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.

Jazzfinger - 'Mole & The Morning Dew' (Spirit of Orr)

Ecstatic drone! Thick, rushing roars of processed guitar. Echoes that ping back, jarring against other sonorities. Cheap keyboards and clanging guitars, sprawling out to explore a dark tunnel. Interplay both primitive and sophisticated. An autumnal atmosphere, like a Jesmond treeline in the dusk, the distant roar of suburban-bound traffic. Naturalistic renderings, both pastoral and contemporary.  The rush of electric energy, a current throughout, filling available space with its potentiality. Not exactly howls, but restrained cries, made with strings and wood being tapped, hammered and bowed. Treble kicked out of the window. Throw in everything and see what sticks, but refine it as it happens, control shaped through a long relationship of improvisation. It's not chaos, but a realm of glorious glowing energy. Arpeggios cycling towards a dark centre. Searing, bowed metal, pulsing through reverberating amplifiers. Gentle acoustic tones prodding against it all. Voices, bathed in static, in varispeed dictaphone glory, providing an off-centre to repeated guitar figures; the colour in the bowing takes it to different directions. Yet is always circles back.  A tape splice to end it all. 

Bert Jansch - 'Jack Orion' (Vanguard)

Renbourn has moved up to full collaborator here, getting a subtitle credit on this, though he doesn't play on every track; the music is a touch more polished too, as the opener 'The Waggoner's Lad' indicates. Here, Jansch's banjo playing pushes against Renbourn's sharp guitar and it's a traditional rendered in a flashy, aggressive style, but I like it; the recording on the banjo is way closer, or maybe it's just a nicer sounding instrument than the one on '900 Miles'. It's the same version from the previous album - here, re-included, a difference between this Vanguard issue of the record and the original UK release. The cover is not the most flattering photograph of Mr. Jansch but it clearly indicates a break from the Village-aspiring folk hipster look on the previous records; I'd say the presence of all traditional material here (well, all but one, but that one is a short instrumental by Ewan McColl, so it's effectively "traditional" in intent) also indicates this turn. It kinda reminds me how the Incredible String Band were total karma hippies on their second album but by Hangman's they were going for something, well, earthier. I've heard a few versions of 'Black Water Side' over the years but this one has a punchy guitar and confident delivery; maybe it's the male vocals as compared to Sandy Denny or Anne Briggs's takes, but it feels distinct and fresh, and I like it. The title track is the big sell, almost ten minutes long, telling the epic story of Jack Orion, a horny fiddler/lover who gets involved in some intrigue with another guy's wife, or something like that. There's a strange, scratchy line drawing of Mr. Orion on the back cover, and I guess it's another cautionary tale, like 'Needle of Death', though not preachy or pushy. Or maybe not; while it's a great track in its monotony, accented by Renbourn's second guitar which drives things forward and building in intensity as it goes along, I must confess that I find the story hard to follow by the end. It's not that I often listen to traditional British music hoping for a good yarn, and in particular I'd say these re-booted versions from the late 60s are even more enjoyable when letting go of the myth. Or maybe it's just my attention span, shot through with holes from a generation's worth on online gratification, YouTube culture, and general meda-overstimulus. Or maybe just from this self-imposed quest to listen to eight Bert Jansch records in sequence.

Idea Fire Company - 'Anti-Natural' (Swill Radio)

This is a two-part manifesto, being both language and sound. All sound is a form of language of course and Anti-Natural is a clear example that even the most conservatory-trained traditionalist could understand. Karla Borecky and Scott Foust's synth interplay, accented with reedy guitar and tape loops, stakes out a universe that redefines musical concepts such as metre, pitch, and duration. With all of the tracks on Anti-Natural, it's really one complete work, the concept of the 'album' being probably the most traditional music-industry one being adhered to. Shorter tracks tease out pinching tones, a murky ambience that breathes and pulses, and these support the longer explorations, for example the 13-minute 'Magnetic Fields', which glows with an organic repetition that feels so attuned to the human body that while listening to it carefully, closely, I feel a change in my own breathing. This LP feels like a complete statement of intent even without the printed manifesto included, but that is an intense and I'd say recommended read, especially for me over today's morning coffee. No one in academic art history circles is even aware of the 'Anti-Natural' manifesto, a fact that serves to prove the manifesto's own points about the conspiratorial blanketing of capitalist commodification, Judeo-Christian morals and positivist scientific thought. It's a convincing work, one that should be taken seriously and applied to this and all future Idea Fire Company recordings, for it stakes out their aesthetic position and radicalises a music that should be already radical, were it not for the context of the music industry which de-radicalises by definition, and of course the LP (pressed and sold by IFCO themselves on the Swill Radio imprint) is a commercial product. Anti-Natural, not music you'd listen to with Grandma, is a vital document of sound exploration that forms around a much larger context than simple electroacoustic experimentalism. And thinking about this as an aesthetic, one that a younger version of me would have happily summarised as an 'alien' one, really raises the question about how to live our lives through art, uncompromising and true. Some of the shorter tracks have great titles like 'We Are Nothing and We Want to Be Everything' or 'On Your Toes, Intellectuals!', which could be seen as jokes or as serious provocations, and somehow I vote for the latter, though the Anti-Natural ideology doesn't feel heavy or dogmatic. The music is ultimately what matters and over the last 25 years or so, IFCO has tended towards lightness, with sounds that are lifting, expanding, and evolving, generating a sensation of a world to explore. It starts here for me (though there are a few earlier records that I haven't heard) and as a statement of purpose, it's marvellous.

Flaherty/Corsano Duo ‎– 'Last Eyes' (Records)

This live recording was made during a radio station session for MIT's station so it has a nice live sound, but no presence of an actual crowd. This doesn't seem to be a problem in generating energy between these two, though the key significance of Flaherty and Corsano together is how much they are able to channel their fiery explosiveness towards more fluid interplay. 'Sign Your Name in the Sand, Please' has exactly this - it opens with a flurry of cataclysmic sound and then refines itsel into some very melodic push and pull between Flaherty's earthy, low tone and Corsano's tom-tom pulse. The two sides of this are up and down in mood, but always maintain a good bit of space. A good solo bit in the middle is chunky and barren, inspiring Corsano to rejoin with aplomb. Side two's 'I Miss Jimmy' finds Flaherty clamping down on the mouthpiece and delivering some real shrill blasts, which will somehow bend back on themselves and pull these lovely complementary melodies from the lower register, darting between the two extremes instantly but somehow not sounding too discordant. There's a long drum solo as well on this track, and Corsano often sounds like two drummers playing at once anyway - this just affords the listener more space to perceive it. When I first put this record on I thought that I would end up writing a bit here about the meaning of 'jazz' today and what this type of free music means in a cultural context, but I don't have the energy for it right now. Listening to Last Eyes takes energy from the listener, though it's not the most abrasive work by either of these two; it's more because the momentum that never lets up, even if the tonality shifts. And recorded by an old buddy of mine!