Carla Bley / Paul Haines - 'Escalator Over the Hill' (JCOA)

Actually, you know, Escalator Over the Hill is my favorite chronotransduction ever. Why can't avant-garde jazz have their own Jesus Christ Superstar? As notorious as this is for being an overblown pretentious pile of art-wank, if you actually listen to it you'll find a pretty good time. There's only a few triple LPs that I think are deserving of the length, and this is one of them. A Lot of People Would Like to See Armand Schaubroeck ... Dead is another, but it'll be years til we get to it. Sandanista is not, and something about that forthcoming Joanna Newsom triple gives me a bad, bad feeling. But let's get to Escalator - the lineup is amazingly great, and I could fill this post naming the luminaries who blow 'n pluck on these six sides: Bley and Mantler, of course, and then Charlie Haden, Don Cherry, Gato Barbieri, Jack Bruce, Don Preston, John McLaughlin, Linda Ronstandt (!), Roswell Rudd, Michael Snow (!), Jimmy Lyons, Enrico Rava, Leroy Jenkins, Dewey Redman .... and that's not counting the unsung heroes like Paul Motian (who drives the drumkit throughout). I am a sucker for Bley's style of brainy big-band deconstructions; I love Tropical Appetites and a lot of the songs here follow a similar pattern, though with Paul Haines' perplexing lyrics. There's a lot of great, soulful movements here; the whole set opens with Roswell Rudd's trombone aching in pain. This Hotel Lobby Band comes back and forth like a Greek chorus, with other smaller breakout groups driving forward the story and the band returning - used to great effect at the end of 'Holiday in Risk'. I'm not going to be a literary critic here, so you won't get any comments on the themes present in the lyrics (mutation, India, conflict, the body, etc.). But as one who enjoys delicate, female-driven songwriting, big-band swing, and weird electro-acoustic sound fuckery -- this has everything for me. It's amazing how incredibly consistent it is over two+ hours. I guess this took a few years to assemble so Bley really could take her time to keep the wheat from the chaff, you know? But while "it's all good", there's still highlights. Linda Ronstadt really has a shit-hot voice, and whenever she takes a tune, it slays ... check 'Why?' on side 2 if you don't believe me. I wonder what this stage production looked like? I can only imagine actors dealing with sounds like the ring-modulated piano or the calliope bits. Jack's Traveling Band (which is McLaughlin, Bley, Bruce and Motian) rip it up in rock-fusion fury on side 3-- to the point where you can only dream of an offshoot LP. It resembles Tony Williams' Lifetime on more than a surface level, though contained into a five minute "rock song" and somehow fitting in place with the rest of this. They come back in 'Rawalpindi Blues' and get a bit more room to explore, when McLaughling busts this nutty guitar line that is super staccato repeated notes. The piece goes into this weird chanted "What will we ever do with you?" vocal part over what sounds like AMM or something, and then the theme is taken up by the other recurring band in Escalator Over the Hill -- the Desert band. They actually appear earlier on side 5 to introduce the Eastern section of the story. This is where Jenkins shines, though it's also copiloted by Don Cherry's ethnoclouds of trumpet (and later his vocal glossolalia). The cello (played by Calo Scott) has a tambura/Bharat vibe, and these sections feel like a slice of curry-flavoured gristle in the middle of wedding cake. Overall, cause it's been a few years since I last listened to this, I'm kinda blown away by how good it is. I could probably go to this at any point during the last ten years and found something in there to reflect on my current interests. When I was into jammy, spacey rock explorations I would have enjoyed the Jack's Traveling Band sections; when I was interested in oblique songwriting, well, pretty much all of the parts with singing would apply. Free jazz? Of course, and more restrained improvisations are all over this, too. Outsider, NWW-listy sounds? Sure, they're the glue that holds this together really. There's also a few tunes where the voice drifts over the instrumentation in the same way that outsider/free folk does, which I can't explain any better. 'Oh Say Can You Do?' on side four (which is voice and calliope) is what I'm talking about. Ethnic free explorations: see the Desert band, above. Complicated art-rock ideas: the whole thing. Right now what I take from this the most is the idea of composition as a means of liberation, not control. This is a pretty tightly knit triple LP, probably the most tightly knit 3xLP I can think of except for maybe that one Vitamin B12 release. But at the same time, it invites exploration across a shitload of different genres, and can probably be studied to the point of microscopic detail.

Masaki Batoh - 'Kikaokubeshi' (The Now Sound)

The yin (or maybe yang) to A Ghost From the Darkened Sea, Kikaokubeshi is another six tracks - though this time its longer, slower, and at 33rpm. As well as instrumental, dark, dense and minimal in comparison to Darakened Sea's folky songs. The raging storms of dark psych that Ghost are known for are more prevalent here, though Batoh avoids any obvious guitar heroics or vocalising. 'Magakami' brings in some rock drums and church organ, though it still maintains an anti-rock experimentalism, like a group improvisation to a dark film soundtrack. 'Ebb' begins the second side with some melting vocal mumbles that start to make sense after awhile, though its got that great sound poetry feel, filtered through the rising sun. I infrequently feel the desire to pull this one out, though in the organic drone/psych genre it's first-class. It's not actually all that droney yet it has that huge, expanding "ball of sound feel" and it reminds me of what the psychedelic/minimal underground was doing in the late 90s. It hurts to say this, but this type of music has lost a lot of its value to me. When this came out, sure, it was awesome and refreshing especially given what I was into at the time. But after ten years of a wonderful, dynamic, exciting underground of home-tapers and bedroom psych wizards, I'm no longer looking for this Out sound -- or rather, I don't really think of it as 'out' anymore. When I listen to Batoh's record I don't apply this criticism because it predates that stuff for me, but it's true -- instead of being excited at the nearly infinite amount of underground psych, I just find it all starting to sound the same and my jaded ears gloss over the nuances that make these records so rewarding. Avoiding that gloss is a major challenge for anyone in these media-saturated times and I try my best, but it's inevitable with the onslaught of effects-pedal guitar/synth ambience continually clutttering my inbox of consciousness. I digress, again, and unfairly so; Kikaokubeshi is a winner and I think these days you can get a CD 2-fer with this and Darkened Sea together -- truly the way to go, if you can't score the wax.

Syd Barrett - 'The Madcap Laughs and Barrett' (Harvest)

It's nice to have this as a 2-record set with a photo-adorned gatefold. Barrett is such the stuff of myths these days that I find it colours my enjoyment of the music a bit. Sure, it's a great story and it's almost inarguable that Pink Floyd was more interesting with him, but it's hard not to feel like the poor guy was exploited a bit. And listening to The Madcap Laughs has its moments of genuine spookyness, but a lot of proto-twee cute moments that, whether they were Barrett's fault or not, are hard for me to get past now. Among the plethora of depressed, outsider folk that's been unearthed there's certainly been a lot of more fucked up stuff, but Barrett has the mass appeal. I guess cause there's such a strong pop sensibility, plus the connection to a very popular rock band whose posters still adorn the walls of college dorms worldwide. Now, my favorite moments tend towards songs like 'Dark Glove', 'Terrapin' and 'Golden Hair', maybe because I've drowned myself in the outfolk sound recently. But the poppy tunes are great too: 'Here I Go' is an Ayers-like bit of whimsy that I think Barrett pulls off well, but many others maybe would stumble on it. I always thought Robert Wyatt played on this record but Harvest's repackaging doesn't credit him, if that is true. Barrett is a bit more cohesive and rocking, with some great songs ('Waving my arms int he air/I never lied to you' is a quite underrated one, plus 'Wolfpack'), yet I think I'm mostly satisfied by the end of record one. The messed up rhythms that sounded so 'crazy' once are there and I pity the backing band, but it's not reason enough to be excited in a record collection full of hesitations. This set falls into the category of records I'd never consider getting rid of, yet I'll probably never listen to them again. They are trophies, existing only to chronicle some important stage in my past development for my own autobiographical purposes. And, I don't have Spence's Oar so maybe this fills that niche too. When I was 15 I used to dream of meeting a girl who would have a Syd Barrett poster in her room, though instead of James Joyce's 'Golden Hair' she always had black locks in my dreams. Said girl never materialised but I'm sure she's not hard to find (I'm no longer interested). But a girl with a Kenneth Higney poster instead, now that would be a treat!