Roy Harper - 'Sophisticated Beggar' (Big Ben)

For the fist time (I think) in Dislocated Underbite's eight+ year history, I happened to buy an LP that was exactly the next one to be listened to alphabetical. So this is both the next LP in the gauntlet and also its newest addition. Sophisticated Beggar is Roy Harper's first album, and one of the three I was missing (out of the ones I want, not his entire discography - FYI contact me if you want to unload a cheap copy of Jugula or Ghenghis Smith). Harper wrote some cute liner notes on the back explaining how he used to dislike this record but didn't mind it so much anymore, and singled out his favourite songs. For a man who's not always left the most comfortable body of work in today's woke/PC times, 'China Girl' is a hell of a way to open his first album. It's wistful and slight and built around 'oriental' melodies, which is somehow more cringeworthy than the concept; but then again whenever I hear 'Turning Japanese' I don't mind it so what's the difference? This is way before Harper started writing epic seventeen minute songs, and also before he really started to flesh out his instrumentation - Sophisticated Beggar is remarkably unsophisticated in terms of arrangement, built around his guitar fingerpicking and voice, a classic late 60s folk record with the influence of rock and British counterculture. But the fingerpicking is fantastic - during parts of this, such as the title track, I realise how fucking great his guitar-fu was, which I tend to forget in the glow of his songwriting. 'Committed' and 'Mr. Station Master' feature a full electric rock band, recorded in a wooly, almost lo-fi way, the latter built around a languid shuffle and dominated by thick organ chords. But both songs are kinda throwaway, closer to bubblegum than the dirgey, intense lyrical dumps he'd become notable for later. The other throwaway stuff ('Big Fat Silver Aeroplane and 'China Girl') at least fit the era, and the album congeals nicely. Rather than being a Dylan copy, theres way more of a Bert Jansch influence (heard most evidently on the instrumental 'Blackpool'). 'Forever', 'Legend' and 'October the 12th' stand out as songs that would linger into Harper's subsequent live career; the latter could be a more colourful analogy to Nick Drake's work, except Harper's voice has the undeniably cheekyness that works well with his more extravagant lyrics. 'Forever' is fucking gorgeous, with his singing earnestly mellow ('drawing into an eternal horizon of time' blends with the hypnotic guitar pattern and is one of my favourite Roy Harper songs in his whole catalogue). With Come Out Fighting Ghengis Smith he really takes a step forwards towards the frustratingly idiosyncratic and mostly brilliant artist he would be over the next decade and eight or so albums. Hang on, cause we're in for a lot of Roy Harper in the next few days.

Godspeed You Black Emperor! ‎– 'Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada E.P.' (Constellation)

And here's where things started to get huge. Not just huge in sound, though it's very much that, but huge in terms of cultural impact. Of course, a large cultural impact in my world circa 1999 is a far cry from an actual cultural impact, like, for example, popular culture. Not that this was underground; Godspeed You Black Emperor! exploded at the right time - when records still mattered, things weren't totally digital, and enough of a groupthink existed to crown them as the new gods of the nearly-underground. I loved the first album and knew they were poised for a breakout; the moment I heard 'Moya', the 45rpm first side of this, I knew it had come. Everything that was great about F#A#∞ is present here! By this I mean the liberal use of violins and cellos, a brilliant application of field recordings and tape manipulations, a theme of dystopian decay, and a strong sense of landscape and sweeping romanticism. Everything that was weak about F#A#∞ has been fixed! While the pieces still have movements, they are not a lazy collage. While there's again a strongly dominant spoken voice, it's integrated into the music as an instrument rather than layered on top, so the band is dialoguing with these ideas. And there's two compositions, one of which tightens the soundscape vibe into an epic cinematic indie rock build, and the other which avoids the easy crescendos in favour of a horizontal composition. 'Moya' is built around one hell of a RIFF - though it takes its time to get there, instead opening with a lush, thick ambience that couldn't be done without these neoclassical instruments. It skates on the edge of eternity, not that long (this is 45rpm after all) but enough to build a pulse inside the listener as well as out of the speakers. And when that riff comes - a rising, anthemic crescendo that is supported by a thunderous, deep bass guitar and the string section filling out the midrange - it's unforgettable. Catchy and iconic, it's been etched into my brain ever since, and seeing it live the two times I did was breathtaking. It's the most 'accessible' track GYBE! ever made, though I write that having heard none of the recent albums after the one after this EP. Anyway. It's amazing, but then after a belt-change back to 33, the B-side, 'BBF3', takes things even further. The centrepiece of this is a recording of a clearly deranged man, an extremist for sure, ranting and raving about freedom and liberty and genreal libertarian insanity. It's impossible to hear this right now, February 2016, and not think about Donald Trump - the tonality of his voice is eerily similar and there's a phrase that is a chilling echo of Trump's line about Mexicans all being rapists 'and some of them,  I assume, are good people'. But it's not just this slightly humorous, mostly disturbing vocalisation that makes the track; it's the way the band creates an epic dialogue with it. It rises and falls like waves, resisting the impulse to explode into a distortion-laden wall of sound, and also keep the harmonic movement rather restrained. 'BBF3' feels like it's pulling itself apart in every direction, it's tonality echoing the chaos inherent in the narrator's worldview. For a band that uses apocalyptic imagery (and are no strangers to religious appropriation when possible -- see the cover art, which whatever it might say, uses the religiously-charged Hebrew alphabet) -- this is the thunderous summation of chaos and dystopia, an internalised fear and trembling that Mr. Finnegan expresses and represses. This is no longer mere soundtrack/soundscape music, no longer merely a darker, punker Morricone - this is a band who has managed to synthesise a vision, and made one side-long work of perfection. I often think of this as following the same formula as Sun City Girls' 'Napoleon and Josephine', which is also amazing and probably my favourite SCG song -- but it's also a different beast and a hell of a lot more breathtaking. Even after I had my backlash to them (which I'll describe in my next review) I would sometimes go back to 'BBF3', which is a work of perfection that is dark, unsettling, and beautiful - and yet addictive. And it lives forever on this slab of wax, one of those tracks that makes me feel justified in owning physical media still. Sure you can listen to all 18 glorious minutes on YouTube but it's not the same; this is a total package, putting the 'art' in 'art-rock' and I don't just mean the lavish packaging. It's a track that remains inspirational to me, to this day - a track to encourage me to attempt to scoop up the mess of data flowing through my brain, blood and heart at all times and regurgitate back something that someone, somewhere, might be able to parse with one iota of recognition for some sort of harmony with their own cracked/skewed impulses. God bless, Godspeed.

Comus - 'First Utterance' (Earmark)

This is the stuff where legends are made, and certainly everything about First Utterance converges to produce something entirely worth of its acclaim. Since I like to wax personal here, I'll say how First Utterance surfaced on my consciousness around 2000-2002, which was also the time that I was discovering British folk/rock from this period, plus prog and other old gems. The Badaboom Gramaphone 'folk' issue was pretty influential and really set the template for things I wanted to investigate, and remember this was in the early days of mp3s - i think I might have actually sucked this down from Napster during it's heyday. After reading about the lost gems of bands like Fresh Maggots, Agincourt, and Tudor Lodge -- and often finding them less than gemlike - Comus was the real deal. In fact, the Badaboom Gramaphone #4 itself says "Seriously odd, and terribly necessary." There's not one thing that makes First Utterance so good; I wish we could say it was "just" the demented lyrical content, or "just" the frantic 12-string thrashing, or just the juxtaposition of insanely Appolonian beauty in the most Dionysian of contexts. But of course it's all of these things, and far more. My favourite track has always been 'The Herald', perhaps because it's tripartite structure seems to create an entire universe in one 12 minute burst. The female vocals are impossibly angelic, and the rolling waves of arpeggiated acoustic guitar have a narcotic effect on me. Despite the placid surface, there's some real thrashing about going on underneath it all - the sleep of reason producing demons for sure. It's a musical world I envy and would love to recreate myself, but such smooth confidence is beyond me. I guess it's a good counterpoint to 'Drip Drip', where the male vocals dominate in the most tortured and affected way. As a "band", Comus have what it takes - the long group instrumental passages are attenuated to a primal stomp, and the darting violin riffs jumping out constantly feel like they are emerging from a common dark heart. And when you're singing about being raped by a pagan spirit you better back it up. Both sides start with relatively short, upbeat tunes that would almost work as singles - 'Diana' and 'Song for Comus', the former being more or less the signature Comus song though it's far from their best. The string playing is fantastic though, and there's a real prog edge, reminding me a lot of Aphrodite's Child. Actually much of the record reminds me of Aphrodite's Child, but a bit more farmyard, and also Aphrodite's Child never sang about dragging Christians into the woods and killing them. 'The Bite' is of course the most overt in this theme, and it's also aggressively-paced, producing a real sense of fear, suggesting the poor victim's desperate attempts to escape. The flute playing here is deft as well, and I suggest anyone who thinks they might not like flutey folk music check this out. Because First Utterance defies everything logical about music. It's clearly created by the most extreme outsiders, a band motivated by pagan bloodlust as much as the pursuit of the sublime - yet it occupied some of the most accessible, upbeat musical territory. Even in the changing Britain of 1970, coming out of swinging London and all that bullshit, the subject matter is shocking. And musically, they couldn't be more out of step with popular music of the times. When put up against Sandy Denny, Anne Briggs and Fairport Convention, there's only a superficial resemblance in instrumentation; against Canterbury-school prog, there's none of the jazzy carefree benevolence. Tyrannosaurus Rex might be the only comparison, but maybe just because of the vocal resemblance - a song like 'The Prisoner', which addresses mental illness in a first-person narrative way, cuts through any sort of pop/psych surface. This particular edition is lovely - it's a thick vinyl pressing, gatefold cover, the extra-nice inner sleeve that has the plastic inside the paper to avoid scratching, and a bonus 45rpm 12"! The bonus material is the single version of 'Diana', which is a bit slower and more gloomy, and then two extra songs from an EP released in 1971. Of these, 'In The Lost Queen's Eye' is more of the same which is not a bad thing; 'Winter is a Coloured Bird' is significantly more chilled out, foreshadowing the shitty second album (which I only heard once, but disliked immensely). I had a friend who claimed to have found an original sealed copy of First Utterance in some weird Yorkshire secondhand shop for a few quid, and then he fell asleep listening to it and a candle melted and fell over and then burned the cover. Given the collectibility of the original pressing, he's a bigger fool for even breaking the shrinkwrap.

Don Cherry (Horizon)

This is the tenth Don Cherry record discussed here, and sadly the last to feature in these pages. I list it as self-titled but it's been reissued as Brown Rice, so I tend to think of it as such myself. 'Brown Rice' is the opening track, a composition for three electric pianos, acoustic bass, drums, electric bongos, vocals and tenor sax. It's also one of the most singularly unique compositions heard thus far in this project. The graphic score is printed in the sleeve, which a fairly symmetrical structured pattern - pianos start, other instruments come in and disappear, and even Frank Lowe's washed out sax blasts are indicated. The melodies are very similar to the structures we've heard on the last five or so records, particularly where Cherry is on the piano. But here, it's made ecstatic with electricity, and a nice 70's cop-show waka-chika underneath it all. The whispered/chanted vocals are just over your shoulder, peering into your soul, and it's unsettling yet inviting. It's a piece that explodes with colour; an all-time classic for sure, it embraces of psychedelic electric fusion while distinguishing itself. 'Malkauns' is actually my favourite track on the record, a slow dirgy tune that begins with Charlie Haden playing bass over a tambura drone. Shades of 'Song for Che' of course, as there's the same thoughtful pauses, but it builds into a pitter-patter jam with Cherry-streaked trumpet lines over everything. This record feels like a very conscious return to the sound of the pocket trumpet from those original Ornette Coleman releases, but transmogrified through Cherry's own musical journey from the preceding decade (this is the mid 70s, after all). On the flipside, 'Chenrezig' evokes dark African clouds (Hakim Jamil's bass style is striking different than Haden's, which is a contributing factor; Cherry's vocals are growly and gruff). But there's also moments that glide along like a taxi in the streets of New York in the late 70's, calmly rooted in a sort of magical squalor. Ricky Cherry's acoustic piano is recorded in a way that makes it sound like an electric piano; by the end he's just pulsing on chords while Lowe and Don Cherry are ripping things up. 'Degi-Degi' takes things to a close, getting back to the electric boogie-whisper of 'Brown Rice'. Haden's bass sounds like it's been put through a loop pedal (except I don't think such things existed back then); the non-stop circular base has more electric pianos shattering glass around it. Cherry's voice and Lowe's sax mostly trade off roles, emulating a sort of verse-chorus-verse structure, but like a great Can track, the magic is all between the pulses. And with this, it fades away, though it connects to 'Brown Rice' and forms a Moebius strip of a record. We can read a bit into the cover photo - Cherry is in front of the Watts towers, yet adorned in some sort of traditional dress and slightly blurry, as if in motion. There is a definitively more 'urban' feel to this record than the last few, though it's still seeped in a mysterious atmosphere, a bit magical.

Dave Burrell - 'La Vie de Bohême' (BYG/Actuel)

If we ever get to the end of Disclocated Underbite Spinal Alphabetised Encourager Templates and you've been paying attention closely, then you'll probably figure out that my own tastes in 60's and 70's jazz runs towards the anti-classics - the free-stompin loft gutbucket party jams. But if you look even more closely you'll see that my favourite moments are when the masters of this form turn back towards composition and melody, bringing their raging adventurism to an exploratory point. When they reference folk forms, traditionals and classical elements it's a fine line, but one that if tred carefully, can be extremely rewarding. Case in point - Dave Burrell's arrangement of Puccini's La vie de bohéme, in a band with Ric Colbeck (trumpet), Grachan Moncur III (trombone), Kenneth Terroade (sax and flute), Beb Guérin (bass) and Claude Delcloo (drums). I'm no expert on Puccini's original but this clearly refracts a classic through the same 1969 Parisian moss that infused so many of these wonderful Actuel sides. The first 20 minutes is the first act of the opera, which finds Colbeck and Burrell frequently quoting the melodic riffs in unison, and Terroade fluting around like a devilish fly. It's the Delcloo-Guérin-Burrell axis, though, which really breaks this thing open. This is a very free, loose reading of Giacomo's work, with rhythms often unraveling and the songs breathing in a unique space. Side two picks up the second act midway through and begins a pounding drumbeat with a dissonant left hand piano line, and the rest of the dudes flutter in and out. It's relentless, except it does relent, turning into a Claude Delcloo extended solo. At some point in this eardrum-rupturing tribal mediation, my stylus got stuck in the perfect way, right on the beat, skipping back to form a perfect loop. But the third movement is soon underway, with cymbals skittering around like birds, ringing piano chords that build up, and the occasional hop-skip-and-jump into other waters. It's a beauty. Movement four reminds me a bit of Vince Guaraldi's timless Peanuts soundtracks, showing how Burrell is capable of the most expressionistic playing, with a few stray voicings for flavour. Guérin is rather understated throughout this record but when it comes in, it hits hard. There's some bent Dixieland crabcakes just before the end, the truest expression of the Bohemian life, and then it goes all minor and austere, and then it turns into free-circus Dada music. It all feels very Pucciniesque again as it crashes to a halt, a Bohemian life lived, explored and extended.