Ju Suk Reet Meate, Oblivia, SIXES, Sharkiface & Loachfillet ‎- 'Dr. Octopuss' (Fish Pies/BOC Sound Laboratories)

Five weirdo outsider types got together and made Dr. Octopuss, two side-long works of fucked-up sound interaction (or I guess it's one long composimprovisiation,  since it's listed as parts 1 and 2, but who knows for sure how it's meant to be taken?). Ju Suk and Oblivia are of course from Smegma and I don't know the others, but this certainly comes from a similar soundworld to Smegma – one that eschews not just all traditional musical patterns (notes, chords, harmony, rhythm etc.) but the orthodoxy of experimental and improvised music as well, if that makes any sense. I get the title mixed up with Dr. Octagon/Dr. Octagonecologyst, though that's about the only similarity beyond the mad scientist, inhuman theme. Actually I think it's the name of a misspelled Spider-Man villain, a mutation human-robot hybrid with scary mechanical tentacles if I remember correctly (no, I haven't seen the films). The hybrid human/machine concept carries over, but perhaps the malevolence is left behind, because this is a pretty fun trip, or maybe my baseline for fun is villanous. This record does have an underwater feel, as many of the layers are surrounded by a slow, encapsulating pulse, holding the rest of the sounds in a sort of permanent stasis. The electro/acoustic (human/machine? too simple, too simple) balance feels roughly 50/50, and with such a layered approach it's impossible to know who is responsible for which elements. It does feel like it was a live take, maybe even in front of an audience, and there are sampled elements (French media speech, other urban sounds) which impose the heaviest themes, even though they are used sparingly. Sometimes the fidelity makes these samples sound like they're coming from an unwatched television in an adjacent room, which is an eerie pathway to postmodernism which I heartily endorse. Whatever sounds were generated by traditional musical instruments, those sources are treated with all manners of household effects, which furthers the sense of otherworldliness. There's clearly keyboard and saxophones, occasionally getting into a dialogue against a mild oscillating background wind. Some moments are delicate and spare, but never exactly silent - an errant keyboard run or bumping bit of static will always poke through. It moves briskly through both sides, a concoction that is at once a unique meeting of some true American outsiders and also another run of the mill jam. This contradiction isn't a blessing but its an unavoidable conclusion when trying to remember the last time I actually listened to this.

Art Ensemble of Chicago - 'Chi-Congo' (Paula)

This is sadly the final Art Ensemble of Chicago record we'll be exploring, and I placed it here because some online discography placed it after Fanfare for the Warriors, though I now see this has a copyright date of 1973 and Fanfare is '74, so I most likely screwed up! Dusty Groove calls this 'a lost chapter' and maybe that's a good one; they're right in that it's closer to the open-form style of the Paris years, though Don Moye (misspelled here as Moxe, kinda like that weird medicinal soda they love in Maine) rocks the fuck out, and the opening track resembles the drum circle mode of Bap-Tizum (though significantly more tentative and, I daresay, amateurish). Roscoe Mitchell's pieces comprise 75% of this and 'Enlorfe' is a real winner, split over both LP sides and featuring some nervous-ass Jarman soprano while Favors and Moye accelerate to an outer dimension. Mitchell moves to the steel drums over some repetetive hole digging by the rhythm section and makes things into a buzzing perpipatetic run-on sentence. At the end it slows down to a thick drone, almost remniscent of 'Tnoona' but then flurrying back to life at the end. I'm a bit sad to leave the Art Ensemble of Chicago (though excited for a change in the Underbite). The crazy thing is that after 24 LP sides and 4 more on CD, we haven't even covered their whole career - just a middle part of it. Their pre-Paris, earliest recordings, which were released on a super hard to find box set, are a thing of wonder though I have only experienced them in the non-physical form. (The blog where I review my mp3 collection in alphabetical order will not be started until, I dunno, 2013 or so). And for some reason I don't have any of their later records for ECM, even though they're pretty easy to find and a few of them (Full Force in particular) rank among their best-ever work. But there's a real difference between 28 sides of the Art Ensemble of Chicago and 28 sides of, say, The Fall, or Kiss or something. Not that I don't like The Fall or Kiss - I do, in the case of the Fall quite a lot - but the inherent diversity of avant-garde jazz means there's going to be a lot more surprises among 28 sides of the Art Ensemble. Now this might be a bit of a fetishisation of the genre, like an attempt to fight my 'rockist' urges and associate a sophistication to this 'other' music - and I'm aware of it! I mean, I've read Carducci and I certainly agree with him on a lot of points (though not all the stuff about gay people, I mean that's just out-of-line) and I really do often wonder if I fall into that particularly as I (like most of ya kids, unless your Dad is John Corbett or something) grew up with rock first and came to 'other' musics in my late adolescence. Because the development of The Fall across 54 LP sides might be an even greater thing to experience, as the variations will be more subtle. Cause it's hard for me to even really say what I've learned from the AEoC Gauntlet I just finished. Despite the compositional basis to these records, it's hard for me to say what distinguishes a Joseph Jarman jam from, say, a Roscoe Mitchell one. Whereas any fool can listen to a Sebadoh record once and know the difference between Lou Barlow and Eric Gaffney's songs, right? Of course there's a lot more freedom/improvisation present in the works of Jarman, Mitchell etc and that makes things a bit more difficult. But maybe that's also what makes it feel so much more dynamic overall. Am I just stating the obvious and sounding idiotic again? It's hard to say because my head actually kinda hurts from all of this AACM theorizin'. When I got into this band it was like being touched by the Hand of God, but then again I used to feel that Touch quite often in those days, when everything was being blown wide open again and again, like an artificial ski slope eternally rolling downhill. But I would have died to see them live, particularly as their theatrical costumes, paint, and antics were allegedly an antidote for the dullness of much other contemporary jazz, visually. At the time the band was pretty much defunct - Bowie died just about that time and Joseph Jarman had retired, running a karate dojo just down the street from my friend's place in Brooklyn. Now I believe they're active again, with some new members, and I'd certainly go if it was local or cheap but it's pretty clear I missed my chance. But how many groups today are there, blending theatre, tradition, and radically groundbreaking assaults on theatre and tradition, that I am also missing the chance to experiencein their prime? I think not that many, but then again, what do I know?

Art Ensemble of Chicago - 'People in Sorrow' (Nessa)

I couldn't find a cover via Google image search that actually looks like mine, which is yellow ink on a white background. It's a truly beautiful (if hard to read) design that is sadly marred by some magic marker scrawlings on the back of my copy. But the sounds within are beautiful and unmarred, unless you count elegiac misery through tonal illusion as some form of detriment. This long piece, split onto two sides, is the yang to the yin of Jackson in the House/Message to Our Folks. Whereas those pieces were chaotic, lively, and exuberant, People in Sorrow is an apt title. This is much closer to Roscoe Mitchell's Sound: space breathes, the notes expand, and there are some definite throwbacks to ballads of jazz past, though through a damaged prism. At times it feels like each of the four musicians are wandering through a desert, conserving their energy yet crying into the wind. There are moments of Third Stream/post-modal hoohah, but undercut by little bit of percussion and, whattatheycallit, "little" instruments. To go back to the cover art, it's interesting how stark and monochromatic the jacket design is, because this music is pure colour. These Paris Art Ensemble records are so special for many reasons. Before Don Moye joined the group, these guys took it upon themselves to provide the rhythm - I mean, they had to. But instead of making Malachi Favors carry it all they equally share rhythmic duties as well as all other soundroles. It's part of their approach - it's what makes them an Ensemble, right? And those early Chicago AACM sides (the solo Mitchell and Jarman, plus early Anthony Braxton -- all of which we'll get to later) are such a bold statement of a sound, that I can't help but feel that the Paris residency was partially about spreading this new gospel. When you listen to People in Sorrow - or rather, when I listen to it -- I hear four geniuses who grew up in the tradition of jazz but have decided to strip away the composition and leave only the feelings, images and accents. There are gestures back to a lot of things - Third Stream as I said before, but also Bowie's utter passion for Dixieland creeps in even on this most wispy of Art Ensemble releases -- but it's never concrete enough to materialise. Dislocated Underbite Spinal Alphabetiser Encourager Templates is proudly supportive of music that dissipates before it is being played; and yet despite our enthusiasm, this probably isn't the first record we reach for when looking to jam these guys. But dark moments are never easy.