Outer Music Diary

Bobb Trimble, HARVEST OF DREAMS (USA, 1982) D:8 / IRON CURTAIN INNOCENCE (USA, 1980) D:8. HARVEST has had a higher profile on the web than it probably had in years due to a recent Radioactive Records issue on CD. (Though according to one source Trimble hasn’t received any renumeration for it.) And I’m surprised that despite reading what I could find online I was in no way prepared for Bobb’s voice. Richie Unterberger, writing for AMG, mentions Mark Bolan, Sparks, and early Incredible String Band by way of comparison. But that doesn’t really do it. The only thing that might approximate the sound would be to play a Curved Air LP at 45rpm. I mean the guy makes Michael Jackson sound like a baritone. You’ll find some discussion online of the work’s psychedelic elements, but don’t expect too many of the “traditional” psychedelic style’s signifiers. There’s definitely a psychedelic vibe, but it’s due as much to a judicious application of lo-fi overdubs - the individual elements of which are not necessarily psychedelic at all - as it is to creatively mind-expanding juxtapositions and whacked out moves. The main problem is the songs themselves - which have an odd AOR thing going on, and are in some cases painfully saccharine. HARVEST is better than IRON CURTAIN, though I don’t think I’ll investigate either further. Just not an aesthetic match here.

Yngwie Malmsteen, RISING FORCE (Sweden, 1984) D:9. And now for something completely different. I just moved into a new apartment with much more space than I’ve had in a while, which has allowed me to set up the turntable next to the stereo instead of the computer. And after lugging all this vinyl, and being amazed that I still own some of it, I’ve set out to play some oldies as well as some more recent acquisitions that I’ve never gotten to. I’ve had RISING FORCE for something like twenty years (gulp) and I probably last played it not much more recently than that. I thought it would be horrible, but it’s actually a lot of fun. You gotta hand it to the guy for playing with a raw tone like that on some really square fire and brimstone classical metal.

Andrew Hill, SO IN LOVE (USA, 1959) D:4. Switch gears here again. This date is Andrew Hill’s first as a leader, recorded with Malachi Favors (b) and James Slaughter (d). (Side note: the first and last tracks on the NEW Andrew Hill album TIME LINES are dedicated to the late Favors.) And my first listen (see turntable space explanation above) to it. My LP copy is, unfortunately, the one put out by TCB Records. Which means the trio - featuring a very solid and almost Red Garland (!) sounding Hill playing much more conservatively than he would just a few years later - shares space with an awful sounding and awfully played cheap string-synth that someone overdubbed after-the-fact. Avoid this edition at all costs. While Hill’s playing is fascinating, it’s impossible to enjoy through the wheeze and murk. Fresh Sounds, a good label, has a version of this out on CD - a clean version, I suspect.

Tony MacAlpine, EDGE OF INSANITY (USA, 1986) D:6. This one didn’t hold up well. Malmsteen’s practically punk compared to this dystopian classical shred metal. Didn’t have as strong a memory of it either, so I probably felt the same way twenty years ago. Billy Sheehan (b) and Steve Smith (d) provide period stadium-size backing for MacAlpine’s burn. None of them are helped by the shrill production and dull material. I mean dude shreds, but shred is not enough.

Steve Roach/Various Artists - The Ambient Expanse

I reviewed this in Exposé at the end of the 90s, it’s one of the ambient genre’s finest releases, one of maybe 5-10 titles that make it back to the nighttime changer with regularity. On this occurence I put it in, hit infinite repeat and went nightcruising. The Ambient Expanse is a loud mastering job, particularly for an ambient release, which reminds me of the volume peak during the Steve Roach track that one can set the volume by. I know it intimately and at times the album shares the 15 spot. Strangely enough, I think it sticks with the 14 because it’s a little dry in the production stage, which is kind of unusual given what usually comes out of the Timeroom.

Tear Gas s/t

I’ve got Vertigo bad now and am loving it. Listening to lots of early British rock (or Scottish in this case) and this might have to be the fattest and heaviest of the bunch, REALLY loud drums, REALLY loud guitar. I loved every minute, they’re like Scotland’s answer to Mountain.

Daemon - The Entrance to Hell

Given the band name, title, country and year you’d probably be able to review this without hearing it. Because it obviously sounds like Black Sabbath. Well you might get away with but it’s not really that close, it’s far quainter, it’s got keyboards and seems a little more typical prog rock in some ways (maybe even some hints of the Nice in there somewhere). Then again, the vocalist is trying to do a young Ozzy in a similar manner to a newer band like SHeavy or Spirit Caravan. A neat little oddity.

Flea - Topi e Uomini
Festa Mobile - Diario di Viaggio della Festa Mobile
Agora - 2
J. B Banfi - Galaxy My Dear
Brainticket - Celestial Ocean

I’ve got all sorts of shelves and cabinets to organize various formats, but the mini LPs don’t usually fit with the regular CDs, so they’ve been sitting in one area for a long time, some of them I’ve owned for years. In trying to reduce clutter and get some space back at my place, I decided to give file listens on a number of upgrades. Not really any major changes, I know the first two all too well to alter the grade, but the Agora had been hanging close to a 10, so I demoted it, although a close listen could bring the 11 out on it again. The Banfi is one of those lone Berlin-style electronic albums from Italy by the keys player of Biglietto per L’Inferno and is a solid but unspectacular example, possibly more 9 than the 10 I’m still hanging onto. The Brainticket was the only one here that sounded better than I remembered, but it’s also the least familiar. There’s something very strange about that project, even beyond the obvious psychedelics.

John Coltrane - A Love Supreme (Deluxe Edition)

This truly is a fantastic package for the Coltrane fan, but it had to be given a 20 bit remaster of it had just appeared several years earlier. The raison d’etre of this release, of course, has to do with the finding of the master tapes which do indeed sound as great as advertised. What made me decide to go a 14 on the package (which is the grade I have on the album itself incidentally) is the major upgrade on the live Love Supreme from the European tour, sounding much better than any previous version I’d owned (and there’s quite a few). And it’s not the end, with outtakes including a larger band version. This is utterly essential, a transcendence of the form of the type that breeds a new school of its own.

Derek & the Dominos - Fillmore East, New York City 10/24/70

Layla was a pivotal album in my musical growth, I’ve got friends who could tell you how often I used to play this one to death in my teens. It’s something of a paeon to unrequited love in a way and it truly does bleed it from the pore. But as objectively speaking as one might, this is a patchy album no matter how you look at it, with several stinkers interlaced with lots of classics. It was Clapton’s band, but it was Duane Allman’s show, at least when he appears. And that’s really why the live album nor many of these shows appeals to me anyway, because they generally seem to be long aimless jam sessions, without Duane there to really get the best out of Clapton. While this show sounds quite excellent, there isn’t a song here better than its original on Layla and most of it is deadly tedious.

The Dog that Bit People s/t

I’m a bit at a loss for words with some of this early British stuff. I got what I asked for and am mightly pleased, minutes upon minutes of fuzz guitar, pounding drums and a progressive aesthetic not fluffed up by twee synths. But when trying to report, one runs into one into another and I’ve just about confused this one except to say that I remember it being somewhat rougher and less polished than the rest. Which is not a bad thing in my book. More the next visit…

Gizmo - Just Like Master Bates (We Did It On Our Own)

I’d say somewhere in the mid 90s I got a slim black and white volume dedicated to the revival of British progressive rock, or what many sling around as the dreaded epithet neo-prog. We generally credit Marillion with leading the pack, but they probably weren’t the first, or at least they certainly weren’t the first to release an album, as the book ably attests. I’ve long sold the book but the title here is one not easily forgotten and if I remember correctly they also went for the costumes and Genesis thing just like their more famous cousins. This album from 1979 shows the style without all the cliches to come, a poprock, digestable version of the 70s bands in the same manner that groups outside that scene like Machiavel or Isopoda were creating. However, Gizmo seem a little more mainstream in a good way, they’re not so quirky and prog-referential, they sound a little more like they’d absorbed their influences a little more thoroughly. It’s not great by any means, but it’s likely to give anyone a fresh perspective on this much maligned subgenre.

Rarebird - As Your Mind Flies By

Sometimes the condition of an LP really can affect your opinion and I believe the one I heard many moons ago probably did so, I remember it having grungy grooves and terrible vinyl. This is my flimsy excuse for the 6. Unsurprisingly, I didn’t go a bundle on it during this return engagement, but it’s definitely at least a 9-10 in quality and certainly has the potential to go much higher. I like this kind of thing more than I did when I heard it last. One that will need more than one revisit.

Christian Vander/Offering - Festival Nancy Jazz Pulsations, Chapiteau de la Pepiniere 10/15/03

Offering seems to often just give Vander the chance to holler a lot, and I find his voice more palatable in the smaller quanties you experience in Magma. Like the track “Hhai,” which in some ways could be the early blueprint for this sort of thing, but a bit more scat-jazz. With only two tracks, one over about 10 minutes and one way over 30, I was worn out about halfway through.

Graphite - Live in Cornwall 1971

Ditto the Dog that Bit People. IIRC, this one was a little more extended in the jam area and resembled Cream in smallish sorts of ways. But again, this is all bliss to these current ears, loud drums, loud guitar.

I Giganti - Terra in Bocca

The rumor that is sticking to the brain is that the Vinyl Magic version of this album isn’t the original. Based on hearing the original now, that seems about right, or at least it seems a lot fuller and grander than I remembered before. I have an 8 on the VM copy, but I’m thinking at least a 9 or 10 on this. I don’t remember it having this much guitar.