Outer Music Diary

I/O\I s/t

I/O\I or “eyeoeye” is the project of musician Stafford Davis, one I’d describe as “everything and the kitchen sink.” What I mean by that is this is basically not only multi-genre, but everything goes, a real open and intimate viewpoint into the life of a composer whose influences seem to be between the two poles of singer/songwriter and ardent pop experimentalist.

As with most one-musician, independent projects that cover so much territory, there’s bound to be quite a bit of variance in quality and the production itself is fairly lo-fi. While I found the latter to be distracting at times, it’s actually not quite as discordant for the sort of Residents-like vibe going on here (track 9, “Product” is one notable example), just lacking in clarity at times. The major issue, as it always is for anything that covers this much territory and is so personal, is it’s difficult to imagine the audience that’s going to like it all. A while back I reviewed a CD by a totally different band, called Sebkha-Chott, who while having a much better production, had the same issue - the attempt to bring coherence from genre hopping. While Davis doesn’t attempt that sort of Mr. Bungle-like pastiche, there’s such a variety going on here that it’s kind of difficult to break any song down in terms of what its trying to do with its own rules. Of course based on the press sheet, I can imagine Mr. Davis doesn’t care too much for rules, as an experimentalist shouldn’t, but it only gives us independence as a context through 26 tracks all of which move through a number of instruments, timbres and styles.

Davis seems to split time between keyboard and guitar-based songs. On both accounts there seems to be a strong ambient Brian Eno influence, whether the echoing piano patches or guitar textures, although in some more conventional cases it’s missing from the guitar entirely. In fact these sorts of treatments probably go some way to explaining my difficulty with the production, some of these aspects wash out quite a bit. When the music takes a turn into more obviously song-inspired territory, such as on track 11, Where Weeds Grow, the production is at its most thin, but at least in these parts they almost give the music an old school, rough and tumble sort of feel. On the other hand such a muted sonic range works well with the Eno-inspired electronics experiments that pop up occasionally.

So overall, a little Eno, a little Residents, some almost Roger Waters-like intimacy when the music gets very songy, but overall definitely the vision of one rather iconoclastic musician, who’s not only brave enough to release something so uncompromising, but to allow negative opinions of such to be part of his press sheet. I’m not sure what sort of audience an album like this has (I’m not naturally inclined to art-pop all that much), combining weird avant garde sonics with natural songwriting, but fans of the abovementioned artists might want to take a quick peak.

[Mike now returns to his summer vacation]

Kostas Tournas - Aperanta Chorafia - Greece 1973

What is intersting about this album is how it effervesces upon repeated listens with the intent of paying attention. In passing it may gloss over as a bit of some sort of conceptual piece being supported by progressive rock. As for what it is actually about, I couldn’t tell you, because it is literally all Greek to me (and you and everyone else, for that matter, lol). Now, there is a building up that happens over and over as the themes undulate over the duration. The playing is precise and specifically unfolding the movements, sometimes within the span of a few bars, even. That being said, this is in no way some herky-jerky schtick… everything is calculated, seemingly down to each cymbal crash. There are pockets of wooly jammage amidst a rolling development. His voice is nice enough and it is one of the important vehicles in this piece; makes me want to understand the words, he has something to say which takes an entire album to unfold upon the listener. There are occasional short small orchestral string sections and horn balustrades as accents on the traditional guitar, hammond organ, drums, and bass rock format. It flows well throughout, and well it should, this is one of the main movers and shakers from Poll (the other main man of which went on to do Akritas, one of the best progressive albums, ever!). I’ll probably be getting that other Kostas Tournas album at some point, another deluxe reissue from the same label that has done marvelous vinyl reissues with all of the bands named herein. “Astronira” is also billed as a yet another classic prog-rock album from Greece.

Aha.. I now note that this deluxe Anazitisi LP reissue also has translated lyrics:
The Endless Fields
“When I was young, I thought of this world to be different than it is [...]
As for you, you smoke your cigarette with pleasure, this is how you have spent an entire life and you think it’s going to change if you compromise…”

Ahh.. an idealistic piece, I can dig it, I think (reading on and signing off..)

Outcome:

Certifiably worth thine time for investigation, recommendation is to spin a few times.. getting into it.

- ~ -

::11/15 - Excellent::

Barney Wilen & His Amazing Free Rock Band - Dear Prof. Leary

The album cover of Dear Prof. Leary uses flashing colors, a green on red design that makes the title of the album wobble in true psychedelic fashion. No matter what one thinks of MPS and jazz rock, this one’s announcing something more in common with the rock scene of the time than jazz music, despite the pedigree of the musicians. Interesting to see French guitarist Mimi Lorenzini on board, readers may recognize him from his late 70s fusion group Edition Speciale or other similar projects. You also get Joachim Kuhn on keys, Aldo Romano and Wolfgang Paap on drums, Gunter Lenz on bass and the leader on saxes. However, the band seems to play as two trios. You have Paap on the left for the beats and Romano on the right for the freer material and often the two diverge for quite a bit of cacaphony.

Musically this starts with a lot of different tunes from the era, both soul (”Why Do You Keep Me Hanging On” and “Respect”) and pop (The Beatles’ “The Fool on the Hill”). If you add a couple originals and Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman,” you’ve got the whole record and despite the different source materials, the album is quite consonant as a whole. Generally the musicians play the themes and then go berserk, time and time again, making it quite a bit different from the same sort of method soul jazzers like Grant Green were using, the vamp and the jam. The whole thing is overlaid by great psychedelic excess, heavy almost Jon Lord-like organ, freaky wah wah guitars by Lorenzini and the warm sax tone you’d expect from a band like Xhol Caravan. The music grooves like some psych beat monster but it always gives a way to bountiful noise and shredding, as if Brotzmann or Braxton was doing a late 60s song book with Booker T and the MGs as backing band.

Overall it’s not really quite what you’d expect. The cover screams the 60s, the line up a great jazz combo, the song line up a mix and the overall approach one of heavy rock. Strangely all these threads converge in a style almost perfect for MPS, American jazz gone European style, deconstructing a lot of familiar tunes until you would barely recognize them. I’ve always considered Kuhn to be a fairly mellow player for the most part, so it’s great to hear him really let loose on the organ here. While the occasional free sax outburst might scare some potential listeners away, be assured that this is far more a rock release than most of what MPS puts out and is likely to appeal as much to the psych/freak out collector than the jazz crowd. It’s a gem well worth rediscovering.

Jasper van’t Hof’s Pork Pie feat. Charlie Mariano - Transitory

One of the best parts of scouring the MPS catalog is realizing just how many all-star line ups are seemingly obscured by the bandname or leader. The unfortunately named Pork Pie, cribbed from the famous jazz standard, does not say a lot, but bandmembers Charlie Mariano and Philip Catherine definitely do. Unsurprisingly from Van’t Hof’s perspective this is something of a keyboard jam album and if you’re a fan of early 70s distorted and treated Rhodes sounds, this will inevitably be a treat, as Van’t Hof not only grooves mightily with the thing but spits out solos that would make Herbie Hancock proud.

Overall it does seem a group work, particularly when you look at the credits and see most of the band members, including drummer Aldo Romano and bassist J. F. Jenny-Clarke, get some writing in. But make no mistake that van’t Hof is the leader here and he’s nearly omnipresent even when leaving the Rhodes behind for some piano, organ and celesta. However these moments tend to be linked to the more composed and thematic material, where the e-piano comes in when the band’s fully charged and riffing on a theme to let Mariano, Catherine or, eventually, Van’t Hof himself let loose.

It’s these latter moments that take up the lion’s share of the album and it adds up to another MPS entry where standard jazz, fusion and free jazz kind of collide. Despite the e-piano tying this directly to the jazz rock of the early 70s, the solos, even Catherine’s, are more reminiscent of free work, and the addition gives it the spice that so many fusion/funk fusion albums are often missing. Lots of chromatic ramblings show jazz chops even when the rhythm section is plunking down a rock vamp.

All of this is broken up by more introspective moments, such as in the second part of “Transitory” or the first part of Romano and Jenny-Clarke’s ”Bassamba.” While many of these seem like taking an ad break during a TV show, they give the entirely a bit of dynamic range so that the jamming onslaughts don’t all bleed into each other. And this is important when the band’s taking a piece of the Mahavishnu playbook for “Angel Wings,” with the picked, modal electric guitar work and increasing intensity “Meeting of the Spirits” style.

Everything’s wrapped up by Conny Plank’s recording, who fattens up the sound thus compensating for some occasional thin tones from the guitar, keys and sax and the remaster brings this out quite nicely, given that this kind of recording doesn’t always sound terrific unless your vinyl isn’t beat up. The presentation is excellent as always with this series with the original liner notes. And if I haven’t already convinced you that this is well worth picking up, Thom Jurek’s allmusic.com review, quoted in part here and in the booklet, should get you off the fence:

“…one of the greatest fusion recordings ever, and trounces all prog rock by comparison (possible exceptions being the first three Agitation Free and first five Can records.”

John Tchicai and Cadentia Nova Danica - Afrodisiaca

Danish musician John Tchicai is an alto and soprano sax player who has been involved with a number of important out jazzers such as John Coltrane (Ascension), Don Cherry and Archie Shepp and still appears to this day on various projects such as Henry Kaiser’s Yo Miles tributes (he’s also taught music at my local college in Sacramento). After Tchicai’s stint in New York playing with the luminaries of the free jazz scene, he moved back home in the late 60s and formed Candentia Nova Danica with whom he recorded Afrodisiaca with a cast of 25 other musicians.

Unlike many of the recent MPS albums I’ve covered, many of which are jazzrock or at least edgy, electric jazz, Afrodisiaca is somewhere between free jazz and composed material, with the title track a side-long piece written by Hugh Steinmetz, who also plays trumpet. While much of the music is written (apparently in the scale of the African percussion instrument the balafon), the solo spots and general chemistry are very reminiscent of free jazz, with a wide musical palette incorporating dissonant free-jazz inspired solos into the music’s framework.

The result is one of MPS’s most difficult and challenging albums and one that could possibly be described as “third stream” in the manner of combining European classical tradition with American jazz. Where side 1 slowly builds to quite the climax, the second side with compositions (or arrangements) by Tchicai himself open the floodgates entirely. “Heavenly Love on a Planet” could be Tchicai’s ode to Sun Ra, slow percussion sets up solos for both he and William Breuker, wildly free and dissonant, while the slow tempo set up by the percussionists creates quite a bit of tension. Pierre Doerge’s guitar gets a bit of play on “Fodringsmontage” which plays like a collage of Albert Ayler, Sonny Sharrock and Ascension, all of the freedom wrapped up in some beautiful, eerie ensemble work.

The final two pieces are probably the work’s most consonant pieces and I still hear, even through such a European approach, a lot of Americana in the melodic themes, always reminiscent of Albert Ayler to my ears, the way he’d swirl chaos and anger around the familiar. Harry Akst’s “This is Heaven” is almost like a march, slightly mournful and delirious, and surprisingly tuneful. “Lakshmi” seems to follow right on out, before breaking into a growingly accompanied Michael Shou flute solo and disappearing into mystery, with the ensemble floating up strange chords and returning in between Willy Jagert’s ophicleide and Christian Khyl’s soprano-saxophone like a narrator. The finale is quite meditative in the end thanks to these solos, as if the bursts of chaos and return to ensemble themes were returning one slowly to the center.

It’s not a surprise that this is a highly lauded free work, given that the ensemble work acts as the glue that holds together all the abandon and experimentation so well. It’ll sit comfortably if not edgily next to one’s Art Ensemble of Chicago, Brotzmann and early ECM albums as a prime example of a truly syncretic and avant garde work that ran with the multiculturalism of the late 60s and created something new and lasting from it.