Peter Jefferies - 'Electricity' (Superior Viaduct)

I got rid of my CD copy of The Last Great Challenge in a Dull World, figuring I could easily upgrade to De Stijl's 2013 vinyl reissue, but I was slow and now it doesn't seem to be available so easily. That's a shame since it makes a nice pairing with Electricity, the first two solo Jefferies albums and two of the finest dark piano and drums-based New Zealand songwriting records of the early 90s. This Superior Viaduct reissue is lovely as it comes in a nice gatefold, the kind of special nice printing where the inside of the cover is coloured (in this case the deep rich blue) and it sounds great, taking the time to stretch the album over three sides; plus it tacks on the awesome Swerve EP (with Robbie Muir) as the fourth side. The mastering and pressing is nice enough that the 'mid-fi' qualities of the original recording shine through. You can hear the clipped compression of Jefferies voice, as this was recorded to a 4-track reel to reel and that was clearly the aesthetic he was going for. But then sometimes the drums sound amazing, the 'digital cello' on 'By Small Degrees' is eerie, and the piano of course usually rings out magically. These songs are in the vein of his usual writing, as heard from Nocturnal Projections through This Kind of Punishment; slow, meditative musings on the self and human relationships, never crystal clear but not too esoteric either. The title track is a beauty, racked with self-awareness and a menacing, yet modernist edge. 'Don't Look Down' is a ballad of pure delicacy, fragile under it's own beauty but confident as well. There are experiments in loops and samples, static and distortion thrown about liberally, and a few bits of messy chaos. Bruce Russell joins for 'Just Nothing' and it sounds exactly like you'd imagine their collaboration to be like. 'Next' and 'Snare', in the middle of the record, provide some damaged art-rock, the most fragmentary tracks. It's sometimes a bit jarring how the songs will shift between delicate, introspective piano ballad to distorted stomper and then back for the next one, but they're all clearly executed with such a vision from Mr. Jefferies, even when that vision is improvisatory and experimental, that it functions as a cohesive whole. The mood stays dark since he favours minor keys, his voice has that timbre to it, and that Peter Jefferies musical signature (when piano and drums pound in unison) is hardly a walk in the park. As the record goes on it seems to diversify its sound, bringing in more guitars (played primitively by Jefferies on 'Couldn't Write a Book',  demonically by Russell, and in a solid folk strum by Paul Cahill on the strident 'Crossover'). It ends with a Barbara Manning cover, 'Scissors', sort of an odd choice, but it somehow works. The bonus tracks on side four are all from Swerve, which is a great EP. Muir's guitar and bass fleshes out these songs, and they're recorded a bit less cleanly than the album (which came after this EP). With the piano not necessarily the lead instrument, it is able to add great bits of colour to 'Don't Call Me, We'll Call You', and the whole suite feels like a brighter take on the usual Jefferies outlook. This isn't to say that his music is exceptionally bleak, but that the light shines through in concentrated rays, which can be an enormously powerful effect. 

Double Leopards - 'A Pebble in Thousands of Unmapped Revolutions' (Eclipse)

When I ordered this I only knew that it was a new band from a former member of Un, a semi-forgotten Siltbreeze band from the 90s built around chaos and beauty dissolving into each other. Double Leopards of course became one of the flagship artists of the 2000s, and this, their second album, was a major starting point for what unfolded. With drones built from vocals and other unidentified sources, Double Leopards are masterful in generating long, horizontal soundscapes. The first side is made up of delicate rumblings, deep echoing drones, and smaller detailed accents. The source material is undeniably organic, and it's bathed in a warm bliss. It moves quickly despite being so minimal, and this makes side two's opener, 'Garments In The Midst Of My Vestures', almost jarring. This track is heavily effected with phasers, flangers, and/or ring modulation, and the overt space-case approach puts this into a more complex acoustic realm. It stays within a strict dynamic range though - a product of the home recording, I'd guess - and while it likes to roar, it never violates its boundaries. The final cut returns to the organic warmth of the first side but from a much more yearning, crying voice. And while human voices are probably a major part of the source material, it sounds magically human yet inhuman yet probably human, a double inversion for these double leopards.

Deerhunter - 'Cryptograms/Fluorescent Grey' (Kranky)

Somehow Deerhunter have crept into my life and become this powerful, meaningful band - the kind of rich n' deep artistes that fulfill almost everything I'm looking for in music (but struggle to continually find as I get older). Big words I guess, but I mean them -- there hasn't been an indie/rock artist that I've connected to this much in years. My love affair really began with Microcastle, but Cryptograms, the predecessor, is also fantastic. It's a strangely structured album, and this 2xLP reissue spreads it awkwardly over three sides, making it even harder for me to view it through the traditional bipartite rock album lens. Deerhunter would have never belonged on Kranky during their early Labradford/Bowery Electric/Tomorrowland days, but in recent years the label has embraced more song-based efforts and this record's pretty much a perfect fit. Bradford Cox began his ascent into the pantheon of great contemporary songwriters here, but it was a sneaky climb. Some of the catchiest songs on Cryptograms are crammed into the back, like 'Strange Lights' and 'Haze St.' - the former could have been a bright, brassy college radio hit, at least in my college days. In terms of album sequence,  Deerhunter here continually shift between the songs and the more ambient workouts, of which 'White Ink' and 'Red Ink' are the centerpieces. The most brilliant thing about Deerhunter is not this dichotomy though, nor the moments of integration when the sound exploration is built around a strong song (such as the dazzling title track, or the thunderous 'Octet'); the brilliance is in Cox's songwriting, which attains some of the most true melancholy I've ever listened to, but in a subtle way. Emotionally, Cryptograms doesn't jump out at me as much as the later records, but I haven't really invested myself in this album as much as the subsequent two. I know that any investment will pay off as it has for Microcastle and Halcyon Digest - this is a band in a brilliant run of music right now and I don't know where it's going to end. Cryptograms is building up to this wave, but not quite there yet. However, this lovely gatefold release is packaged with the Fluorescent Grey EP, and this is precisely the moment where the brilliant run begins. These four songs are about as perfect as things get, Deerhunter's Watery, Domestic. I really do think of Deerhunter like Pavement because I think Cox might be my favourite songwriter since them, and there seems to be as much depth, to me, in these songs, as in Malkmus's 'Greenlander' or 'Home'. The title track of the EP is where the creep factor begins - it's an exploration of death and obsession, lyrics almost perfectly underwritten, and it's just a great achievement. 'Dr. Glass' sets down a misleading groove with a fun woodblock/handclap accent, though it's about useless bodies. And this is what I love again - the subtle darkness, disguised by a flamboyant, psychedelic colour, yet it's not exactly like other psych music. 'Wash Off' is among my favourite Deerhunter songs too, and an excellent way to end (more so than 'Heatherwood' ends Cryptograms, which seems to demand a nonexistent coda). It's sharp and smooth at the same time, twisting around with wicked caresses. "I was sixteen" is the refrain, the counterpoint to "You were my god/in high school", making this EP really about adolescence, which of course rhymes with fluorescence. So fucking good. Please keep it coming.

The Cure - 'Pornography' (Fiction)

Pornography is a deliberately bleak, dense record. All of the songs sound pretty much the same, and the band, still a trio, sounds huge thanks to overdubs, a scrupulous use of reverb, and the slow, plodding rhythms that eventually propel this record through its eight songs. Robert Smith has taken his great step away from the bouncy frontman of 'Boys Don't Cry' and towards the posturing foolishness of the late 80s. But here, it's balanced - the doom and gloom isn't that far beyond Factory output of the same period, though when the opening lyric of your album is 'It doesn't matter if we all die', it's pretty much the stuff "goth" is made up. I like Pornography a lot because of how relentless it is, and how it sits on the border of being overly sincere romantic body poetry and genuinely edgy yet bare sentiment from the imagistic planet that the Swans came from. Either way, it's honest, and Smith's guitar playing is just brilliant here. He's kept the long, sinewy notes of the first record but taken away the attack, without compromising the mood. It's decay all along and the monotonous rhythm (I think I criticised drummer Laurence Tolhurst for being kinda weak before, though really it's perfect, and while he moved to keyboards after this record, I sorta miss the plodding). Big hair and makeup are just around the corner, but I generally stop here, except whenever I hear 'In Between Days' I can't deny it's greatness.

The Ornette Coleman Trio - 'At the "Golden Circle" Stockholm volume one' (Blue Note)

This is the record on which the Izenzon/Moffett trio's reputation rests, for me (and I will spell their names correctly in this writeup, as this record's sleeve uses the correct spelling unlike Town Hall 1962, which I only just realised butchers it - great job, ESP proofreaders!). I actually have never heard volume two of this concert, and never remember to look for it, which is strange given how much I love volume one. Part of the reason is that I was surprised by this record. My father gave me this LP, from his very small collection of jazz records, representing his brief flirtation with avant-garde jazz in the late 60's which he quickly lost interest in. Actually, I think this might be have been the only record to remain, though he told me that he had both volumes of The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra and swore they were upstairs (they weren't; what a tease!). Anyway, I took this somewhat reluctantly, during the peak of my interest in skronky out-jazz, figuring it couldn't be that good because the recording date was early and Blue Note wasn't a label I thought of as being representative of free jazz. So what a surprise to hear a hot-shit band disassembling the ghost of bop, propelling with energy and that agile, wispy tone of Coleman. The record starts with a spoken introduction in Swedish, after Izenzon tunes up and we hear Moffett adjusting his hi-hat - which makes me now realise that as much I love this trio, it's only these two live recordings I know by them. (I suppose I should start looking for copies of the Chappaqua Suite). Anyway, 'Faces and Places' quickly explodes, with Moffett drilling his ride cymbal throughout, propelling along Ornette's creaky explorations. Again, Izenzon is a little hard to hear, which is partially cause of this weird phasing effect caused by the ride cymbal, which I quite like - it gives the whole track a semi-metallic feel, a little bit like industrial music. It occasionally feels familiar, like quotations of Charlie Parker melodies, but then rips the rug from under itself as it goes along. 'European Echoes' begins with an almost intentionally crude pattern of toots and bleats from Coleman, his technique sounding quite amateurish as the swing slowly starts to take hold. It doesn't feel so much like an echo to me or even something European, but more like a training wheels on a bicycle that slowly rolls long, hitting some Moffett-driven potholes along the way. It sputters to a quiet bit and Izenzon gets plucky, and the whole piece feels like it's about to open up like the Art Ensemble of Chicago would approach it. Slowly the bubbly pattern comes back into place and we're at halftime, after a round of applause from a room of polite Swedes. On the flipside, 'Dee Dee' bursts out with the toe-tapping exuberance begun with 'Faces and Places', leading to a great interplay between the bass and drums when Coleman drops out. And 'Dawn' is a beautiful, slightly subdued closer, beginning with a long melodic improvisation where the bass echoes the sax melody at times, bowed in a way that resembles another horn almost. Moffett's sound is really tinny, with lots of fluttering around on the hi-hat and not much kick, probably a result of recording techniques of anything. It's a meandering tune, content to coast around peripatetically with lots of coffee breaks. It ends, essentially, in a restless, slow bass solo; Ornette returns to put a cap on it, and we're out. It's a downbeat closing, but it looks ahead to volume two.

Chrome - 'Red Exposure' (Beggars Banquet)

Though this record is missing credits, I think Chrome has been paired down to the Edge/Creed duo by this point. Compared to their debut record, Red Exposure makes a significant step forward in terms of recording/sound quality, sounding like an actual studio product. This serves to accentuate their sound, allowing strange melting metallic drone intrusions to poke out of the mix more. There's more dynamic range, and it allows the songs to breathe more, such as 'Static Gravity' which reprises the midtempo jauntyness found on Alien Sountracks in a carnivalesque manner. Side two opens things up a bit, but also moves into 80's pop territory with 'Electric Chair'. The sense of menace and fear is released here, and a slight Gary Numan thing is in place. But it's cool, there's no reason why Chrome can't write something catchy. It's still a bit scary, after all, and this is total metal - metallic and shimmery, not heavy metal. By the end, 'Isolation', we're drifting into a sunset, with a rising and falling pulse, not quite machine but not quite human.

John Cale - 'Fear' (Island)

Here's at least one detail to love about every track of Fear: 1. Manzanera's crunchy, slightly palm-muted guitar part during the first verse of 'Fear is a Man's Best Friend'. 2. The pause, the hesitation just before the vocals start in on 'Buffalo Ballet' (but really, everything about 'Buffalo Ballet' - Cale's greatest power ballad, and one that really captures the sense of openness and wonder about his adopted home). 3. The wow and flutter of 'Barracuda', which I guess means the way it wobbles despite the confident rhythmic motion. Maybe it's the static around the bass guitar or the carnivalesque keyboards (are they Eno or Cale?) but it makes this a fun track to play loud when DJing. 4. 'Emily's organ textures, which provide a churchlike, apostolic earnestness behind Cale's emo lyrics and Eno's sweeps of white noise, particularly during the second verse. 5. In 'Ship of Fools', Cale sings 'There was something in the air that made us kind of weary', but his voice trails off at the end, cause, well, he's weary right? But I would be too if I was sailing all around the Welsh coast with these dudes. 6. The monotony of 'Gun', which when it ascends to its chorus, feels like the haymaker after you've already been peppered with jabs. 7. 'The Man Who Couldn't Afford to Orgy', which was for some reason released as a single, has all manners of perversions, but Cale's hard-G pronunciation of 'orgy' is the biggest, outranking Judy Nylon's sultry breaths. 8. When the female backing singers (credited simply as 'Girls' on the sleeve) enter 'You Know More Than I Know'. They change the song -- no longer a reflective complement to 'Buffalo Ballet', it turns into something more exuberant, and tinged with gospel fringers. 9. Well, all the slide guitars, of course, on 'Momamma Scuba', though given the presence of Richard Thompson with Manzanera, I find this track rather disappointing. Overall, side two starts to drag, but this is the Island album I enjoy the most from Cale and the only one I've bothered to own over the years. It's a pretty fantastic 1-2-3 punch and 'Fear is a Man's Best Friend' should be at every karaoke bar on this planet.

Tim Buckley - 'Lorca' (Elektra)

'Lorca' (the song) has a great descending riff, the evil twin to Floyd's 'Interstellar Overdrive', and it feels amazingly focused, searching towards Buckley's own inner destructive soul. The electric piano steps forth, played by Lee Underwood in the same meandering, noodly style that he showed us on guitar those last few albums, but sounding like small burning solar flares. 'Anonymous Proposition' is the kind of song that exemplifies Lorca though - Buckley's own melody is strong and the band is floundering around him. Forty years of rock deconstruction followed but methinks this is a real stab at musical freedom through folk forms. By the time this gets to the end, it's like we're right back where we started, but we've felt. The rhythm section is what's missing - John Balkan's bass has become a lead instrument and apart from some congas (probably most obviously timekeeping on side two and a bit of 'Lorca', actually), we have a beast of a record. But the voice becomes the centre - the ultimate inversion of rock's rules, so already cast-in-stone by 1970 despite all the manic experimentation of the past few years. But this feels relatively uninfluenced by any of that. 'I Had A Talk With My Woman' has some bonafide pop hooks in it, but it continues the atmosphere set by the first side. Then 'Driftin'' enters the scene, which is slowed down miserable country-blues over a campfire ambience. I think of some of Neil Young's most miserable times on the beach when I hear this one, both in temperament and in Underwood's soloing. It ends with a frantic pace, as Buckley is wailing in his teen idol way but the band is cooking a brutal breakfast. I used to think of Lorca as split between side one's radical explorations and side two's more conventional tunes, or rather, they always seemed more like a continuation of Happy Sad/Blue Afternoon. But this time it sounds much more cohesive than I remembered. It's true that 'Lorca' and 'Anonymous Proposition' are the most radical in form, with 'Lorca' itself introducing some real dark juju. But the second side shouldn't be overlooked, just because it has a more rhythmic center. This is Buckley unleashed, and if you think of all three of these records (including the ones before and after) as coming out of the same sessions, then we really have a remarkably productive period of creativity for any one artist to claim.

Anthony Braxton - 'New York, Fall 1974' (Arista)

This radio statio promo copy fails to put the graphical notation of the titles on the label, so I will use the same standards here. This is Braxton's move to a major label, and from listening to side one you'd think it was a blatant stab at commercial success. The three cuts here are based around a traditional rhythm section (Jerome Cooper and Dave Holland) and it swings quite nicely in post-bop quartet mode. The chord changes are somewhat golden, and it goes quite well with the ghostlike autumnal walk in the woods on the back cover. "Side One, Cut Three" gets the most intense, with a mind-numbingly repetitive bassline over which Braxton's alto and Kenny Wheeler's trumpet can scratch at each other. It's remarkably Apollonian but then again, Braxton is generally somewhat Apollonian (at least compared to other "difficult" composers). Side two introduces some crazyness -- a Braxton/Richard Teitelbaum clarinet/Moog duo opens up, and it's slow and exploratory, with lots of bubbling, gurgling sounds and fast/slow clarinet doodles. It's more of the push/pull we heard in the album with Jarman, but they occasionally lock into sync and make some amazingly mindmelded tunes. Overall, it's the highlight of the record and a nice entry into the Arista catalogue. "'Side two, cut two' is a predecessor to the World Saxophone Quartet, but with Braxton subbing for David Murray. The piece is kinda goofy, almost like an experiment of what they could get away with, with four saxophonists. Braxton's on soparino (which is even higher than soprano), leaving Hemphill to play alto and Oliver Lake on tenor. Hamiett Bluiett's baritone is quite restrained but occasionally it blasts a jarring jolt that makes me sit upright and pay attention. By the end it's an exercise in repetition with everyone playing staccato notes at the same time, and it's not the most enlightening of the man's works, to put it mildly. 'Side two, cut three' returns to the quartet of side one, but with Leroy Jenkins added. It's now 6 years since his contribution to Braxton's 3 Compositions of New Jazz and I daresay it shows a new sense of resignation. It's as slow as the duet with Teitelbaum, but this time there's a full band to enforce the misery. Maybe this bird gets unhappy when he leaves Chicago, or maybe he's anticipating the financial pressures that would virtually kill avant-garde jazz a few years later. Maybe I'm reading into it too much, but, my point is, it's a sad and oblique ending to a mixed grab bag of an album.

Béla Bartók - 'Divertimento (for strings)' (Bartók Recording Studio)

Classical records pose a problem, alphabetically. Do I file the record under the name of the composer or the name of the conductor? Despite a lifelong interest in classical music (though one marked with a healthy skepticism towards the nauseating attitudes carried by advocates of the genre), I actually don't have that many records so it's never been a big issue. This is conducted by Tibor Serly, and actually the 'Divertimento' is only half of the record with side 2 filled out by a Gesueldo piece (also conducted by Serly) and a Scarlatti sonata conducted by A. Walter Kramer. Which means, there is neither consistency of composer nor of conductor to make the decision for me. Since the record was issued by Bartok's own in-house label, we have a tiebreaker. This comes on that super thick shellac like 78s are pressed to, and the sleeve claims the record is 'non-breakable'. It sounds pretty good, with 'Divertimento''s lively glissandos sounding like lemon juice splattering across glass. The melody is circular and initially doesn't display the usual Magyar folk jams associated with Bartók. The second movement emerges with this really sweet cello riff that meditates for awhile before the screaming violins and violas burst out, clawing for your heart - but only for a second before they are subsumed. It's the ocean at night, raging to a foggy horizon, with occasional bursts of static and white light cutting through. At moments, the same sense of drama that Mahler's later symphonies have is here, though with a very different sonic palette. The recording is crisp and wide - the differences in volume between the quiet and loud parts are so extreme that it's actually a bit difficult to listen to without intense concentration. The third movement is actually on side two and brings in the typically Bartókian circular folk/dance melodies -- not a bad thing as the bass-like cello plucks sounds great on this old bit of wax and you can't always want Béla in minimal/mystic mode. Still, it doesn't feel like it fits with the first two movements and I wonder how much the physical interruption of flipping the record is responsible for this feeling. I guess it's a thematic tie to the Gesueldo piece, which even though it was written 350 years earlier carries a similar sense of motion. The Scarlatti piece is 'whatever' I guess - total filler but it's easy enough to ignore.