playlist from 9-12-2010

1. Holiday by Tom Jones.  From Mr. Jones, 2002, V2.

The Mr. Jones album was really popular in Europe in 2003, where Tom Jones continues to have almost the same level of popularity he enjoyed here in the 60s/70s.  This album was never released in the US, but I was fortunate to pick up a copy of this record--and hear tracks from it blasting from practically every other store--during a trip to Italy that spring.

Maybe they should've marketed this record differently for US markets--rather than call it a Tom Jones record, maybe it's a new Fugees record with TJ on vocals?  Really, that's what it sounds like--those undulating postreggae rhythms one expects from Wyclef Jean are all over this album, and it sounds truly phenomenal.

Here's the video for the lead track from the album.  It's a keeper, for a multitude of both serious and ironic reasons:

2. Act Of Being Polite and N-Err-Gee (Crisis Blues) by Amy Denio and Ubzub. From Eyesore: A Stab At The Residents, 1996, Vaccination Records.

I love lots of music from Amy Denio's career--solo albums, her early work with Curlew, the Tone Dogs, and the Science Group, etc.  This track, though, hit me from left field back in '96, as the most beautiful and haunting track on a Residents tribute album already loaded with talent.  Denio really breathes some space and "human feel" into the Residents, a feat I wasn't sure was possible before hearing this album.  Great arrangement, great performance, etc etc etc.

3. Hambu Hodo by Renaldo & The Loaf. From The Elbow is Taboo, 1987, Some Bizarre.

While I'm in Residents territory, here's one of my favorite tracks from Renaldo & the Loaf, the duo who was signed to the Residents Ralph Records label in 1981 for the release of Songs for Swinging Larvae. This isn't one of my favorite Renaldo & the Loaf tracks, but somehow I thought it would be really complimentary to the Denio track--more human feel and playfullness in a genre that often became rigid and inhuman. 

If you like this track, though, definitely get into more Renaldo--their albums are mostly "organic" instruments and voice captured on tape, in contrast to the synthesizer-based work of the Residents. Yet they manage to make some amazingly synth and sample-sounding music with their modest instruments, especially impressive when considered in their time period. And the vocals on all of their albums are fantastic in a mind-altering overdubbed sort of way.

Here's one of my favorite Renaldo & the Loaf tracks in video form, but a warning: the video is fairly disturbing. And I suppose music like this, that's so uncomfortable on so many levels, should feature uncomfortable videos, too.

4. The Elmination Of Incompentence by The Flying Luttenbachers From Infection And Decline, 2002 Troubleman Unlimited

I'm a big fan of the Flying Luttenbachers "brutal prog" compositional period, which extends roughly from this album through 2007's Incarceration by Abstraction. Drummer Weasel Walter composed a series of records made of increasingly sophisticated classically-influenced figures, but performed them with the intensity of a free jazz loft-fest and the tone and attitude of a metal band. There really wasn't anything to compare them to at their best--kind of a Conlon Nancarrow meets Gorguts or something?

This album featured a trio configuration, which included Lincoln native Jonathan Hischke on "air bass," assumedly the higher-pitched sections of bass playing compared to the "earth bass" of Alex Perkolup.

Walter, who was a major figure in Chicago's No Wave scene, wrote and performed the "brutal prog" music mostly from California. Now he's moved on to NYC, where he's focussed on free improvisation. Though he's good at everything he does, I must admit that I really wish he'd continue with the Luttenbachers.

5. Tartine De Contrebasse by Igorrr. From Poisson Soluble, 2010 Impulsive Art (first official release).

I was delighted to receive the 2-LP Igorrr release a couple of weeks ago, after its long journey from Greece.  Continued listenings have yet to disappoint.  Check out this post for some more observation on Igorrr and this release.

6. Bodies In Motion by Laurie Anderson.  From Homeland, 2010, Nonesuch.

I wish that I would have followed Laurie Anderson's career more carefully over the years.  Every time I hear something of hers, I find that I have to stop and listen.  And maybe that's a general feature of her music: it forces you to slow down, sit down, meet it up close and at its own pace, and breathe a bit before parting ways.  This track is no different, even though it has more of a mid-tempo Bill Laswell vibe in the percussion treatments than most of her work, and it features the signature "I'm on somebody's pop record" reverbed-out sax squawks of John Zorn in the back of the mix.

Here's somebody's video for the track:

zip file of the playlist

The Show is the Rainbow - First Recordings

No radio show tonight--KZUM does a "blues weekend" every Labor Day weekend, so...

here's something even better: with Darren's blessing, some music to check out on your own.

The Show is the Rainbow's first two EPs are out of print and the label is no more, though you can still take a gander at the old Suckapunch Records website for reverie's sake.  Back in late 2002/early 2003, which feels like it was several lifetimes ago, Darren Keen was the insane guitarist/showman in a really fun rock-trio called Musico.  At Darren's request, my band, Shinyville, played our first show with them at the 49r in Omaha way back then.  Then Musico broke up, and Darren started working on a new solo project that ultimately became The Show is the Rainbow.  He played some early shows with the project at strange little places around Lincoln and Omaha like The Point After, and really started to develop his stage persona.  At the time, he didn't have a recording setup, but he was producing synth-based tracks in Reason and burning them to CD to sing/freak out over them for shows.  Though the gear I had was quite modest and lo-fi, too, I absolutely adored the new music and offered to help with tracking vocals and any extra "real instrument" parts at my little shoebox studio setup in the tiny bedroom of an apartment near the capitol building.

Darren took me up on the offer, and we spent the occasional evening over a month or so tracking vocals, eating salmon, and playing Smash TV on NES.  Party hard, right?  The recordings weren't multitracked in the "usual" way: Darren brought over stereo mixes of his instrumental material produced in Reason, then I loaded those onto ZIP discs (remember those?) for my old VS840 recorder, and we added vocals to the pre-existing mixes.  It makes for tricky mixing at the end, since there's no way to go back and adjust levels on any of the instrumental stuff.  Fortunately, Darren already had a really good ear for that sort of thing, and did a great job of anticipating the needed levels, so you can hear a lot of the very detailed instrumental stuff going on in the backing tracks.

Almost everything is Darren, though I do some falsetto background vocals on "401k" and a bit of banjo on "barry, barry, barry, save us!" and my wife plays some trombone on "401k."  I think the three of us made some fake restaurant foley sounds on "down the drain," too.

From those recording sessions, five tracks were selected and mastered to become 2003's "Barry Sure Wrote a Lot of Songs About the Girls He's Loved."  A few other tracks were later re-recorded in CA and released on the follow-up EP "Correcting Dog Behavior Problems Using Dog Radartron."  Finally, a few tracks exist that were created for a potential split EP, where Darren would play a couple of Shinyville songs, and Shinyville would play a couple of Show is the Rainbow songs.

Anyway, here are the original tracks from those early 2003 sessions. These are unmastered, but they sound pretty good considering the various circumstances mentioned above.  And sorry that these are .m4a instead of .mp3 files, but I archived a bunch of stuff as .aac "back in the day."  They'll play just fine in iTunes.

The Show is the Rainbow - First Recordings

Darren has continued to do some amazing work with The Show is the Rainbow, has toured around the world multiple times, and continues to grow exponentially as a musician.  I would highly recommend checking out his latest two full-lengths Wet Fist and Gymnasia.

Igorrr

Igorrr's recent 2xLP reissue of his first two albums is likely to be my favorite record of 2010.  I've been listening to the two records captured on this release in digital versions for the last few years, and the music never leaves my mind, or my playlists, for longer than a week.

This is genre-hopping stuff at its finest.  I was exposed to Mr. Bungle and John Zorn's Naked City recordings at a young age, and as a result, montage approaches to music have long been very dear to me.  On some level, maybe this is ironic: I strongly dislike "watching stuff," ala movies and television, and many composers of music like this describe their intentions as creating a sort of "audio movie," where time is decorated with the kinds of jumps and edits one finds much more common in film work than music.  For that matter, I'm a huge fan of William S. Burroughs, whose cut-up writings go for a similar effect with literature.

Both of these albums have a similar compositional approach and sound, making them a perfect fit for issuing together.  It's hard to describe what music like this sounds like, as montage music by its nature incorporates a wide range of styles.  But imagine if Naked City had been a one-person breakcore project rather than a live band, and you'll be pretty close.  All of the tracks incorporate electronic music, particularly for percussion and editing styles, but many other genres, including classical fugues, jazz, waltzes, native american music, rock, metal, and cinematic soundscapes all play a role in the music.

Better yet, you can hear one of the albums captured on this release yourself for free, via archive.org:

Igorrr's Moisissure on Archive.org

If you get knocked over by this stuff like I do, you can order your own copy of the double LP, which includes bonus tracks not on the original releases, from Impulsive Art.  Keep in mind the label is based in Greece, so shipping to the US takes a while (mine just arrived after about six weeks).  But it's sure worth the wait.  And €16.70 EUR for a double LP plus shipping is a phenomenal deal.

Igorrr is also set to release a new CD, entitled Nostril, on Ad Noiseam in October.

In the meantime, check out that archive.org download, and here's a little clip of a live Igorrr show: