16.2.12
Albert Mangelsdorff & Lee Konitz - Art of the Duo
from the All Music Guide:
No one has worked harder to elevate the art of the jazz duo than Lee Konitz. His 1967 session, The Lee Konitz Duets, was a seminal statement. This much-later duet session with trombone master Albert Mangelsdorff pales in comparison. Konitz has long espoused the belief that horn players can swing without a rhythm section, yet much of the time Mangelsdorff insists on serving as a faux bass -- really, tuba -- player. And when he uses his patented technique of singing into his horn while creating chords, he functions as a very simple guitar player. That said, anything with these two masters on it has its pleasures. Konitz creates tasty lines with souffle-like lightness, and when Mangelsdorff breaks free he provides some gruff, complementary solos. His use of mute on "Creole Love Call" offers a break from the session's monochromaticism. Konitz also brings some fetching originals to the session, notably "A Minor Blues in F" and "Cher Ami," which feature the kind of freewheeling counterpoint that would have been welcomed throughout The Lee Konitz Duets.
~ David Dupont, All Music Guide
John Coltrane - First Meditations (for quartet)
Not released initially until 1977, the music on this 1992 CD was the last recording made by the classic John Coltrane Quartet; other slightly later records found the group augmented by additional musicians. Four of the five movements on this release which are augmented by a lengthier second version of "Joy" would become part of the better known Meditations album along with another movement 2 months later when tenor saxophonist Pharoah Sanders and drummer Rashied Ali temporarily made the group a sextet. Coltrane sticking here exclusively to tenor plays passionately, alternating ferocious explorations with more lyrical sections. Includes the full untouched version of "Joy" later replaced by "The Father And Son And The Holy Ghost".
Jackson and His Computer Band - Smash
from http://www.dustedmagazine.com:
In everyday life, you are usually ostracized for wanton displays of self-indulgence. This should not be a problem for 26-year-old Parisian producer Jackson Fourgeaud as one suspects his relationship to the everyday is far-gone. For the casual listener, however, the issue remains. What exactly can you make of Jackson’s more-ideas-per-second electronic music?
You are there with Fourgeaud for the opening stretch of Smash. “Utopia” stitches together pleasure-spasm, helium-breath diva vocals, hanging them from the song’s humming, light-flare body like a child balancing baubles on the branches of a lit Christmas tree. Fourgeaud loves the heady stomp of glam rock, stringing its glitzy, brash stomp through current single “Rock On” and the hissing neon strobes of “Teen Beat Ocean.”
“Radio Caca” closes the album with pointillist scrawls of convulsive IDM, electrified particles dancing on the head of a bobby pin. The song acts a précis of Fourgeaud’s production technique: cumulative layers of compulsively rendered texture stacked and woven together in fantastical formations. You are continuallywatching an abstract machine make its way across the room, wondering if it will topple, Tinguely-like, into disrepair. Yet the best songs on Smash make for great pop. Fourgeaud’s stuttering melody lines are fishhooks that pierce deep into your skin.
Jackson’s debut album is not always a success, as Smash’s panoptic detail eventually turns homogeneous. Fourgeaud’s palette appears rich but he reapplies the same lexicon to every teetering structure. When Jackson’s productions work, they are so full of life the music explodes with the very joy of its own construction. However, the great grey patch in the middle of Smash suggests that Fourgeaud may well suffer from the gourmand’s curse: too much of a good thing. (A similar problem befell Akufen’s My Way - perhaps one of this record’s most immediate predecessors, though it works within a different genre.) Fourgeaud is a gifted producer with an enviable eye for detail and an ability to wrench almost profligate pleasure from the seizures of circuitry, but right now, a little Jackson goes a long way.
15.2.12
Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel - Nail
LONG PLAYER – 33 1/3 RPM – SOME BIZARRE/SELF IMMOLATION
ALL SONGS WRITTEN, PRODUCED AND PERFORMED BY SCRAPING FOETUS OFF THE WHEEL
PRODUCED BY CLINT RUIN/SCRAPING FOETUS OFF THE WHEEL AND WARNE LIVESEY
ENGINEERED BY WARNE LIVESEY
RECORDED AT LIVINGSTON, PARADISE AND WAVE STUDIOS LONDON 1985
MIXED AT LIVINGSTON AND CRESCENT STUDIOS
SONGS PUBLISHED BY INTERSONG
CHANGE YOUR MIND-MIND YOUR CHANGE-BLAST THE PAST-PAST THE BLAST
POSITIVE NEGATIVISM
ALL SONGS COMPOSED BY J. G. THIRLWELL
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