Joy Division - 'Unknown Pleasures' (Factory)

This is another one of those 'classics' that I'm almost embarrassed to have in the accumulation, if only because a) I rarely listen to it and b) I will certainly struggle to write original thoughts about it in 2017. Coming between the bootleg of Warsaw and the superior vision of Closer, it's interesting as a midpoint, or if you like to marvel at how far bands push themselves in a short period of time. I'm sure this is not an original observation, but Martin Hannett's production is just about everything to why this is a great record, and if you don't believe me, listen to Warsaw. I'm sure that Hannett and the band were working in synergy here, but regardless, the decision to strip out the middle of these songs, rather than filling them with crunchy guitar chords, is what makes Unknown Pleasures such a definitive turning point between punk and post. This introduction of emptiness of course amplifies the lyrical themes but it really opens up the songs and lets mood play a role, a gesture towards what is felt and not heard. Event underwritten songs like 'Candidate' gain so much from this expansion, and it still gets thick and meaty at times. 'Shadowplay' is attenuated towards a wall of sound feeling; 'New Dawn Fades' and 'Day of the Lords' are balanced, production-wise, against their baroque tendencies. It doesn't hurt that Curtis really starts to emerge as one of rock's iconic voices on this record, with the same menace as the Warsaw sound but an increased commitment to emotional delivery, meaning he's actually singing, and his 'When will it end?' is bone-chilling even if you don't consider his ultimate fate. It's a voice that is almost defiantly masculine after the 70s sounds of Bowie and glam, yet implying more than it lets on. This is still Factory rock music, made by cold men in dark warehouses, but it's inching towards a more cybernetic approach, the full-on embrace of synthesisers to come later in New Order but no doubt a concern this early on, already. Morris's drumming is more motorik, and a song like 'Insight' is far from computerised but looking at least in that direction. Synths are used more atmospherically here, swooping into the corners and occasionally roaring. There's a reason university students still walk around wearing t-shirts bearing this logo today, despite the fact that the only two songs even remotely close to being catchy/hook-based are 'Disorder' and 'She's Lost Control'. And there's a reason we still have scores of bands like Protomartyr essentially aping the sound of 'Wilderness', four decades later. 

Christopher Hobbs / John Adams / Gavin Bryars - 'Ensemble Pieces' (Obscure)

Not sure why I don't have this in the split LPs section; I guess I file it under Hobbs since he's the most present here in addition to being first-billed, having composed two of the four pieces and performing on Bryars's work as well. Eno's Obscure imprint was a great enterprise I think, and I buy any of them if I'm fortunate enough to come across one and it's affordable. The cover for this really captures my impression of the 1970s British avant-garde, showing some modernist urban building in a manner which seems like it comes from a film excerpt, perhaps some structuralist-materialist polemic. Ensemble Pieces is occasionally a bit dry, as 70s British avant-garde can be, but it's at least democratically dry if that makes sense. The word 'ensemble' is quite relevant as these are compositions in which the players have a great deal of agency, and the focus is on how the group performs, perhaps the only commonality between the three composers. It does raise the question of why, if the ensemble is the point of this record, the composers get the primary credits, but I guess old habits die hard. The two Hobbs compositions open both sides and 'Aran' is the high point of the record, a pulsing melodic work originally for 12 performers but here played (through the magic of overdubs) by Hobbs, John White and Bryars. It's all tonal percussion, beating around a pulse and resembling a Western hackjob gamelan, and I mean that in the most endearing way possible. The toy piano, wood blocks, and small cymbals all fight it out and there's an exuberance that is minimalist composition at its finest. 'McCrimmon Will Never Return' has the same sense of melodic investigation, though being a duet of Hobbs and Bryars on two reed organs each, it has a significantly more restrained sonic palette and takes on a mantra-like feel, like an Indian harmonium devotional except slightly neurotic and with the tonal conflicts being the focal point. John Adams presents three works and his ensemble players aren't credited individually, perhaps because the back sleeve needed more space for the liner notes. They move through three distinct pieces, the most unusual being the slowest, 'Christian Zeal and Activity', which features a strange radio interview tape played overtop. It's a predecessor to 'BBF3' I guess, but decidedly less apocalyptic. 'Sentimentals' closes out the side and apparently quotes 'Sophisticated Lady' though I didn't notice it; it feels the most rooted in academic composition though it's light and moving. 'John Philip Sousa', a tribute, is centred around a motorik snare drum and maybe the one of the three where one can most hear that this ensemble is self-conducting. Bryars' '1, 2, 1-2-3-4' is an odd exercise in genre collage on first listen, and the liner notes reveal the format of the composition, where the all-star cast (including Cornelius Cardew, Derek Bailey, Andy MacKay and Eno himself) are all playing along to dictaphones while wearing headphones. There's a sense of irony here of course, since it's a jazz ballad, but the format makes it sound like its' all falling apart, yet in a delicate way, not like the Portsmouth Sinfonia (though clearly related since this is Gavin Bryars after all). Bryars is the odd man out here as the others can all be connected somewhat to post-minimalist composition, at least in terms of structure, but this iconoclasm, even within the scope of this LP, is welcome.

GOL, Ana-Maria Avram, Iancu Dumitrescu And Members Of Ansamblul Hyperion - 'Musique Directe' (Planam)

GOL are a French-based quartet of electro-acoustic improvisers who take their soundmap from Musica Elettronica Viva and others which have followed in their wake. It's a spacious sound, and occasionally gets quite extreme in terms of echo/effects/processing, but there's a group feel throughout that doesn't really change when the guests join in. The opening cut is just GOL alone, and while their name suggests football fandom, this is more like water skiïng, cutting against waves of roomspace with tensely attenuated electronics. Avram and Dumitrescu join for the second track and it's a much murkier affair, with Dumitrescu playing a prepared piano frame which (I assume) fills up all the middle space. There's still a lot of negotiating even when there's nervous energy, like a yapping dog knowing when to pull back and wait for a snack. Occasionally some really what-the-fuck sounds drift in, but then they don't overstay their welcome; it's a trick that GOL plays a few time throughout the record but never to the point of gimmickyness. The last cut on side 1 features Dumitrescu on the cello but this doesn't sound like Yo-Yo Ma or even like a recognisable cello in any form. Actually, there's very few points of recognisable instruments across the whole album, at least in a conventional sense. Sometimes a processed sound has a texture that makes it identifiable as a plucked acoustic string or percussive tap, but it's transformed into a sideways ghost here. Yet this processing is not the point - it's not an overly wet record, just one that has a solid mood. Side two starts with a Dumitrescu composition built around a tape piece from 1985, played by Avram, and accentuated by the group's clatter and sturm. It rather seamlessly blends into the last piece, which is the only one to feature "members of Ansamblul Hyperion", in this case two people both named Teodorescu. It's not like the sound is significantly more full when there are seven people playing on a track instead of four, but this one gets into the higher register a bit more and ends around some ringing space tones that have a subtle pulse beneath them. At first I thought the title of this album was somewhat of a joke, but actually there is something 'direct' here, in the direct cinema sense, as in we're witnessing a group collaboration that is natural and unprocessed. The sounds, sure, have their own electronic processing at times, but the cohesive group dynamic is presented without visible editing or subterfuge. The liner notes contain a graphical score for a piece which is not on this album, maybe a Dadaist joke or just something pretty they wanted to include anyway. It's hard to tell the tone of this - it's not an overly joyous sound, nor is it too-serious or academic. And the basic, plain graphic artwork places this in a zone of total neutrality, allowing one to add their own interpretation at will. Direct music, indeed.

Fire Engines - 'Lubricate Your Living Room' (Pop Aural)

This first record by the Fire Engines doesn't feel fully-formed, though that's maybe just because it's mostly instrumental. My other Fire Engines record (we'll get to this in a sec) has most of this one on it, and that pressing sounds slightly better than this earlier effort. It's funny to think of this happening in 1980 Edinburgh, which means it's possible these guys played shows with the Exploited. You couldn't get further away from Wattie & co. while still being rock music (well, I suppose you could); the monotony and tight rhythm section + jagged, sharp guitars sounds not unlike Gang of Four's blueprint, though I guess this was the blueprint for about 70% of British bands at the time. Fire Engines really excel at the long instrumental jams - 'Discord' is an epic, seemingly endless bashabout, and the two-part title track is a long-form exploration as well. They aren't unmelodic, though they prefer to focus on pounding guitar licks than pop hooks. The monotony has a fun, poppy flavour, unlike the Fall's nihilism or Flipper's drugged-out dirges. It's a statement of a new musical frontier - where the rhythmic concerns are of foremost importance and the traditional rock frontman recedes to the distance (though singer David Henderson can yelp like the best of them, when he bothers). I remember these guys doing a reunion show when I was living in Scotland, maybe 8-10 years ago, and I skipped it because it was in Edinburgh and expensive. I think they were actually opening up for a Beefheartless Magic Band, or maybe I'm just conflating two shows around the same time, neither of which I went to. Either way, it would make sense, as there's some real spiritual unity between Fire Engines and the Magic Band's most notorious efforts. The brutal, plodding 4/4 drums that rarely break for fills or flourishes anchor the guitars, but it's somehow spirited and uplifting. A sarnie and tomatoes makes a nice album cover, too.

Chrome - 'Alien Soundtracks' (Siren)

As the title suggests this is a blast from another world, a discordant slicing array of metallic textures and primal songforms that somehow sounds of its time despite having no peers. It's home recording-style song construction, with searing feedback guitars mixed low and weird monotonous percussion which sometimes attains genius, particularly on 'Nova Feedback', which has an almost jazz-guitar tone and a somewhat prog riff. Sometimes you can't tell if it's badly-played violin or a weird guitar texture, and everything is balanced so well nothing fights the frontal role. It's an easy record to lose yourself in, for while all of the elements are obvious, there's something about the way it all attenuates into the mix. There's sci-fi allusions everywhere (from the title, band name, and 'Baradas nicto' scrawled on the liner notes, which I guess is a paraphrase of The Day the Earth Stood Still, plus lyrical detachment in tunes like 'Slip It To the Android'); yet occasionally, there's something associative in Helios Creed's singing; a surreal escapade in 'All Data Lost' or 'Phraoah Chromium's confused sexuality and claustrophobia. Guitars are still the root of the Chrome sound, even if they're more focused on texture than riff. The modulated vocal style, especially on tunes like 'Pygmies in Zee Park', sorta sounds like Bowie and should have glam associations, but there's something too bastardised about the Chrome sound to pull things that way. Chrome never really quite fit into the punk lineage and the music is more akin to psychedelia anyway (listen to the blues-thrust of 'Pharaoah Chromium', for examps, or 'St 37' which is like a lost Malcolm Mooney-era Can track), but there's also a swagger and attitude that is unmistakably snide. I find myself listening to this record very rarely even though it's kinda revelatory whenever I do.

Bügsküll & the Big White Cloud (Scratch)

This is technically a collaboration with someone named the Big White Cloud, but it's hard to tell what Mr. Cloud actually brings to this that wasn't already in the Bügsküll arsenal (ah, those lovely umlauts have returned again!). This record begins with a driving stadium rock jam called 'Fair Are the Sails' (or at least, if Bügsküll played a stadium). The bedroom electro-psych we've heard emerge over the past few records (and we are missing Distracted Snowflake Volume Two, remember) is now emphasised with a driving 4/4 beat behind it and triumphant, anthemic riffs. The long second track, 'We Understand That', builds up on the thick layers of the opener with a goofy come-and-go electronic beat, and occasional vocal intrusions - a brief processed vocal part that serves as a type of hook, and then some murky megaphone speaking. The speaking continues on side one's brief coda, a plucky metal-tank inhabitor that somehow fits with the back cover text about whales and whatnot. Side two furthers the 'inside' psychedelia, as the layers are quite thick and the notes quite melodic. Whomever the Big White Cloud is, they certainly steer Byrne to a more fun, accessible direction - until the last track, 'Tweedlebug Jamboree', which is perhaps the longest and most out there piece heard on any of these records. There's no tonal center, and it's assembled from bits and pieces - and it's dark. As dark as some of Snakland's bad karma. As the sendoff track for our Bugskull run, it's a good choice, as it somehow encapsulates much (if not everything) that is great about Bugskull. And overall, this album feels like a logical place to go after Distracted Snowflake. It builds on the confidence of that record and the achievements of the early work, but without being repetitive. Mr. Byrne pretty much dropped off the map after this - nine years later, another LP was released, but it dates from the Snowflake period - so maybe this is a swansong not just of my own accumulation but of Bugskull in general.

Anthony Braxton - 'Five Compositions (Quartet) 1986' (Black Saint)

I wonder if Braxton went to his label in 1986 and said "hey guys, guess what, i got a new album for ya!" and the Black Saint brass were like "o sweet what is it called?" and he was all like "Five Compositions (Quartet) 1986" and they were like "wait, didden we just do that?" But this is the next logical step, right? Keep Gerry Hemingway but replace Marilyn Crispell with David Rosenboom and put Mark Dresser on bass. What changes? Everything. Rosenboom is a chop-chop pianist and introduced a much more rhythmic (if not hyperactive) melodic structure, which Hemingway works well with on the toms. The compositions are swirling and dense, and retain the darkly inflected quality of the last LP, only with a somewhat more jazz cloud around it all. They're back in Milano for this (which makes me ask - why the fuck do we English speakers shorten Milano to Milan? I understand difficult foreign names like Köln we might want to make Cologne, or Götebørg as Gothenberg, but, seriously, what English speaker is not capable of saying Milan-O? or Roma?) and the recording quality is a bit murkier, yet strangely dry at the same time. The first four pieces blaze through with few moments of relief - there are the occasional moments of bass/alto sax interplay that really stick out, but generally it's an onslaught. The final track, 'Composition - No. 101 (+31+86+30)' (which has a pictograph that sorta looks like a roll of toilet paper) beings with a very small, quiet section. The drones that are built up are extended breath pieces, with bowed bass and percussion to push them along, and it's not unlike some of the outer-breath experimentations that Evan Parker did with the Electro-acoustic Ensemble a decade later. When the band does come in, they never show their hand, and it's a bit more of the eerie dance I've gotten accustomed to after listening to 10 Anthony Braxton records in a row. But now, sadly, it's time to move on for an even more daunting gauntlet....

Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band - 'Lick My Decals Off, Baby' (Straight)

It's been a bit of a holiday for the Underbite corp., for which I can only offer my heartfelt apologies. Life, reality, circumstance, etc. often combine to prevent the listening required to properly assess these records and without being physically near the accumulation (or a turntable), this service had to just lie dormant. But Lick My Decals Off, Baby is a hell of a way to return. A lot of people hold this up as the pinnacle of Van Vliet's musical work and I wouldn't argue against it; certainly it's an essential piece of the puzzle, at least along with Trout Mask. It's single-album length and general diversity (and marimba!) make it a somewhat more palatable record to throw on when craving a blast o' Beefheart. I think there's a greater merging of the dismantled visionary (heard on Trout Mask) with the raw rock of the earlier stuff; somehow the overall product isn't compromised. 'Doctor Dark' is a great indication of this sound - it drives forward like the most raw, guttural riff-based rock but also mangles the fence. Even though this is one of the most listened to Beefheart records, there are some songs I always tend to forget about, like the brilliant 'The Clouds Are Full Of Wine (Not Whiskey or Rye)' or 'Petrified Forest'. The lyrics sheet prints some additional poems mixed in, which deny the normality of the font with the freelancing apostrophes and choppy fragments. It's a pleasure to read these, something I can't do for Trout Mask because (my copy, at least) doesn't boast a lyric sheet. Listening to 'Bellerin' Plain' is like proto-Pollard - the casual falling off in pitch at the end of each line as he sings "Foothills, locomotives walked n' sugar beets rolled down the tracks/Sunbum bounce soot off the black smokestacks" is practically 'Dusted' to me. And how about the sense of assonance in 'Doctor Dark's "Tear apart 'n black 'n white 'n like / The moon on a pail of milk spilled down black in the night / little girl lost a tear 'n her kite/ T' the night 'n like 'n light" -- I know it's boring to quote lyrics here but that's some fucking Bruce Andrews shit there. 'Woe-Is-A-Me-Bop', 'Space-Age Couple' and 'I Love You, Big Dummy' are the rawest songs, I think, perhaps of Beefheart's entire catalogue. It's not that they are simplistic or particularly carnal; rather I think they just communicate most directly. There's some brilliant shifts in 'Woe-Is-A-Me-Bop' - listen to the way the intro bars set a tone and then as soon as Don's voice comes in, it totally contorts itself in a different direction. There's a lot of cadence shifts in this song as it goes along; perhaps the limited set of lyrics on this one makes it easier to concentrate on the tonal lurches. But somehow, by the time of 'Flash Gordon's Ape', the lurching feels more like a snowmobile running through the desert, hitting irregularly spaced rocks. It's enough to see your own shadow and know when to confront it.