Continuing the mini-reviews of ten albums from my collections of CDs, cassettes and vinyl albums during the corona virus lockdown. There was an unusual amount of jazz and improvised music this time, but I didn't plan that: Coltrane, Corea, and Coleman all begin with C. (Also, in the rest of the B's: Chris Brown, Chris Burke, Beatles, Battles. Anyone for "Fox in Sox" and the Tweetle Beetles?) As always, comments and questions are welcome.
Duets (Chris Brown et al.)
Here electro-acoustic source material makes a leap from prerecorded musique-concrète to improvisations on electric instruments. By turns mysterious, strident, sci-fi-ish, ethereal, danceable (for the very nimble) and dark, this provides resonances quite unknown until this album came out.
An Evening With Herbie Hancock & Chick Corea In Concert
These two still do things on pianos that can’t be done on pianos. And, unlike several other musicians I can name whose technique is impeccable, the result is more than just a lot of fast notes. I especially like how the “riffs” bounce from one player to the other, both in standards and in improvisations, and the occasional use of extended techniques on the instrument.
Free Jazz (Ornette Coleman)
The father of a sub-genre, not entirely free improvisation. At times the music coalesces into obvious themes; at other everyone stops and starts at the same time. The bass solo and the series of drum solos are interesting in themselves. Whatever – it’s still fascinating: a lot of noise and a lot of music at the same time, full of colors, always changing, always the same, turning upon itself like a jazz homage to giant gothic stained-glass windows.
Gloss Drop (Battles)
Hocketting is a sort of metrical ping-pong game used in Balinese gamelan, the Medieval European "Ars Nova", certain genres of African music, and experimental pieces by Jo Kondo and others. Here, it makes a rare appearance in indie rock (along with, on other albums, a track or two by Dirty Projectors) and electronica. The result is a hyperactive, experimental, rhythmically precise chaos, and it's a lot of fun. It's also exhausting. The rhythms and the melodies seem to be one in the same, and both jump from instrument to instrument (and sometimes to vocals) and side to side and back to front. It's impossible to describe; one has to hear it, and then hear it again, to make sure that what you heard was really what was there. And please, hear it with the volume up.
Idioglossia (Chris Burke)
1989 post-punk beat-driven electronica with samples and wry commentary on culture, TV, and politics. “Get ready to give in to evil! Sounds neat! Extremely attracted to – evil!” Little did we know that this satire (probably on heavy metal music) would actually describe how American society would go in another quarter century. Also one of Max Ernst’s well-known supposed hallucinations, here rendered as a Devo-esque (or Warhol-esque?) glorification of style over substance: “The hat makes the man, a man made of Hat, replace the dinosaur…”
A Love Supreme (John Coltrane)
This 1964 masterpiece is one of the classic jazz albums. It’s also a fine introduction to Coltrane’s work, situated as it is between his “standard” style and his more interesting (and therefore less popular) experimental period. “Heads” and solos flow into one another freely in a jazz stream-of-consciousness; in fact, many of the jazz “solos” are more like classical “development sections”, where Trane takes fragments from the main theme and repeats them in various keys (that may or may not be related to the accompaniment). Then there are those timbral innovations, such as the chanting of “a love supreme” in multiple overdubs, and the timpani solo by the drummer, Elvin Jones. The whole album is a sound experience that is still as fresh now as when it was recorded.
The Number Pieces I (John Cage)
Music from the intense edge of silence; some of it is even more intense than silence and yet silence is a major part of it. The piece with rainsticks is perhaps the most beautifully held-back aleatory music ever conceived.
Raga Mian Ki Malhar (Hariprasad Chaurasia)
The light and easy sound of the last third of this flute and drum music fools the listener. Like Mozart or Chopin, it’s only simple on the surface. The extended introduction provides clues: the flute (here and there sounding very close to the Japanese shakuhachi) enumerates the notes of the raga slowly, one at a time, gradually increasing in complexity (but seemingly decreasing in volume) until all possibilities are exhausted. Only then does the tabla appear, in a second “movement”. For the listener unfamiliar with Indian classical music, this would be a good (and beautiful!) introduction. (When I published this, "tabla" had been changed to "table". Bleepin' spell-check.)
Right of Violet (Alex Cline, Jeff Gauthier, G. E. Stinson)
Free-improv jazz on electric instruments becomes a rock-based symphony. The entire album strikes me as being slightly too long, but the string of “compositions” has an interesting shape centering on the gorgeous “Sophia” for electric violin (with multiple delays) and gamelan gongs. “Metal” music preceded this, having built up slowly ex nihilo and then scattering into fossilized fragments; “Sophia” itself (herself?) then trails off in a similar manner, but the beauty remains even as the metal rebuilds itself and then subsides a second time. A hint of Vaughan-Williams lingers as the music concludes.
The White Album (Beatles)
Probably doesn't need an introduction. With this, mainstream pop stared across the abyss into experimental music (there’s even a tape collage!) but never quite made the leap. Maybe that doesn’t matter: some of this is a little dated now (and there’s a lot of awful baggage) but there’s still great melodic songwriting and some interesting ideas that pop artists are still coming to terms with. Worth several listens, even if only because (for better or worse) it’s part of our history.
So that's it for the music, for now. For another type of discussion altogether, check out the new sister blog of this one (it's about books, words, and random stuff about linguistics) and my new website about my books (yes, there's a book of this blog!).
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