Julius Hemphill - ''Coon Bid'ness' (Arista/Freedom)

I'm still kicking myself for missing out on the Dogon A.D. reissue last year, but at least I have this LP to enjoy whenever I'd like. I get uncomfortable saying the title but it makes sense, cause with this record, Hemphill attempts to musically interrogate the question of blackness head-on, particularly with side 1, the first half of which is fairly avant-classical in nature. The presence of a white drummer (Barry Altschul) doesn't matter, as this record opens around the slow, melodic rumblings of the altos against Abdul Wadud's cello and Hamiett Bluiett's baritone. Both 'Reflections' and 'Lyric' are careful, somber, and rather beautiful, with sonorities akin to Messiaen in places. They never stay 100% calm, though, with flutters in the corners to reveal the inherent and potential freedom of it all, perhaps described as a benevolent instability. I'm reminded a bit of Ornette Coleman's 'Sadness', but maybe that's a simplistic comparison, because these two pieces have an awareness that situates them in the mid-70s Bohemian/artistic milieu, much more than mere throwbacks to either Coleman's work or third stream jazz. 'Skin' parts 1 and 2 is where the rhythms start to kick in, with Wadud's cello sawed at like a rock guitar. It's genuinely riffy, a bit like those late 70s Ornette Coleman records only really more strident & driving than funk-leaning, and could be mistaken for a 'black' analogy to Rhys Chatham, Branca, or the minimal rock chops to come in the early 80s. The three saxophones share the soundstage and while it freqently revs into some really punchy sequences, there's enough space for everyone to explore their themes. I love the cello and Altschul is such a great player that he's able to set a pace without dominating, just like on all the stuff he did with Chick Corea. It's the B-side, 'The Hard Blues', that lets everyone stretch out the most. It feels more improvised after the tightly composed (in parts) first half, though it's not anything close to a free-for-all. Blues it is, but not in a 12-bar way (thank god), and I continue to hear rock tendencies in the way Wadud saws at his strings, and maybe the lower baritone sax contributes as well. Over 20 minutes the group comes together, comes apart, and comes back together, and they embrace dissonance wholeheartedly, and you can feel Hemphill's vision not just as a composer, but as a bandleader. There are moments in 'The Hard Blues' that recall Captain Beefheart circa Trout Mask, not necessarily as whacked-out or surreal, but in the sense of otherness, except here using blues as a crossing point for jazz instead of rock. 

The Ex - '6.6' (Ex)

A 'return to form' in some ways, after Joggers & Smoggers and only using my small sampling of physical Ex releases, this 12" is the last of a series of singles released around 1990; maybe because of a mastering problem or whatnot, this is actually a 12" of two songs, but the package includes a 7" sleeve for this two songs. Don't try to stuff it in though, it won't fit. 'Euroconfusion' makes me chuckle a bit; it's accompanied by a text against the Schengen treaty, which I personally think was a pretty good treaty. It's a great song, though it's the closest G.W. Sok's ever come to straight-up rap music. There's a drum machine (really!) and jagged Gang of Four guitars, but it's more hip-hop than Big Black. The flip, 'Bird in the Hand', has a funky rhythm part too, but the guitars jump in, punctuating each vocal shout, simultaneously melting and exploding. It crashes to an end, ending up a completely satisfying outburst. These six singles (of which this is the final) were collected at some point into an album which would likely work as one of the more complete and satisfying Ex records, and a nice balance to the improv weirdness (yes, I love both sides!).

Crass - 'Stations of the Crass' (Crass)

The second record is an album-and-a-half (three sides at 45 rpm, the last a live half-album at 33) and maybe the defining statement from this band - before they got committed to conceptualism, which is from what I remember everything that follows. (Penis Envy, Christ the Album, Yes Sir I Will ... and while conceptualism in punk is certainly welcome, sometimes you just want to hear a band doing what they do well. Of course, I am a Crass dilettant, and quite willing to admit that I don't really understand the full vision and philosophy here. I use the term philosophy without any irony, because my understanding of Crass is that they were first and foremost a way of life, and the records were an effect of this. Or were they a symptom? And what of the music anyway, which is the primary focus of Dislocated Underbite.... ? To be honest, it's something I've rarely considered before - my tendency is to read Crass as if it was a radical art collective, which it was. But they were also a band. At least here and in Feeding of the 5000, it's punk as typically manifested - fast and aggressive, surely a reflection of the frustrations and the desire to irritate and confront general society. This is 1979, when this sound carried some weight - I firmly believe that Crass's later experimentalism came from the desire to stretch out and continue their activist tendencies through music. And likewise, I see later groups such as Chumbawumba (at least their early records) to be true followers of Crasstactics (or at least moreso most other shitty crust bands I've seen in my life). The experimentalism is here though - Eve Libertine speaks out similar to the deleted 'Asylum' on the first record, but in 'DemoNcrats' the music gets quite ethereal, creating a really provocative sound piece. It's a product of its time, but it's also not. 'Walls' gets into proto-new wave territory, with it's dissection of feminine space rather brilliantly expressed. But most of Stations of the Crass is still punk fucking rock. The songs are mostly fast, but occasionally drop down a bit to breathe. One tendency that's developed since Feeding is the embracing of piercing, shredding guitar noise at times - noise annoys, as the Buzzcocks taught us, but Crass actually use it that way. The recording is better on this sophmore effort, and the bass in particular really shouts out. 'White Punks on Hope' moves along with a creepingly familiar chord progression, driven by Pete Wright's bass. There are glimpses of their contemporaries - Black Flag at times, though I dunno how much influence was there (in either direction); 'Upright Citizens' though, could be an early Mekons single. You can actually sing along at times, but not too often. The lyrics are all printed on the foldout, and holy shit are there lots of them and it's really hard to read because of the (what else?) typewriter approach. Penny Rimbaud's artwork is stunning though, and I can only imagine what a loss this would be on a CD. Reviewing Crass now is a strange one - their anarchist ideology isn't so important to me (not that I am dismissive), but their place within the whole continuum of underground music as well as art/activism is pretty much untouchable. It's kinda strange to me to think about how much of a cornerstone these images, sounds and concepts are for so many people - and how unknown and irrelevant they are for so many others.

John Cale and Terry Riley - 'Church of Anthrax' (Columbia)

When titans meet! Except this is really surprisingly grounded in art-rock stomp, much closer to a solo Cale than Riley's stuff. It's hard to deny that this sounded like an avant-minimal supergroup on paper, yet the execution is less than amazing. It's good though -- but not one of the best records by either artist. If anything, it's too much of "here's what I do and here's what you do" -- not so surprising. They clearly strive for a balance between them, made the most evident in 'Ides of March' where we literally have Cale doing his piano thing and Riley doing his, with a different drummer behind each. As a bit of stereo experimentation it's rudimentary, but as a work of polyrhytmic sketching, it's sort of great. But first things first -- 'Church of Anthrax' blasts off the vinyl like a locomotive, and pounds away almost relentlessly. There's more of a focus on Dream Syndicate monotony than Riley's harmonic gliding, which is saved for next track. But as 'Church' pounds away, the layered organs and keyboards flex the right amount of muscle; the bassline ascends forever, picking a hole into my brain. So when Cale's microtonal piano meets the palace of mirrors in Versailles, it's awesome how Riley's reverb-drenched sax teases things. Riley is playful and a bit sassy; Cale is practically lowbrow in his Palestineque technique. The sax part is like 'Music from The Gift' all over again, but with the scary, unknown 70's looming ahead. There's an oceanic tide that darts around this double-helix, but at times, it feels like an afterthought. When it turns more thoughtful, I love the warm buzz underneath as it takes it's own natural breaths. It's a coda to side one, and a hell of way to fade out. After the flip, Adam Miller sings 'The Soul of Patrick Lee', which is such a John Cale solo song it's almost a parody. It has the same guitar riff as 'Venus in Furs' but then that moody, literate sensibility that he perfected on Paris 1919. I'm trapped more in the dark-psyche side of Cale here than I'd like to be -- I much prefer the sentimental, nostalgic whinging -- but it's okay. Riley is only plinking a few piano keys here, so it's funny to think of him as a mere sideman. Does 'Patrick Lee' stick out like the sore thumb of an otherwise instrumental record? Quite a bit, yeah, but maybe that's why it's smart in the middle. 'Ides of March', as already stated, is the meat of side 2, and it starts to take on a 'Bad Bad Leroy Brown' feel after about 8 minutes, which is probably just a successful sign of the delirium they were trying to induce. 'The Protege' closes things, a mirror image of 'Church of Anthrax', with pounding bass and drums and an elegant, slightly dirty edge to the piano part. The dissonance creaks out of the edges rather than being front and centre, and then there's a surprise ending which just sounds like a mastering error. Hmmmm. I remember buying this when on a trip to England, when I still lived in the US - it was a reissue (or maybe bootleg?), with a nice glossy cover and a pretty good sound to it. The shop proprietor made a comment about why would I come all the way to England to buy an American LP, but I don't think things are as simple as that.

Buzzcocks - 'A Different Kind of Tension' (I.R.S.)

The Buzzcocks are certainly a great singles band but their albums are probably just as good. I admit that I rarely pull this one out, except I somehow keep thinking this is the one with 'Moving Away from the Pulsebeat' (it's not -- I don't have that one). It does have 'I Believe' which is another 7-minute tune, because this is the Buzzcocks at the turn of decade, trying to branch out and explore Shelley's long-standing interest in Krautrock, electronic music, etc. Or at least we have rumblings of that, if not an abrupt direction change. He does deliver some 'atmospheric keyboards' here but repetition is still the prime directive. Side A (or 'The Rose on the Chocolate Box', as the label subtitles it) finds three Steve Diggle tunes, including the beautiful 'Mad Mad Judy' which climaxes with a brilliantly psychedelic riff-feast. Side B (or 'The Thorn Underneath that Rose') has the cryptic 'Money' which seems to be about changes people go through, but throws it's hands up in disgust under a strangely classic rock-sounding riff. 'Hollow Inside' is a minor key meandering, though actually quite focused. If there's one point where I think A Different Kind of Tension fails, it's the title track. This is a conceptual song attempting to pair commands in opposition to one another, and has a stupid vocoder sound (which probably sounded awesome at the time). But no fault to Shelley for trying; it's 'I Believe' where he turns the lens inward and spills things all over the vinyl. Fair enough -- I appreciate the changes. It's 1980, after all -- instead of 'Boredom' and 'What Do I Get?' , Shelley waxes patience in 'You Say You Don't Love Me' and 'I Don't Know What to Do With My Life'. Deep philosophy yeah, but didn't everyone confront Thatcherism in their own way? But as his voice rings out at the end, "It... my... life!"

Anthony Braxton/Joseph Jarman - 'Together Alone' (Delmark)

These two giants supposedly only ever recorded this one album together, but it's immense. The Jarman side is first, with three compositions that begin slowly. It's multi-instrumental as you'd expect, but the first half is a very slow awakening. Jarman and Braxton tease each other slowly, trying to pull out a strong direction but then darting away when the other commits. This is the title track, 'Together Alone', and I guess that's an apt description. By the end of the side things are jittery and ecstatic, with tons of chimes and percussion clanging about, like a small furry animal trashing about in a skip full of disaprate metal shards. The voices start to come in while you can still hear saxophones, which means - gasp! - overdubs! 'Morning (Including Circles' is the name of this piece and the awakening metaphor continues, though the psychobabble of speech layers up into an indecipherable tangle of fishing lines. When flipped over, there's Braxton's two compositions to ponder. 'CK7 (GN)-436", dedicated to David Berman, begins with some electroacoustic noises quite alien to the AACM aesthetic. There's a buzzing motor sound and some flanged-out space fuzz over the Jarman/Braxton interplay. Occasionally it explodes into a fingernail-on-chalkboard soup, though processed by the big computer in Giles Goat-Boy. I'm not sure if it's distracting to the saxophone duet at the core of these pieces or if it makes things more interesting. I think a whole record of this would be a bit hard to focus on, but when juxtaposed against the more "traditional" (ha!) duets on side A, it works well. So do we have a meeting of the earth-spirit-soul (Jarman) and the turtleneck-wearing technical innovator (Braxton)? Or are things a bit less definable than this? If we listen carefully to Braxton's sax when Jarman is flauting about (or at least I assume that's the breakdown since individual credits aren't listed), Anthony is totally kicking it warm, open and human. The electronic interjections do make it occasionally sound like a giant speck of dirt has just hit the stylus, but maybe that's what he intended. 'SBN-A-1 66K' is the closer, which is the least improvised and most dirge-like moment here. It's a slow, winding melody that stops to rest every few notes. Braxton and Jarman are in-sync, playing contrapuntal harmonies off each other while a triangle randomly clinks about. There's a dynamic of push and pull at work; the lock-step song over a haphazard triangle, sure - but also you can hear little bursts of air and taps behind it all. It's a strangely unsettling thing to listen to (like all of side B, really) but when the low reed tones kick in, it shakes my esophagus.

Birdsongs of the Mesozoic - 'Magnetic Flip' (Ace of Hearts)

Fast-forward to 1984 - Burma is pretty much done and now Birdsongs of the Mesozoic can open up their wings and soar. This record explodes, sounding a zillion times more confident than the debut EP does. Partially this is because of the recording - the drums are pounding, the electric guitars burn, and the you can feel the energy coursing through the microphones. But the band's performances are far more lively, feeling like a dynamic unit here instead of a series of academic overdubs like on the EP. The mix-tape highlight is the cover of the theme from Rocky and Bullwinkle, but they tackle Rite of Spring too. And they do it well! But the original compositions have much more of a flow to them. The opening cut, 'Shiny Golden Snakes', is built around shards of electric guitar that sound like they're sampled from a Gang of Four record. There's confident RIO/prog strides here but there's still a heavy focus on tapes and collages. I think if anything, Magnetic Flip sounds more like Mission of Burma, but if Chris Cutler had replaced Peter Prescott. 'The Fundamental' is a crashing cacophony of thunderous density that explores rhythm, texture and tone all at the same time. The piano is no longer the lead instrument, sharing time equally with everyone else, but when it's played there's less flowery runs and more punchiness. It's like Miller feels that he is running out of time, or something. The last cut, written by organist Rick Scott, takes on a somewhat new-agey feel through it's synth clouds. Perhaps this presages the crystal/jazz direction they went towards after Miller and Swope left. Supposedly Miller quit Mission of Burma because of his tinnitus, but Magnetic Flip is a loud record. Given the progression from Sproton Layer to MoB to BotM, you can certainly hear the sound of someone who is relentlessly looking for new directions in music; I suspect this need for self-reinvention was somewhat of a motivation for his departure from both bands. Of course the reformed Burma probably destroys that bit of pop-psychology. There's probably some good stuff in the post-Swope/Miller Birdsongs records just like there's probably some good jams on those late-70s Soft Machine records; but with all the other stuff out there to hear, I'll probably never find out for sure.