Random Review #4- Prince Jammy- Uhuru in Dub

CSA Records, 1982

 Among the first generation of Jamaican dub reggae engineers, King Tubby's assistant (and later rival) Prince Jammy has always been somewhat unfairly neglected. Unfortunately “Uhuru in Dub,” a 1982 collection of mixes he did for the roots band Black Uhuru, isn't the best album to make a case for that. At a time when producers like Scientist, Lee Perry, and, over in the UK, Adrian Sherwood were busy elevating remixes to something close to composition, “Uhuru in Dub” is an unremarkable by-the-numbers dub album. 

The basslines of the 10 songs here are largely unmemorable, drums are treated with the usual delay and flanger and Jammy's use of horn, guitar and vocal snippets seems fairly arbitrary. Some harsh, almost “glitchy” sounding fades on “Mystic Mix” and a catchy organ riff on “African Culture” were the only things that stood out to me. Next please.

Random Review #3- Sun City Girls- Torch of the Mystics

Majora, 1990

What we have right here, ladies and gentlemen, is one of the great overlooked masterpieces of the 90s American rock underground. A strange brew of dirty punk rock, omnivorous pan-globalism, warped folk, exploitation movie soundtrack and transcendental psychedelia, this is Music so “outside” it doesn't even fit into the “outsider music” category. The mask-wearing trio of freaks known as the Sun City Girls (all men by the way) had already been releasing documents of their bizarre (and probably hallucinogenically assisted) flights of fancy since the mid 80s, the best of which is probably the Fugs-esque anarchic vulgarity of “Horse Cock Phepner.” But I feel like “Torch of the Mystics” from 1990 is the first time (and one of the few times) Richard Bishop, Alan Bishop and Charles Gocher took a serious stab at making something like a “real album.”

The first four tracks (side A of the LP) showcase the band channeling Middle Eastern influences through the medium of lo-fi guitar/bass/drums garage punk. There's some stunning and highly original axework from Richard Bishop to be heard on here (check out his flurries of notes on “Esoterica of Abyssinia”) as well as Alan Bishop's patented faux-arabic glossolalia on “Tarmac.” But the real highlight is “Space Prophet Dogon.” Driven by an Indian-sounding guitar riff played with the kind of huge, wide open fuzz tone that can't help but conjure images of oceans and/or deserts, it's a 7-minute psychedelic journey through the nether regions of human consciousness with Alan Bishop's strange high-pitched muezzin-like vocal acting as a guide.

On the 7 shorter songs on side B the Girls largely ditch the electric instruments in favor of acoustic ones. After the cosmic of “Space Prophet Dogon,” we're treated to a surprisingly straight-faced (by SCG standards) Morricone-style cover of Bolivian folk band Los Kjarkas' hit “Llorando Se Fue,” retitled “The Shining Path.” A simple but effective of combination of acoustic guitars, wood block percussion and ghostly whistling. “The Flower” is a psych folk song with droning, incantation-ike vocals and English lyrics, “Radar 1941” is an honest-to-the-gods surf instrumental and “Papa Legba” is what the Blues would sound like if it had been invented in the streets of Bangkok rather than the Mississippi Delta. “Cafe Batik” creates more mystical moods but is slightly hurt by the jokey castrate falsetto. “Burial In The Sky” fittingly closes the album with a glimpse of the noisier improv side of the Sun City Girls.

While the acoustic side contains some excellent material, it doesn't feel quite as fresh now that “freak folk” has become an established genre in the “indie world.” It's the four electric pieces on first side, seemingly effortlessly combinations of “rocking out” and exploring uncharted territory, that continue to impress.

Random Review Week #2: Brian Eno & Harold Budd- Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror

E.G. Records, 2008

 

Not sure how to feel about the fact that the second Random Review Week album is yet another ambientish collab, but alas, fate has decided and I'm not complaining.

Released in 1980, “The Plateaux of Mirror” is the second in Brian Eno's influential four-part “Ambient” series. Where “Music for Airports,” the first and most famous installment, was largely an Eno solo effort, he takes a back seat here and leaves the center stage to American composer and pianist Harold Budd whose simple but pretty keyboard melodies dominate for the most part. At that time, Eno was in a kind of transitional phase, shifting from his previous identity as a performer to his new one as a producer and curator. And it shows in his contributions to this album. He subtly processes Budd's electric and acoustic piano playing through various reverb and delay units and adds some atmospheric, sampled touches, such as quacking ducks on the title track. In fact it's not a million miles removed from what he did on Roxy Music's “Sea Breezes” in 1972.

I admit I'm not familiar with any of Harold Budd's other recorded output, but the pieces on “The Plateaux” give me a strong Erik Satie vibe, maybe with a bit of Arvo Pärt (minus the religion stuff) thrown in. The mood is warm and melancholy throughout, occasionally slipping into the sentimental. The individual tracks sort of start to blur together, which I suppose is the intended effect. Like so much Ambient music, it often borders on New Age without ever fully embracing it. A pleasant album and the perfect soundtrack to lying on your couch reading a book on a rainy afternoon.

Random Review Week #1- Carl Craig & Moritz von Oswald- ReComposed

Deutsche Grammophon, 2008

 

We kick off Random Review Week with a risky concept: Take two techno icons from Detroit and Berlin respectively and let them remix Ravel's “Bolero” and Mussorgsky's “Pictures at an Exhibition,” two classical works ubiquitous enough to have become cliches. With a premise like that, it's easy to make a lame novelty record where a couple string themes you've probably heard in at least 5 car commercials get the four-on-the-floor bassdrum treatment.

Thankfully, that's not what “ReComposed” is, but despite the general tastefulness and musical competence on display, it's all a bit on the safe side. The name of the game here is ambient-leaning techno more geared towards home listening than club use. It's almost exactly what you'd expect from a Moritz von Oswald / Carl Craig collab too. Both the former's trademark use of delay and reverb and the latter's taste for warm melodies are in full effect, but the use of the source material is often a bit superfluous, particularly on the “Bolero” half of the album which lasts from tracks 1 to 5.

Over the course of 32 minutes the music slowly moves from warm synth drones reminiscent of krautrockers like Cluster and Harmonia to dubbed-out horn samples and marching snare drums. And then, just when things are about to get interesting, it turns into something that appears to contain no samples at all and sounds like a track from Moritz von Oswald's 90s dub techno duo Basic Channel, complete with wavering, synthscapes and filtered kickdrums. The remaining 3 tracks focus on “Pictures at an Exhibition.” “Movement 5” unfortunately sounds a kinda “strings plus techno beat” thing talked about earlier in places, but the closing 14-minute “Movement 6” is the album's strongest point. A reggae-like shaker-and-bongo rhythm(!) is enveloped in a gauze of manipulated samples and spacy synthetic swooshes. It's an odd combination, but it works well and uses the source material in an unexpected way instead of casting it aside

“ReComposed” is a well-crafted and enjoyable album from two towering figures in electronic dance music, but as a techno-meets-classical experiment, it's kind of a disappointment.

Random Review Week!

I'll just get straight to the point here: I haven't used this blog nearly as much as I'd have liked to in the past few months. So to motivate myself to write more, I've decided to experiment with a new format: The Random Review Week. Starting today, I'm going review a random album, EP, single or compilation from my collection everyday until next Sunday.

Selection is done by shuffling through my iTunes library which currently contains around 500 hours of mostly music I've been listening to in the past 2 years or so. I'm going to try to rip some older CDs to my computer in the next few days to hopefully shake things up a bit.

Have fun reading and listening,

C.A.S.