The Lavender Flu - 'Heavy Air' (Meds)

I don't feel guilt about the non-diversity of this vinyl accumulation, or even see my tastes as homogenous. Someone recently said something to me about the whiteness of it all, which pissed me off a bit. I was quick to point out that despite being largely rooted in rock and folk, there is a  proliferation of jazz and other black American forms here, as well as African and Asian indigenous musics – plus other outliers. What he really meant to say was that because I don't really like reggae and have few hip-hop or soul records, and my vinyl accumulation is so heavily weighted towards rock, that it was somehow racially problematic. Fuck that. We like what we like, and we like what we grow out of, and I come from a background that led to a heavy interest in indie, post-punk, and psych. This is a weird intro to write about the Lavender Flu's first album, a double LP collection that I would cite (along with its followup) as one of the finest examples of modern-day psychedelia. I bring up the whiteness of my records because this record definitely comes from the same lineage that I do (Flu leader Chris Gunn was a member of the Hunches, whose last album is a brilliant slice of post-garage energy), and that's probably a lot to do with why I like it; no one would describe this as 'urban'. This made me think about the very word 'psychedelia', which most people would probably use to describe Heavy Air, and what it even means anymore. It might be best to retire this term, unless you're using it to describe a very precise and historical time in rock music (like 13th Floor Elevators or the Nuggets collections). I don't hear many thowbacks to that era in the Lavender Flu, except for the cover of Bo & the Weevils 'My Time' here. Heavy Air is a lot to take in, and it's a bit of a mess by definition - a 'kitchen sink' approach that mixes half-formed songs, full-formed songs, and bedroom experiments into a lengthy sound quilt. The band name is apt - colourful and lush, but also with an undercurrent of instability. A lot of these tracks wobble on their hind legs, and even the more straight-forward presentations have a detuned viewpoint, not intentional obfuscation but just a nice, new angle. There's a few covers here - the Godz, Townes van Zandt, and John Fahey, but these are given the Lavender take. Home-fi techniques abound, though overall there's a clarity in the soundstage that avoids this being murky tape-piss, but also has an intimacy. A lot of these tracks are Gunn with just one other musicians, rather than a cohesive band (that comes on the next record). The scraps, on their own, wouldn't add up to much, but as incidental pieces tying together a whole it gels, and these smaller movements don't feel like throwaways, or even like there are two tiers of composition on the record. Whispered spoken voices, melting bells, reverberating string plucks, slow-paced rock drumming, droning organs, tape treatments that sound like birds – from this description and the length of this, it might sound like I'm describing some Elephant 6 style band, like the first Olivia Tremor Control record. But while Gunn is no stranger to melody, earworm hooks are largely absent, making this a pleasant mystery of a record that demands repeated listens. Overall it's quite an accomplishment, feeling like the summation of a lot of things that have been happening on the West Coast in the past decade. Scott Simmons, who put out this record, plays on a lot of tracks and also had a hand in Eat Skull and Helen, and the relationship between the three can be felt despite the different applications. Yes, it's white music, 30 tracks of it, and it's pretty fucking great. 

Ken Lauber - 'Contemplation (View)' (Dynamic)

I've known this record for a few years but only recently realised its title come from a popular translation of the I Ching, at least popular at the time this was made (1970). A friend recommended this a few years back when we were both discovering music from the country-western genre and particularly lonely obscurities of the late 1960s-early 1970s. This isn't actually that obscure or lonely, nor is it even super country-fried. It's a Nashville album though, or close enough (recorded in Madison, TN) and it's driven by Lauber's raspy, smoky voice and his piano (even though he poses for the back cover with a guitar). As 'alternative country' artists go, at least among those who existed before that term did, he's from the piano-driven honkytonk side as opposed to the outsider/freakazoid scene. But despite the piano being his instrument, Contemplation (View) is nothing like Terry Allen, leaving behind (for the most part) narrative cleverness in favour of sweet romantic wistfulness and a hint of new age stargazing. At least I pick that up in both 'Wander On' and 'Far I Will Travel'; there's a similar openness to darker numbers like 'Undertow'. 'The Disabled Veteran' is the one foray into narrative character building and it's a little bit much for me, but more genre-leaning cuts ('Mama, It's such a Long Ride Home', for example) are such solid band efforts that they could be cover versions and I mean that in a good way. I've listened to this a fair few times over the years and it's always a pleasant, rollicking dip into the country-rock sound, a template taken straight from Dylan's Nashville Skyline, of which this bears a shocking resemblance to. The Gray Speckled Bird Band (actually listed as the Gray Speckled Bird Brand, but I assume that's a typo) are pretty hot though, assembled I think from mostly session guys and some members of Barefoot Jerry. Bassist Wayne Moss is one of the strongest forces, as his confident walking and thumping holds together the whole unit and he brings a subtle uncertainty to 'Mama', playing the notes with a bit of hesitation or nervousness. There are guitars everywhere - steel ones, dobro, and regular - some of which are played by Nashville legends, I have no doubt. Lauber's cadences are sophisticated and his underwhelming vocal delivery takes away any commercial edge this might have had. I guess the guy made some more records but I've never heard them, nor do I ever think to seek them out. But Contemplation (View) has stayed in focus for so long because there's a certain raw honesty in these songs, heard immediately in the first line of opener 'When I Awake', and carrying through its entirety.

Last Exit (Enemy)

I wonder what motivated this 'super group' to form - who phoned who, where the inspiration came from, etc.? Were Peter Brötzmann and Sonny Sharrock just hanging out one night and decided that the world needed more hot, swampy electric freak fusion music? If so, they were right; or at least the world of 1986 sure did, and maybe in 2019 (despite having more music available than ever, despite the nature of streaming having transformed music itself into something disposable for the majority of people, despite the plethora of niche choices available to all reducing if not outwardly eliminating the idea of 'obscure' or 'inaccessible') we do too. Last Exit were the greater than the sum of their parts, I think, and the group is unimaginable without any of the four members, so prominent are their contributions, almost perfectly balanced. Yet somehow, Ronald Shannon Jackson's drumming is the crucial element here. Even though no other guitarist sounds like Sharrock, no other saxophonist quite sounds like Brötzmann, etc., I could at least deign to imagine this record with, for example, Fred Frith instead of Sharrock; and that would be probably pretty great too. But if you swapped out Jackson for another drummer, even a great drummer, it would fundamentally change the group so much because his propulsive, machinelike approach is what most thrusts this record away from any semblance of swing or blues and into tortured, primal viscera. This is made clear about two seconds into 'Discharge', the opening cut, where the drums sound like gunshots and everyone is thunderously blasting notes to the point where it becomes a sort of drone, though one with a punchy staccato texture making it up. 'Backwater' seems to pull things down a notch, with a skittery interplay between Brötzmann and Sharrock around a spacious atmosphere. The feeling is of a cold storage locker, steam rising from dirty urban manholes, and a hopeless pallor over everything. It builds to a full-band freakout, and while Last Exit resemble jazz occasionally in the sense that there are solos and no vocals and a saxophone, they resist showy musicianship or navel-gazing noodling. There's no shortage of notes being played, most of all by Laswell, on an electric six-string bass, but it's perfect for this band. I was out with my parents recently and I saw a fusion trio play, who were led by an electric pianist, with a drummer and six string electric bassist (I won't name names here). It felt like endless samey talk show background music, and despite my best efforts to enjoy it I could not. The motivating drive of those musicians seemed to be to cram as many notes as possible into each composition, without any regard for personal expression or musical diversity. For me, growing up PUNK (or at least PUNK-adjacent), I subscribed to all sorts of clichés about jazz and chop-based music, a result being there were instruments I considered acceptable to play and ones that were not. The six string bass was clearly banned from my teenage idea of good taste and the trio I saw with my parents illustrates why. But Laswell, who has occasionally overstepped his boundaries in other projects, demonstrates on Last Exit precisely why it's childish and reductionist to dismiss any sound, and why my favourite era of musical discovery was when I learned to cast off my PUNK-adjacent hangups. When Laswell enters the soundspace (with Jackson) on 'Red Light', his technique is a torrent of thumping physicality that would be unimaginable on any other instrument, and it's awesome. Especially on vinyl, which emphasises low-end in a way that CDs never can. All of the churning and grinding within these songs is still driven by tempo and rhythm, rather than tone, and while chaotic, it never feels messy. The first side alone is near-exhausting to listen to closely, and the second in no reprieve. But that's what I want here - thunder, acrid smoke, sharp edges, and something sinister glowing beneath it all.

Steve Lacy ‎- 'Solo - Théâtre Du Chêne Noir' (Emanem)

This solo sax LP, recorded live in concert as the title indicates, opens with 'The Breath' which was the closing cut on the previous record under review here, Moon. Stripped of the Franco-Italo-Swiss band, the composition is barely recognisable, though it is much more clearly a 'tune' in this form. Emanem is a label I associate with Derek Bailey and the most idiom-destroying musicians of the 1970s, so it's somewhat interesting how much of this LP stays around a compositional frame. But then again, that's Lacy - free as hell on Moon (and after all, he played on Cecil Taylor's Jazz Advance way back in '55) but ultimately one who was looking to extend jazz through composition and experimentation. Solo is thus a tight concert; while not exactly traditional standards, it's only on side two opener 'Josephine' that Lacy gets into some extreme techniques. There's a part of that piece where he's squeezing the sax to the point of no return, asymptotically approaching silence but leaving the faintest escape route for his breath. It's man vs. very small machine and the machine almost wins, and you could hear a pin drop in the room as he does it. Actually, for a live record of solo sax this is recorded well, exceptionally so in a genre that usually is well-recorded to begin with. It was a (certainly hot) August night in 1972 and that tense room energy is felt as you often hear on live records, in the echo and reverb through the room behind each breath. But there's nary a shuffle or peep from this crowd, as they were edited out (assuming there was anyone there to applaud in the first place), apart from the briefest moment at the end before a quick fadeout. The compositions start to blur together but Lacy brings out a honking assonance in a few places that made me question if this was all soprano, such was the grit behind it. Other segments are sinewy and untouchable, darting around like an angry insect fleeing a structural flyswatter. Technical mastery, sure, you know already he established that a decade prior, so now it's about hearing him unadorned. The closer, 'The Wool', seems to be the most complete piece, a modal tune that drops into extended breakdowns and keeps coming back to itself.  'Stations' employs a radio in the most John Cage-like fashion and it's a suitable improvisatory foil for Lacy; 'Cloudy' keeps the static running which integrates well into the blowsier parts of the sax playing. The liner notes are clear, explaining who they are dedicated to (Roswell Rudd, Gil Evans, etc.), and there's a concluding paragraph about the nature of solo sax concerts, crediting Anthony Braxton in particular with 'open[ing] the way', and even claiming that they are 'easy'. Nothing sounds easy to me but that's because I once tried to play a soprano sax and struggled to get any sound to come out of it. Like all the other solo sax records in this accumulation, I don't think to pull this out much, but there's something remarkable about the way this was played, recorded and presented.

Steve Lacy - 'Moon' (BYG Actuel/Get Back)

This is a far cry from The Straight Horn of Steve Lacy, as it's anything but straight. Moon hails from a period where he was immersed in the Italian free jazz scene (recorded in Rome, 1969) and features a bunch of European musicians who I'm not really familiar with. His wife, Irene Aebi, appears on cello and does vocals on 'Note', which is one of the more memorable cuts not just because of the staccato, one-word lyrics but cause of its whirlwind start-stop madcap nature. Jacques Thollot is on the drums - I only know him from Sharrock's Monkey-Pockie-Boo record and otherwise more as a name – and he clatters and whoops throughout. The overall momentum of this feels closer to the scratchy bending and hacking of the Spontaneous Music Ensemble than much American free jazz going on at the time. The front line being clarinet and soprano sax means we're locked firmly into the upper register, and the bass and drums are fluid enough that it feels like a lot is missing from the centre. Aebi's cello isn't always so present, or it's played in such a way that it's hard to distinguish from the bass. There's generally a thump-thump bassline behind most cuts, probably most melodically on closing cut 'The Breath', but the whole record feels pretty scrappy. 'Moon' is where things get a little loopier, and the swirls of breath and string start to bend and form a parallax effect. The whole thing goes by rather quickly, and it's absolutely uncompromising in its style. Not a full-breath blowout by any means, but maybe that's just due to the limits of the instrumentation and the way that Thollot plays. Drummers can have a huge effect on these matters. Lacy is front and centre on the cover photo but in the mix he's all over the place, darting through the corners of the soundstage and coming to the forefront furtively, only to slip away as he pleases. This is music that plays against itself continually, twisting against a centre that keeps escaping. I'm not sure what this record's reputation is but it's a demanding listen, despite having a light touch. Somehow it feels unique from other Euro-free records of the period, but maybe that's just because Lacy is such a singular player.

Kuupuu ‎- 'Yökehrä' (Dekorder)

This is a compilation of earlier releases by Kuupuu and it hews closer to other Finnish underground music of its time than some of the later work by Kuupuu (Jonna Karanka) and related projects. There are many names from the Finnish scene of this time (2002-2005), some of which have dissipated into our distant memories (The Anaximandros, anyone?) and others which are still active, though quite different in today' s incarnations (Avarus, Kemiälliset Ystävät). All certainly bring to mind a certain vibe, and that vibe, to me, is 'small' - short form pieces, often just sketches, recorded and left to lie and marinate rather than be overworked. Kuupuu, at least in these earlier recordings, has a certain delicacy to her approach and I'm finding it perfect for this evening's imminent sunset. Acoustic sounds are prevalent and these compositions are more content to move forward slowly, if at all. There's a tendency towards space and texture, and the sequencing is well-chosen here, breaking up the running order from the original cd-r releases and reassembling here. The home-recorded nature of Karanka's work from this time sounds great when transfered to vinyl and I guess it's thanks to Dekorder doing a solid job with the mastering, as usual. When there's hiss and tape noise around the material, it somehow sounds grandiose and important on wax. When she uses her voice, especially on side 2 ('Pihlajapuu', 'Tuli Uni'), it's all breath and transference, mixing with the hiss to be wordless or essentially so. More recognisable melodies on squeezeboxes and keyboards peer out but don't overstay their welcome. In lesser hands this could come off as hackneyed goth music, but there's a really personal vision which seems to abstractly convey experience, which is all I could ever want from music. Her later work becomes a little denser, and more focused on motion in conjunction with texture, specifically the music's own internal ebb and flow. One could probably argue that Kuupuu recordings also become more distinct later on, and that the pieces on this record are more simple or somehow less developed. But there's a care evident here, a sculpting that isolates her from any traditional musical precedents while also situating her work as part of a movement. 

Fela Ransome-Kuti And The Africa '70 With Ginger Baker ‎– 'Live!' (Signpost)

Afrobeat meets British jazz here, or at least Ginger Baker sits in on a second drum kit to make this collaboration. This is the only Fela Kuti record I own but I've heard a lot of those classics from the 70s, and this sounds more or less in line. Tony Allen is a formidable enough drummer that Baker is probably only adding accents and thickening; it's panned a bit so you can get some separation, and this has a pretty excellent sound for a live recording from the time, though there's no credits as to when or where this recording was made. Baker is explicitly introduced by Kuti, who speaks between each of the cuts, and when Baker starts to tap about on the drums, Kuti quickly says 'That's enough, that's enough' and moves into the next song ('Ye Ye De Smell'), which is supposedly written for Baker because he does NOT in fact smell. It's some good natured ribbing I'm sure but Kuti makes it extremely clear who's in charge, as if there would be any doubt. 'Smell' is a banger though, but they are all, of course. This album came out in '71 so it's actually one of Kuti's first releases, and they're already playing a well developed form of their music here. Four songs, opening with the nicely named 'Let's Start' and and propelled by Kuti's shouts and sax, Igo Chiko's fiery solos and of course the drumming, from not just Allen and Baker but the small army of congas and other percussion instruments. There's a long electric piano solo on 'Black Man's Cry' that is also uncredited - no keyboards officially appear on the album, unless it's some sort of insane guitar technique. It's just before he climax of the record building up with the clattery guitars until it just stops and leaves some space for Kuti to begin soliloquising again. When the theme comes back in towards the end (it's a twelve minute piece), with trumpets and sax ringing in harmony, it feels at once like a beautiful orchestrated pop song and the rallying, radical cry its title implies. The final cut is the most somber, being midtempo and transferring all of the polyrhythmic shuffling to be between the beats, though somber for Fela Kuti is maddeningly energetic for most others. Titled 'Egbe Mi O (Carry Me I Want to Die)', it builds to a 'Hey Jude'-like wordless chant, which while sung by the entire band and presumably live audience, attains a wistfulness which is only echoed by the exuberant trumpets. The bands builds it up under this, until it's a somewhat distorted wall of sound, coming back to a lovely theme as is the formula.

Erkki Kurenniemi ‎- 'Rules' (Full Contact)

I'm going to use this record as an excuse to rant about a topic that is probably not even relevant anymore, but I connect it to Rules specifically. I'm pretty sure this is the only LP in the accumulation that was purchased at an art biennial, though being that it was Documenta 2012, I suppose I should refer to it as a quintennial (or whatever it's technically classified as). Documenta 2012 had a lovely and large retrospective on Kurenniemi's instruments there, as well as numerous other sound art works on exhibition, most by the big names of the time - Janet Cardiff, Susan Philipsz, etc.  It was all part of a clearly deliberate attempt to recognise 'sound art' as being very much of the 'now', of the contemporary, at least as it looked in 2012. I don't remember much now about these sound works, but felt at the time – even before arriving – that the selection of sound artists was pretty obvious, like a curator who wasn't super familiar with sound art just looked up the top names from Wikipedia and invited them. That's probably closer to the truth than anyone would admit, and echoes the experiences I've had in the art world, where I frequently wonder why visual art people are unwilling extend their interest in avant-garde aesthetics to the world of music. Actually, I no longer wonder about this much, because I don't care much about the narrow tastes of visual art people anymore, and also because the answers are rather obvious (the financial/educational system wrapped around visual art provides a historical and academic context, while music is still generally a populist, market-driven sector, blah blah blah) and people have even written books about it (Fear of Music by David Stubbs is a quick, OK read that mostly emphasises these same points). Anyway, I don't mean this as a dig against the curator since she otherwise did a brilliant job, with the visual art at least. Documenta 2012 was probably the pinnacle of contemporary art as I've seen it – in many ways the 'last' step for me, since I have struggled to find much of interest in the vacuous, decaying carcass of that cultural sphere – despite the mostly forgettable stock list of sound art superstars dotting the periphery of Kassel. Anyway (and, I'm sorry, we're only about halfway through the rant, let alone actually talking about Rules), there was a small concert of several contemporary Finnish musicians performing on Kurenniemi's instruments that were in the exhibition, as they were still functional.  A friend of mine was playing, so I went and tried my best to enjoy it. The press descended on this like vultures, though to be fair it was the official 'press' preview of the whole exhibition so they were supposed to swarm like that. It was actually hard to hear the sounds over the constant digital camera clicks and flashes, and I realised halfway through that not only was nobody listening, but nobody there knew how to listen. Kurenniemi's embrace by the contemporary art mafia was due largely to the strong visual appeal of his creations, as well as the general sense of nostalgia, hauntology, etc that was attractive at the time. Essentially, they looked cool with all of their lights and knobs, fitting a general analogue fetishism which has persisted throughout my entire adult life, and that's all that mattered. The music, the sounds: absolutely secondary. And you know what? This really annoyed me, because up to that point I had always identified myself as coming from a music-world network background that thrived precisely because it was unconnected to commercial or critical recognition in the fine art world. I was working (and still occasionally work) in and around a less explicitly musical art context and I initially found a lot of liberation in this opening up of parameters, as starting to bring strange sounds into an art context could bring in larger audiences and potential career growth. But something happened to me at Documenta in that precise moment, which is that I realised how the wonderful thing about music is that it always has and always will have total freaks and weirdos making noises in their basement, and these freaks and weirdos have built over time and necessity a truly vast, amorphous and undefinable network that is united through passion, enthusiasm, and truth. Some of these freaks may get their moment in the sun of recognition in a larger art context, though only probably if they fit into the social narrative of whatever current is hot in art. I'm channeling Carducci here and I don't want to start sounding anti-diversity or even close, but I'll get back to my main point - let's go back to the basement, or stay there to begin with. The art world can fuck off; if you want to love and celebrate music, then love it and celebrate it for the correct reasons, because you actually love it. There's no one telling you that you can or cannot dub your own cassette in an edition of 10 with whatever fucked up and strange sounds you want there to be; everyone is genuinely permitted to participate in music, and you don't need any validation from an academy, curator or gallerist to be part of it. (Yes I know there are music academies but that's not what I'm talking about). Nor am I talking about Kurenniemi himself - he worked in a university context, and the brilliance and singularity of his music deserves to be heard, and I'm sure whatever late-life financial benefits he's received from interest in his work has been beneficial and appreciated. But the presentation of it to a cabal of the contemporary art media is really what pushed me over the edge, and I've never been quite the same. Oh, and what about Rules itself? It's great, mastered well (I remember my friend proclaiming that the remastering of 'OnOff' here brought out qualities he had never heard before, to the point where it sounded like a different piece entirely), and you should have it. 

Kukerpillid (Мелодия)

I lived a few years in Estonia which coincided with the decline of my obsession for hunting down weird records. So originally I may have expected to accumulate a crateful of oddities, but sadly, I never really came across much and my leisure pursuits shifted to other matters such as drinking and complaining. The Soviet Melodia imprint was essentially the only record label, being state-run and releasing thousands of records (all on flimsy vinyl with poor sleeve printing), and the secondhand shops were full of piles of these records. I think early on I bought a few random ones based on the covers, being unable to read Cyrllic myself, and batted 0.000 on the batch. All I really remember is a bunch of classical 'pops' arrangements, sometimes of Beatles songs if I was lucky, or else just forgettable vocal music. Now, I know there's a whole subculture devoted to hunting down the gems and gems there sure are - I heard a DJ once in Helsinki who spinned exclusively Soviet vinyl and it was astounding, all weird surf-rock sci-fi music and otherwise unclassifiable genre distortions. But you know, you gotta dig through a pile of dogshit to find a few kernels of corn, or whatever the expression is, and I just didn't (and still don't) have the wherewithal for such pastimes. Somehow this Kukerpillid LP stayed in my accumulation, though listening now I'm not sure why. This is a record of rave-up Estonian village folk/country music, sung by a group of moustachioed men in the early 80s and if you like these sounds then there's a lot to love, as there's 21 songs here. I do actually enjoy this sound, a real hoedown that reminds me of American country-and-western with even a few dixieland jazz elements sprinkled in. The singing is kinda funny, even if you know the language, being hearty men singing in unison, plus, those moustaches. The bass is handled by what sounds like a tuba, though the blurry photos on the back cover show no such instrument - there's also accordion, banjo and a decent violin and simple 1-2-1-2 drumming on what sounds like tin cans. These guys can play - the songs are fast and tight, and there's occasionally sea-shanty vocals ('Joogilaul' which is translated into 'Drink-Hail' and sounds like it) that make it feel even more like an outtake from a film. A few original tunes are sprinkled throughout, most composed by Toomas Kõrvitz, who I suspect is the band leader. They follow from the traditional template, but some ('Oh Roosi, Roosi' for example) have some rock residue, like even electric guitar solos. The manufacture of 'tradition' is a topic for critical anthropologists and not for me, but I have seen how identity has been made particularly in traditionally occupied cultures (Scotland, Estonia and Finland). I'm mildly curious as to how much the members of Kukerpillid invented the traditions here, though of course that's a Pandora's box I shouldn't open. But the Soviet Union is the elephant in the village barn here, and its presence is strongly felt (by me, at least) far beyond the state-owned pressing plant that made this.

Ramnad Krishnan - 'Vidwan: Songs of the Carnatic Tradition' (Nonesuch Explorer)

These four sides of Carnatic classical music were recorded while the musicians were in a residency at Wesleyan. No date is given but this came out in '68 so one would have to assume it was from around this time - during the summer of love, perhaps? Krishnan has a strong and reedy voice, and it's recorded really up-front, making these Telugu lyrics really reverberate. Of course I don't know what they're saying, and I don't know anything about Carnatic music, but that's the escapism of music. Not that when listening to this material (or anything else equally impenetrable to me on a linguistic level) I make up my own meanings; maybe when I was younger I did or I tried to interpret a narrative through non-verbal moods and images at least, but now I just ride along with the sounds, harmonies, layers, assonances and dissonances. Most of these tracks are loooong (10-20 minutes), built around little more than a violin, some percussion, and the everlasting tampura drone that makes Indian music so distinct. V. Thyagarajan is the violinist, and he plays it seated and upright, like a tiny cello - this allows him to saw in and out quickly around the notes and this leads to some stunning, stark passages where everything drops out except the violin and tampura. This is recorded in a way that makes it sound somewhat tinny, or maybe a better word would be 'crisp'; the little bells on the percussion instruments sound like they are right here in the room with me, and that presence gives it a lasting physical feeling, especially due to its length. Four sides are a lot of Carnatic tradition, and each seems to be punctuated with the same structural shifts as the others - solos, long jammy passages, and vocal fore-fronting. The fourth side is billed as an improvisation, so I spent the whole record looking forward to it, hoping that I would be hearing some sort of freakout AMM/No Neck Blues Band style jam. But alas, it was an improvisation around fairly tightly defined Carnatic traditional structures. Which is to say that its still a fine side o' vinyl, as fine as the other three, but I didn't detect any increased freedom or looseness here; this is hardly Tristano's 'Digression' or Coltrane's Ascension - but that's OK, its not necessary at all for everyone in the 60s to let loose in a wild way. Krishnan died in the early 70s but is still well regarded in this world; Thyagarajan popped up on a lot of recordings by Jon Higgins, who is also one of Carnatic music's greatest practitioners, despite being originally from Massachusetts (thanks, Wikipedia).

Konono N°1 - 'Congotronics' (Ache)

Somehow this feels like a long time ago already; it has been 13 years, I guess, but this time has passed somehow both slowly and quickly at the same time. Which is maybe a cheap metaphor for describing the music of Konono?Congotronics arrived at the right time for me. Perhaps it had felt like I and my friends had exhausted our investigations of caucasian music as far as they could go, a feeling which was absolutely not true but certainly how I felt at the time. Perhaps the sheer awesomeness of this music, equal parts novelty, energy and magic, was undeniable. And why not? The newsprint poster included here explicitly maps out the connection between this recording and 'today's most underground forms of music', no doubt referring to their use of homemade electronic amplifiers. I guess that's something, though I've been to basement noise gigs in Ohio built around similar homemade amplifiers and it felt nothing like Congotronics. This isn't a blown out, distorted sound but one that is bathed in a warm fuzz. The bass likeme is the star of the show and the reason I like to listen to this on vinyl; its tones are soothing despite having a thump and kick. The percussion, well, it's all percussion I guess, but the non-likembe percussion, being pots, pans and tam-tam, feel more like a light dressing on top. The pulse here is not so much hypnotic as scatterbrained; there's an off-kilter balance throughout, constructed by the rising and interacting waves of likembes. The slow numbers, 'Kule Kule' and its reprise, are my favourites, as they have the same ability to pull my head and my heart together as I first felt when hearing Steve Reich and Philip Glass. The longer pieces, well, they're just a party that never seems to stop. I'm no expert on African music but have my fair share of Ocora releases and it's easy to make a superficial connection between the structures of those recordings and these. Horizontality is the game here, but that could just as easily work as a comparison to, well, 'today's most underground forms of music' circa 2005 (so, really, yesterday's). It's logical that this hit when it did; the predominantly white sounds of my life were struggling to accommodate more disparate influences, and I remember a lot of local rock/post-punk bands employing 'African' material, not to mention stuff like Vampire Weekend. Hey, it happened before in the early 80s too; white is always going to look to black for inspiration and I'm not one to get hung up on authenticity. But this still transports me to never-actually-experienced smoggy night in Kinshasa; it's this type of audiotourism that justifies owning so many goddamned records.

Kommissar Hjuler / Mama Baer - 'Amerikanische Poesie Und Alkoholismus' (Feeding Tube)

I'm not sure what this became a roadblock to the project because while it's certainly a slab of extremely dissonant art-brut Fluxus madness, it's not the most difficult thing to write about. The truth is, I found myself listening to side A, by the Kommissar and Frau ('Once Again Concrete Poetry') repeatedly, injecting a musical reading onto something that probably was not intended to be seen that way. But this side-long live performance, a mixture of American poetry records, static hiss, and shouted readings through a low-quality amplifier, somehow succeeds in attaining some sort of mantra-like resonance. Hjuler's voice often resembles a comedic parody of a James Bond villain (like something out of Austin Powers) and it's lurching into 'ONCE AGAIN! CONCRETE POETRY' approximately eight million times starts to take on a visual element. By the end I feel like I'm there, imagining this surely big, sweaty and hairy German bounding across the stage behaving badly in the tradition of all central European performance art. And then on the flip is his partner, Mama Baer, though this is properly a split LP and not a collaboration. 'Alcoholisme - brut' parts 1 and 2 are somewhat more obtuse. It's collaged from tape material, in the greatest of pause-button edit styles, with splices and other distortions providing the rhythmic muscle like a Tall Dwarfs song on downers. Over this are various found materials, high pitched howls and whistles, and likely the wooden recorder on the cover. Baer sings in places, in English, and it's ragged and haunting, with words that comes surprisingly fast and deny any attempt to find narrative. A good use of the stereo field too; the little bursts and buzzes of static dance back and forth across the field and the tape-manipulated squealing making a lovely counterpoint. The second part builds in intensity, with Baer's chant of 'anymore, anymore, anymore' (I think) becoming hypnotic, and the recorder getting as aggressive as you've ever heard such an instruments. Through it all lies a good deal of space, however, and both sides of this record are remarkable in how they maintain a sense of control, never piling things on even when the aesthetic often drives towards it. I give the nod to the Mama Baer side here, as it seems to offer the most encouragement for repeated listens, even though I gave Kommissar & Frau more time myself.

Kodama - 'Turning Leaf Migrations' (Olde English Spelling Bee)

For some reason the title of this, Kodama's only LP, sticks in my head much more than the music does. Although I always think of it as 'tuning leaf' instead of turning, a sentiment I really like. A duo of American-in-Europe Michael Northam + Japanese-in-Switzerland Hitoshi Kojo, Kodama turn the dial slightly past halfway between field recordings and electro-acoustic composition. The musique concrete elements are more than just salad dressing; they're a fundament around which the instrumental interplay congeals, and it's not virtuoso riffing but a careful colouring based around mood and timbre. There's a thick, dense atmosphere that goes throughout almost the whole LP, either the result of buzzing midrange electronics, or acoustic sounds processed into something more - it's hard to say. The numerous tracks, all with great artsy names that are much easier to cut 'n paste from discogs than to re-type ('Backing Up Into A Cultural Ditch We Slobbered Through The Din Of The Alcoholics' Babble' is my fave), blend into one big suite. At their most spacious ('Uprooting Mycelium In The Night Forest Of "Grmade" We Spoke With The Bubilant Sage' being an excellent example), Northam & Kojo bring in just enough improvised instrumentation to genuinely integrate with the field recordings; the silence slowly gets taken over but first after a variety of flutes, small percussive sounds, bells, and other objects are brought in. There's no clear divide between human/machine here; the purity of performance maybe gets lost in service to the cohesive whole, but that's OK. It's a very busy record, and given the naturalistic, pastoral elements (not just the source material but the titles and artwork as well) it's a little bit overwhelming, not a meditative field recording platter at all. That's not to say one can't lose oneself in Kodama's music; it's the very definition of psychedelic, and uncompromising in its vision as it layers up the details. The opening of the first side actually hurts my head a bit, if I have it placed right between the speakers (which is, of course, the best way to listen to music); the opening of side two is made to sound like there's some huge gob of debris being dragged across by my stylus, but it's just a trompe l'oreille. Turning Leaf Migrations is definitely a playful record, not necessarily ha-ha funny or subterfuge-driven but awash in the potentiality of bringing sounds together. For something so carefully put together it manages to feel loose, and even the denser ringing parts feel like sketches, or at least that they feel like they have the intent of a sketch, because they move on quickly. Because the tracks all flow into two side-long pieces, it's arguable that Turning Leaf Migrations is really just one big composition, but there's something a bit scatterbrained about it all. Towards the middle of the second side the sound shifts into a more creeping, underwater/sci-fi feel, like an outtake from a Chrome session only with all of the benefits (and great stereo processing) that the technology of the time (the mid-00s) provide. This shift in tonality either adds complexity to the overall picture or maybe it distracts from it and sounds too generic; I can't really decide. By the end though, I'm glad to have revisited this, as it moves to a hypnotic, meditative drone ('Where Even Once We Slept By The Arctic Ocean When Cloud Drops Bounced On Our Strings') that is stunningly beautiful yet still has the presence of quiet rustling and other bits and bobs, quilted together perfectly. It could close on that but instead takes another tactic entirely, a closing track which is the album's longest and brings in pulsing, yet soft electronics, more ringing and buzzing, and some discordant voices. There's nary a trace of distortion across the whole album, except for maybe the aforementioned needle fakeout on side 2; it's a clean mix that gets thick when it needs to, but doesn't go for the thunder. By the end, I'm actually tired from such active listening.