, China"

Jason Kopec - "Untitled Track 2" (Noise|Order 2008)

Jason Kopec – Release the Cheerfulness, China: Ground Up 2 / Noise|Order

Eth-nog-ra-phy (eth- ‘nä-gruh-fē): the study and systematic recording of human cultures; a descriptive work produced from such research. (Merriam-Webster)

Jason Kopec refers to himself as a musical ethnographer. While this is not a new concept (see Sublime Frequencies as a popular and well executed example), it’s a practice that typically leads to very interesting results, especially for audiophiles. Historically, traditional ethnographers gain an expertise in their field of interest by holistic research methods. In other words, it’s the complete submergence into another culture by an anthropologist to try and form qualitative and quantitative descriptions of different societies and social occurrences. The goal is to achieve as good of an understanding of the situation as possible by first-hand experience and report it in some sort of research paper for others to learn from and become culturally aware and stimulated. As a musical ethnographer, this would enlist a similar approach to research with an enlightening audio statement as the final product. The product of Kopec’s research is presented through the Ground Up series via his own label, Noise|Order Recordings. His field recordings sidestep compete academia though thanks to a lack of accompanying information, which surprisingly plays to the album’s favor in this writer’s opinion.

Kopec dubbed Group Up 2, Release the Cheerfulness, China. As the title implies, it consists of field recordings he captured during a four-month expedition through the vast East Asian civilization. Unlike a lot of ethnomusicological studies, it does not concentrate on a highly specific style, instrument, people or concentrated area. Instead, Kopec apparently just meanders with ears open and microphone ready. The contents of the disc range from captured ambient scenes – like that of Shanghai traffic noise or peaceful nature chirps – to traditional music or channel flipping through local television. The liner notes are sparse to an alarming degree, leaving less to be learned from these audible culture glimpses as to be aesthetically enjoyed.

The sonic scenes are not terribly hard to decipher. There are tracks that solely concentrate on a particular native instrument performance, such as the refined glissando of a guqin during the second track or the familiar awkward yearns of a solo erhu performance on track nine. When the ensembles are larger, for example the sixteen-minute meditative performance of bells, strings, flutes and bass drum during track twelve or the slightly militaristic sounding track eight, pinpointing a particular style of music or geographical area where it may stem from would only be possible for folks experienced in Chinese culture.

The ambient scenes run a similar course of vague identifiability. The highly resonant space recorded in track eleven conjures images of massive temples or maybe even natural caves as hollow soundwaves and sparse gong hits cascade into an eerie, unsettling drone. And the final two tracks capture what sounds like a late evening plaza scene as ambient conversation and a passing vehicle are drowned out by the menacing chirp of some sort of species in the Acrididae family. The common listener can always form a generic mental image of the circumstances under which Kopec turned on his field kit, but the specifics are left to Kopec’s memory alone, letting the sounds transcend any kind of voyeurism into a sort of indefinable music.

This is all thanks to the lack of liner notes on Kopec’s part. It’s simultaneously frustrating from an academic standpoint and alleviating by forcing the recordings into simply a recreational listen. Release the Cheerfulness, China could just as easily be a study on curious sonic characteristics of the East Asian culture, but instead it becomes a transportive piece of ambient music suitable for nearly any circumstance when you just want something exotic on in the background of your apartment. I’m not sure if this makes Kopec the musical ethnographer he proclaims to be, but instead a sonic photographer. The moment is captured not for the particular details to be pieced together into the bigger puzzle of understanding life, but to be enjoyed in aesthetic sense as an interesting scene unable to be recreated and displaying the momentary beauty of the exotic world we live in.

Scott Tuma - "Not for Nobody"

Scott Tuma - "Rakes" (Digitalis 2008)

Scott Tuma – Not for Nobody / Digitalis

Book-ending Scott Tuma's third solo album is a pair of elegiac tunes narrated by a teetering high-pitched voice. Like most of Tuma's music, the atmosphere is eerie and somber: wooden panels creek beneath barely audible acoustic guitar melodies, wind chimes ping softly somewhere in the distance, and the low mechanical hum of a rundown pick-up truck rumbles past the microphone once or twice. It's as if a field mouse is crooning the loss of a loved one in the dark and damp corner of an abandoned shed somewhere in the rain-soaked farm fields of Tennessee. "So long, so sorry to you" he aches in his squeaking falsetto, obviously on the verge of tears; the feelings of remorse, anxiety and solitude in his voice clearer than the instrumentation used to create the mood. It would sound rather ridiculous of it wasn't so damn heart wrenching. Tuma has always had a talent for rustic, elegant and bittersweet music, Not for Nobody is just a reminder that he exists in a class of his own when it comes to such categorizations.

Tuma's expansive and experimental take on country, folk and bluegrass obviously originate from his time spent in Souled American, a Chicago-based roots rock band that helped pioneer the indie- and alt-country movements which bloomed in the early-to-mid 90s. Their winding discography, which eventually intertwined numerous genres – from psych to dub to r'n'b – into their rustic sound has been an influence on almost every country-based indie-rock icon since (Uncle Tupelo, Palace, Smog, etc). After their disbandment in the mid-90s, Tuma joined the Michael Krassner-helmed Boxhead Ensemble, which not only featured a number of the artists Tuma helped influence – Will Oldham, Edith Frost, the Tren Brothers – but members of Chicago's burgeoning avant-garde jazz scene like Ken Vandermark, Fred Lonberg-Holm, David Grubbs and Jim O'Rourke among others. Their minimalist and intimate jazz landscapes seep heavily into Tuma's solo work.

Like Tuma’s previous solo albums before it – 2001’s Hard Again and 2003’s The River 1 2 3 4 – Not for Nobody exists as an ethereal spirit in the graveyard of Americana music. Recorded mostly with guitar, banjo, harmonium and hand percussion, Tuma sets himself in an acoustic-friendly room and picks away at somber, meandering melodies reminiscent of lost folk songs and backwoods ballads. The twanged nylon strings fill the room with cascading harmonies, and soft overdubs of harmonium, bells and the occasional moaning horn add all the more emotion to the already affecting sound. From the confident march of “Eloper” to the acoustic guitar and tape-hiss ballad “Moccasoclea,” each track ties your heartstrings deftly to the porch so you are forced to watch the sun set over the auburn fields of grain.

Differentiating himself from most modern folk revivalists, Tuma’s talent is not as much in his ability to speed-pick his way through archaic stringed instruments, but his mastering of resonant harmonies and room sound. A track like “Newjoy” for example falls closer to the Stars of the Lid camp with its tone-rich wall of harmonium swells than much of anything coming out of the School of John Fahey. Then there are songs like “Jason” and “Loversrock1” – featuring Chicago bassist Jason Ajemian – that are more folksy takes on minimalist free jazz with their lack of definable structure. Not to mention the diversity between each track just in terms of recording method. I don’t have the specifications in front of me, but I would be pretty surprised if any of these songs were cut in an actual recording studio as opposed to a series of field recordings.

Of course Tuma does pay his respects to the Americana music that bred his musical taste, if only with “Tiktaalik.” Named after the evolutionary link between ancient fish and amphibians, Tuma faintly plucks the melody to “Camptown Races” in between a tapestry of nylon strings. It’s instantly familiar and nostalgic, but as the song proceeds, Tuma drops the pace and saturates it in a room full of resonating harmonies and out-of-phase multi-tracking. Like the rest of Not for Nobody, the mood it conjures is somber and placid, the atmosphere thick, the music fragile, and the overall vibe rather confusing and more often than not, downtrodden. You are forced to ponder, reminisce and daydream within the cascading timbres. An exacting portrait of thought may never fully form, but the hazy memories and tender emotions Tuma evokes with his voiceless melodic glimmers are plenty enough to force you to sit down and recollect yourself before leaving the room.

Make Believe - "Going to the Bone Church"

Make Believe - "Wearin' Torn" (Flameshovel 2008)

Make Believe – Going to the Bone Church / Flameshovel

In 1965, when Mick Jagger declared "I can't get no satisfaction / 'cause I try and I try and I try and I try", it encompassed the voice of a generation. As the years tolled on, and the Stones' tours (and ages) have reached the triple digits, the once inspiring song has evolved into a staple of the dive bar where the satisfaction not being reached is more sexual frustration than anything. But I think Jagger envisioned more with his statement. His snarling delivery resides somewhere between commentary and biting sarcasm; it encompasses the insatiable appetites (for wealth, notoriety, sex, etc) of modern life, and perhaps – as the length of the Stones' discography might imply – his creative endeavors. When Make Believe frontman Tim Kinsella aches "I can't understand satisfaction" in the waning moments of Going to the Bone Church, I hear the same frustration. We're now living a post-modern life though, and Kinsella rightfully re-evaluates even the notion of satisfaction. It's a telling thought from one of Chicago's most idiosyncratic and prolific songwriters, and the reason why this album was not supposed to exist.

On July 1st, 2007, Make Believe opened for Tortoise at the Metro; it was supposed to be their final show. According to Flameshovel, Kinsella was frustrated and unsatisfied with his position in the group as solely the lyricist/singer, though there is no room for any more musical additions to Make Believe’s sound without completely re-establishing themselves in a new guise. This is understandable, because while Kinsella personifies the group to an extent with his abstract commentaries, unmistakable raspy yelp and confrontational stage presence, the real distinction between Make Believe and hundreds of other contemporary underground rock bands is their rhythm section. Drummer/keyboardist Nate Kinsella and bassist Bobby Burg piece together rather catchy grooves, but then proceed to drop every third or fourth bar. So instead of grooving straight ahead, songs awkwardly shift and stutter creating even more intriguing rhythms for Sam Zurick’s already abstract approach to crunchy guitar melodies and Tim’s obtuse phrasing.

After courting a number of suitors for the frontman position, Tim rejoined the group with a less-is-more attitude; perhaps not as much trying to force satisfaction, but taking a step back to attempt to understand just what it means to be satisfied. The refreshed line-up spent six days recording at Chicago’s Electrical Audio studio and is set to release Going to the Bone Church – their third full-length – at the end of April, but only available in vinyl format.

This new record is a continuation of the band’s increasingly mellowed sound. The elements and instrumentation remain the same, but with a calmed clarity in both production and performance. Nate’s drum and Wurlitzer rhythms are not as much a tool of urgency as a grounding force to Zurick’s short elliptical guitar phrases. There are still tracks of disjointed paranoia – like that of opener “Ooo-Yum” with multi-tracked yelps and calls between jerky post-punk outbursts – but mid-tempo jaunts like “Sam Rollerskating Backwards” and the rather melodic “Wearin’ Torn” are much more prevalent and in that manner, affecting.

Make Believe was originally intended as the more aggressive outlet for the Joan of Arc touring members. They achieved this with their excellent self-titled debut EP and their first full-length, Shock of Being. Going to the Bone Church is created with the exact same tools (guitar, bass, drums, wurlitzer, vocals) and approach to songwriting (you could almost call it post-post-punk), but resounds of maturity because of its patience and lack of purely punk-derived chaos. These are finely pieced together songs – however jagged the final product may be – with a number of rather affectionate moments. For example, the band reveals their playfulness for the first time as Tim concludes a spoken-word rant at the end of the title track. Instead of masking it in serious artfulness, they leave the tape rolling as he breaks out into a silly sing-song which causes the entire band to erupt in laughter. Because what’s more satisfying than having fun at what you enjoy to do?

Collections of Colonies of Bees - "Birds"

Collections of Colonies of Bees - "Flocks IV" (Radium 2008)

Collections of Colonies of Bees – Birds / Radium

Establishing an identity in the faceless world of post-rock has always been the genre’s Achilles’ heel. Now on the downside of its popularity arc, any ambitious instrumental band purveying the experimental rock sub-style typically gets grouped in behind one of the genre’s poster children (Slint, Tortoise, Talk Talk, Gastr del Sol, Godspeed!, Labradford, etc) and is more or less left for irrelevant. Much like being pegged with the indie rock tag these days, one assumes the basic scope of the sound, writes it off as derivative, and moves on to a new, more exciting buzzword. But in doing so, you can overlook intriguing evolutions, which with a stylistic description as vague as post-rock is very easy to do. There are musicians like Chris Rosenau and Jon Mueller who have been a part of the scene for fifteen-odd years, and simply enjoy experimenting with guitars, drums and electronics. Those pieces keep them under the post-rock guise, but the music shifts continuously keeping the sound of each concurrent album a guessing game. And that’s all I ask as an obsessed listener regardless of genre.

Guitarist Rosenau and percussionist Mueller started Collections of Colonies of Bees in 1998 in a flurry of band forming in the Milwaukee rock scene (Pele, Vermont, Telecognac, and Raccoons all stem from a very close family of players including Rosenau and Mueller). Like the ethos of their label that was started the very same year – Crouton Music – CoCoB is an idea and any resulting sound is “only part of the picture”. The idea: what would traditional folk and bluegrass instrumentation sound like if brought up to date and utilized with modern experimental recording techniques and technology? The result: 1998’s Collections of Colonies of Bees and 2000’s Rance; both dreamy, drunk and heavily textured experimental folk albums that bridged Directions in Music, John Fahey, Gastr del Sol, Pullman, Sandy Bull and Cul de Sac.

The latter half of CoCoB’s existence has seen the band expand with each album and slowly but surely leave the backwoods instrumentation and folksy influences behind. By 2004’s Customer – released by Pele’s label-home Polyvinyl – the band was piecing together arrangements one digitally segmented second at a time. The tinkered stuttering sound makes for excellent headphone music and is a prime example of a well-balanced approach of melodicism and experimentation. This is where we find CoCoB in 2008, releasing Birds on Radium – a subsidiary of the excellent experimental label Table of Elements – and interestingly enough moving back to the core of post-rock: melodic electric guitar wizardry, technically proficient and rather anthemic kit work, and of course, a little studio gimmickry and electronic augmentation.

For their first time in CoCoB’s existence, Birds sounds like a record created with the live show in mind. Mueller’s recorded drums are left wholly in tact – a far cry from the previous few efforts – and while he occasionally works the odder intricacies of his kit, for the most part the rhythmic backbone is rather bombastic and triumphant. Rosenau, joined by baritone guitarist Dan Spack, keeps with the uplifting cadences by not so much riff-based workouts but tight, elliptical patterns that weave in and out of each other. Maybe a rather odd comparison, but it reminds me a lot of Sam Zurick’s approach to the guitar while providing obtuse leads to Make Believe and previously Owls. But those instances are of course well balanced with the subtle, free-form picking of the quieter moments from the record. Also now traveling members of the band, Thomas Wincek and former Pele member Jim Schoenecker augment the hearty rock sound with warm touches of Fender Rhodes, analog synthesizers and the occasional electronic buzzing.

Four tracks in nearly forty minutes, Birds doesn’t as much transcend the boundaries of post-rock as enliven the genre’s best attributes. “Flocks II” and “Flocks III”, though sprinkled with curious minimalist edits and electronic twinkles, adhere to the cymbal-driven climax and comedown approach with militaristic cadences counteracting the warmly chiming guitars. “Flocks I” is a bit more untamed structure-wise, and in fact sounds like an unedited outtake from the Customer sessions. And finally, “Flocks IV” delivers the inviting melodicism the band has been perfecting the last ten years as rhythmic patterns are layered and tenderly interlocked as established by the Reichian School of Arranging.

Birds is not particularly the indefinable album I had hoped from Collections of Colonies of Bees, but it is an excellent reminder of how much I enjoy post-rock when it is performed with a sunny disposition. However easily categorized it is though, Rosenau and Mueller are talented musicians, and Birds is crafted with a crisp idea in mind and impeccable production. They now just exist outside of those stuffy headphones. And besides, it’s about time post-rock fans started getting out of the house more anyways.

Nalle - "The Siren's Wave"

Nalle - "Alice's Ladder" (Locust 2008)

Nalle – The Siren’s Wave / Locust

Last night, with a head thoroughly blotted with congestion and cold medicine, I drifted mercifully to sleep watching The Sword of Doom in an unfamiliar apartment. I lost consciousness at Ryunosuke's height of confidence as a ronin, emotionlessly carrying out assassinations and ignoring his mistress and their baby son. When I came to sometime later, the samurai was frantically fighting off shadows, his formerly commanding poise slashed by his own evil sword/soul. It was a surreal moment thanks to my clouded consciousness and only exemplified by listening to The Siren's Wave on the trip home. The Glasgowian trio Nalle crafts a sound that is not solely inspired by their Scottish surroundings nor many of their contemporaries. While traditional European folk and the buzzing drone of the Great Highland bagpipe are certainly prominent influences, Eastern modal elements are just as prevalent. The music is both unsettling with its odd tunings and harsh pitches and hypnotic with its fluid drone; much like Okamoto's samurai film with its visceral and almost absurdly violent imagery paired with the mesmeric cinematography and pace. The contrast makes for a much more interesting experience.

Nalle is three multi-instrumentalists: visual artist Hanna Tuulikki, The Family Elan’s Chris Hladowski and Aby Vulliamy. For their second full-length as a band – and their first for Locust Music – the trio entered the studio with John Cavanagh, whose collection of analog electronics and recording devices have helped further develop their avant-folk sound. The added instrumentation provides more of a definable structure for the lyrical voices (flutes, violin, bouzouki, Tuulikki’s captivating vocals) to experiment overtop. The austerity of their prior release is replaced with a large palette of autumnal colors, and the recording is more intriguing for it.

Now I use “definable structure” loosely, as each of the six tracks has little to do with traditional song arrangements. A continuously swelling and patient drone is used as the foundation of each song creating a sensation not unlike being on a small drifting sea vessel. Tuulikki’s pitch-gliding voice rocks back in forth between gentle waves of accordion, cello, harmonium, oud, clarinet, valve oscillators and whatever else they can muster up with a somber tone or a buzzing output. This meditative drone created with mostly acoustic instrumentation is what immediately sends the mind to Eastern Asian associations. And when Tuulikki’s voice is matched with a recorder, flute, violin or other instrumentation of similarly high pitch, the influence of Japanese Gagaku becomes most apparent. It’s a simultaneously odd and elegant sound that will more or less dissuade most Western listeners on first listen, but given time, the harmonic interplay becomes very inviting.

“Young Light” is the best example of this Japanese-tinged experimentation. Hladowski improvises patiently with his bouzouki as Tuulikki jaggedly strums the metallic strings of a kantele. Interjection of cello further deepens the loose string arrangement as the song morphs from a Lichens-like meditation to an almost agitated display of exotic free jazz, but always grounded in Eastern tones. “Secret of the Seven Sirens” though couldn’t sound further away geographically. Between the group vocal sing-alongs, violin and flute interplay, loosely strummed acoustic strings, and eventual handclap enhanced pace, it sounds decisively European. The most accessible of the tracks, “Alice’s Ladder” also exists in this vein, just in more of a compact and focused presentation. Names like Joanna Newsom and Fursaxa come to mind, but neither really captures Nalle’s implacable exoticness.

When I first listened to The Siren’s Wave, I wasn’t particularly impressed. Locust is renown for their keen avant-folk ear, and Nalle’s sound just wasn’t that unexpected. But really, it just took the right circumstances for the nuances and idiosyncrasies of the album to make sense. They are weaving such distant cultures and so many different exotic instruments together that a cursory listen will only leave a confused stare on your face. Consider it a lesson in patience, though our contemporary listening habits will make Nalle’s work an uphill battle. And if you still can’t quite get a grasp on the record, let me suggest cold medicine and samurai movies, it worked for me.

Static North - "Static North"

Static North - "More Life" (2007)

Static North – Static North / self-released

Know that feeling when you come home after a show, de-clothe your sweaty garments and hit your pillow with a wash of swimming drunken exhaustion? That odd moment of sheer placidity after finally laying down when the chaos of the night finally comes to a screeching halt. All of the evening’s festivities begin to play over in your head: the excited anticipation while prepping yourself with hipness before leaving the house; the ride to the venue with energized music probably turned up a bit too loud; the awkwardness of entering the show space with two main priorities: 1. find someone you know 2. get alcohol; finding your social groove as the alcohol begins to dismantle your guard; watching the bands perform as the over-modulated sound frequencies do permanent damage to your poor ears; the ridiculous and embarrassing conversation you have post-performance with the alcohol now holding your better judgment hostage; the inevitable ride home with music once again turned up too loud despite a more somber mood; and the final triumph of closing your abode’s door and turning the lock, another night enjoyed and conquered. Then, as you hit your bed in the momentary silence of the night, the pounding ring in your ears takes complete control of your immediate consciousness. No specific melody or harmony can be discerned, just washing staticy noise with a faint rhythmic echo that does battle with the throbbing of your head. It’s a feeling of slight regret and fatigue, which only exemplifies your confused drunken emotions and leaves just the desire to finally lose consciousness and sleep. Static North’s opening track – “Westbound” – on his self-titled, self-released debut sounds a lot like that.

Holed up in an undisclosed studio space in Toronto, Canada, Dave Gareth Lewis crafts the type of music that bridges sobering placid ambience with noisy drunken feedback. It exists somewhere between the carefully controlled harmonic feedback of My Bloody Valentine, the ambient exploiting sound collages of Tim Hecker, the precise rhythmic loop manipulations of Jan Jelinek, the slowly budding drone of Lichens and the introspective visually-enhanced post-rock of Godspeed You Black Emperor! For a debut, it is surprisingly realized; a motif is established and manipulated creating an overarching vibe without giving in to redundancy. Despite utilizing mostly feedback and other non-melodic sound sources, the albums remains musical and pleasant. And like all good records in this vein, listening to the non-narrative songs causes you to search within yourself for emotional associations. Lewis keeps it captivating without over-indulgence, a tough beam to balance.

As I mentioned earlier, the opening track “Westbound” is mostly cascading waves of feedback and the accidental harmonic responses to such, but Lewis also introduces his basic songwriting structure. Typically building vertically, each song begins with a loop, whether it’s the pleasant, westward gazing synthesizer chord progression of “Stubborn Tiny Lights” or the crunchy, Fennesz-approved minimalist throb of “Ours, That Night Got Away from Us”. He doesn’t waste much time layering as slight rhythmic devices – usually consisting of a buried kick drum or a simple bass line progression – ambient synthesizer swells and tenderly controlled guitar feedback swirl each track into a shimmering, pulsing orb of surprisingly melodic noise. As each song develops, the individual sound sources melt into each other creating accidental harmonies that Lewis cleverly expounds upon. Everything climaxes in a symphonic mess of layered frequency byproducts and unforeseen rhythmic throbs, and finally winded down as each filter is concurrently closed and all that’s left is the initial loop.

Static North may not be reinventing the wheel with his psychedelic shoegazing ambience, but having the hindsight of purveyors past, he knows just which characteristics to utilize. Melodrama is kept succinct by not letting the melodies outwork the static and feedback, and keeping each track under the seven-minute gate of over-indulgence. Guitars, bass, synthesizer and drum machine are obviously his tools of choice, but Lewis is studio-savvy enough to manipulate them into new, more curious sounds where exacting each particular source is near impossible. And most importantly, it has a large enough sonic ceiling not to sound like a bedroom-created record. In fact, he gives enough space for the harmonies to develop that it almost sounds live. Keep an eye to our northern Canadian neighbor because Static North is most likely a name we’ll be gushing about again in the near future.

Yikes - "Whoa Coma/Blood Bomb"

Yikes - "Make a House" (Kill Shaman 2007)

Yikes – Whoa Comas/Blood Bombs / Kill Shaman

From Kill Shaman website:

"Yikes was formed when Dwyer called an end to Coachwhips to try something new, something more fun and explosive in nature."

Okay, let's think about this. San Francisco garage-noise maker extraordinaire John Dwyer wants to try something more fun than the Coachwhips. The fucking garage pop-rock trio whose every riff, vocal and snare snap was drug through a multitude of distorted, blown-out amplifiers to create a sound that eventually was just the sawdust remains of the original hook-heavy songwriting. He wants something more fun than that? Go back and listen to the blistering, excited blues-rock of Bangers vs Fuckers and prove to me it doesn't send you thrashing around your studio apartment in a sweaty destructive rage. And let's remember, the Coachwhips incarnation followed Pink and Brown, an even more abrasive explosion of lo-fi guitar-and-drum noise hysteria. So Dwyer's latest band is his escape to finally make something "fun and explosive"… I worry for my eardrums.

Here's my hypothesis: Dwyer dismantled the Coachwhips a few years ago, and since then, he's been focusing mostly on his OCS/OhSees side project. The few albums he put out under that guise are an eerie mix of folk and trembling dissonance, which can be fun as he experiments by jumping from the inside to the outside of folk's limitations; though that certainly makes for a more somber mode of writing and performing. Perhaps the press release writer misunderstood Dwyer – which is wholly possible if his regular speaking voice is anywhere near the megaphone distorted yelps of his recorded persona – and Yikes is actually his escape from the mellow confines, no matter how skewed it may be, of his folk outfit. Then again, maybe Dwyer is just a tonal nihilist and he truly felt that the Coachwhips were the equivalent of a pleasant evening stroll through a pasture of daffodils and button-nosed, dewy-eyed rabbits.

But just how does Dwyer up the acridity of a sound that is already so abrasive and confrontational? He drops the only instrument formerly anchoring his group down to anything even reminiscent of melody – the keyboardist – and adds a second guitar player, which apparently is patched through the very same sputtering amplifier as Dwyer. In fact, throughout most of their brief seven-song EP – Whoa Comas/Blood Bomb – it is almost impossible to discern Dwyer’s guitar from his new accomplice, Eric Park (Curse of the Birthmark, Fuck Wolf). Behind the stripped-down kit now sits Mike Donavan (Big Techno Werewolves, Ropers, NAM), and together they form a convulsing mess of overblown blues-tinged garage-rock that sounds like The Fall if Mark E. Smith wasn’t so obsessed with having his drunken rants cued so high in the mix or Bob Log III if he could afford to clone a few copies of himself to form the band of his dreams.

In the tradition of most noisy garage-rock bands, Yikes keeps it brash and succinct with Whoa Comas/Blood Bomb consisting of seven manic tunes in less than fifteen minutes. The band basically works in two modes: fast or bluesy. This method is exemplified by moving back and forth between each approach in the tracklisting. So after the EP’s riff-and-roll opener, “Carol Ann”, they dropped into the menacing blues stomp of “The Wick”. Donavan’s snare and surprisingly deep thudding bass drum march straight through the shards of flailing guitar distortion and Dwyer’s unintelligible megaphone squawks and back into the sweltering Delta swamp from which they originally stemmed. When they miss sequencing the tracks with variation in mind, the songs get muddled even more than they probably intended. The punk-derived “No Guaranty” dives straight into “Blood Bomb”, and the tracks are so similar in pace and style that it sounds more like a brief hiccup in a single song instead of an actual track change.

For my money, Yikes excels when they abandon all punk intentions for straight up blues turmoil underpinned by 60s rock’n’roll. “Make a House” for example finds Dwyer yelping like the lost stepchild of The Kingsmen’s Jack Ely from behind a bluesy three-note molasses riff – heavily distorted of course. Park uses his guitar to make a sound not far from that of a waling siren and Donavan just does his best to be heard from behind the tangled mess of fuzzy distortion. Just as Dwyer hoped, it’s fun and explosive and packaged succinctly enough for repeated listens. Is it that far flung from The Coachwhips or even Pink and Brown though? No, but if you were into those bands, this should appease your appetite endlessly.

Colorlist - "Lists"

Colorlist - "These Complimentary" (Off 2008)

Colorlist – Lists / Off

Nearly every image Colorlist associates themselves with contains two distinct characteristics: fractured separation and soft-hued fluidity. Their album cover for example is made up of at least nine distinct blocks – like that of a shifting plastic number puzzle – and within each one are digitally bled streaks of autumnal reds, browns and yellows. It is hard to tell exactly, but it almost looks like the blocks were once arranged into a discernible picture, which was subjected to heavy Photoshop manipulation. If we look to the music inside for a confirmation of my hypothesis, I would confidently lean towards that as the origination.

Then there are the photographs strewn across the Colorlist website and MySpace page. Skilled lomographers, percussionist Charles Rumback and reedist Charles Gorzcynski capture hazy ambient scenes with the four-eyed lens of a Supersampler. Each individual picture is made up of four quickly successive shots, each one slightly more telephoto than the next, lined up in progressive order to create a sort of slow motion mini-film reel. Each individual section only differentiates slightly from the previous one, but by lining them up, an otherwise mundane image can take on a more animated and thought-provoking narrative.

Perhaps it is an aesthetic decision by the Chicago-based duo, as the visual associations are analogous to the music they create as Colorlist. The rudimentary melodies made by Gorzcynski’s alto saxophone are consistently patched through a digital delay, looped and embellished upon. Each simple three or four note phrase is captured and slowly manipulated creating a refracted, cascading harmony rather than projecting a single chord. As Gorzcynski builds a patient whirlpool of melody between his soft-toned saxophone, harmonium and electronic toys, Rumback provides a more organic rhythm, though rarely lifting his sticks beyond half-mast and working the more odd-sounding corners of his kit. The final product sounds like Terry Riley jamming with Paul Desmond and John Herndon while Rob Mazurek sits behind the effects board. Each song progresses at a melodic soft boil with its organic instrumentation, but without fail, a frayed wire is introduced to the pot and the track is sent sputtering into fractured, experimental electronica territory.

Now joining Gorzcynski and Rumback at the core of the group are engineers Brian Bullard and Matthew Gagnon, who continue the manipulation from a post-production standpoint. Also contributing to Lists – their first record for Stilll side-label Off Records – are bassists Matt Lux and Jason Ajemian, cellists Ellen O’Hayer and Sarah Biber, bass clarinetist Jason Stein, and guitarist Bill MacKay.

As “Lluvia” displays, the core of Colorlist works well alone. Behind Rumback’s steady hi-hat rhythm, Gorzcynski doubles over his simple downscaling melody while electronic rumbles begin to thunder in the distance. The song progress in a vertical fashion; Gorcynski’s saxophone embellishments and harmonium swells, Rumback’s spry, shifting rhythms, and a barrage of other electronic hums and sputters give increasing texture to the otherwise monochromatic composition. The song eventually becomes a throbbing orb of harmonic tones hovering around light drum patterns and creaking electronics.

Lists really shines when they begin collaborating with outsiders though. “These Complimentary” is six minutes of pure aural ecstasy. Long cello yawns create a steady stream of warm tone, of which MacKay’s guitar tweaks along like an agitated pond skater. Vibraphone-like chimes cover the surface in capillary waves that eventually feed back onto each other causing odd harmonic ripples that refract the images of a bright electronic sun. The players don’t seem to be heading in any particular direction, but the drift alone is an impressive display.

The following track “Carbon Monoxide” features the same ensemble but with a heavier presence from Rumback and his drum kit. It begins in a similar fashion, but eventually tumbles into a realm between Isotope 217, HiM and Boards of Canada. Rumback works his snare and tom into an agitated rhythm while never really evoking a verbal description like pummel or pound. It is a constant reminder that this is more grounded in improvisational jazz than post-rock despite my recent comparisons.

While Colorlist is self-described as a compositional project, they are much more effective while marrying a collection of seemingly separate improvised components – as on “Living Mausoleum” – than on the more structured numbers with a discernible climax – as on “Rewinding Sunday”. Either way they approach it though, it is an interesting sound. The music is soft-toned, organic and patient, composed with accessible melodies in mind, and searching while rarely scathing. But it’s concurrently fractured, fried and strung into compositions nearly unidentifiable from their original sources. Think of it as the aural equivalent of watching a late night jazz trio from outside a softly lit bar in the pouring rain. Streaks of water run down the window, refracting the image into streaks of warm reds, yellows and browns; you can’t quite make out the individual figures, but that flash of yellow was certainly the saxophonist raising his horn in a climactic spout and that blur of brown is the bass being rocked in a meditative fervor. It’s almost more interesting not knowing the exact spatial outlines and just letting this obtuse fluid image become a new aesthetic all its own.

Susie Ibarra - "Drum Sketches"

Susie Ibarra - "Drum Sketch 8" (Innova 2007)

Susie Ibarra - Drum Sketches / Innova

Sometime in 2003 or 2004, I caught Prefuse 73 on tour supporting the release of his near-universally acclaimed album One Word Extinguisher. Joining Guillermo Scott Herren on stage was his typical partner in turntable-sampler-mixer-effects debauchery, DJ Nobody aka Elvin Estrela. I’ve caught the pair live a number of times and thoroughly enjoy the knob twiddling performances, but for this particular show, Herren had a secret weapon. He enlisted jazz drummer Susie Ibarra to accentuate his programmed rhythms, an effect that ran twofold as both a bit more interesting (and better looking) focal point than two hairy guys with their heads buried in a web of color-coded cords and a more resounding organic bump to accompany the electronic beeps.

If keeping up with Herren’s continuously shifting and stuttering rhythms wasn’t impressive enough though, Ibarra reportedly did not practice with the pair prior to the show. She simply played on instinct, and an incredibly quick instinct at that. Herren would drop the beat, and within one or two loops, she’d catch the groove, lock into the rhythm and start accentuating the particular tune with her own improvisations. The set’s playful vibe was contagious because not only was Ibarra’s appreciation of each beat physically apparent (smiles, head-nods, etc), but Herren and Estrela would repeatedly turn around and momentarily stare in awe as she percussively took each tune to new aural heights.

At the time, the Filipino drummer was new to me, but she has in fact been garnishing respect in the contemporary jazz scene since the mid-90s. Ibarra’s first encounters with the drums were via punk and hardcore gigs, but her realization of percussion’s possibility came from a chance encounter with Buster Smith, Sun Ra’s drummer in the 80s and early 90s. With his more formal and extensive training – along with lessons from free jazz great Milford Graves and the much traveled Vernel Fournier – Ibarra honed a multi-dimensional style that infused the many different layers of jazz with more worldly influences, especially the music of Southeast Asia. And that range of ability shows in her résumé: a shortlist of artists she’s performed and composed with in the last fifteen years includes modern jazz players William Parker, David S. Ware, Matthew Shipp, Craig Taborn, Butch Morris, Zeena Parkins, Derek Bailey, as well as experimental performers like John Zorn, Thurston Moore and Yusef Komanyakaa, electronica cats like Herren and Ikue Mori, and even contributed to a few Yo La Tengo tracks.

Ibarra’s first solo album following a number of well received Tzadik ensemble releases continues to explore not only rhythm as a lyrical force but the culture of her heritage as well. The aptly titled Drum Sketches features the percussionist solo – except for a few ambient field recordings – on her drum kit along with instruments native to the album’s inspiration, the Philippines. It has also been commissioned as a live performance piece, of which visual artist Makoto Fujimura, the man behind the album’s intriguing cover art, joins her on stage to paint live in reaction to the music.

The album is bookended by two Kulintang pieces: “Binalig” and “Sinulog”. Ibarra plays the bright sounding gong kettles with a sort of delicate forcefulness. Over a field recording of ambient chirping insects, birds and amphibians, the chiming tones dance like a torch’s flame in the wind; the traditional cadential patterns just have this hypnotizing and unpredictable melodic rhythm. For “Drum Sketch 6”, she switches to a Surunay xylophone, which like the Kulintang gongs, doesn’t sound overtly foreign, but the odd tunings create an exotic, implacable vibe. The solo xylophone track finds Ibarra teasing the resonation of the bars with a number of separate rhythmic patterns rather than locking into one distinct melody or groove.

The drum kit pieces range from the longer formed, lilting solos to more searching pieces where Ibarra utilizes hand percussion and more nontraditional approaches to the kit. I’m not sure if sketches “3” and “8” were actually performed and recorded live or if the crowd noise was spliced in later, but both sound like Ibarra is entertaining a crowd with much success. The former features an almost tribal tom rhythm adjoined with jazzy improvisations on the traps and cymbals; the latter sounds more indigenous with a pulsing polyrhythm egging on the crowd’s hoots and hollers. While during a few of the more experimental pieces you can visualize Ibarra’s means to the sound – the circular brush strokes on a snare during sketch “4” for example – the means to a couple of the sounds completely baffle me. Sketch “5” for instance is made up of this two-minute mysterious croaking resonance that eventually opens up into cascading muffled cymbal crashes.

Solo drum albums are not typically large crowd pleasers as their fan base is almost solely limited to other drummers despite the genre. Ibarra though transcends this pigeonhole by crafting a record that doesn’t as much display her technical prowess as translate her interpretations of Filipino ambiance. The subdued record, joining jazz drumming to free improv, modern composition, and a slew of her native styles, is not overtly challenging – but don’t mistake that for a lack of intrigue. Quite the contrary actually, Ibarra’s interpretation of the Philippines’ aural landscape is brimming with textural nuances and captivating idiosyncrasies, and it makes for an interesting listen no matter your taste.

Valet - "Naked Acid"

Valet - "Kehaar" (Kranky 2008)

Valet – Naked Acid / Kranky

About halfway through “Drum Movie” – the second track on Valet’s sophomore release for Kranky Records – delicately crashing waves of static give way to the distant low end of tribal drums and a singular oncoming dither of guitar feedback. But out of this slightly unsettling aural tension, Honey Owens – the mastermind behind the moniker – layers three or four different synthesizer drones into this rippling wall of simultaneously pleasant and harsh frequency harmonics. While it eventually gives way to ghostly feminine mumbles and loose electric guitar noodles, that brief two minutes of pure sonic serenity completely envelops your senses. It’s kind of baffling how the simple layering of slightly wavering electrical oscillators could evoke such an emotional response, but it does and Owens knows just how to tease the frequencies into an aural bliss.

You can’t really listen to Valet without repeatedly referring back to Spacemen 3 (or at least I can’t). Owens just taps into so much of the English trio’s minimalist psychedelia: their reliance on just the right distortion to skew the guitar’s familiar sound, their grasp on how exactly to harness the harmonic overtones rather than the immediate amplified product, and their unpretentious approach to songwriting – i.e. taking a single chord, key or tempo and stretching it to it’s monochromatic limits.

Owens is certainly not a one-trick pony though, and her experience with Portland, Oregon’s kings of improvisation – Jackie-O Motherfucker – is permanently displayed in her solo material as well. Listening to one of the experimental rock group’s live extended jams is a paradoxical experience as it can lull you into a pleasant state of sonic euphoria even though the group often enlists the harsh sounds of free jazz to continuously mutate their sound. Owens doesn’t utilize as many horn squawks or minimalist freak-outs for her Valet output, but she certainly understands how to wrangle feedback and other amplified by-products into pleasant harmonics all their own.

Naked Acid rambles through a number of different approaches to her psychedelic landscapes. Where the aforementioned “Drum Movie” is built around the melting together of glacial soundscapes and brooding slabs of frequency icebergs, “Fire” sounds like the Velvet Underground holed up in a cabin somewhere in the rural regions of the Pacific Northwest. Owens’ linear songwriting is backed by deceptively simple and faintly atonal guitar playing, of which she teases each strand with a slightly wet mix of echo and wah-wah.

Fellow Portlandite Adrian Orange collaborates on the opening track, “We Went There”. With a delicate background of wind chimes and rain sticks, the two contrasting voices – Owens’ eased and hypnotic feminine coo and Orange’s ominous baritone – duet hauntingly among electric guitar scars and foggy feedback. And Mark Evan Burden of Silentist contributes drums to a number of songs as well, including the wonderful narcotic-friendly trip of “Kehaar”. Owens seduces every ounce of your attention like the most cunning of Homer’s sirens, at which point Burden’s steady snare rhythm locks in to guide your wayfaring ship directly into the rocky coast.

If 2007’s Blood is Clean introduced Valet as one of contemporary psychedelia’s most promising new entrants, Naked Acid solidifies the point. Like the previous release, it sidesteps any pretentiousness while still providing a challenging listen. Owens’ great sense for subtlety and texture in her songwriting and improvising as well as the degree of diversity throughout the record keeps the album continuously interesting after multiple listens. Consider Naked Acid yet another must hear in the Kranky catalog.

Dead Meadow - "Old Growth"

Dead Meadow - "Ain't Got Nothing (To Go Wrong)" (Matador 2008)

Dead Meadow – Old Growth / Matador

As we approach the fortieth anniversary of the ingenious name change four English teenagers thankfully agreed upon in early 1969, the legacy and influence of the band formerly known as Polka Tulk, mammoth rock icons Black Sabbath, still looms heavily over nearly every musician wanting to electrify their anguish into cascades of mind-melting guitar solos and psychedelic atmospheres. Every year or two, an American underground band eclipses their cover-band status and begins to spin the Sabbath sound, typically shaded with tones of Led Zepplin, Jimi Hendrix, Blue Cheer and Pink Floyd as well, into a new contagious vibe of fuzzy bliss, bluesy bombast and stoner sanctity.

D.C.’s Dead Meadow – with the 2003 Matador debut Shivering King and Others, their third proper full-length – fulfilled this near-annual prophecy with a career highlight. 2005’s follow-up, Feathers, found the band wearing a bit less black and a bit more psychedelic swirl. Their apathetic stoner stumble slipped into an eddy of Floyd-ish acid jangle. Not a terrible direction for a band looking to diversify its approach, but a slight disappointment for fans hung up on the guitar solo ear-fry and bluesy confrontation of the previous efforts.

Nearly three years to the day since Feathers dropped comes Old Growth, Dead Meadow’s third release for major-indie Matador Records. The elements of the trio’s sound are still in place: singer-guitarist Jason Simon’s nasal, Neil Young-derived whine, cyclical blues-heavy riffs and wah-wah friendly pedal-board, bassist Steve Kille’s crunchy, lilting undercurrent and the patient 70s hard-rock pummel of drummer Stephen McCarty. Then how come the Black I want to compare it to is no longer followed by Sabbath but Rebel Motorcycle Club?

The obvious culprit is overproduction. A bigger budget certainly opens possibilities for a band to experiment with their sound, but it also more often than not deteriorates urgency. It landed the band at Sunset Sound – an aged West Hollywood studio with a cheesy Jim Morrison legend – for half the recording instead of solely capturing their previously haunting sound in the abandoned rural Indiana guesthouse that was the location for the remaining of the tracking. For example, “Ain’t Got Nothing (To Go Wrong)” features the band in a familiar setting: electrified blues with a steady, punchy backbeat and Simon’s wondering narratives. And the expected guitar solo awes with a slight echo-delay blossoming into cascades of warm, wah-wahing guitar tones and a nearly over-modulating climax ebbing into a familiar blues sobering. But it doesn’t over-modulate when doing so would have accentuated the energy tenfold, not to mention it is the album’s longest instrumental outburst at barely three minutes.

So instead a lo-fi labor of love where every inch of tape is a potential moment of psych bombast, you get a crisp collection of compact ideas that are downright radio friendly. This is not too much of a stab at the band, but who gets stoned in under four-minutes? It takes a period of time for the THC just to work its way into the central nervous system, at which point a smoldering guitar solo can be slow-downed, strung-out and melted into the consciousness of the listener. Old Growth certainly has a good number of moments that will have you nodding in appreciation, but they almost always evaporate before you can really get lost in them. Besides, who is still not reeling from the Sabbathian punch in the mind’s eye of Black Mountain’s In the Future released just a few weeks ago? Talk about poor timing.

Karl Blau - "AM"

Karl Blau - "Spring Morning" (Whistler 2008)

Karl Blau – AM / Whistler

I suppose it is appropriate that Karl Blau – an eclectic, DIY-savvy singer/songwriter from northern Washington state – chose A.A. Milne as the muse for a record. Though known almost unanimously at this point for penning the Disney-hijacked Winnie-the-Pooh stories, Milne was a widely varied writer. Primarily a playwright, he as well penned a number of novels (both fiction and non-fiction), newspaper articles, poems and humor pieces, but it all became overshadowed by the looming figure of his son, Christopher Robin, and his animated stuffed animals.

Looming over Blau is his association to D+, a trio formed by Beat Happening’s singer/guitarist Bret Lunsford and featuring drummer Phil Elvrum – who has gone on to make quite the indie-quirk name himself as The Microphones and Mount Eerie. Blau’s eclectic career, now spanning over a decade, somewhat compares with Milne’s own as the multi-instrumentalist tackles a number of different mediums to release his music, which itself is quite stylistically varied though rooted in the Northwest lo-fi indie-pop approach.

This is the second release of AM, an album inspired by the literary works of Milne and that daily reminder of life when night and day briefly cross paths, shake hands with a respectful nod and trade posts: dawn. Re-mixed, re-mastered and re-sequenced from the original release, which was only available through Blau’s own refreshing DIY periodical-label Kelp Lunacy, AM 2.0 is being released by Chicago’s Whistler Records for a wider audience.

The music is what you’ve come to expect from Blau and his K/Marriage/Knw-Yr-Own counterparts: creative and colorful; endearingly lo-fi; encompassing indie-rock, psych, folk, and the skeletal remains of soul and reggae; and most importantly, oddly charming. For an outside comparison, AM stumbles along not unlike Joan of Arc’s most recent Eventually, All at Once. The compositions, though obtusely structured, chug along behind Blau’s guitar with cut-and-paste drum syncopations and blinking melodic embellishments – keyboards, mallet instruments, accordion, ambient chirps and the occasional electronic whiz. The songwriting, again like that of Tim Kinsella or Elvrum and to an extent Syd Barrett, is the sewn together thoughts of a man who spends a lot of time meandering down sidewalks, half-heartedly walking between the cracks partly because it’s fun partly because it’s a challenge (however miniscule), mentally patching together ideas with current inspirations and eventually concluding before a microphone, guitar and tape recorder. It’s honest, rudimentary, thoughtful and charming.

Like most eclectic lo-fi pop affairs, AM shines when Blau finds a sprightly groove out of odd superimpositions of melody and instrumentation. “Spring Morning” features a skeletal snare beat and shaker rhythm lilted by a surprisingly colorful bass, warmly reverberating electric guitar, melodica and Blau’s everyman vocals. It begins in Northwest twee-pop territory and ends somewhere in Southeast Kingston. In stark contrast, “Lake King’s Daughter” pays dues to prog-rock with its amateurish-but-endearing (perhaps consciously so) guitar noodlery and analog keyboard effects. At just less than three-minutes, there is nothing over-the-top about it, but the stylistic difference is outstanding. The rest of the album follows suit in its eclecticism: the The Glow, pt.2-esque “Yellow Sunbonnet”, the near-tribal “Noah Richards Son”, the pastoral folk-guitar ambience of “Of Birds”, or the just plain catchy “In the Morning”.

If you are already a fan of the Northwest indie-rock scene, AM is probably the album you were looking for when Blau traded in his folk guitar for dance beats and echo effects on 2007’s Dance Positive (which is not a stab at the record by any means). It is just in more of the D+ vein of minimalist and obtuse indie-pop. With Milne as the muse and Day and Night as the storybook’s main characters, Blau fashions an endearing fairy tale of wistful psych-folk illustrated with dawn’s beaming rays of optimism and peacefulness. In fact, where most records of this style are better suited for lonesome late nights when you are just looking for an accessible voice to keep you company, AM is – yes – best suited for those first moments after waking up; when you need a voice, simple and sincere, to accompany the fantastic display of the sun rising over the horizon.

Bana Kadori - "Agwambo"

Bana Kadori - "Agwambo pt. 2" (Kanyo 2008)

Bana Kadori – Agwambo / Kanyo

I spent a couple hours earlier today discussing the current tumultuous situation in Kenya with Ian Eagleson and Alex Minoff. As members of the Kenyan-American group Extra Golden – not to mention being kind and informative individuals who have taken time out of their schedules to speak with me on multiple occasions – they have done much to spread the warm grooves of benga music to international ears. Joined by three Kenyan musicians – Opiyo Bilongo, Onyango Wuod Omari and Onyango Jagwasi – the band mixed the chiming guitars and steady rhythms of Luo benga with American boogie and light psych-rock.

In 2006, as Extra Golden embarked on their first tour across the U.S. (thanks in part to the help of a certain Presidential candidate’s office), Eagleson and Minoff were in need of an outlet to make available the solo recordings of band member Bilongo to sell on the road. So the Kanyo label was formed and KNO 001 became the debut domestic release of Opiyo Bilongo & Bilongo Golden Stars: What Do People Want? Now two years later, in the wake of Kenya’s tremendously unfortunate socio-political tensions, comes the second installment of the burgeoning imprint.

Despite Agwambo being one of their first domestically available albums, Kenya’s Bana Kadori is far from being a new band. They formed nearly thirty years ago in 1979 as the backing band for Ochieng Kabasseleh, a now legendary figure in benga music. As an individual entity, their music doesn’t stray too much from the modern renditions of the style, including the use of lyrical electric guitars, delicate but steady polyrhythm, and buoyant syncopated electric bass lines. What does separate the veteran group from the pack is their lush vocal harmonies, which carry the tunes into a welcoming and breezy soul territory. Add in a penchant for intertwining Congolese rumba and warm, elegant horn lines that – for lack of a better comparison – remind me of Paul Desmond’s tone, and you have a benga band brimming with individualism and charm.

Poignant to a frustrating degree, Agwambo was recorded in the Fall of 2007 as a dedication to Raila “Agwambo” Odinga, the Kenyan Orange Democratic Movement presidential candidate who appeared to be the victor of the late December elections before questionable vote tallies abruptly swung the election to incumbent President Mwai Kibaki and in turn sparked nationwide civil unrest and violence. In fact, overtop the smooth dance groove laced with a sweet-swinging alto saxophone of “Agwambo pt. 1”, the frontman of Bana Kadori first praises “The People’s President” in Luo before breaking into English. “He is a true revolutionary who has brought liberation in Kenya…” states the singer in hesitant but articulate English, “He is now at the forefront for the struggle for the third liberation, the people’s right to a responsible government, free of corruption, free of tribalism, free of inequitable distribution of the national pay… he has a plan to eradicate insecurity in the streets of Kenya; he has a plan for gender equality so that men and women alike will be included in our national building; he has a plan to bring Kenya to the glory we all wish for; vote Raila ‘Agwambo’ Odinga for president, because he is the people’s president.” I have no intentions of making a political stance being as my aim here – like that of Eagleson and Minoff – is strictly ethnomusicological, but that is certainly a tough sell to argue.

“Agwambo pt. 2” keeps the same groove of it’s prior section, but at a more upbeat pace. Along with “Ochot Mayaka”, the Afro-Carribean rumba influence is all too apparent, lilting each track into a pleasantly fluid swing. Later in the album, on tracks like “Auma” and “Judy”, the sophisticated vocal harmonics take the spotlight while the chiming electric guitar falls into an almost counterpoint. “Doc Odotte”, which features more of a lead singer and grou