title: Pretty good !

text: good album came brand new straight from japan . some really chill song like: above the crowd and awesome knowledge . great bang for your buck


title: A must for metal collections! Raw, old school power metal!

text:
A very good old school power metal album. This in fact the only power metal album by Judas Priest and also the last album with Rob Halford.

Some may consider this the last great album by Judas Priest and it delivers, if you like power metal that is.

 I recommend getting this one for your metal collection as it is a classic to remember and share with our kids in the future.

Keep metal alive fellow metalheads.


title: A MUST HAVE

text: I was shocked when I checked this item out.  MOST of the tracks I didn't have, and I have a large library of Larry's tunes from Capitol (Bootleg, Upon This Rock) to the MGM Trilogy, on to later albums (think I have about 25 of his albums).  GREAT ADD for phans of Larry.


title: Awesome!

text: I didn't get to buy it from the Dead web.  Double packed from this Amazon seller,  The original Dead Box inside another packing box.  The "booklets" or whatever you would call the CD containers make it pretty easy to slip the disc out of.  Better than other DVD/CD cardboard packages I've had.  Quality so far has been great. If you are a Dead Phan YOU NEED THIS!


title: The Main Event Is a Winner

text:
Kyle Matthews is coming to our church in August, 2011. He sent some music for our choir to learn, but no accompaniment parts. So, I needed a copy of the album so the choir could learn the songs.

I had heard of Kyle Matthews, but was not familiar with his music. I have enjoyed all of the songs of this album. Kyle has a great talent as a songwriter, singer, and pianist.

I would recommend this album to everyone.


title: Where`s the title trtack for the movie

text: If I`m wrong my apologies, but this C.D. doesn`t evan have the main track from the movie! That`s the  one of 2 songs (I can dream about you) that I bought this c.d. for.  Buyer beware !


title: Very unexpected arrangements

text:
My take on this album is this:
Big band vs Vegas

I've been a long-time fan of Bublé but he was beginning to become boring. This album rescues my fandom.

Cry Me a river is very intense. The beat, the bass, just about everything about it is like no arrangement of this song I've ever heard. It is the very reason I bought this album.

All of Me is produced to sound like you're at a piano bar until the horns come in. Suddenly it becomes a swing arrangement. Very tasty.

Georgia on My Mind doesn't meet my Ray Charles bar of soul, but then no artist I've heard can come close.

Crazy Love is a sexy rendition of Van Morrison's song. Very warm.

The rest of the tracks are very entertaining. Arrangements are unexpected but welcome. The one exception is Stardust. I know it's just me but I gag on Whiffenpoof-style harmony, or doo-op or whatever this song is supposed to portray.

None of the tracks on this album are what I would consider Bublé standards. They are all very different from his norm. He moves into Phil Spector's "Wall of sound" style that is best listened to on a full-blown stereo system or a great set of studio headphones. Earbuds are not going to cut it.

Reverb is tastefully limited to the places it should be. The horns seem to pull you into the vocals instead of competing like so many productions do.

All in all, I really like this album.


title: Definitely NOT the best+

text: Barely okay is more like it. Only three tracks by Chet Atkins, one of which- Hark the Herald Angels Sing - can't be among his best. Otherwise, way too much other instrumentation and vocal content. To add insult to injury, the entire CD is less than 27 minutes long. Look elsewhere.


title: A sentimental journey

text: Bought at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center several years ago. Nice album by Willie and Don and it supports the wildflower research center.


title: Great!

text: Great!


title: Five Stars

text: great music, excellent quality


title: Reckless Kelly--Another Top Album

text: This album really grew on me after listening to a few times.  I think it at least equals RK's previous "personal best" which (IMHO) was the "Bulletproof" album of a couple years ago.  I think this band is like a fine wine--it just gets better with time.


title: Good CD

text: Good CD


title: Five Stars

text: Great cd fast shipping


title: Thank you Mr. Wilson

text: Steve Wilson finally got it right.


title: Real Love

text:
This Anthology represents the Beatles beginning their experimental phase!
Like Anthology 1, this CD begins with a John Lennon solo song performed by John with additional music provided by Paul, George, and Ringo.  Probably because this is a more complete song, the concept works a little better than on "Free as a Bird".
Beyond that, you get a grabbag of demos, alternative takes, and live tracks from 1965 to early 1968.  "Yes It Is" begins the set.  Interesting is some of the studio banter like in "I'm Down" (with Paul saying in a pseudo-American accent: "Let's hope this one turns out pretty darn good... Plastic soul, man!") and "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" (glass shatters and John mumbles: "Paul's broken a glass broke a glass Paul broke.").  There are also never before released songs like "If You've Got Trouble", "That Means a Lot", and "12 Bar Original" (a fun jam in the mold of "Green Onions").
Live performances include television performances of "Yesterday" (with George introducing Paul) and "Help!", "Everybody's Got to Be My Baby" (from the legendary Shea Stadium concert) and "Rock & Roll Music" and "She's a Woman" (from their final 1966 tour).  You can hear the Beatles slowly go through the motions in the end on stage as their studio recordings became more complex...
There are only a few outtakes from Rubber Soul, including the heavily sitar drenched "Norwegian Wood" and "...Looking Through You" in its early stage (with a hand clapping intro).  The Revolver selections are more generous, with "Tomorrow Never Knows" (which even without all the tape effects sounds bizarre!), "Taxman" with the line "Anybody gotta bitta money" in place of "Uh uh Mr. Wilson... uh uh Mr. Heath", and a mellower slowed down take of "Got to Get You Into...".  There are instrumental takes of "Eleanor Rigby" and "...Only Sleeping" (with a vibraphone).  It's fun to hear Paul and John giggling while attempting to sing harmonies on "And Your Bird Can Sing"!
CD2 begins with an early demo of "Strawberry Fields", followed by an unused take, then the take which would begin the master we all know (played in its entirety) with Ringo's drum part at the end.  "Penny Lane" features an oboe instead of a piccolo trumpet after the 2nd verse and features the closing horn riff which was previously only available on radio promo copies!  "A Day In the Life" features John mumbling "sugar plumb fairy" and begins as a simple folk song up to its buildup (you can hear Mal Evans counting down the seconds until the alarm clock), then Paul goofs on the vocals and cusses, and it all concludes with the orchestral buildup.  "Good Morning" sounds more rocking than the original.  The instrumental take of "Within You Without You" sounds more ethereal than with George's vocals.  You also get the complete stereo version of "You Know My Name...".  The Magical Mystery Tour outtakes are interesting with Ringo playing a march beat on "Your Mother Should Know".  "I Am the Walrus" and "Hello Goodbye" sound different without orchestration.  The set concludes with "Lady Madonna" and one of the best takes of "Across the Universe".
Also recommended is the hard-to-find "Real Love" CD single with outtakes of "Yellow Submarine" (featuring a spoken intro by Ringo), "Here, There and Everywhere" and "Baby's In Black" (from a 1965 Hollywood Bowl performance).


title: Free as a Bird

text:
"Free as a Bird" is a pleasant reunion between John and the 3 surviving Beatles (I agree with one of the reviewers below who said we're lucky to have that).  The song was allegedly written about the freedom  Lennon felt after his deportation threats and "Lost  Weekend".
On with the rest of the album.  It features interviews  with John, Paul, and Brian Epstein.  We have possibly the 1st Quarreymen  recording: a 1958 scratchy recording of "That'll Be The Day" and  an original "In Spite of All the Danger".  There are more demos  of this sort-"You'll Be Mine" and the instrumental  "Cayenne".  We have Tony Sheridan's fair sounding vocals on  "My Bonnie" before the Beatles take over (with Pete Best, the  original drummer) on "Ain't She Sweet" and "Cry for a  Shadow".  George sings lead on "3 Cool Cats" and Paul sings  lead on "Besame Mucho".  Also included is a flat-tempoed Pete  Best on "Love Me Do" before Ringo replaces Best on "How Do  You Do It" (I prefer theirs better than Gerry and the Pacemakers').  An early (and superior) version of "One After 909" finds its way.  There's a more raucous demo of "Can't Buy Me Love" and the  Beatles experimenting with harmonies on "8 Days..", with an  electric 12-string on "And I Love Her", and with tempos on  "I'll Be Back".  Great songs you never heard from the Beatles  (until now) include "You Know What to Do" (George's 2nd song) and  "Leave My Kitten Alone".  And the Beatles really did sound well  live, as witnessed by the 1963 recordings (most humorous is "Moonlight  Bay" with Morecambre and Wise!)
Also recommended is the CD single  which includes demos of "This Boy", "I Saw Her Standing  There", and the 1967 "Christmas Time (Is Here  Again)".
This is the most historical of the 3 Anthologies!


title: Movie seemed focused more on looks than story...

text:
This long-awaited installment in the Star Wars saga is breathtaking, and a big improvement over Episode 1. But is the movie any good? Well, yes, and no.
Yes, the effects and visuals are breathtaking. The film looks absolutely gorgeous. The battle scenes are stunning. The art deco renderings of Coruscant, the fairy-tale sunshine of Naboo, the cathedral-like Jedi halls, and the rain-soaked water world of the cloners, and their ultra-clean city dwellings, are all brilliant. Art direction for the 21st Century, to be sure. Much of the film is smartly done.
And no, the dialogue is at times childishly written. The transition of Anakin from troubled teen to Dark Side bait is choppy, uneven, and not really believable. The romantic elements are heavy-handed, and poorly acted (by Christensen, not Portman). All of these beautiful moments and scenes, visuals, effects, and other elements were each mindblowing, pristine, gorgeous, and perfectly designed... but the way they are pieced together is not. In short, it seems the story was an afterthought, and a flimsy way to tie all of the wonderful visual elements together.
The original Star Wars broke the barriers of (then) limited special effects, introducing new thinking as well as new techniques and technologies in the field of movie magic. "Clones" is no different, what with the practically seamless digital animation. In fact, the only "fake" moments come when an actor is inserted or morphed into a scene through computer animation (most notably when Mr. Lee is riding his sky-scooter). Other than that minor quibble, the film is a breathtaking collection of jaw-dropping effects work. But let's face it; effects alone a good movie does not make.
I like Ewan McGregor as Kenobi. Some have criticized him for "channeling" Alec Guiness, but out of all the cast, he is the only one who has to merge his performance with the original actor from the series. More power to him, I say. He's doing just fine. I also like Natalie Portman and Ian McDiarmid. Samuel Jackson is a bit moody and broody, but he fills his role suitably.
As for the young Mr. Christensen, he needs to go back to his high school drama club. Sorry, but for every scene where his performance was perfect, there had to be at least two or three where he botched it. In the final analysis, I just couldn't buy Anakin's transformation to the Dark Side. Sure, there are moments when you see it, but then the actor throws what amounts to a teenage temper tantrum, and ruins the moment. His reading of the romantic dialogue is stilted, phony, and forced, especially when placed against Portman's far more believable romantic reading.
Now, I realize fans of the Backstreet Boys or whoever will just love this guy and his looks, and I'm sure that one day he will mature into a fine actor. I really hope this starts to happen before Episode 3, because again, looks alone a good movie actor does not make, just as effects alone cannot carry a movie. I just can't believe Lucas would let some of these scenes with young Mr. Christensen make the cut, and to be fair, the burden here falls more on Lucas than Christensen. As a director, it was his job to bring out the best performance the actor could provide, and that was just not the case with Mr. Christensen's performance.
But that's not all. What the movie really seemed to be missing was a bad guy. In the original trilogy, it was Darth Vader, hands down one of the top five movie villains ever. In "Phantom Menace", it was Darth Maul, again, a brooding force for evil. Here we have a bounty hunter, and Christopher Lee. The bounty hunter is the standard second tier villain in an action movie, which is just fine to provide an obstacle for the heroes until they take on the head bad guy. He and his son (the future Boba Fett), both do a great job of providing this challenge for our heroes. But the head bad guy (Lee) just wasn't all that menacing, and had very little screen time.
Now, there is no question about Christopher Lee's talent (and I like the idea of his being in the Star Wars saga, sort of picking up the torch of his long time friend and colleague Peter Cushing). His character is just fine, but came off more as another second tier villain rather than the big threat (like Vader and Maul). One fun thing is to watch the magnificent Lee, the second most famous Dracula in film history (after Lugosi), playing Count Dooku, complete with black cape and gothic setting. And the sabre duels he has with Skywalker, Kenobi, and Yoda are some serious throwing down (although a bit reminicent of "Empire Strikes Back"). But is he as bad a dude here as Vader or Maul? As much as I love seeing Mr. Lee, I have to say, no, not really.
Some inconsistancies; C3PO and R2-D2 wander all about Tattooine without recognizing it (or Obi Wan), in the classic Star Wars. The same could be said for the future Darth Vader, who orbits the planet in the 1977 film as if it were just any old planet in the Empire instead of the one he grew up on. And lastly, if the technology of the Star Wars universe is so advanced that they can attach a cybernetic device that acts as a fully functional limb, then why can't they reattach the severed limb itself? Heck, we can do that in many cases today with our "primitive" medical science. Oh, well, we can chalk that one up to dramatic licence.
To be honest, I had to see this movie twice before deciding I liked it (most of it, anyway). This is not your father's Star Wars, however, and if that's what you go in expecting, you will be very disappointed. This is a teen pop, Brittany/n'Sync Star Wars, aimed at a decidedly modern, younger audience.
I give it one star for the bad romantic dialogue and the pointless, slapstick abuse of C3PO, five for the visuals, four for a young Kenobi in action, and five for the battle sequences.
Bottom line, "Attack of the Clones" is worth a look.


title: Omg buy this

text: This is a a music project done from the Beatles music. This is an amazing listen. They piece together songs creating twist and turns through out the composition. I love the John Lennon acoustic beginning to straw berry fields.


title: return

text: after the first song it would the CD was defected it would chatter the a high pitch squeal then my CD player would say sorry. it would have cost me more than the CD cost me. DO NOT BUY FROM THIS COMPANY!


title: Bummer of Love.

text:
If the Velvet Underground is often subjected to the cliche of being the dark shadow to the San Francisco hippie scene, then Love deserves its place in history as the band that acted as a double-agent in that den of narcissism and 'peace and free love'. Without question, the history of this album will forever play a part of listening to it, but that is all. Unlike other pieces of music from the summer of 1967, this album sounds not the least bit dated, and remain as ahead of the game today as it was then.
Not the least bit hippie fluff, this is actually as dark as an album can get, since it was begun as, if not a suicide note, then certainly a disintegrating young man's final words, before reaching redemption. This is a difficult album to connect with, certainly, especially the second half. Forced to describe this album in a sentence, I'd say that it could be likened to The Beatles' masterpiece "A Day in the Life" stretched across the length of an entire album. The strange orchestration, existential dread, depression and subversive pop qualities are present all across the board on 'Forever Changes'.
'The Daily Planet' is a prime example of this. It features a drum beat that you can easily picture as the pace of a person walking down the street as part of their everyday routine, or the spiral of the planet spinning around, perpetual and unchanging. Arthur Lee's words "In the morning, we arise/ And start the day/ the same old way", the brief but poignant guitar squalls and overlapping vocals compound the dread.
'The Red Telephone' mocks hippie paranoia with its chanted outro of 'Freedom' and the voice of an old black man saying "All God's children gots ta have dey freedom..." Funny, that. Lee does indulge in paranoia of his own, but a personal kind, of a man retreating into his own mind. "I just don't want you using up my time," he sings, to no-one.
The extensive liner notes do a far better job of detailing the paranoia in these songs than I ever could. Just know that this album is wonderful, and Arthur Lee will always be a closer kindred spirit to experimental pop geniuses Lou Reed and Brian Wilson than to Jerry Garcia. With that in mind, buy this album.


title: Five Stars

text: Just what I wanted.


title: Very funny!

text: Mike Warnke is a great comedian.  This is one of the funniest cds that I have heard, but he also speaks about serious things quite well.  Great cd!  I highly recommend it!


title: It Doesn't Fit the Formats.

text:
I believe that this album has one or two songs on it that wouldn't be suitable for radio without at least a bit of audio trimming.

(I do know that a song from the Girls' second album that gets the "F" word into the second line of a song based on a Buddy Holly riff was played uncut at least once on community radio here in Atlanta...)

But it has two tracks that were more than worth the original cost of the CD by themselves:

"I Spent My Last $10 (on Birth Control and Beer)", the lament of a woman who fell for a guy for the careless, carefree lesbian days of her youth was the song that i heard on community radio several times and that i tracked down the CD for.  It is hilarious.  It is sad.  It is so true, and potentially metaphorically about a lot of things other than sexual politics.*

But "Sweet Jane (with Affection)" a beautifully ethereal seamless blending of Lou Reed's "Sweet Jane" and Joan Armatrading's "With Love and Affection".  This is one of those tracks i can listen to two or three times running before going on. (Another, to give you a possible sense of my tastes so you can decide it it's relevant to you, is Rivhard & Linda Thompson's "Wall of Death")

When Cowboy Junkies' "Trinity Session" first came out, the longbox ("Daddy, what's a longbox?") had a sticker on it that said "This is the most authentic version of 'Sweet Jane' I have ever heard -- Lou Reed".  In a rather more recent interview, Reed remarked that he hadn't heard the Girls' version yet when he said that.

(The original cover art, by the way, features the Girls in a photo-pastiche of Maxfield Parrish; on the right hand side is to be found what may be the only mandocello you will ever see.)

Unfortunately, Rough Trade Records (which was at the time Fairport Convention's US label as well) went out of business in the early 90s.  And, since the Girls' come nowhere near fitting the procrustean formats of Clear Channel (ptui!) and its ilk, their entire catalog is out of print, and thus their CDs are available only for Absolutely Astonishing prices.

But if you ever happen upon a copy of this CD (or the LP, for that matter) in a store that doesn't know what it has and only has it priced in the $20 to $30 range... jump on it.


title: I Loved It!!!

text:
Believe it or not, "Attack of the Clones" is the first "Star Wars" movie that I've ever seen and I must say that I was thrilled. From the opening scenes where Senator Padame Amidala arrives in the capital of the Republic, I was drawn into this science fiction epic.
 There is trouble brewing in the Republic and Senator Amidala has come to the capital to help in peace processes and somebody wants this young beauty dead. Anakin Skywalker and Obi Wan Kenobe have been assigned the task of protecting Padame. After a short stay, Padame is sent back to her home planet and Anakin goes with her so he can protect her. Meanwhile, Obi Wan goes to a planet that is not listed in the archives of planets in the galaxy to search for a bounty hunter that tried to kill Senator Amidala. Dark forces are rising and the Republic is on the brink of war in this exciting film and you'll be entertained throughout the whole entire film.
 The imagary that is in this film is fantastic. The capital city is amazing to look at on screen and it is cool to see all of the spaceships flying in the air. Padame's home planet is beautiful as well. This is the first movie that has ever been shot on digital film and this change in the shooting makes a huge difference in what you see on the screen.
 The plot of this film is great and you will be immersed in a wonderful tale of good versus evil. The action sequences in this movie are great, especially the battle at the end. It is very cool to see a little guy like Yoda fight a in a duel with a lightsaber, as well. Everything about this movie was great. This is a must for any "Star Wars" fan and for novices like me this can be enjoyed without feeling like you have no clue what is going on. As a matter of fact, new people will be able to pick up what's going on. This is a non-stop action science fiction movie that will be enjoyed by any fan of science fiction movies. This is a definitely a must see film.
Happy Viewing!


title: Refreshing.

text: What is the problem with this movie?  Hayden Christionson?  Well is because he's an annoying brat?  Well Anakin is but Hayden?  I don't know.  Maybe, but the writer is Lucas.  And what a good job he did.  This may be different then the classics, but its refrshing to the series.  The stry is about mostly the the beginning of the Empire.  Hayden did a good job as abrat though.  He's excellent.  He actually is a good actor LOL.  But seriously, the special effects are great.  Highly reccomended.


title: My favorite AKB48 song.

text: Kibo Ni Tsuite is my favorite AKB48 song. This was an import so I had to wait a while to get it but the wait was worth it. The other two songs are also right up there in my favorites. It is really hard to have favorites with AKB48. All the songs I'm familiar with are so good. The instrumental versions are good too. I am very pleased with my purchase and can recommend it to anyone who likes AKB48 or other good music. I don't speak or understand Japanese and I STILL like it:) I think it's that good.


title: Monotonous and cacophonous - only for the serious Neotropical birder

text:
The reason this 3 cd set was compiled is really conservationist.  The decline of New World parrots due to deforestation, capture for pets, and use for food and feathers, prompted an attempt to record and therefore familiarize conservationists with detectable and identifiable means to track and record species census counts.

All this is very well for the serious ornithologist, Neotropical birder and scientists.  For the average listener this is an exercise in unpleasant noise, stretched out for three hours and nineteen minutes.  The majority of species receive multiple recordings of perched and flight calls.  The unfortunate thing is that few of these are recognizable as patterned or unique vocalizations.  All noises made by all macaws sound alike to my ears.  All noises made by all parakeets sound alike to me, etc. etc.  Even a trained musical ear can detect almost nothing to distinguish one species from another.  So for the average listener, this becomes an unpleasant assault on the ear by loud screams, chatter and alarm notes - all made by the most unmusical group of feathered friends on the planet.

Here are 140 species - 14 macaws, 56 parakeets, 16 parrotlets and 54 parrots.  The sixteen species of parrotlets are somewhat charming- their quiet chatter is endearing rather than annoying.  There are also a few parrot species whose voices form distinct vocal patterns and/or sounds that do make them recognizable:  Blue-Headed, Blue-Cheeked, Blue-Fronted, Red-Browed, Mealy, Yellow-Lored and especially the Yellow-Crowned.

This is not a set for the average birder. At $39.95 it is a hefty price to pay for discs that can be of little interest to anyone other than the groups identified at the beginning of my second paragraph.


title: Mesmerizing sound tour through the Amazonian Rain Forests

text:
This third volume of the series is the only one I have heard thus far.  It is quite superb sound wise.  99 species are fit onto one cd, lasting about an hour.  Each species is given 30 to 45 seconds to display songs and calls.  There are a few that run a minute and one -Solitary Black Cacique - that runs over two minutes.

There is no narration so one must be glued to one's beautifully produced booklet to follow the species being heard.  This is definitely a cd for the serious birder and one geared solely toward identification, not for those looking for a "natural soundscape" experience.

The majority of songsters in this volume produce loud, clear whistle clusters of differing notes.  Most impressive for me were the four songs of the Oropendola (practically impossible to describe but unearthly delightful), the explosive song of the Screaming Piha, and the stunningly beautiful songs of the five wren species.  The Solitary Black Cacique song is also a stunner.

Highly recommended for the serious birder of South America - and a fascinating curio for any bird fancier who seeks a different and unique aural experience.  Note: Amazon states it has no pricing info on this series (including Voices of Andean Birds, Songs of the Ant Birds, Voices of New World Parrots), but Cornell's web site lists them at $19.95 for a single cd - some sets are of 3 cds and these run $39.95.


title: just when I thought I wouldn't care less ...

text: I figured there'd be no way I'd care as little about the characters in CLONES as I did in MENACE. So much for that. As a comput-o-graphix exhibition I found it amazing, but that novelty fades about 30 minutes in for me, leaving  n o t h i n g  compelling whatsoever. I had STAR WARS when I was a kid : now I have LORD OF THE RINGS, thank god...


title: "....the Force is stronge with this one."

text: In the on going saga known as Star Wars, we are given by far the best edition yet.  This film has all the essential pieces to the story you would expect and leaves us thirsting for the last installment to have all of our questions answered.  Although a great story, the acting could have been better, but it wasn't really all that great in the original three either.  If you want an Oscar winning performance, see something from Tom Hanks or Denzel Washington, if you want to see an installment in one of the best stories ever told with great special effects, go see SW EP II.


title: I love this album

text: I heard slave to the music in Spain summer 1994 and had to get the album.  I loved it.  It has happy unique style to it.  They are a very energetic group with good veats and nice catchy songs that will stick in your head.  I really think they would have been sucessful hear if the radio played  them, i love them.


title: Five Stars

text: Great!


title: An incredible sounding record, but mean-spirited for no good reason

text: For me, Zappa was on a hot streak in the 80s, and "You Are What You Is" is part of the recovery from Joe's Garage and Sheik Yerbouti, which certainly have their moments but I found them weak and self indulgent in their totality. All four sides of this one go down easy, that is to say it's got replay value. It also has some truly mindbending arrangements. But where Frank stumbles a bit is in the lyrical content, and here is not the first time I have noticed. You have to have a sense of humor to listen to Zappa to start with, but I don't find things like "Suicide Chump" amusing. Yeah, it was the 80s, and no one had even heard of Prozac at this point, but it sticks out like a sore thumb by trying to get laughs out of someone's serious disorder.  There's no denying that a monumentally creative genius is at work here, with more music in his head than may have been healthy, hence the double and triple siders that were released during the latter half of his career. Anyway, if you love Frank's music, you really can't go wrong with this one, but you will have to endure the puerile, often unsophisticated humor laid atop it.


title: Stupid soundtrack.

text: Not what I remembered.


title: Great music from a (hopefully) up and coming band

text: Great little band based out of Asheville, NC.  Music is very organic and funky, with clear influences from the worlds of reggae and funk, but touches of the acoustic music tradition of the southern Appalachians.  Production values are about what you would expect from a little indie studio, which is to say, a step or two below major labels, but still decent.  But the important thing is the music, which is quite good.  All three musicians are top-notch.  I saw these guys do an acoustic set in my hometown and they can do it live, too. If you get the chance to catch a live show, you should do it.  Song-wise, my personal favorite tracks are: We Work All Day, Get Right, The Carpenter's Daughter, Florida, and an honorable mention to the leadoff track Satisfied Man.  For the curious, yes, the last song is a cover of the Talking Heads classic.  There is a fairly interesting music video for that one on YouTube.


title: Not what I expected, but ok. Guess I'll ...

text: Not what I expected, but ok. Guess I'll have to listen more, but I thin it was too pricy for what it is.


title: excellent c.d arrived as described, new, fast shipping

text: Love this cd,


title: excellent product

text: I love this cd of easy listening music, cool.


title: Great Listening! You won't stop laughing!

text: We first heard Stuart McLean on a CD of Christmas music.  We had to listen to his story 3 times straight becuase we all laughed so hard and loud we would miss parts of the story. This CD has that story, "Polly Anderson's Christmas Party." In addition, when you listen to the other stories before "Polly" then you will get some of the content of this story.  Every story from beginning to end is a HOOT! We listen to his stories over and over again.  They are just as good the 5th time around as they were the first.  We bought all his other CD's, as well.  Highly recommended!


title: Great mix!

text: Love this collection, some of my favorites included in one cd, perfect!


title: Emblematic of Japanese math rock

text:
Some musical scenes have a style.  Blue Note’s variation of hard bop had a style, and while there were more creative and unique artists within their roster, there were also workman-like, professional and finger-snapping albums that fit within the form.  Choose your genre, and there is an equivalent.  In Japanese math rock, there are the standout bands who craft their own experimental sounds, and there are the groups that work professionally and as consummate instrumentalists and craftsmen within the form.  That is no true disparagement to the latter.  It is a challenging form, and when done right, as compelling in its way as a well done Blue Note hard bop album.  Clean Of Core is not an experimental math rock group stretching the form nor crafting it in the manner of LITE, or some similar group, but they make no mistakes, craft interesting pieces, and play with aplomb.  That is enough for an interesting album, just as a Blue Note roster album may not necessarily be a top tier Horace Silver album, but may bring a smile to the face of a jazz fan.

There is not all that much on Spectacle that fans of the genre will not have heard before, either in the instrumental approach, or compositional approach.  It all feels quite familiar, like a well chosen opening act that deserves exposure.  The group plays with vitality, and will win over the audience.  Is it the essential album of the genre?  No, but it does not need to be.  Well played guitars, interesting drum work, brain-twisting rhythmic shifts, and there’s a math rock album, well within the challenging requirements that Japan’s high standards have created.


title: A math rock group records a prog-rock album

text: Listeners must respect the courage required for bands to make a dramatically different kind of album.  In 2008, Japan’s about tess released beautiful, which had some importantly unique characteristics, but still fit within the framework of their fellow countrymen’s variation of math rock.  Harder, louder, sure, but still essentially Japanese math rock.  2010’s Song Of The Bird is an altogether different kind of album.  The 75 minute, four-part suite is less a math rock album than a prog-rock, sprawling piece which draws occasionally on their base, but similarly post-rock, prog, and several other subgenres in order to construct a series of pieces that move more like some ambitious 1970s album project than the more typical 30 minute set of five minute or so brain twisters of shifting time signatures.  To be sure, none of these compositions remain at the same time or rhythm, but rather than the kinds of hairpin turns that are the bread and butter of the genre, the transitions the group attempts are more gradual and organic, keeping more in the spirit of epic-sounding prog rock projects.  Does everything have the same kind of coherence as a Fripp project, or choose your favorite?  That would be debatable, but it is impressive how coherent the four-part suite is, moving swiftly but organically with yes, some of the bombast of prog, but math rock is hardly a minimalist subgenre anyway.  Taken as a whole, one should listen not merely to how well the project holds together, but how impressive it is that the group could put it together, having previously worked in such a different form.  Fans of an album like beautiful will still hear through-lines, and it is still clearly more within the sound of either the group’s previous work, or similar efforts by groups like mudy on the sakuban than, say, Pink Floyd, or even Rush, but yes, a math rock group managed to record a four-part prog rock suite.  It worked.


title: Does humor belong in math rock?

text: Mudy on the sakuban’s 2011 album, MUDY IN SQUALL, fits comfortably within a discography that is just unique enough that those interested in math rock as a form should make sure to hear some of their music.  Japan’s math rock has a few consistent elements, which are not uniformly shared, but there are some common sounds, as develop within any musical scene, just as New Orleans jazz had a sound distinct from what came out of New York.  While there was variation within, each location develops a sound as artists interact.  Japan’s math rock artists have coalesced around certain generally clean tones and linear (to a point) phrasings, to the degree that shifting time and rhythm permit, exemplified by groups like toe.  One can understand groups by how they distinguish themselves from the core elements of the sound, and mudy on the sakuban has a multiple guitar approach that can be aggressive at times, but on MUDY IN SQUALL, they manage a trick that few can master in a genre that is often more about hyperintellectualism.  There is humor here.  It’s funny.  Of course, this is instrumental music, so the jokes, such as they are, have a different form than those from a witty songwriter, but there is a playfulness to the music here, which is not merely a kind of bounciness, but rather, making the shifts intrinsic to math rock sound more like the group is goofing off than showing off.  There is something refreshing about that.  Sure, they could chart out some complex piece that forces the drummer to engage in some bizarre counting ritual in his head, and then the guitarists would have to twist their brains into knots to follow, and there are plenty of groups that do so, in Japan, and in America, and elsewhere, but something can go missing.  It was that thing that Frank Zappa had, that King Crimson had, that the Rock In Opposition bands often had.  A willingness to let loose a bit, and just have some fun.  This one is fun.  Sure, you can listen and play the counting game, if you would like, or you can chuckle along at the intentionally bizarre and humorous choices the group makes in the shifts.  One is a rarer opportunity.


title: Lesser sound quality, no liner notes, but maybe the only way to get some of this

text:
As a clarification, this is a review of the compilation itself rather than the music.  This three disc set consists of the complete studio recordings of Etron Fou Leloublan.  This is Rock In Opposition on the stranger side, which is saying something.  Abstract jazz, beat/spoken word poetry, experimental rock, and a twisted sense of humor.  When considering this set, be aware of several things.  Depending on the price point, it may be the most efficient, or even only way to get some of Etron Fou Leloublan’s albums.  That said, consider some warnings.

First, the sound quality.  If you compare the sound on these discs to the somewhat more widely available cds for, for example, Les Poumons Gonfles, the sound quality is inferior on this set.  The difference is quite noticeable.  It is not that the sound quality is horrendous, nor that they just took some poor quality tapes and transferred them with no mastering, but it is a clear difference.  If you have the cd for Les Poumons Gonfles, don’t give that up upon purchasing this set.

Next, there are no liner notes.  If you have any other physical media from Etron Fou Leloublan, you have something.  Again, don’t give that up, because those liner notes are good to keep.

These two factors should also influence your purchase point.

Finally, this probably won’t matter, since most people just import music to their computers at this point, but since the set consists of three discs with five albums, two of the albums have breaks between discs.  That’s basically irrelevant for most people, though.

Should you get it, even if you already have some of the more available recordings by the band?  Depending on the price, yes.  Don’t pay an exorbitant amount, and if you have the later release of Les Poumons Gonfles, it has better sound quality, but this might be your best opportunity to get a couple of the group’s albums, depending on market prices, even knowing the lesser sound quality.


title: A fitting final studio album.  RIO with funk?

text:
Etron Fou Leloublan took a strange turn with their penultimate album in 1984, but with 1985’s Face Aux Elements Dechaines, they neither returned to the sound that they refined for their most renowned album— Les Poumons Gonfles— but nor did they craft something as muddled as the preceding album.  In a fitting final studio album, the group ended their recorded output (except for a few stray live recordings) with something totally different, yet quite fulfilling.

Face retains the core elements of the group’s sound, from the abstract jazz and spoken word to the barely comprehensible rock, but to that, adds something strangely timely.  Something about the album’s predecessor suggested that the group was listening to sounds around them, and with this 1985 album, the group actually manages to sound almost funk-like.  The increased emphasis on bass lines, which are more linear and soulful than the abstract horns creates that funk, put in tension with the more “standard” elements of Etron Fou Leloublan’s style.  Whether it is accommodating, experimental, or satirical is difficult to tell, and almost irrelevant, particularly from the vantage point decades later because at the end of the day, the only question that matters is this.  Is the music good?  Yes.  In fact, the funk bass lines add even more of a tinge of fun to the music, and while no one would accuse Etron Fou Leloublan of playing music for mass appeal, it does mean that there is something that a few more people might be able to latch onto, before the weirder elements of the sound raise eyebrows.

This is still RIO to its core, but perhaps just more playful, it the way of Zappa incorporating funk, or a straight blues guitar solo into an otherwise avant-garde piece.  It is ultimately just some gravy, and all the better for it.  A fine album to be the conclusion to Etron Fou Leloublan’s studio output.


title: Worth it for a 25 minute live set

text: This cd looks very much like it is merely a single, containing one track from tricot’s 2013 release, THE.  Indeed, there are technically two tracks, the first of which is 99.974, which appears on that album.  However, the second track is not one track, but rather, a 25 minute live set.  That live set makes the disc well worth purchasing for tricot fans, and in fact, it is markedly different from the band’s studio releases, as can often be the case with live albums.  The group’s studio work is compelling as a strange combination of math rock and not conventional punk (from which math rock somehow sprang) but a kind of pop-punk that could otherwise be insipid, but somehow works for them.  One of those bands that should not work, but does.  The live set, though, has much less of the sheen that the studio work does, and that’s not necessarily intrinsically better, but the ragged quality of the playing will appeal to fans of the original sounds of American math rock, from say, Don Caballero.  That is not to say that their playing ever becomes sloppy, but without the studio polish, and with the energy of a live crowd, the band does put more of a sneer into the music that gives it a bit more walking the edge quality.  One can hear it in several ways, then.  As another aspect of tricot, perhaps a better one, for those put off by the pop sheen of their studio work, or perhaps as rough draft, given the ragged, live show from a decade prior to where they are now.  At no point were they playing in the style of toe or LITE, but neither quite Ling Tosite Sigure, to think of that as something of a spectrum or axis.  That pop-ish quality was sort of their unique thing, set against the oddity of the genre, but without that, what are they?  Strange, sure, but worth hearing.


title: Ideas from the best kids in the art school class.  Who needs coherence?

text:
At some level, Etron Fou Leloublan’s 1976 debut album has the sound and feel of a group of art school kids throwing things at the wall to see what sticks, with the hope that a clearer vision will come about in the future, and to be sure, the Rock In Opposition group’s sound here is hardly one of coherence, yet a fuller picture of what the group did throughout their recording career reveals that throwing things at the wall is largely what they did, with the glory and perhaps nerve being the shifts between when it all comes together, falls apart, and comes together again.  The critique is not a critique, so much as just the basic observation of what the group did, combining a very French concept of avant-garde jazz with beatnik sensibilities and then surprising moments when everyone gets on the same jazz-fusion-prog wavelength to produce something that syncs for just a moment before breaking apart into a kind of chaos that just hints at underlying ideas striving to break through.  Yes, that is exactly what it would be if a bunch of art school kids who haven’t figured out what they want to do just jammed without a plan and recorded, but what if they were also the best of the class?  That is Etron Fou Leloublan, and even on Batelages, amid the near chaos of jumping from idea to idea without transition, one cannot help but listen closely to find the pattern that must, that just must be there.

Is this the great, lost masterpiece of avant-garde rock?  No, nor is it the best of Rock In Opposition, and truthfully, Etron Fou Leloublan did raise the bar from here, yet there is real excitement and danger in this kind of wild exploration, and this is why the banded needed to be at the 1978 festival.


title: Of interest to fans of Jonas Hellborg and Bill Laswell

text:
Niels and the New York Street Percussionists may sound like a proper band, but this is instead a strange project organized by Jonas Hellborg, as explained by the rather sparse liner notes, and one will notice that Hellborg’s name is merely one amid several more prominent names on the cover art.  Who, after all, is Niels?  As the liner notes explain, Hellborg was wandering in New York, and heard some percussion, around which he organized this album with some fellow Laswell collaborators, and Niels Jensen, a Swedish vocalist.  That is the album.  Niels Jensen is an unusual vocalist, as much a growling poet as anything else, and the music combines electronics and the subtle instrumentation of the collaborators, like Hellborg, Skopelitis, Laswell and others for something that has a distinctive aesthetic, if less of a harmonic or rhythmic vision.  The liner notes, then, truly make sense of the project.  It came together as Jonas attempted to capture lightning in a bottle, and whatever the moment was, he captured something, but it would be a stretch to say that it rises to the highest peaks of the careers of the principals, whatever one can say in limited form about the more mysterious Niels Jensen.

The recording date of 1990 is also difficult to ignore.  Many recording periods have distinctive sounds, styles and production techniques, and those are more obvious with the inclusion of electronics on the album.  That is merely part of the package, and one either takes it or leaves it, keeping in mind that those elements play against Niels’s strange voice, and the creepy instrumental background.  That said, do remember that this is not a Laswell album proper, nor a Jonas Hellborg album, much less a Skopelitis album or a Brotzmann or Worrell album.  It is a play on sound.  Good and interesting, but interesting more as an experiment than anything else.  Of course, that’s right up the alley of most Laswell fans anyway.


title: A more experimental turn

text: Not to be confused with Muddy World, mudy on the sakuban plays a related style of instrumental math rock, drawing on a range of styles, although their albums— short though they are— can veer toward a bit more wildness.  The present album, unlike Muddy World, really cranks up the chaos almost to the level of a Tatsuya Yoshida project like Korekyojinn.  Not quite, but that band becomes almost a touchstone for the present EP in the extent to which the group takes some almost familiar tropes, then adds in wild intervals, dissonant chords and interactions between the three guitars (in contrast with the trio arrangement of Korekyojinn), and generally speaking, a strange brew of confrontational playing around concepts that could almost seem familiar if the group didn’t twist them into funhouse mirror versions of themselves.  One can hear an almost cheesy 70s rock beat, twisted into dissonant chords and wild, contrasting rhythms.  Then the sounds get twisted around in weird and subtle manipulations.  This is a creative and boundary pushing effort.  mudy on the sakuban’s other efforts are enjoyable in a much more friendly manner, combining jazzy sounds with math rock in the manner of Muddy World, but what Zyacalanda shows is that the group can push the music into more of an experimental territory and still make it fascinating.  Truly, this is among the more impressive groups to emerge from the country’s scene, not only for the consistency of their music, but for their ability to stretch beyond a core sound into something more experimental and still thrilling.


title: A good starting place for tricot

text:
Dating this particular EP is slightly difficult, but several sources indicate that it was originally recorded and released in 2011, and heard in that light, one gains a different respect for what Japanese progressive rock group, tricot, has done here.  tricot have established themselves in Japan’s crowded math rock scene by combining the angular melodies and shifting times of the subgenre with the strange sheen of an almost pop-punk, distinguishable from the more aggressively punk sounds that characterize the roots of the style, and even fellow Japanese groups like Ling Tosite Sigure.  It is a thing that should not work, but does, relying on a contrast to build tension and dissonance.  That kind of thing requires time and practice to develop.  Considering a 2011 release date, which seems to be the consensus, this EP would would actually be something like a rough draft, and as such, one can take it as a set of ideas that would develop into albums like THE, AND or THREE, which are more conceptually developed, building the tension between the aggression, angularity and sheen.

The present EP often sounds more like hard rock with just a bit of an odd rhythm.  Something off kilter.  That’s enough to draw the listener in before they really start playing with things and leaning toward math rock, but tricot has not yet developed a sound here.  They are outstanding musicians, capable of playing with the kind of precision belied by the punk-ish rhythms, but at this point, they have not yet solidified a direction.  Listening if you know where they have gone, then, is different than if one listens before getting to THE or AND.  If you can start here, that would be best.  Follow their journey, listen to the progression of ideas, the development of the tension between the angularity and the sheen, and hear how tricot found themselves.


title: Unpredictable, not indecisive

text: Not to be confused with Muddy World, mudy on the sakuban recorded a strange and almost indecisive EP with VOI.  mudy is among the more eclectic of Japan’s many instrumental math rock groups, and in that eclecticism, they shift not only time and rhythm within a composition, but style and mood.  Even the strangest groups within the genre tend to coalesce around a specific sound, whether that sound comes from unique instrumentation— such as JYOCHO’s incorporation of the flute, or mouse on the keys and the centering of the keyboard— or a specific stylistic innovation, like jizue’s use of fusion improvisation.  Groups like toe and LITE distilled and then experimented with the core sounds, but within any specific composition, one gets a specific set of coherent ideas.  mudy on the sakuban is throwing that away on VOI.  Apropos of the name, and as on pavilion, there is an aesthetic similarity to Muddy World, yet the aesthetic just keeps shifting.  Sometimes hard rock in the tradition of Happy Family, sometimes more psychedelic, sometimes jazzy, and all of those shifts along with the angularity and time shifts of the math rock genre.  It is as though mudy on the sakuban cannot decide what they want to play, yet there is enough semblance of intentionality that this would not be a likely explanation.  Rather, the all too brief EP simply comes across as one surprise after another, harder than most other bands in the style, with enough jazzy compositional tricks to keep the music theorists happy, and gloriously unpredictable.  In a genre that can be as prone to monotony as any other, that counts for a lot.


title: Somewhere off to the side

text:
Mudy on the sakuban has carved an interesting niche in Japan’s progressive rock scene.  There is a point at which one questions whether one is listening to math rock, post rock, or something else, and mudy on the sakuban plays around somewhere in this space, and in such a crowded field, that is to their benefit.  As one listens to pavilion, one might especially wonder whether there is any connection between mudy on the sakuban and that great band which released only one album, Muddy World.  In fact, there is not, although the name is not the only point of similarity.  There are hints of familiarity running throughout the music, even if mudy on the sakuban plays a style much more connected to punk-inflected post rock in a Japanese progressive style than anything else.

Surprisingly, as one counts out the meter, one can find 4/4 rearing its head, although as fans of modern music have come to learn, complex polyrhythms can be used to wrest interesting sounds out of 4/4, and the group exploits similar techniques, even if it is easier to hear the 4/4 than on some groups’ more abstruse efforts.  Nevertheless, the math rock elements, as one hears them, come more in the form of playing with tempo and angular melodies rather than rhythmic shifts or complex meters.  Moreover, the punk-ish energy is almost reminiscent of Yosowayoso in places, if not as wild.  If nothing else, there is more recklessness than tricot or Ling Tosite Sigure, and their incorporation of punk into math rock, while still retaining more form than a Tatsuya Yoshida project like Ruins or Korekyojinn, sets them apart.

In many ways, then, the closest reference point would be someone like Marnie Stern, even if the basic aesthetic is closer to Japanese progressive rock than the U.S.  At first blush, one listening to pavilion will hear it as LITE, or a similar group.  The layers, though, peel away to reveal, in some ways less, and in some ways, more.  Less complex meters, less precision, but more wild, reckless energy.

That is its own charm.


title: Quite good, but there isn't a lot here for the devoted fan

text:
Tricot’s 2016 EP, KABUKU has a bit of material that fans will want, but one should be warned that with only about 20 minutes of material, one of the songs actually appears on the following year’s Three album, leaving even less material that fans may not have.  Moreover, the two-minute opener is more of a sonic lead-in than an actual piece.  In other words, for fans of the band who already have Three, there is not a lot here.  That said, what is here is quite good, and in keeping with what one comes to expect from this unusual group.

Tricot has found a way to blend math rock with not even just punk, which somehow sits at the root of the genre, but strangely even a kind of pop-punk aesthetic, and they do so without it sounding offputting.  Instead, they make it work by playing staccato rhythms in precision against sudden shifts such that even if any one moment might sound almost like a gimmicky pop-punk thing, the radical shifts from moment to moment would make the music unpalatable to much of the pop-punk audience.  All things considered, one of the stranger mixes in music.  Precision, where precision shouldn’t be, or radical shifts where radical shifts shouldn’t be, or something like that.

The few minutes of new and original material on this EP are exactly what tricot excels at playing.  Understated virtuosity based on rhythmic manipulation, styles that shouldn’t work together but do, and a surprise around every turn.  The only real question will be the price.  The first track is just a sonic lead-in, and the second also appears on Three.  How much are three tracks worth?  To devoted fans, this is important, but that’s the trick, isn’t it?  Still, this is good music.


title: No mere sketchbook

text:
Among the world of hotshot acoustic guitar players, it helps to have a gimmick.  There are the slap-and-tap players, the frailers, the transcription and adaptation players, and so forth.  Harvey Reid somehow slips through cracks, arguably by being so completely free of gimmickry, and just playing in whatever style suits his fancy.  A true troubadour, willing to borrow from folk, blues, Celtic, old-time, or whatever, as long as it sounds good and has heart.  And truly, he is a masterful player, as long as one isn’t looking for the fastest pick in all the land.  Taste and elegance.  His albums bounce around, but on Solo Guitar Sketchbook, one hears a focus on the guitar itself, to important effect, and calling attention to the strangeness of the observation that Reid does seem to be in his own category, outside the acoustic guitar picking world.

Stylistically, Reid is all over the place, even on this Sketchbook of an album.  Over the course of 71 minutes, Reid borrows significantly from Celtic and British folk in the Renbourn/Pentangle tradition, some jazz including a fascinatingly ornate rendition of Summertime, plenty of bluegrass and old-time, and even some hints of classical, on steel string.  There is so much here, stylistically, that a listener can feel almost deluged.  On many albums, Reid will pick a theme, so to speak.  Consider Steel Drivin’ Man, which is a bit bluesier, with some old-time hints.  In some ways, genre-themed albums are easier mainly because listeners are accustomed to them.  What is a listener to make of an album that is tied together merely by Reid’s vision and elegance as a picker?  Mainly, that this is just beautiful music, and music that makes one think about the place of Harvey Reid in the acoustic guitar pantheon.  Are there faster pickers?  Cleaner pickers?  Perhaps, but Harvey is so expansive, creative and tasteful that one cannot help but marvel at the range and vision of this mere sketchbook.


title: Explorations in math rock and fusion

text:
Jizue’s first album, released in 2010, put them on a path to be one of the more interesting groups on Japan’s progressive rock scene.  Not quite fusion, not quite math rock, but somewhere in between with a mix that makes sense.  The idea itself is one that is logical, and surprisingly rare.  Math rock is built upon unusual time signatures and rhythms, which shift within a composition in unexpected ways, along with angular melodies.  These are also hallmarks of some modern jazz, so why not combine them?  Math rock tends to be orchestrated rather than improvised, but there is no law that says it must be.  Jizue improvises in ways that recall math rock and fusion, building piano into the group, itself creating an unusual dynamic.  While mouse on the keys uses the piano as its central lead instrument, jizue stumbled on the idea of playing the piano against the guitar, also common in jazz.  Recalling, too, JYOCHO’s combination of guitar and flute, the use of unusual instrumentation for the form allows the group to build a distinct sound.

From here, the group would branch off and experiment quite successfully.  Not only do they vary their sound, but the core ideas are so distinct that even the comparisons made here to groups like mouse on the keys and JYOCHO do not do the group justice because none of them sound like each other.  That fully justifies the group’s work.

Bookshelf remains, though, something like a fascinating rough draft, brimming with ideas that the group is trying to figure out how to implement.  They know they are onto something, and in fact, they are.  Compositionally, organizationally, everything is starting to come together.  That excitement is really the strongest thing about the album.  It feels almost incoherent in the combination of fusion and math rock, but that incoherence is both a lack of full commitment as the group finds solutions to difficult problems, and their own process of discovery, which is also a kind of exploratory joy.  It is not a bad thing, when a group is blazing a trail, albeit a niche trail.  The group is moving almost recklessly from piece to piece, and moment to moment asking, where do we go next?  They don’t know, and that’s half the fun.  And for a form that is often so orderly, this uncertainty of discovery adds excitement, of a different form than the wild chaos of a Tatsuya Yoshida project like Ruins, or Yosowayoso, or some such group.

Is this the most fully realized Jizue album?  No, but that’s the point.  It is the path to discovery.


title: Unique and different Japanese math rock

text:
One of the more unfortunate things about music scenes that develop a sound is that sometimes one finds a band that manages to break out of the pattern, forge a path, and the band leaves little in the way of recorded legacy or information.  This has happened on several occasions with Japan’s math rock scene, which has a few truly original leading lights, but also, if one is honest, some tropes that can become worn.  Clean guitars that sound a little too linear for a subgenre that is supposed to be built upon angularity, if not done well, although there is so much great music to be found.  Then there are the groups that release one album and that’s it.  Consider Muddy World, whose sole release, Finery of the Storm, is a high point in the genre, partly for sounding like no one else.  Here, consider Sayonaraitsuka, or however one chooses to transliterate the name into Latin-based characters.  The Fragments of Resurrection has many of the core elements one will find on releases from bands like toe and LITE, which sort of define the nation’s take on the genre, yet rather than either linearity in defiance of the concept of math rock, or mere angularity in strict adherence to the form, the band casts about, seeking.  Some of the more successful math rock groups in Japan draw on jazz or post-rock, like jizue, JYOCHO or mouse on the keys, but few draw on a kind of RIO experimentalism that the more wild groups do, like those associated with Tatsuya Yoshida, who draws from RIO, zeuhl, and anything else that is just raw chaos.

The Fragments of Resurrection is not chaos, to be sure.  The harmonic structures, rhythmic and time changes are all logical, if strange, yet the band stretches.  Some chord changes are unusual, and similarly, some rhythmic shifts are more surprising.  Sayonaraitsuka draw their sound from unexpected shifts that will catch even jaded math rock listeners as out of nowhere.  Wild and random?  No.  This is not Ruins, yet the sounds and structures are so different from toe, LITE and the others that one thinks of Muddy World, simply because Sayonaraitsuka is so different.

And yet like that band, the present band just does not have much out there, and unfortunately, even finding information is difficult because the band’s name, with a few spellings in transliteration, shares the name of a more popular work in Japanese fiction.  So it is that a few of the more interesting experiments extending core sounds in Japanese math rock leave little in the way of recorded legacy.


title: This is how you use a flute in rock

text:
JYOCHO has a distinctive sound.  Whatever one thinks of the arrangement, one must give them that.  The place of the flute in rock music is fraught for many, given the controversy of Jethro Tull, but the flute is a misunderstood instrument, and properly placed, it adds balance.  Consider jazz greats, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, or Yusef Lateef, or more recently, Nicole Mitchell.  Yet in rock?  As always, it depends.  On this, JYOCHO’s first album, the group takes what would otherwise be a relatively standard sound for Japanese math rock and adds a flute.  The vocals are similarly pretty, and the flute and vocals play against the shifting, knotty times of math rock, along with the rapid guitars in order to create a tension that belies the tone of the flute, and therein lies the trick that JYOCHO uses.  It has two effects.  First, as a trick of arrangement, it makes them sound like no other, even though merely removing the flute would make them sound like nearly every other Japanese math rock band.  Second, the contrast between the dulcet tone of the flute and the guitar and structure build a kind of tension that is completely unique to the sound of JYOCHO, making the flute far more than just a gimmick, and integral to the musical appeal.  Roland Kirk managed something similar, when he would play blues on a flute, and Nicole Mitchell has been learning from how he worked, incorporating that with even some of Sun Ra’s ideas, but it is all about that tension.  Without it, the flute is a very pretty instrument, which can be appealing if that is the goal, but if that isn’t the goal, then one must arrange it for the tension.  That’s harder.  JYOCHO is doing precisely that.  Fascinating, and it means that even when they shift to something more acoustic, the knotted structures still create tension with the tones.

There is a place for gritty, down in the mud blues, or whatever other genre one takes for the mess of it.  There is similarly a place for music that is just purely elegant.  Yet so much can be mined from tension, and that’s where bands like JYOCHO thrive.  It’s funny how sometimes a simple trick of arrangement is all it takes, but they figured it out quickly.


title: The band's harder side

text:
When a band strives to define a signature sound, looking for distinctions among its albums is sometimes a matter of degrees.  This particular album by Japanese math rock group, Ling Tosite Sigure is not a particularly dramatic departure from anything that TK and group recorded, yet that is not to say that it is merely one among its discography.  The Japanese math rock scene is sufficiently crowded, strangely enough, that it can be difficult for any particular group to define a sound, and thus, it becomes praiseworthy when a group does.  Ling Tosite Sigure, even if their sound may not be to everyone’s taste, has a sound.  Striving to combine something like a punk-pop aesthetic reminiscent of tricot with breathy vocals distinctive of the general contours of the origin, along with more crunching guitar lines than either tricot or many of the more toe/LITE-influenced groups, Ling Tosite Sigure does not really sound like anyone else.  The breathy vocals may not be what the instrumental audience prefers, the instrumentals may not be what the tricot side prefers, but this is Ling Tosite Sigure.  It is what they do, yet at the end of the day, what remains is still the angularity and strangeness of time and rhythm upon which math rock relies.

Yet that is merely to describe a general sound.  What makes the present album different?  The general approach of the band has been a sort of splitting-the-difference approach, finding some aggression here, some pop appeal there (especially in the vocals), and mixing it all up in a way that could seem haphazard if one did not pay close attention.  The present album steers the sound toward harder territory.  That is not necessarily to say the more noise-punk origins of math rock, but the album throughout, despite a few moments of quiet melodicism, steers toward something more brutal than some of Ling Tosite Sigure’s previous work.  The album is not one of clean, elegant, linear guitar progressions, nor of pretty tones, and while the vocals alternate between breathy and something more like screaming, the general tenor of the album is something much harder than one gets normally this side of a Tatsuya Yoshida project.  Which is not to say that TK is going the way of Ruins, or any such band, nor even Korekyojinn, but perhaps closer to Don Caballero than Covet or Chon.

That means the album may turn away some Ling Tosite Sigure fans, but pull in a few others, keeping in mind that the differences are a matter of degrees, rather than kind.  The band is still identifiably the same band.  Just harder.  Take that for what it’s worth.


title: Like a different band, with Adam Jones

text:
Having participated in the creation of a sound with albums like Oceanic, it would not be fair to expect ISIS to have merely continued treading over the same ground.  At least if a band is going to move forward, they should find useful directions, and as Wavering Radiant demonstrated, ISIS was going to do that, and it may be noted by way of explanation the distinction between the sounds can be expected by the presence of Adam Jones.

Where Oceanic helped to set a template for groups who would emphasize dynamism over melodicism, and crunching sounds over anything like conventional lead lines, it does not take long into 2009’s Wavering Radiant before a listener hears the kinds of odd rhythms more closely associated with either math rock or djent, or at least the prog side of the genre, and therein one hears why it may make sense to hear Adam Jones as a guest artist.  If any guitarist makes sense as a guest artist on an album emphasizing tonal exploration with some odd rhythms and time signatures, it would be Jones, although his primary band’s over the top prog explorations are not what one hears here.  Nevertheless, the version of ISIS one hears on Wavering Radiant is a different band, in many ways, from the band on Oceanic.  They may not be building an album around the Fibonacci sequence, but they are exploring more complex structures rather than simply trying to find a way to evoke a sense of grandeur without pretense.

In some related forms, a listener is tempted to be drawn into counting out the whole piece, perhaps to the point of distraction, or moving between the chord changes as though it were a jazz composition.  That is still not the case on Wavering Radiant, although the group had moved in a more ambitious direction structurally.  Whether or not that constituted ambition in an artistic sense is another matter.  In many ways, it was risky.  Minimalist forms require balance, and the group had managed to balance the forward movement of their compositions with the persistent tonal qualities.  To push in more of a prog direction, as Wavering Radiant did, risked throwing off something of the essential quality.  Yet to backtrack from here— one may easily find the group through Adam Jones, whose band perhaps has a larger audience— one may get a sense of the underlying concept with which ISIS worked, hearing the incorporated larger ideas, then move back in time to an album like Oceanic, in its rawer form, so to speak, and find an appreciation.  It all depends on one’s perspective.  That’s not to say that Wavering Radiant sounds anything like 10,000 Days, released three years earlier, and far more elaborate and expansive (predictably) but ISIS’s willingness to move beyond their emphasis on simple structures for evocative purposes on Oceanic towards something more mathematical here works as a gateway in any direction.

Is it a better album?  A lesser album?  It is different, to be heard differently.  The band did not sit still.  They did not play what came before them, and did not play precisely the same way throughout, and all of that is noteworthy.  Wavering Radiant is a fascinating album, and even if Jones did not play on it, one would expect him to have appreciated it.


title: Sudanese-centered, with blues, jazz, funk and Afrobeat

text:
Western listeners of African music have mostly been exposed to the sounds of a few countries.  Thanks to its direct connection to the blues, Mali and a few adjacent countries have often been the focus of attention, and these days, desert blues is big.  South Africa got its spotlight thanks to that popular 1980s album from a 60s folkie, although there is far more to explore.  East Africa, though, has a wide variety of musical traditions that do not receive nearly as much attention.  Tarig Abubakar moved from Sudan to Canada, and formed the Afronubians to play a set of styles rooted in Eastern African styles, but more diverse than merely traditional styles.  His band consisted of artists who moved to Canada from various African countries, and that allowed Abubakar to lead a group that blended styles in a way that centered around Sudanese, while still showcasing the interconnections as well as how African music had, obviously, been influenced by rock, funk and jazz in the 20th century.  One hears the Ethiopian/reggae connection, the central African/funk connection (see: Fela Kuti and Afrobeat more generally), bits of blues guitar, creative horn and percussion arrangements, and styles that will feel vaguely familiar to those who listen to styles from across Africa without necessarily being able to place any particular rhythm or melody.  The band is top notch, and includes participants from the African Guitar Summit as well— Pa Joe and Adam Solomon, both of whom are strong instrumentalists, although this is not a guitar-led group.  Rather, one hears horns, guitars, percussion and vocals trade lines as Abubakar allows the group to travel from Sudan to Kenya to Ethiopia to Mali, Guinea and further.  Sudan, though, is at the center, and it is fascinating to hear Abubakar explain to the crowd on these live performances how each country treats the styles, and the relationships between them.  All around, interesting and valuable recordings.

Further listening:  Ndala Kasheba, from Tanzania.


title: Finding balance between free jazz and funk (through Africa)

text:
For whatever reason, the front cover art for this album attributes the music to “Shannon Jackson.”  To be clear, it is Ronald Shannon Jackson, and it is a proper “Decoding Society” album.  The reverse artwork attributes the music to “Shannon Jackson and the Decoding Society.”  Attribution aside, this is as fine an album as Jackson recorded with the group, as a live set at the Caravan of Dreams.  The liner notes, written by Jackson, explain that the rhythmic origins come from his travels through Africa.  It is interesting to note this, and one may consider listening either independently of, or with this knowledge.  The music itself is particularly balanced, and perhaps Jackson’s thinking explains the balance.  The two primary elements of Jackson’s music were generally funk and free jazz, with any particular album veering more in one direction or another.  Any individual fan’s taste, then, will determine favorites.  When Colors Play is a balanced album, drawing out the connections between these two predominant influences in a particularly effective way, difficult task that this is.

Might Jackson’s African explorations explain the balance?  Perhaps, being the common source of African-American music, by definition.  Jackson was exploring the music that provided common sources, and in so doing, probably serendipitously, wound up balancing the funk with the free jazz in a manner that was as seamless as anything else he recorded.

After all, beyond that, how prominent were the African rhythms?  Compared, say, to Kahil El’Zabar and his many projects, from the Ritual Trio to the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble?  Even on this intentionally African-inspired project, Jackson is playing a distinctively African-American style, with an emphasis on the American part of that hyphenation for the purposes of this taxonomy.  El’Zabar’s more global, and especially Afrocentric view of jazz presents a contrast.  This is not to say that one cannot detect the influence of Jackson’s travels upon close listen, but it may require a bit more attention, in contrast with the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble.

Here, Jackson’s observations provide a center, a core around which the Decoding Society can find a balance, and in the end, play a particularly satisfying set.  It should go without saying that Jackson keeps everyone on point, Zane Massey in particular.  One might have appreciated Vernon Reid, in 1986, but both Cary Denigris and Masujaa impress on guitar.  A favorite Jackson recording?  Who could choose such a thing?  A balanced Jackson recording, and that is a fine thing.


title: Just ragged enough

text:
Tricot is a bit of an oddity among Japanese math rock bands, and an oddity generally.  They have a combination of shifting rhythms and time characteristic of math rock, along with a bit of punk, but more of the pop-punk occasionally popular, which risks a kind of bubblegum aesthetic, which the group somehow, amazingly, manages to avoid.  More than anything else, that is what astonishes about the group.  As is often the case with the Japanese math rock groups, tricot’s albums can be hard to acquire if you want the physical media in the US, with 3 being the most widely available.  A N D, released in 2015, and two years before that album, has many of the characteristics of 3, but some notable differences.  It is considerably more ragged and less polished, which is to the benefit of the music.

The greatest challenge tricot faces is the risk of bubblegum, and the more elements of raggedness they can include, or put another way, the less sheen they put on the finished product, the more they reduce the risk that the music comes across in any way bubblegum.  3, for all the math rock oddity of angularity, could be heard that way.  Its charm, in many ways, came from that contrast, and it is a very good listen, yet if there is anything to recommend A N D above that 2017 album, it is that the slightly lower level of polish reduces the bubblegum component of the recording, allowing the more aggressive elements of the songs, and the angularity of the math rock compositions to play more strongly against the vocals, which cannot help but come across as a bit more saccharine.  And thus the tension works even more to the benefit of the group.  The rawness, the angularity, and the contrast with the vocals.  Fascinating.  Strong instrumental work, well contained within the framework of the compositions so as not to be flashy, and allowing the tension within the music to be the star.

It should also be noted that if you get the two disc version, you get a bonus track by an artist who has a style notably similar to tricot.  Typing it into the review is difficult because her name uses Japanese characters, but she is quite good, and if you have the option, get that.

Overall, A N D puts the band somewhat closer to Ling Tosite Sigure, and perhaps even some of the Western math rock bands who lean more punk, although certainly not Tatsuya Yoshida.  Just that extra bit of an edge, which helps the sound.


title: Perhaps El'Zabar's best post-bop album, but still not his real strength

text:
Jitterbug Junction, recorded in 1997, is an interesting album to compare to Kahil El’Zabar’s What It Is.  Both Ritual Trio albums are somewhat anomalous in El’Zabar’s discography for their adherence to a more mid to late 60s, Coltrane-esque post-bop style rather than the African trance thing that characterizes much of El’Zabar’s music, whether with the RItual Trio, the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, or various other projects.  On these recordings, Kahil works with his root players, Ari Brown and the late Malachi Favors, who helped him form his sound, and one can hear the refinement of Kahil’s approach to music on the early Ritual Trio albums with these two artists, combining influence from Coltrane and others with an African percussion kit that he plays in a way that owes less to any specific African tradition than to what he takes from the instrument itself.  Yet he never loses the 60s post-bop root, which explains his capacity to play with artists like David Murray, or the late Hamiet Bluiett.

On 2013’s What It Is, there was a little more of a pedagogic feel to the exercise.  Everything was well played, to be sure, but it did feel more like an exercise rather than where Kahil’s soul was.  As much of modern jazz can feel like rote exercise, El’Zabar’s 2013 album was something like showing the kids how it is done, and that he did.  It was a fine album, easily standing alongside the tradition Kahil so deeply respects, yet there is something different when Kahil steps behind the standard drum kit rather than his African setup.

On this earlier album, recorded in 1997, Kahil did much the same.  By this point, one can hear either from the Ritual Trio or the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble that El’Zabar had found his sound.  In the same year, he released The Continuum with the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, as an exemplar of what that project can do, and Love Outside Of Dreams.  Kahil knew what he was doing.  Yet in the same year, he steps behind a standard drum kit (on all but one track) with Ari and Malachi to record a more traditional set, and it works more effectively.  Why?  Compared to What It Is, there are just those subtle tricks of rhythm.  Consider the excursion, The Sweet Nectar of Cacophony, which may be the better tribute to Coltrane than “One For John” because rather than trying to think like Coltrane, the players weave in and out of conventional time in a way that Coltrane would have loved, as Kahil sets a rhythm that flows without actually being in any way cacophonous.  Coltrane circa ’65 wouldn’t have played it, but rather, he would have heard it and been inspired.  Then told Elvin, hey, check out that drummer!  Play to your heroes, not from them.

Nevertheless, will Jitterbug Junction be considered central to El’Zabar’s discography?  Given that it is not his core sound, nor what he does best— that trance groove thing— it is important more as a demonstration that at his best, he can do 60’s post-bop as well as or better than anyone, particularly accompanied by his most sympathetic collaborators, who allowed him to bring in the subtle rhythmic twists behind the more experimental Ritual Trio recordings.  El’Zabar’s best?  No, but a very fine album.


title: Strange, but almost strangely familiar

text: This 2004 release from Japanese progressive guitarist Kido Natsuki’s rather interestingly-named band is quite a different experience from the band’s first album, a decade earlier.  In between, Korekyojinn marked Kido’s collaboration with Ruins-drummer Yoshida Tatsuya, and one may wonder about the effect of that collaboration, but the trend line must be noted.  The first album from the band at hand was a wild experience.  As wild as the name would suggest, but perhaps in different ways.  The sounds originally blended a kind of prog-rock improvisational weirdness with Japanese folk and all sorts of hard rock energy, with strains of violin and oddities all around.  Very cool.  Then came Korekyojinn.  Korekyojinn is almost impossible to describe, which is really true of any of the drummer’s projects, and with Yoshida, Kido went even further into the aether.  One must approach Korekyojinn’s music with a truly open mind.  Beyond math rock, beyond zeuhl, there is Korekyojinn.  So what happens when Kido comes back to this old group, in 2004?  After various incarnations, something has changed.  Something is different.  The sixth album is, well, not normal per se, but almost comprehensible.  Instrumentally, the band incorporates vibraphones.  This is a fascinating choice, for how the instrument plays against either Kido’s electric or acoustic guitar work.  The instrument can evoke a moody, 60’s jazz feel, a kind of Bobby Hutcherson thing, and while a few modern players have gone back to it (Stefon Harris comes to mind), the almost dated sound of the instrument can keep it off of peoples’ radars.  Yet it adds a sense of time displacement to the sixth album by this already odd group.  Kido is the type of player to reach across all boundaries, to the point that the final track almost sounds bluegrass-ish, so whether reaching for sounds that evoke trains or any other feel, the group decided to move subtly (or perhaps, not so subtly) away from the more abstract world— perhaps as a consequence of Kido needing to do something different from his work with Yoshida Tatsuya— and created an album that has themes that are displaced rather than otherworldly.  Within rather than out of grasp.  Oddly familiar rather than too odd to be familiar.  When the group started recording a decade earlier, like many of the most progressive groups on the Japanese progressive rock scene, they had a kind of wild streak that could sound too far from the familiar for a lot of music fans.  Yet something interesting happens with a lot of these groups over time.  They can strangely converge to sounds more accessible.  The manner in which they converge is strange, and the fact of the convergence is strange.  Sometimes it can feel like something is lost in the movement, but in the case of this 2004 album, it has the feeling rather of Kido needing to play something more grounded, and one can understand that.  Artists, particularly restless artists, must follow a muse that cannot abide excessive repetition, but as long as they follow that muse, this kind of artist will lead true.  Strange.  Yet strangely familiar.  The group moved quite a distance from their 1994 debut, but that’s not a bad thing.  Just as there must be movement within music, artists must not abide stagnation.


title: Interesting international jazz from the early 90s

text:
What one gets from Aydin Esen’s Anadolu will depend, to some degree, upon expectations.  Jazz albums made by artists from around the world can often bring an interesting element.  Jazz is the quintessentially American art form, and yet it grows in fascinating ways when built upon by artists who bring their own cultural traditions.  Esen brings, at least to some degree, traditions from his native Turkey, and one may expect an album that combines American and Turkish traditions in some sort of blend.  Esen is a highly skilled pianist, accompanied by equally talented accompanists, so this is not outside the realm of possibility.

If that is what one expects, though, one may be at least slightly disappointed.  This 1992 album shows at least as much influence of its era as from Esen’s Turkish roots.  Those roots are here, and the album is clearly made by someone drawing on traditions outside of the US.  The extent to which Esen draws on those roots varies from track to track, yet much of Anadolu would sound at home in rotation among other high-quality early 1990s jazz.  It just has that extra something to make it stand out.  Part of this is the perspective of jazz in the 2020s, when we have artists like Tigran Hamasyan, Dhafer Youssef, Ibrahim Maalouf, Anouar Brahem, and others combining jazz with their own cultural heritages, which while not Turkish, bear some resemblance.  Consider, then, Okan Ersan, or others.  Jazz has progressed, as may happen.  Yet perhaps it is not fair to think of Anadolu in those terms.  The album was made in 1992, and jazz was in a different place.  Consider the important questions, then.  Is Esen is skilled improviser?  Yes.  Does he draw on a wealth of knowledge of jazz and the ability to synthesize it in new ways?  Yes.  Does he have that extra something?  Yes, occasionally blending cultural roots not often heard in jazz, modern or otherwise.

Some of the production and elements may sound of their era, and the early 1990s, but that is to be expected.  At the end of the day, Esen really can play, and this is a worthy album.  It is merely difficult to hear it without thinking of where international jazz has gone since 1992.  Unfair, yes, but there it is.  To listen to Anadolu in 1992, with fresh ears, would have been a very different experience, without having heard Tigran, and the others mentioned, but Esen really did make a fine album here, interesting in its own right.  A worthy addition to the collection of anyone interested in international jazz.


title: The Decoding Society moves on without Vernon Reid, still good

text: Ronald Shannon Jackson’s Decoding Society put out a wonderful series of albums in the 1980s, showing exactly how to present “free jazz.”  At its best, free jazz could be what the word suggests.  Freeing of unnecessary constraints.  At worst, that freeing process is also unmooring.  The secret to avoiding that latter is to ground it in something like funk, rock, or both, and that is what Jackson managed to do.  Throughout the best of the Decoding Society, part of the magic, the secret ingredient, was Vernon Reid, who was about to become one of the greatest rock guitarists ever, with Living Colour.  By the time we get to Texas, then, there are personnel changes, and Jackson is joined by two guitarists— Hugh Riley and Cary Denigris.  Both are quite capable, and would have been as at home with Jackson as with the developing MBASE, should they have gone that route, and their sound bears at least a passing resemblance to what David Gilmore (not him, different spelling) was doing with MBASE.  Anatomy of a Groove came out just a few years later.  Here, though, Jackson finds himself with a slightly different group, not quite as aggressive without Reid, and somewhat more “jazz” than rock or funk.  Whether that is to a particular listener’s preference will be a matter of taste, of course, but it is also worth noting that Texas is not quite as tied to Ornette Coleman as some of the earlier Decoding Society albums, so the tension between hard funk and free jazz doesn’t quite propel the music.  That said, Texas still sounds distinctively like Jackson, and while clearly having the aural hallmarks of a 1980s jazz album, it is off-kilter in the right way, rock-ish, funky, offbeat enough that nobody is going to mistake it for those rather unfortunate popular trends vaguely associated with jazz from the era, and all things considered, fans of earlier Decoding Society albums will still find much of value here.  The best?  Perhaps not, but if the listener ever gets lulled, there is a surprise around the next corner to justify the album.  Jackson won’t let you down, and while Reid isn’t here, Riley and Denigris are worthy players, capable of the knotty music Jackson throws at them.  Zane Massey is still here, holding down the Decoding Society sound, and without him, Texas would be a fundamentally different thing, lacking some continuity, but the interaction between Jackson and Massey’s sax remains a source of wild excitement.  As good as Man Dance?  Perhaps not, but still quite good.  Yet if we are honest, it is hard not to miss Vernon Reid.


title: Maalouf's second album, growing by leaps and bounds

text:
Ibrahim Maalouf’s debut album, Diasporas, was such a bold album that it created a challenge.  How could the trumpeter/composer/bandleader follow it?  On Diachronism, Maalouf answered and set a true direction for his career.  Go bigger.  Diasporas was, for all its creativity and confrontation toward boundaries, a stripped down affair, built around Ibrahim’s trumpet, some oud, and some relatively subdued electronics.  Diachronism, divided between two discs, includes a couple of duets, but the arrangements get much more elaborate, including vocal work, fuller band arrangements, expansion into more genres, and generally speaking, the mindset of an artist asking, where next?  What can I do next?

At the core, there remains the immediately distinctive, lilting sound of Maalouf’s trumpet, which manages to evoke Middle Eastern sounds, and even Middle Eastern singing technique through his horn, along with electronics in a way that seems familiar from Diasporas.  Electric guitars occasionally augment, along with saz, and piano from no less than Jacky Terrasson!  Yes, Terrasson.  A rising star from the 1990s shows up to pass the torch, so to speak, and say that yes, Maalouf is not only the real deal, but the new rising star, the one to watch, and Jacky says listen.  Also, you get to hear Jacky Terrasson, and that’s always good.

That said, Diachronism sounds nothing like a Terrasson album.  Terrasson came up in the 1990s boom of post-bop sophisticated jazz, as it recovered from what was happening the previous decade.  Cool?  Yes, but Maalouf is not trying to save jazz.  He is reinventing it, tearing down, rebuilding, with the kind of restless energy of a runner off at a sprint any time he hears anything even vaguely resembling a starting signal because he just can’t stop it.

Diasporas was strange and different and inspiring.  This is leaps and bounds beyond, and only two years after something that was such an opening statement that it would have been career-defining innovation for most artists.  Maalouf just keeps going, though.  Whether playing against a saz, Jacky Terrasson, hip hop vocals, electronics, or later, as on a masterpiece like Levantine Symphony, the Paris Symphony Orchestra, Maalouf just cannot be contained in any style or format.  Restless genius.

And this was just one step past Diasporas for an artist who would keep going.  Remarkable.

Pro-tip, though.  You can get this as a part of the three-album set, DIA, along with Diasporas, and Diagnostics.


title: Early genius from the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble

text:
This 1990 album is comparatively quite early in the recording career of Kahil El’Zabar, either in his general discography, or in the specific form of the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble.  Coming just a year after Alika Rising, with the Ritual Trio, this is an exciting period for Kahil.  It is a period of development, really.  At his core has always been a concept of merging his African percussion kit with post-bop, yet the process of finding a seamless blend has been one of refinement and discovery.  Refinement both in terms of technique and arranging in such a way as to find the perfectly entrancing mood and groove.  Hang Tuff finds Kahil working with a two horns/percussion configuration, the classical configuration of the EHE, and while Hang Tuff may not be the most practiced arrangement, by temporal necessity, there is excitement to discovery.  That makes it a good companion to Alika Rising.  Interestingly, there is more vocal work on Hang Tuff than most of Kahil’s albums, and not just the percussive, rhythmic grunting thing that he somehow makes into music.  More like beat, spoken word poetry.  To be sure, this is a style occasionally incorporated into Kahil’s music, but Hang Tuff sees more of it.  Why?  Experimentation.  He was seeing what worked.  As well, he was trying to find arrangements between his percussion and the horns that gave him the sounds.  The sound as painting, so to speak.  The overall piece that would hold together.  At any given moment, you can follow and and enjoy it as much as on any EHE album.  Does any given piece hold together as well as once Kahil gets the concept refined?  Maybe not, but the playing itself is as tight as anything from this core group of El’Zabar, Wilkerson & Bowie.

That is really what you would expect.  These are consummate technicians, with outstanding feel for the moment.  Put them together, and it’ll work.  Moreover, there is often excitement to discovery, as when working in an unusual configuration and trying to figure out how to manage without, say, a bassist, a pianist, or even frequently without a standard drum kit when Kahil plays the African kit.  During this period, not everything did work as well.  1987’s Ancestral Song was quite good, but not quite up to this standard.  Some practice, some lightning in a bottle waiting for everything to come together as they figure out what will work, who can say?  But Hang Tuff is an early moment of the Ensemble figuring out how to make this strange arrangement work.  The best album they ever released?  Perhaps not, but the excitement of discovery, and the groove carry the album.  Well worth tracking down.


title: Something a bit different for fans of African music

text: A couple of years before Mahlathini & The Mahotella Queens released Rhythm & Art, American music fans received some exposure to some South African music through the very famous album released by the more famous half of a 60s folk duo.  To be sure, there is something to be said for that album, but there has always been so much more to not only African, but South African music, and Mahlathini & The Mahotella Queens had been around for quite a while developing a distinctive style, Western-influenced, with South African rhythms, varied instrumentation, and a willingness to experiment.  To say nothing negative of the more famous exports from South Africa, Mahlathini & The Mahotella Queens were good.  The styles range from hints of reggae to gospel morphing into almost Nigerian juju, all with distinctively Southern rhythms.  Varied vocals keep everything moving along, and the range in instrumentation similarly provides a sonic palette one wouldn’t expect, from acoustic guitars to synthesizers, all blended together in a way that American artists wouldn’t because in South Africa, the distinctions weren’t there in the same way.  Is this the most virtuosic musicianship?  South Africa has boasted guitarists like Shiyani Ngcobo, and some more famous vocal groups, like Ladysmith Black Mambazo.  Quite a range, there.  Yet what Mahlathini & The Mahotella Queens are doing here is something else.  It is a blend of styles that is valuable for its distinctiveness.  There is joy and energy to it, coming from the range of styles synthesized, so to speak.  (Even when the music eschews synthesizers.)  When delving into the important recordings from various African styles, it would be easy for instrumental enthusiasts to overlook the importance of Mahlathini & The Mahotella Queens, in favor of the famous virtuosos of their instruments, particularly the Malians, Tuaregs, Nigerians, and further South, Shiyani, and the many South African jazz masters, like Abdullah Ibrahim (Dollar Brand).  But don’t overlook Mahlathini & The Mahotella Queens.  Not quite Afropop as many conceive of the term, not Ladysmith Black Mambazo, not juju, but something else enticing.