Last Exit (Enemy)

I wonder what motivated this 'super group' to form - who phoned who, where the inspiration came from, etc.? Were Peter Brötzmann and Sonny Sharrock just hanging out one night and decided that the world needed more hot, swampy electric freak fusion music? If so, they were right; or at least the world of 1986 sure did, and maybe in 2019 (despite having more music available than ever, despite the nature of streaming having transformed music itself into something disposable for the majority of people, despite the plethora of niche choices available to all reducing if not outwardly eliminating the idea of 'obscure' or 'inaccessible') we do too. Last Exit were the greater than the sum of their parts, I think, and the group is unimaginable without any of the four members, so prominent are their contributions, almost perfectly balanced. Yet somehow, Ronald Shannon Jackson's drumming is the crucial element here. Even though no other guitarist sounds like Sharrock, no other saxophonist quite sounds like Brötzmann, etc., I could at least deign to imagine this record with, for example, Fred Frith instead of Sharrock; and that would be probably pretty great too. But if you swapped out Jackson for another drummer, even a great drummer, it would fundamentally change the group so much because his propulsive, machinelike approach is what most thrusts this record away from any semblance of swing or blues and into tortured, primal viscera. This is made clear about two seconds into 'Discharge', the opening cut, where the drums sound like gunshots and everyone is thunderously blasting notes to the point where it becomes a sort of drone, though one with a punchy staccato texture making it up. 'Backwater' seems to pull things down a notch, with a skittery interplay between Brötzmann and Sharrock around a spacious atmosphere. The feeling is of a cold storage locker, steam rising from dirty urban manholes, and a hopeless pallor over everything. It builds to a full-band freakout, and while Last Exit resemble jazz occasionally in the sense that there are solos and no vocals and a saxophone, they resist showy musicianship or navel-gazing noodling. There's no shortage of notes being played, most of all by Laswell, on an electric six-string bass, but it's perfect for this band. I was out with my parents recently and I saw a fusion trio play, who were led by an electric pianist, with a drummer and six string electric bassist (I won't name names here). It felt like endless samey talk show background music, and despite my best efforts to enjoy it I could not. The motivating drive of those musicians seemed to be to cram as many notes as possible into each composition, without any regard for personal expression or musical diversity. For me, growing up PUNK (or at least PUNK-adjacent), I subscribed to all sorts of clichés about jazz and chop-based music, a result being there were instruments I considered acceptable to play and ones that were not. The six string bass was clearly banned from my teenage idea of good taste and the trio I saw with my parents illustrates why. But Laswell, who has occasionally overstepped his boundaries in other projects, demonstrates on Last Exit precisely why it's childish and reductionist to dismiss any sound, and why my favourite era of musical discovery was when I learned to cast off my PUNK-adjacent hangups. When Laswell enters the soundspace (with Jackson) on 'Red Light', his technique is a torrent of thumping physicality that would be unimaginable on any other instrument, and it's awesome. Especially on vinyl, which emphasises low-end in a way that CDs never can. All of the churning and grinding within these songs is still driven by tempo and rhythm, rather than tone, and while chaotic, it never feels messy. The first side alone is near-exhausting to listen to closely, and the second in no reprieve. But that's what I want here - thunder, acrid smoke, sharp edges, and something sinister glowing beneath it all.