Proving once again that some of his most beautiful pieces come when he is paying tribute to someone, Redbird, a tribute to the artist Agnes Martin, is a work of ambient and minimalist grace. The album consists of two pieces: a shorter percussive piece called "Dark River," and a 41-minute work for harp, viola, cello and percussion called "Redbird." Each conveys a hypnotic quality that does justice to its subject. Martin is an incredibly spiritual artist, whose minimal gestures on canvas and paper exude auras of calm. Redbird captures that sense in music and, in its continuity, becomes one of Zorn's most effective tributes. As always, Zorn has managed to collect a group of extremely talented musicians, and their execution of this album makes it even more perfect.| 1 |  | Dark River | Zorn | 8:51 | ||
 | 2 | | Redbird | Zorn | 41:01 |
This reissue of a St. Joan/Black Label release from 1989 was a project related to the late Chicago band Gastr Del Sol, comprised of Jim O'Rourke and David Grubbs. Their aim was to reissue classic criminally under-heard recordings: this, Derek Bailey's Aida, Folkarabe, and others. Unfortunately, the band broke up and the label went belly-up, leaving their distributor Drag City to unload the remaining copies. There are a few out there so snap them up while you can. This gig features guitarist Loren Mazzacane Connors playing "Trouble in Mind" twice with a couple of wondrously creative "Preludes" in between, creating a suite of the entire work. So stark is the original, and so drawn out its phrasing, we are tempted not to hear it as that nugget of American folk song, but as a new one offered in the sprit of dislocation, disappearance, and the erasure of the America that song represented. Connors' "Preludes," with their distant tones and slight dissonances, attest to this as well. They carry within them the root of "Trouble in Mind," but also of Neil Young's "Cortez the Killer." They cross boundaries between blues, folk, classical, and jazz musics, slow as a turtle, and as careful as a preacher with a new bible. In fact, the music here is the word, stretched to the breaking point where it bleeds into only sound and resonance. When Connors reenters "Trouble in Mind," he plays as if from another world; his key change is evident as a different sense of purpose. The tune is now played as a reverie, for something erased and barely remembered for what it was. This is the deep blues Robert Palmer wrote of, a sense of "how did I get here and not remember where I cam from or even what I was?" And as if on cue, the second "Prelude" prepares us for an entry into the world of those very same blues, prepared from ether only to return there. The absorption of atmosphere and texture inherent in every phrase and fragmented line suggests a melody that never quite comes. "Wish Train" becomes the ghost that rode in on the wind of Mazzacane Connor's guitar. It has the tenderness of a lullaby and the vastness of eternal space floating about its open tuning like a star. It calls back and forth across musical history for an answer but all it gets is an echo. But in that echo is all the music you could ever want to hear. Both "Child's Blues" and "Fallen Son" are the end pieces of generational changes in music, in sound, in culture. Connors, like John Cage and Mark Rothko before him, sees and hears the value in not ordering sounds along a particular path even if that path has been drawn out in advance. Hence, where the 12 bars are supposed to be placed are sparse notes and large spaces where notes, harmony, and melody once existed. Touch, sense, and aural interrogation are the only bones left on the skeleton of Connor's blues, and even these are ghostly, spectral in their languid elegance and deep sense of sadness and remembrance. And as if this weren't opaque enough, Suzanne Langille wraps her voice around Lonnie Johnson's "Blue Ghost Blues" with such an ethereal sensuality it's difficult to hold the lyric because you are too busy listening to the way the words drip from her mouth like honey. She's singing of being haunted by the presence of the disappeared, but it sounds like she wants to possess the bodiless essence of that personage within hers, no matter how horrifying. We can only wonder if hearing this originally, Margo Timmins of Cowboy Junkies decided she wanted to be a singer and front a rock & roll band dedicated to playing the blues her brother had so obviously appropriated from Connors. But it's an old story, and the majesty and grace with which Langille and Connors play out this old, obscure blues points to another kind of disappearance, of this music from the culture at large. Their emphasis is not on how dead the music is at this juncture, but how absent we are from our emotional and cultural heritage. This is a wondrous album of profound implications.| 1 | | Trouble in Mind | Connors | 4:16 | ||
| 2 | | Prelude 1 | Connors | 2:24 | ||
| 3 | | Trouble in Mind 2 | Connors | 1:57 | ||
| 4 | | Prelude 2 | Connors | 2:14 | ||
| 5 | | Wight Train | Connors | 3:25 | ||
| 6 | | Child's Blues | Connors | 3:58 | ||
| 7 | | Fallen Son | Connors | 3:17 | ||
| 8 | | Blue Ghost Blues | Johnson | 6:12 |
Most Univers Zero recordings originally appeared on the small French Atem and Cyronic labels, and were not exactly easy to obtain at the time of their initial release. But the long out of print Crawling Wind was recorded as an EP for Eastern Works, the Japanese division of Recommended Records (ReR), and it has achieved a kind of cult status over the years because of its even greater rarity. The original EP was recorded at what was quite possibly Univers Zero's creative peak, after their first three LPs and before they started moving away from acoustic chamber rock and toward a sound that was a little more conventionally electric. The three pieces on the EP (two studio recordings and one live track) are supplemented on Cuneiform's CD reissue with two additional live tracks, plus "Influences," a studio piece previously released only on ReR's 1983 two-disc Rock in Opposition sampler, which featured other iconoclastic bands/artists of the time, such as Art Bears, Faust, Henry Cow, and Robert Wyatt. The mixture of studio and live tracks (and the different times and places of the recordings) doesn't allow Crawling Wind to generate quite the intensity of UZ's three prior recordings -- 1313, Heresie, and Ceux Du Dehors. But with the exception of one early track from 1979 (an alternate live version of "Complainte," which appeared on 1313, UZ's first release), all the tracks on the Cuneiform release were recorded from 1982-1984, and are mature examples of UZ's unique gothic chamber rock sound, which featured a combination of strings (violin, cello, viola), woodwinds (clarinet, bassoon, oboe), and the powerful rhythm section of founder, leader, and primary composer Daniel Denis on drums, and either Guy Seger or Christian Genet on bass. Univers Zero enthusiasts will know what to expect from the studio tracks, which project either the moody gloom of Heresie ("Before the Heat"), or the ferocious, dissonant energy of Ceux Du Dehors ("Toujours Plus à L'est," "Influences"). One of the two long live tracks, "Central Belgium in the Dark" (a verbal play, at least, on 20th century classical composer Charles Ives' "Central Park in the Dark"), represents a slight change of pace for the band, as it is more loosely structured, with less ensemble playing and a more playful, improvised quality that is almost lyrical at times. "Triomphe des Mouches," while looser than a typical UZ studio recording, is still typically heavy and relentless, with featured cello work by Andre Mergenthaler, who uses his instrument's upper register at times to produce strangled, human-like cries. The three earlier Univers Zero reissues can probably be considered more essential than Crawling Wind, but this CD definitely transcends the "for completists only" category, and is a worthy addition to Cuneiform's fine catalog of UZ reissues.| 1 | | Toujours Plus à l'Est | Denis | 5:34 | ||
| 2 | | Before the Heat | Kirk | 4:06 | ||
| 3 | | Central Belgium in the Dark | Univers Zéro | 9:54 | ||
| 4 | | Influences | Kirk | 7:36 | ||
| 5 | | Triomphe des Mouches | Denis, Kirk | 9:55 | ||
| 6 | | Complainte | Denis | 5:29 |
This 1981 album, on CD for the first time, is something of an enigma. The cover proclaims the music to be "composed by Klaus Schulze," failing to make it clear that Richard Wahnfried is the famous German electronic musician Klaus Schulze operating under a pseudonym. The album consists of four lengthy tracks, 13 to 18 minutes, mainly exercises in fusing high-energy synthesizer music with wailing acid-rock lead guitar heroics. Amphetamine sequencers, metallic synth chords, merciless drum machines, monster guitar riffing, palpitating basslines, and vocals on "Angry Young Boys" (sung by Arthur Brown of "Fire" fame) make this an endurance test for all but the most die-hard heavy rock aficionados. The saving grace here is the high-speed but fluid drumming of Michael Shrieve who shines on "Druck (Pressure)" (a Musical Starstreams feature), which sounds like it came from the 1986 album Transfer Station Blue.| | | 1 | | Schwung [Momentum] | Schulze, Wahnfried | 17:04 |
| | | 2 | | Druck [Pressure] | Schulze, Wahnfried | 18:35 |
| | | 3 | | Angry Young Boys [*] | Schulze, Wahnfried | 13:27 |
| | | 4 | | Rich Meets Max [*] | Schulze, Wahnfried | 14:00 |
Seattle-born William Rieflin (b. September 30, 1960) is one of the most respected metal/industrial drummers of the last decade. Through his work with Ministry and that band's countless side projects, Rieflin has become known as a powerful and original force within the alternative scene. During the early '80s, Rieflin was a member of the Blackouts, a Seattle-based hard rock band. The lineup also included Paul Barker and Mike Scaccia, both future members of Ministry, as well as Rieflin's brother Raymond. The Blackouts folded in 1987, and Barker convinced Rieflin to join him and Al Jourgensen in the newly reinvented Ministry. Together they produced one of the seminal industrial albums, Land of Rape and Honey.
The Repercussions of Angelic Behavior is a rock CD with atmospheric timbres. It is by Robert Fripp, Trey Gunn, and Bill Rieflin. The liner notes are sparse. In fact, they're nonexistent, so listeners have to tackle this disc with no "graphic interference." Fans of Fripp looking for a sound similar to his work with King Crimson will not be disappointed. The disc is loaded with hot guitar riffs and freaky dissonance. It is not pleasant and it is not unpleasant -- it is Fripp and it meets expectations. It is a new kind of avant-garde.| | 1 | | 7:37 | |||||||
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A longtime linchpin of the New York City underground music scene, Bill Laswell was among the most prolific artists in contemporary music; as a performer, producer, and label chief, his imprint is on literally hundreds of albums, the majority of them characterized by a signature sound fusing the energy of punk with the bone-rattling rhythms of funk. Born on February 12, 1955, in Salem, IL, he initially played guitar, but soon switched to bass; raised primarily in the Detroit area, he honed his skills in local funk outfits before relocating to New York in 1978. There Laswell formed Material, an outlet for his experimental approach toward sounds ranging from jazz to hip-hop to worldbeat; originally the backup unit for Daevid Allen, the group soon began working on its own, issuing its debut EP Temporary Music in 1979.
This project had such potential. Celtic music lends itself very nicely to being mixed with modern dance beats, and no one makes such cultural fusions work better than Bill Laswell -- witness in particular his very fine Imaginary Cuba album and countless other bubbly multicultural musical stews. On Emerald Aether, the idea was to take tracks from Shanachie's enviably deep Celtic catalog (including performances by singer Karan Casey, flutist Matt Molloy, piper Jerry O'Sullivan, and the band Solas) and place them like green jewels in Laswell's trademark space-funk settings. And in several cases, it works really well -- "The Stride Set," a set of reels by Solas, is nicely energized by Laswell's breakbeats, and the echoey ambience he applies to O'Sullivan's "Wind Chimes and Nursery Rhymes" works very well, too. But too many of these tracks are ruined by Laswell's ignorance (or, it seems more likely, simple disregard) of modal harmony in general and the key centers of the individual songs in particular. His settings of Karan Casey's performances add chord washes that bear no apparent harmonic relationship to the keys Casey is singing in, which means that her singing clashes unpleasantly with the music that is supposed to be supporting her. The same thing happens rhythmically with the dubwise drum'n'bass setting that Laswell builds for Matt Molloy's rendition of "The Hare in the Heather" -- there's no reason why the beats couldn't have meshed with Molloy's played rhythms, and the final product would have much more compelling if they had. Despite some inspired moments, this album is a real disappointment overall.| 1 | | The Wayfaring Stranger | 2:49 | |||||||
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| | 2 | | The Stride Set | Reels | 6:45 | |||||
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| 3 | | The Lavouring Man's Daughter | 5:07 | |||||||
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| 4 | | We Dreamed Our Dreams | Farrelly | :48 | ||||||
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| 5 | | Wendel's Wedding | Cuffe | 3:15 | ||||||
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| 6 | | The Gray Selchie | 2:12 | |||||||
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| 7 | | Dark Green | 3:59 | |||||||
| | 8 | | Wind Chimes and Nursery Rhymes | Ellis | 2:49 | |||||
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| 9 | | One, I Love | Ritchie | 4:44 | ||||||
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| 10 | | La Bruxa | Shivanez | 4:34 | ||||||
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| 11 | | The Hare in the Heather | 2:32 | |||||||
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| 12 | | Coaineadh Na Dtri Muire (Lament of the Three Marys) | Traditional | 3:37 | ||||||
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| 13 | | Slieve Russell, Jimmy Wards J.G. | 2:00 | |||||||
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| 14 | | The Beauty Spot | Reels | 4:19 | ||||||
