Outer Music Diary

Frumpy - 2nd British Rock Meeting, Gemersheim, Inser Grun 5/20/72 aud

I’m going to apologize in advance for some of the upcoming blurbs, but being over a week behind for various reasons means I’m going to have trouble remembering some of these listens. Occasionally like in this review the general feelings are enough. I’ve got two Frumpy shows, both sound like average to poorer cassette recordings and both are quite short (something of a contrast given the double live album). Like most live shows that have to fight the sound quality, it’s hard to bring back any subtlety. Neither, even with a major upgrade, would compete with the live album.

XL - Jeti

I’m probably going to try readjusting for a tendency popping up in my listening of late, the idea of listen-dumping several albums by the same artist or in the same style. Recent listens to lots of albums by Gismonti and Steve Coleman have made this more or less clear. I think to some extent I probably process my listening experience as much as a few days after the event and do so by comparison and contrast. Without knowing the subtlety between attempts in a given style one creates enough white noise to deafen any subtlety. My listens to XL albums have been a little farther apart, enough to know I like the tendencies of some and less of others. What fascinates me is this is a genre (roughly) that I probably wouldn’t normally like, possibly because XL work from the academic/compositional viewpoint. It’s a lot like telling the Pekka Pohjola band to loosen it up a little and become more daring.

Paradox Trio - Source

I’m finding the Paradox Trio don’t have the oomph I’m used to, possibly being a casualty of the Shakti Imprint Method. That is, many sheltered American music fans hear this stuff and think “world music” when we all know you could break this down into 15 adverbs and a multitude of countries and regional areas. Right now I conveniently lump Paradox Trio with Rabih Abou-Khalil and “slow world music.” To further elucidate on this, Ravi Shankar plays both fast and slow world music, often one style per side of a record. Anyway, I just made this all up because I don’t really remember anything else about PT except that I like em a little more when I pay more attention.

Muck Groh - Muckefucke

I’m drawing a blank on which German group Groh hails from, it’s one of the more obscure groups floating around the Embryo and Schneeball axes. Moira? I’m really trying to avoid Google here! Anyway, this is a record that practically screams first solo album, it’s so disparate in styles that it can both wow and offend in one song, while averaging out to something possibly a little less than a sum of its parts. I can get some pretty specific song-oriented impressions, but very few as an overall album.

Kitaro - Mandala

My history with Kitaro starts with actually liking Silk Road (and to a much lesser extent several others in the series) when I was in high school. I’m not sure when I got tired of the shtick, but it wasn’t long after. I nearly had to pay to get rid of several LPs, all of which, Japanese imports and all, are virtually worthless on the market. So why would I be visiting a Kitaro album much later than even the early dreck? Well, it was quoted as being his closest album to the Far East Family Band, possibly due to the presence of electric guitar solos, but it sounds more or less like every Kitaro album I’ve ever heard but with the presence of electric guitar solos. I’ll give it another whirl to be sure, but won’t be expecting much.

Glencoe s/t
Writing on the Wall - The Power of the Picts

These were both first listens and about a week ago so I may get some of this wrong. Glencoe struck me as being as much early Cressida/Spring prog in parts as much as it was the usual heavy edged, guitar-first early British rock. Kind of like a mix, a little amateurish but interesting. The Writing on the Wall was more of what I was expecting, heavy rock moving forward from the Hendrix/Cream/Blue Cheer thing into more progressive methods of expression, a little jammy but a little guided as well.

Andrew Hill on Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz (recorded 02/05, broadcast 12/05). Great to hear Hill chatting about his life and work, but even better to hear a bunch of concise solo improvisations, duets, and a lovely impromptu “Portrait of Andrew” from Ms McPartland. The most interesting moment of their conversation was when Hill explained a chord as “augmented 11″ and McPartland replied that she doesn’t think of chords in those terms. Hill quickly rejoined that he doesn’t either, but had to come up with some terms for talking about chords because people were always asking him to explain them. Anyway, it’s interesting if you care about Hill’s methodology.

Andrew Hill, STRANGE SERENADE (USA, 1980). Trio record on the Soul Note label, with Alan Silva (b) and Freddie Waits (d). And a valuable one! Wilder and more “out” than much of Hill’s discography, definitely some fires lit here. I was concerned that there would be problems with the sound, as I’ve found a couple of Soul Note dates from the 80s to have issues (Bill Dixon’s NOVEMBER 1981 and Borah Bergman’s UPSIDE DOWN VISIONS) stemming from too much noise reduction. But thankfully no such problem here. As with much of Hill’s work, this will take a number of listens for the parameters of the individual pieces to sink in; the compositional material is so deeply woven into the group improvising that it takes some familiarity to puzzle it out. 

Ran Blake, ALL THAT’S TIED (USA, 2006). Read about this album in Paris Transatlantic this month, and headed over to eMusic to see if they had it and sure enough they did. Though I wonder if this is a case where compressed audio will not do (a problem I haven’t encountered much, I must say). Much of the information in Blake’s music comes from his touch and dynamics, and I can’t be sure in some cases that I’m not hitting the limitations of the format. In any case, this was a first listen, and I wasn’t able to form much of an impression of it.

Charles Gayle, TIME ZONES (USA, 2006). Ditto the Paris Transatlantic / eMusic scenario above. Gayle’s playing is brawnier and drawn in thicker, more uniform strokes, and so I didn’t have the same feeling about MP3 limitations. I did more immediately take to this album, as it’s more freewheeling, had more surprising juxtapositions, and reaches back into sanctified folk as a source rather than chamber music. Looking forward to further listens of both albums.