U Totem - Strange Attractors
I’d be curious to see how people approach an album such as this, it feels like the doors are held pretty fast from my end. I feel I’m only being engaged mentally by this, that I’m interested in the unusual arrangements and the way the pieces come together, but that the entirety doesn’t seem to speak to me in any other way. For the record, I definitely enjoy U Totem’s debut release (assuming we’re not counting older Motor Totemist Guild/5 UUs collabs), there was something, perhaps, less formal and academic about the result, and it always felt like it touched on more than the intellectual, “heritage of RIO” side. Perhaps this is the sort of music best to really focus your attention on, after all I’m hesitant to want to give anything so intelligently crafted the pants-kick. Maybe the difference is that this is an 8 I can’t really feel comfortable with cutting loose, when most albums of that grade I wouldn’t look backwards for.
Freddie Hubbard - Hub-Tones
Hub-Tones is fast becoming my favorite Freddie Hubbard release, it’s an album whose every listen has me looking to that 12. I get the impression Hubbard’s CTI career has written him off as fairly populist, even looking back at his strong early hard bop career you can see this is player who appeals to the heart and body more so than the mind, even if he’s always had the chops to impress the musician in most of us. There’s something just so lively and strong about this, in fact mention should be made of James Spaulding’s playing here. Not much of an alto fan, but I like what I hear here. And with Hancock and Workman on rhythm section there’s little to be concerned about. Fabulous stuff, a gem in a very deep 60s Blue Note catalog.
Ocarinah - Premiere Vision de l’Etrange
Got a rather muddy sounding cassette of this rare French album, and my guess is the mud is getting in the way a little, although I’m curious if its part the production, the era of the late 70s and early 80s in France was a wasteland for great sounding progressive rock releases. With a release such as Ocarinah, I’d expect swathes of the inimitable string synth to be present, but it actually relies more on monophonic synth leads, something fairly odd even for a keyboard trio. I must admit in listening to this, it sounds like the musicians’ ambition far outweighs their talent to produce music like this, but often this is a charming aspect of progressive rock. Ocarinah seem to build their music in riffs that the synths and bass player often play in unison. At times it feels like someone running through the forest and occasionally tripping on a tree root. A bit of hesitancy in finish a repetition or a lost beat or sloppy fill in the drumming. Trios, especially keyboard led trios, often strike me as being a little on the thin side, add in the thinness of late 70s keyboard technology and things start to look a little two dimensional. I find that progressive rock is far more successful when multiple instruments add to the harmonic complexity, but there’s very little of that here, so much of this album is made up of synth and bass lines doubling melodies. Ocarinah also has one of the great descriptives in the Gibraltar Encyclopedia of Progressive Rock: “Prog.” Indeed it is and probably prog that only deeper fans of the genre are going to appreciate.