Steve Lacy ‎- 'Solo - Théâtre Du Chêne Noir' (Emanem)

This solo sax LP, recorded live in concert as the title indicates, opens with 'The Breath' which was the closing cut on the previous record under review here, Moon. Stripped of the Franco-Italo-Swiss band, the composition is barely recognisable, though it is much more clearly a 'tune' in this form. Emanem is a label I associate with Derek Bailey and the most idiom-destroying musicians of the 1970s, so it's somewhat interesting how much of this LP stays around a compositional frame. But then again, that's Lacy - free as hell on Moon (and after all, he played on Cecil Taylor's Jazz Advance way back in '55) but ultimately one who was looking to extend jazz through composition and experimentation. Solo is thus a tight concert; while not exactly traditional standards, it's only on side two opener 'Josephine' that Lacy gets into some extreme techniques. There's a part of that piece where he's squeezing the sax to the point of no return, asymptotically approaching silence but leaving the faintest escape route for his breath. It's man vs. very small machine and the machine almost wins, and you could hear a pin drop in the room as he does it. Actually, for a live record of solo sax this is recorded well, exceptionally so in a genre that usually is well-recorded to begin with. It was a (certainly hot) August night in 1972 and that tense room energy is felt as you often hear on live records, in the echo and reverb through the room behind each breath. But there's nary a shuffle or peep from this crowd, as they were edited out (assuming there was anyone there to applaud in the first place), apart from the briefest moment at the end before a quick fadeout. The compositions start to blur together but Lacy brings out a honking assonance in a few places that made me question if this was all soprano, such was the grit behind it. Other segments are sinewy and untouchable, darting around like an angry insect fleeing a structural flyswatter. Technical mastery, sure, you know already he established that a decade prior, so now it's about hearing him unadorned. The closer, 'The Wool', seems to be the most complete piece, a modal tune that drops into extended breakdowns and keeps coming back to itself.  'Stations' employs a radio in the most John Cage-like fashion and it's a suitable improvisatory foil for Lacy; 'Cloudy' keeps the static running which integrates well into the blowsier parts of the sax playing. The liner notes are clear, explaining who they are dedicated to (Roswell Rudd, Gil Evans, etc.), and there's a concluding paragraph about the nature of solo sax concerts, crediting Anthony Braxton in particular with 'open[ing] the way', and even claiming that they are 'easy'. Nothing sounds easy to me but that's because I once tried to play a soprano sax and struggled to get any sound to come out of it. Like all the other solo sax records in this accumulation, I don't think to pull this out much, but there's something remarkable about the way this was played, recorded and presented.

Steve Lacy - 'Moon' (BYG Actuel/Get Back)

This is a far cry from The Straight Horn of Steve Lacy, as it's anything but straight. Moon hails from a period where he was immersed in the Italian free jazz scene (recorded in Rome, 1969) and features a bunch of European musicians who I'm not really familiar with. His wife, Irene Aebi, appears on cello and does vocals on 'Note', which is one of the more memorable cuts not just because of the staccato, one-word lyrics but cause of its whirlwind start-stop madcap nature. Jacques Thollot is on the drums - I only know him from Sharrock's Monkey-Pockie-Boo record and otherwise more as a name – and he clatters and whoops throughout. The overall momentum of this feels closer to the scratchy bending and hacking of the Spontaneous Music Ensemble than much American free jazz going on at the time. The front line being clarinet and soprano sax means we're locked firmly into the upper register, and the bass and drums are fluid enough that it feels like a lot is missing from the centre. Aebi's cello isn't always so present, or it's played in such a way that it's hard to distinguish from the bass. There's generally a thump-thump bassline behind most cuts, probably most melodically on closing cut 'The Breath', but the whole record feels pretty scrappy. 'Moon' is where things get a little loopier, and the swirls of breath and string start to bend and form a parallax effect. The whole thing goes by rather quickly, and it's absolutely uncompromising in its style. Not a full-breath blowout by any means, but maybe that's just due to the limits of the instrumentation and the way that Thollot plays. Drummers can have a huge effect on these matters. Lacy is front and centre on the cover photo but in the mix he's all over the place, darting through the corners of the soundstage and coming to the forefront furtively, only to slip away as he pleases. This is music that plays against itself continually, twisting against a centre that keeps escaping. I'm not sure what this record's reputation is but it's a demanding listen, despite having a light touch. Somehow it feels unique from other Euro-free records of the period, but maybe that's just because Lacy is such a singular player.

Kuupuu ‎- 'Yökehrä' (Dekorder)

This is a compilation of earlier releases by Kuupuu and it hews closer to other Finnish underground music of its time than some of the later work by Kuupuu (Jonna Karanka) and related projects. There are many names from the Finnish scene of this time (2002-2005), some of which have dissipated into our distant memories (The Anaximandros, anyone?) and others which are still active, though quite different in today' s incarnations (Avarus, Kemiälliset Ystävät). All certainly bring to mind a certain vibe, and that vibe, to me, is 'small' - short form pieces, often just sketches, recorded and left to lie and marinate rather than be overworked. Kuupuu, at least in these earlier recordings, has a certain delicacy to her approach and I'm finding it perfect for this evening's imminent sunset. Acoustic sounds are prevalent and these compositions are more content to move forward slowly, if at all. There's a tendency towards space and texture, and the sequencing is well-chosen here, breaking up the running order from the original cd-r releases and reassembling here. The home-recorded nature of Karanka's work from this time sounds great when transfered to vinyl and I guess it's thanks to Dekorder doing a solid job with the mastering, as usual. When there's hiss and tape noise around the material, it somehow sounds grandiose and important on wax. When she uses her voice, especially on side 2 ('Pihlajapuu', 'Tuli Uni'), it's all breath and transference, mixing with the hiss to be wordless or essentially so. More recognisable melodies on squeezeboxes and keyboards peer out but don't overstay their welcome. In lesser hands this could come off as hackneyed goth music, but there's a really personal vision which seems to abstractly convey experience, which is all I could ever want from music. Her later work becomes a little denser, and more focused on motion in conjunction with texture, specifically the music's own internal ebb and flow. One could probably argue that Kuupuu recordings also become more distinct later on, and that the pieces on this record are more simple or somehow less developed. But there's a care evident here, a sculpting that isolates her from any traditional musical precedents while also situating her work as part of a movement. 

Fela Ransome-Kuti And The Africa '70 With Ginger Baker ‎– 'Live!' (Signpost)

Afrobeat meets British jazz here, or at least Ginger Baker sits in on a second drum kit to make this collaboration. This is the only Fela Kuti record I own but I've heard a lot of those classics from the 70s, and this sounds more or less in line. Tony Allen is a formidable enough drummer that Baker is probably only adding accents and thickening; it's panned a bit so you can get some separation, and this has a pretty excellent sound for a live recording from the time, though there's no credits as to when or where this recording was made. Baker is explicitly introduced by Kuti, who speaks between each of the cuts, and when Baker starts to tap about on the drums, Kuti quickly says 'That's enough, that's enough' and moves into the next song ('Ye Ye De Smell'), which is supposedly written for Baker because he does NOT in fact smell. It's some good natured ribbing I'm sure but Kuti makes it extremely clear who's in charge, as if there would be any doubt. 'Smell' is a banger though, but they are all, of course. This album came out in '71 so it's actually one of Kuti's first releases, and they're already playing a well developed form of their music here. Four songs, opening with the nicely named 'Let's Start' and and propelled by Kuti's shouts and sax, Igo Chiko's fiery solos and of course the drumming, from not just Allen and Baker but the small army of congas and other percussion instruments. There's a long electric piano solo on 'Black Man's Cry' that is also uncredited - no keyboards officially appear on the album, unless it's some sort of insane guitar technique. It's just before he climax of the record building up with the clattery guitars until it just stops and leaves some space for Kuti to begin soliloquising again. When the theme comes back in towards the end (it's a twelve minute piece), with trumpets and sax ringing in harmony, it feels at once like a beautiful orchestrated pop song and the rallying, radical cry its title implies. The final cut is the most somber, being midtempo and transferring all of the polyrhythmic shuffling to be between the beats, though somber for Fela Kuti is maddeningly energetic for most others. Titled 'Egbe Mi O (Carry Me I Want to Die)', it builds to a 'Hey Jude'-like wordless chant, which while sung by the entire band and presumably live audience, attains a wistfulness which is only echoed by the exuberant trumpets. The bands builds it up under this, until it's a somewhat distorted wall of sound, coming back to a lovely theme as is the formula.

Erkki Kurenniemi ‎- 'Rules' (Full Contact)

I'm going to use this record as an excuse to rant about a topic that is probably not even relevant anymore, but I connect it to Rules specifically. I'm pretty sure this is the only LP in the accumulation that was purchased at an art biennial, though being that it was Documenta 2012, I suppose I should refer to it as a quintennial (or whatever it's technically classified as). Documenta 2012 had a lovely and large retrospective on Kurenniemi's instruments there, as well as numerous other sound art works on exhibition, most by the big names of the time - Janet Cardiff, Susan Philipsz, etc.  It was all part of a clearly deliberate attempt to recognise 'sound art' as being very much of the 'now', of the contemporary, at least as it looked in 2012. I don't remember much now about these sound works, but felt at the time – even before arriving – that the selection of sound artists was pretty obvious, like a curator who wasn't super familiar with sound art just looked up the top names from Wikipedia and invited them. That's probably closer to the truth than anyone would admit, and echoes the experiences I've had in the art world, where I frequently wonder why visual art people are unwilling extend their interest in avant-garde aesthetics to the world of music. Actually, I no longer wonder about this much, because I don't care much about the narrow tastes of visual art people anymore, and also because the answers are rather obvious (the financial/educational system wrapped around visual art provides a historical and academic context, while music is still generally a populist, market-driven sector, blah blah blah) and people have even written books about it (Fear of Music by David Stubbs is a quick, OK read that mostly emphasises these same points). Anyway, I don't mean this as a dig against the curator since she otherwise did a brilliant job, with the visual art at least. Documenta 2012 was probably the pinnacle of contemporary art as I've seen it – in many ways the 'last' step for me, since I have struggled to find much of interest in the vacuous, decaying carcass of that cultural sphere – despite the mostly forgettable stock list of sound art superstars dotting the periphery of Kassel. Anyway (and, I'm sorry, we're only about halfway through the rant, let alone actually talking about Rules), there was a small concert of several contemporary Finnish musicians performing on Kurenniemi's instruments that were in the exhibition, as they were still functional.  A friend of mine was playing, so I went and tried my best to enjoy it. The press descended on this like vultures, though to be fair it was the official 'press' preview of the whole exhibition so they were supposed to swarm like that. It was actually hard to hear the sounds over the constant digital camera clicks and flashes, and I realised halfway through that not only was nobody listening, but nobody there knew how to listen. Kurenniemi's embrace by the contemporary art mafia was due largely to the strong visual appeal of his creations, as well as the general sense of nostalgia, hauntology, etc that was attractive at the time. Essentially, they looked cool with all of their lights and knobs, fitting a general analogue fetishism which has persisted throughout my entire adult life, and that's all that mattered. The music, the sounds: absolutely secondary. And you know what? This really annoyed me, because up to that point I had always identified myself as coming from a music-world network background that thrived precisely because it was unconnected to commercial or critical recognition in the fine art world. I was working (and still occasionally work) in and around a less explicitly musical art context and I initially found a lot of liberation in this opening up of parameters, as starting to bring strange sounds into an art context could bring in larger audiences and potential career growth. But something happened to me at Documenta in that precise moment, which is that I realised how the wonderful thing about music is that it always has and always will have total freaks and weirdos making noises in their basement, and these freaks and weirdos have built over time and necessity a truly vast, amorphous and undefinable network that is united through passion, enthusiasm, and truth. Some of these freaks may get their moment in the sun of recognition in a larger art context, though only probably if they fit into the social narrative of whatever current is hot in art. I'm channeling Carducci here and I don't want to start sounding anti-diversity or even close, but I'll get back to my main point - let's go back to the basement, or stay there to begin with. The art world can fuck off; if you want to love and celebrate music, then love it and celebrate it for the correct reasons, because you actually love it. There's no one telling you that you can or cannot dub your own cassette in an edition of 10 with whatever fucked up and strange sounds you want there to be; everyone is genuinely permitted to participate in music, and you don't need any validation from an academy, curator or gallerist to be part of it. (Yes I know there are music academies but that's not what I'm talking about). Nor am I talking about Kurenniemi himself - he worked in a university context, and the brilliance and singularity of his music deserves to be heard, and I'm sure whatever late-life financial benefits he's received from interest in his work has been beneficial and appreciated. But the presentation of it to a cabal of the contemporary art media is really what pushed me over the edge, and I've never been quite the same. Oh, and what about Rules itself? It's great, mastered well (I remember my friend proclaiming that the remastering of 'OnOff' here brought out qualities he had never heard before, to the point where it sounded like a different piece entirely), and you should have it.