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lunes, 16 de mayo de 2011

Maestoso - 2007 - Caterwauling

14 years passed between Wooly Wolstenholme's solo debut and his second set, and another decade was gone before a third album appeared, credited to the artist's new solo moniker Maestoso. 2004's One Drop in a Dry World, was swiftly followed by Grim, and a mere two years went by before Caterwauling landed on the shelves. While One Drop was an exuberantly diverse musical affair and Grim a wildly creative concept set, Caterwauling neither explores new musical territory nor presents an overarching theme. A far more introspective affair, here Maestoso seems intent on solidifying his musical ideas. There again, the artist is not immune to current events or their antecedents, tracing the long historical trek of the "Soldier of Fortune" across a free-form jazzy, prog rocker. Flipping the coin, Maestoso then follows a patriotic young enlistee down "The Road to Nowhere." The latter's a perfect pop/rocker, and almost reminiscent of the Jam at their epic heights. Maestoso's sympathetic portrayal of both these characters is belied by the heavy-hitting "Shoes," a requiem for war's multitudinous innocent victims, that begins in quiet beauty, then explodes into progressive metal-laced rock. This triptych of death is the set's only concessions to current climes, bar the sarcastic expose of our "Pills"-popping culture, with the rest of the album given over to more personal affairs. There's a trio of moody, yearning numbers in the center of the set -- the revelatory "Closure," the emotive rocker "Always," and the introspective "I Don't Like You." One can draw one's own conclusions that the group is book-ended by "The Collector" and "Tonight Could Be the Night," electrifying numbers both, but representing death and beginnings respectively. The lilting "Matilda Yarrow," in contrast, is a gentle lullaby, "Strange Worlds" a succinct sci-fi story set to a grandiose pop backing, and "Blossom Hill" a return to simple pastoral pleasures. Joined once again by Kim Turner, Steve Broomhead, and Craig Fletcher, alongside a guesting Geoffrey Richardson and Jake Fletcher, the music and arrangements are magnificent, the quieter numbers glistening, the rockers spectacular. Not as immediately mind-blowing as One Drop, nor as cohesive as Grim, Caterwauling, instead strengthens the links to Wolstenholme's own past with Barclay James Harvest.

1 Caterwauling 0:49
2 Soldier of Fortune 11:36
3 The Road to Nowhere 4:08
4 Matilda Yarrow 5:04
5 The Collector 4:04
6 Closure 2:44
7 Always 4:06
8 I Don't Like You 3:33
9 Tonight Could Be the Night 4:10
10 Shoes 3:43
11 Strange Worlds 2:16
12 Quicksand 5:30
13 Blossom Hill 3:53
14 Pills 3:11

¡Aquí!

lunes, 9 de noviembre de 2009

Merenzon, Andrea - 1999 - Para Fagot y Orquesta

¡Aquí!

Mercyful Fate - 1993 - In The Shadows

After an almost decade-long hiatus, Mercyful Fate's reunion did not disappoint; it was as if they picked up right where they had left off. There are more of King Diamond's gothic tales of horror and the supernatural, and the music sounds better than ever. It doesn't have the historical significance of their early-'80s material, but that doesn't really matter; this is high-quality material from a tight veteran band. The CD features a re-recorded version of the underground classic "Return of the Vampire" with Lars Ulrich on drums.

1	Egypt	King Diamond	4:52
2	The Bell Witch	King Diamond, Shermann	4:34
3	The Old Oak	King Diamond, Shermann	8:54
4	Shadows	King Diamond	4:42
5	A Gruesome Time	Denner, King Diamond	4:31
6	Thirteen Invitations	King Diamond	5:17
7	Room of Golden Air [instrumental]	Denner	3:06
8	Legend of the Headless Rider	King Diamond, Shermann	7:43
9	Is That You, Melissa	King Diamond	4:41
10	Return of the Vampire...1993 [*]	King Diamond, Shermann	5:08

¡Aquí!

lunes, 14 de septiembre de 2009

Mazzacane Connors, Loren - 1989 - In Pittsburgh

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

¡Aquí!

M People - 1997 - Fresco

M People spent a considerable amount of time on Fresco, the group's fourth album, crafting a record that would break them out of the Europop straitjacket and establish them as an international dance-pop act. In other words, Fresco is less a club album than it is a radio record, filled with carefully constructed songs with strong rhythms, sturdy hooks, and pop-soul melodies. Too bad that much of the record simply isn't as memorable. Sure, there are several potential singles with naggingly catchy melodies and the entire production is appealingly glossy and accessible, but the songs simply aren't there and neither is the charming, unashamed brashness of their early work. A few songs -- the garage techno of "Angel St.," the catchy house of "Fantasy Island" and the sweeping orchestrated pop of "Just for You" -- make the album worthwhile, but on the whole Fresco is a distressing step backward for a group that had yet to make a false move.

1	Just for You	Heard, Pickering, Small	6:01
2	Fantasy Island	Heard, Pickering, Small	5:39
3	Never Mind Love	Heard, Pickering, Small	4:24
4	Last Night 10,000	Heard, Pickering, Small	5:13
5	Smile	Heard, Pickering, Small	6:04
6	Red Flower Sunset	Heard, Pickering, Small	4:57
7	Angel St.	Heard, Pickering, Small	5:31
8	Lonely	Heard, Pickering, Small	4:46
9	Rhythm and Blues	Heard, Pickering, Small	4:17
10	Believe It	Heard, Pickering, Small	5:08
11	Bohemia	Heard, Pickering, Small	3:28
12	Avalon	Ferry	6:02

¡Aquí!

lunes, 31 de agosto de 2009

Mayall, John - 1966 - Bluesbreakers With Eric Clapton (2CD)

The 40th anniversary deluxe edition of John Mayall's classic Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton album, issued in the U.K. in 2006, is a two-CD, 43-song affair, even though the original LP had just 12 tracks. While the many extras aren't nearly as essential as the original LP itself, this reissue neatly packages everything the Clapton lineup of the Bluesbreakers recorded, while still making the Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton album the centerpiece. Disc one presents both the mono and stereo mixes of the record, which was not just Mayall's best, but also a cornerstone of both British blues and blues-rock, as well as being the first to showcase Clapton's talents in full bloom (and in a purer blues context than anytime before or since). In common with many such mono-stereo packages for CD reissues, most listeners won't find the differences drastic, but sometimes they're noticeable -- in mono, Mayall's vocal on "All Your Love" has a much hollower, echoing feel, and "Parchman Farm" has keyboards that are inaudible in the stereo mix (which, in turn, has a longer harmonica intro for the same song).

Of more value, at least as far as the extras go, is disc two, which presents no less than 19 tracks that the Clapton lineup recorded in 1965 and 1966 that didn't appear on the Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton album. This includes the 1965 "I'm Your Witch Doctor"/"Telephone Blues" single, the A-side of which is not only one of the Bluesbreakers' greatest recordings, but one of the great rock non-hit singles of the '60s by anyone, with searing futuristic distorted guitar. Also on hand is the fine late-1965 soul-pop-flavored studio recording "On Top of the World," and the less impressive, more traditional blues of the obscure "Bernard Jenkins"/"Lonely Years" single. Then there are eight previously unreleased 1965-1966 BBC recordings, only one of them ("Key to Love") of a song that appeared on the Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton record; the other tracks include radio versions of "I'm Your Witchdoctor," "On Top of the World," the early Mayall single "Crawling Up a Hill"/"Crocodile Walk," and three cool numbers the Bluesbreakers never put on their '60s studio records ("Cheating Woman," "Bye Bye Bird," and "Nowhere to Turn"). Rounding out the disc are the half-dozen 1966 live recordings (with both Clapton and Jack Bruce in the band) that have appeared on compilations (five of them on Primal Solos, and the sixth, "They Call It Stormy Monday," on the Looking Back collection). The sound on the BBC cuts is decent, though the performances not as full and cutting as the Clapton lineup's studio work; the live material is in fuzzier sound, though listenable. Despite the uneven nature of the second disc, however, it's great to have all of this Mayall-Clapton material in one place, and impossible to imagine a more definitive collection of the Mayall-Clapton Bluesbreakers recordings. [The Deluxe Edition contains live and unreleased versions.]

All Your Love

Dixon, Rush