Jason Lescalleet - 'Electronic Music' (RRRecords)

The title of this, a record that I guess now would be classified under 'early Lescalleet', is deceptively simple. For all recorded music is electronic, and there's surely meant to be a tongue-in-cheek sense of that meaningless descriptor being applied here. The electronics presented here were (I assume) designed and performed by Mr. Lescalleet, and across four tracks he shapes their possibilities into compositions that come to blossom slowly, expanding with cinematic flourishes. This is heard probably most evidently on 'Litmus Tape', the second track, which builds off the static bristles of the opening cut, but introduces a shifting, tonal echo that comes and goes, providing just enough narrative to serve as a central guiding principle. This track recalls third-album Labradford in some way, which is probably the only piece I've heard from Lescalleet that I would compare to them, or anyone else on the Kranky roster. Side two on this beautiful, marbled grey vinyl record begins with the most minimal piece, 'Accidental - Oriental'. This demands intense focus, and it's easy to let the mind wander while waiting for the slow, increasing presence of flickering square waves or whatever electronic sources make up this work. It eventually coalesces into a roar, a hell of a roar actually, one that really shows the full dynamic range of vinyl as it moves between nothing and something so fully over the course of about seven minutes. But it doesn't explode, nor does it seek a cheap soft-loud effect; it just grows and evolves, and then goes away just when I'm about to turn the volume down because the windows are about to shake. This is a hint of the pyrotechnics to come on the last track, 'Beautiful Whore', where the lurching, discordant electronics that are present in much of his other work come to the forfront. Despite the deep-listening lay down of Electronic Music, the tools and palette make him a closer fit to the 'noise' underground, and I'm not just saying that cause this is on RRR and because of the transgressive titling of that track; there's a sense of raw energy here, even though most of the record is quiet, that Lescalleet manages to turn inward and make into something different than a typical amped up banger. The cover art of this record has always greatly influenced my listening of it, and I'm nt sure why. Perhaps the porcelain plate is a good representation of the brittle, carved in fire nature of the sound here; perhaps the bespoke detailing on its rim is an echo of the careful considerations put into Electronic Music's assemblage. Or maybe it's just a nice plate that he saw somewhere and thought looked good. 

Cheb Khaled & Safy Boutella ‎- 'Kutché' (Zone/EMI)

I don't know much about rai as a genre but thought this would be a good way to find out about it, as Cheb Khaled is one of those names I knew of, even if the actual sound was a mystery to me. And it's not common to find interesting records for sale in Latvia, so why not start investigating a genre with something that promises 100% of it? This is from '88 and you can hear it; the drums and synths are right out of MTV from the era, and the traditional Algerian instruments are sometimes hard to make out, or maybe even synth/MIDI versions. Khaled's voice soars over the songs, and he does this choppy/blocky thing sometimes that I like. The more sunshine-drenched tunes like 'El Lela' stick out a bit, because there's an openness and energy that overcomes the dated (to my ears) sound of the instrumentation. Khaled was the biggest of the big in this scene and I'm reading how he sold out later, but by the 1980s rai had already transmogrified into the modern pop music that this is. 'Chab Rassi' has a nice odd distance - its beat propels along like a ball on a hard floor, but there's a whirling flute line that answers Khaled's vocal line and it adds a nice woody assonance to the track. If there are ballads here, then it's a form of balladry I don't get, fast and bulbous; I don't understand the language anyway so it's hard for me to grasp the intent of any of these tracks. It's secular music, that's for sure, and overall it's slickly produced by Boutella, who gets a co-credit and largely handles arrangements and a bunch of instrumentation. There's some nice drum programming on 'Chebba' and a generally bouncy disposition to the whole record, but I really should investigate the rai from earlier decades, when it was genuinely the music of pariahs and rebels. 'Minuit', the closer, hints at that with some street field recordings of an accordion player bringing in the song before it erupts into the world pop confection that fits with the rest of the album. If rai is traditionally Dionysian music, like punk and rembetika, then by this point it had embraced the system pretty fully, I think. I'm not disappointed - though I rarely play this, it suits a certain summer mood, and listening to this provides some form of a escape, as I'm sure it's the closest that I'll ever get to Western Algeria.

Bob James Trio - 'Explosions' (Get Back)

The 60s are full of amazing recordings that push music into new directions; this Bob James Trio LP is often overlooked, maybe because James himself had a long career playing more standard jazz afterwards, and he wasn't there for the long haul. Despite the title, this isn't fire music, but an early exploration of electroacoustic improvisation meeting the jazz idiom head-on. It's credited to the trio of James, Barre Phillips and Robert Pozar, but the frequent incursions of tapes and electronics are the work of Gordon Mumma (on opening track, 'Peasant Boy') and Robert Ashley (on 'Untitled Mixes' and 'Wolfman'). The credits make it unclear if Mumma and Ashley are just responsible for the compositions, or maybe the tape material was supplied by Mumma but not actually, technically 'played' by him on this recording. It's a stunner, though - opening with a bumpy, centreless improvisation between James's piano, Phillips's bass and Pozar's drumkit, it soon withers to almost nothing and the players do an Art Ensemble-esque exploration of space. A few plucked strings, something scraped, a few tonally confusing notes - and this is when Mumma's sounds come in. Sounding like only tapes can sound, you can hear the squleching and squirming movement push the musicians to redefine their approach to colour and mood. This segues perfectly into 'Untitled Mixes', where Ashley's somewhat more present electronics are in place, but it feels like a seamless transition, just a handoff of tapes. The band continues their spacious interplay, with enough emptyness at the core that the surface noise is often alone (or the echo of the studio if your hi-fi equipment is good enough). Slowly, the musicians come back together, and it's harmoniously disharmonious, if that makes any sense. James's 'Explosions' closes the first half, a curiously named piece for something so quiet and spare. Phillips's bowing take centre stage and it sneaks around sonorities not unreminiscent of baroque European composition, eventually puttering to halt which is a false ending, before a few plucked strings resonate to the run-out grooves. Side two begins with Phillips's composition 'An On', which starts with a carnivalesque whirring of some sort of motor and a tin whistle, until the trio comes in and teases out a plodding theme. While neither Mumma nor Ashley are credited here, there's a heavy presence of tape loops, garbling and spinning slowly enough to interplay with the tonalities of the piano and bass quite beautifully, if you find this sort of thing beautiful (I do!). The piece utterly refuses to gel into a recognisable jazz form; that's saved for 'Wolfman'. This closer is the weirdest moment, simple because it sounds like Ashley's 'Wolfman' work (radios and voices) played overtop of a standard post-bop Bob James Trio jazz recording. It's a nice wall of sound, I guess, but there's no interplay, and it just comes off as a failed experiment, albeit not a terrible thing to sit through. The rest of the album is so curiously, cautiously groundbreaking that it fits because of the way it doesn't fit, and Ashley's work is pretty interesting on its own. I never really hear this record talked about much, which is a shame, because it's phenomenal, and tonally it's unlike anything else from the era that I've heard.

Idea Fire Company - 'Stranded' (Swill Radio)

The anti-natural manifesto is not anti-human in any sense, and I'm struck by the physical effects of listening to multiple Idea Fire Company records in a row. Stranded bears little resemblance to the Roxy Music classic, but also takes a great step forward from what the duo of Karla Borecky and Scott Foust exhibited on Anti-Natural. Here, the group has expanded to a quartet, though that doesn't alter the clarity of their vision one bit. I find that the different tracks affect me in different ways, physically, here; there is a breathing ebb and flow that generally is present in every piece, but it moves from placid and contemplative ('Heroes') to edgy and nervous ('Wünderwäffen', 'Artificial'). Foust is entirely relegated to radio and tape duties here and his preparations are masterful, particularly the murmuring voices buried beneath 'Stranded II's music-box melody. Where a lesser musician or sound artist might gravitate towards sentimental nostalgia with such material, IFCO eschews any such reading and infuses a cold isolation, using the radio to conjure mysteries that do not reflect on culture's reading of the future from the past, like so much music called 'hauntology' today. The voices on 'Heroes' are shockingly beautiful, rotating in an echo of a dream; here's where more traditional musical aesthetics are dabbled with, and it's extremely rewarding. 

Eno - 'Here Come the Warm Jets' (Island)

Here come a run of records that will be hard to write about because I've listened to them to death and there's not much new to say. In fact, when I listen now, I have to struggle to hear new things, which is not to say I am in any way 'bored' with Here Come the Warm Jets. But certainly, the iconic cuts have been played to death, so I no longer have much to say about 'Needles in the Camel's Eye' or 'Baby's on Fire' except that when I hear them played in public places (a bar, restaurant, club, or dentist's office) then I'm delighted to know said establishment has good taste. The more disturbing and edgy tracks are the ones I enjoy the most - 'Driving Me Backwards' is possibly Eno's greatest achievement, as it feels like a metaphor that can apply to so many zillions of scenarios - the 1970s British economy, the pressures of creative inspiration - or maybe it's just about nothing. The jets of the title track and 'On Some Faraway Beach' are indeed warm, dragging me into a murky, pleasant sound bath, with genteel melodies circling around some undefined dynamo. 'Blank Frank' is like the evil version of the Beach Boys' SMiLE - psychedelic, sure, but it's all bad vibes and menace, with just as much invention in the studio. These records, especially Another Green World, somehow get away with guitar tones that would sound horrendous in most other contexts. 'Blank Frank's solo sounds more like a paper shredder, yet I wouldn't call it proto-industrial. I have a thing for 'Some of them are Old' and 'Put A Straw Under Baby' (on Tiger Mt.) because I love Eno's pure melodicism; the songs are like nursery-rhymes with bizarre, intangible lyrics and stick in my head deeper than the rockers ('It will follow you, it will follow you...'). The breakdown on 'Some of Them are Old', with it's weird slide guitar arpeggios and buzzsaw/tabla contradicitons, is among the most sublime passages on any Eno recording I've heard, and the reverb-drenched church bell coda is an oft-overlooked island of calm. I'm an unabashed Eno fan, but also a shitty one that doesn't stick with his recent material (recent meaning, oh, the last 25 years or so). A Year with Swollen Appendices, his book from 1995, is maybe his greatest gift to the creative world (even more than the Oblique Strategies) but when viewed holistically, his career somehow maintains a consistent approach to exploration throughout - there's never anything that feels like it wasn't worth trying.

Eardrum - 'Last Light' (Leaf)

Eardrum, a British duo (I assume they are British - you can just tell), put out this double LP in 1999 and  my rhythm-seeking ears were thrilled at the time. This is a work of complex assemblage, made to feel like an organic jam; I'm not sure if it belongs in the 'electronica' genre or if it's dance music or why any of that matters, but people like to classify things. The drum in the name Eardrum is key here, as this is built around percussion. This appealed to me because Eardrum avoided harsh, dance-like club beats and used acoustic recordings; the multilayered psychedelic quilt that results is invigorating, light, and functions as both deep-listening and good-time music. Polyrhythmic syncopation is just the base; the various textures are the real joy here, and they are built from howling echo effects, wispy flutes, and other accents. 'Swamp Doctor' opens up side two with a lighter pitter-patter, suggesting equatorial music, but it somehow escapes any stereotypes, even that of eclectic hybrid forms. I also like O.Rang, who I'm reminded of by this; such invigorating exotica is not everyday fare for me, but it's hard to find fault. When the beats get more rapid, as on 'Nightcrawler', it's never overwhelming; there's enough counterpoint and development over the course of each piece to keep things moving. Tension is immediately released, and when occasional digital artefacts are audible, they feel more like phase/flange effects than glitch-core. It's an achievement to make music that is clearly constructed from samples, edits and very finicky details yet still manages to feel so loose. The four sides of this go by quickly, mastered loud on 180-gram vinyl that has strangely sharp edges to it. It a melting pot, clearly sampled from worldwide sources, but darting in and out of various regions. 'From the Nucleus' starts to take on a rainforest feel, with sonorities not a million miles from Gamelan music, but doesn't commit. Perhaps this is true contemporary music, a grey-washing that aims for the middle of all metrics and somehow doesn't  feel blanched. Reading back over this post, I realise that almost every sentence asserts something about Eardrum and then gives a qualifying "but..." so maybe this balance is even evident when listening. Active balance, perhaps?