STUFFS & THINGS & THINGS & STUFF (STTS-020) (Special 20th Edition! Several No-Prizes Within!)
Tolerance, Tuning Circuits, the Trypes, Flesh Eaters, Gil Evans, Astrud Gilberto, Andrew Hill, Bobby Hutcherson, Richard Davis, Elvin Jones, Air Music International, Cale/Riley, Plug, Kim Gordon, more
COMPARING TOLERANCE DIVIN (1981) TO TUNING CIRCUITS NO COMPASSION (1990) DEPT.: I was jamming this lovely new 45RPM 2LP reissue by the Mesh-Key label of Tolerance’s mindblowing 1981 album Divin, and thinking how some of it reminded me of that all-time power electronics (?) jammer No Compassion by Tuning Circuits. Well, the latter wasn’t released until 1990, so they’re almost a decade apart, and completely different scenes (Tolerance from Japan and TC from Holland), but hey, someone in the No Compassion YouTube comment section just linked does compare Tuning Circuits to Tolerance labelmates Sympathy Nervous. Validation, mine! And have I ever told you how much I love No Compassion? Like, it’s the #1 slammer of all time. It makes me dance furiously in my chair. It’s so good I don’t even fast-forward past the porn samples. And P.S. maybe it’s my computer settings or something, but thing #4,080 to hate on Spotify for, listen to their version of No Compassion and compare it to this YouTube version. The latter sounds so much louder and better as to immediately render the Spotify version unlistenable.
As long as we’re comparing music from the 1980s, how about putting “Force of Habit” by the Trypes back-to-back with “Cyrano de Berger’s Back” by the Flesh Eaters? I wouldn’t immediately think of these bands as similar, even if both were fairly contemporaneous 1980s affairs, sharing what feels like a similar home-spun and trend-free DIY underground approach in the wake of punk rock, though geographically far apart in a pre-internet East Coast vs. West Coast situation. Regardless, the reason I’m bringing up these two particular tracks right now in the same paragraph is that they both riff on the same chord change, the 1950s doo-wop staple of the major tonic to the relative minor, and even at the same midtempo garage-rock tempo. In “Force of Habit” it’s F to D minor (on the chorus not the verse), in “Cyrano” it’s D to B minor (on the verse not the chorus). Check it out (and feel free to completely ignore the music theory and just enjoy two great bands and songs).
DREAMTONE DISCOVERY B/W REST IN PEACE MS. GILBERTO DEPT.: Good god “I Will Wait For You,” hauntingly sung by Astrud Gilberto and masterfully arranged by Gil Evans. Originally appeared on the 1966 LP Look to the Rainbow (released by the Verve label), on which Evans arranged all but two of the songs. I’ve probably listened to this song seven times this week, the last time loud on headphones, and man, those lush yet mildly dissonant and tension-bearing tonal clusters that are always swirling and eddying throughout his arrangements are in full effect here, with Gilberto’s lonesome-angel vows floating just above. With visionary harmonies and textures and soundworlds like this, let’s just say that when reading more about Gil Evans, I wasn’t too surprised to come across recurring anecdotes of him partaking in cannabis. In fact, there’s a good such anecdote on the very first page (screen grab below) of the excellent and definitive bio Gil Evans: Out of the Cool by Stephanie Stein Crease. Evans passed away in 1988 at the age of 75, and very recently Ms. Gilberto passed away (June 5th, 2023) at the age of 83. Interesting to see she was living in Philadelphia at the time, but that’s a tangent for another day.
BUNGLE IN THE FUNGLE DEPT.: Speaking of entheogens, here’s a nugget from The Wire: Invisible Jukebox paperback book that was published in 1998 by Wire/Quartet Books, right there on page 161 in the interview with Mixmaster Morris, who is listening to “Cheesy (Pic ‘n’ Mix)” by Plug from the Rebuilt Kev EP (aka “Plug 2”) on the Rising High record label: “These records would’ve sold more if they’d actually been available, because Rising High went down between Plug 2 and Plug 3. To me those are the definitive ‘Fungle’ records, which to me is the bastard son of Jungle, sort of Jungle and mushrooms.” Okay Mixmaster Morris, got it: “Jungle” (drum & bass techno) plus “fungus” or ”fungal” (psychedelic mushrooms) equals a new techno microgenre called Fungle, and the definitive records are three EPs from the 90s by Luke Vibert recording as Plug. Sign me up! And yes, what M. Morris calls “Plug 3,” the Versatile Crib Funk EP from 1995, was indeed released on a different label than Plug 1 and Plug 2’s home Rising High. Who knows, the definitive one-stop Fungle release might even be a promo-only cassette compiling the three Plug EPs that was made by Trent Reznor’s Nothing Records label, probably around the same time (1998) they released the excellent Nothing Changes comp that blew my mind as a promo at the record store I worked at (and includes another remix of Plug’s “Cheesy”). But in the meantime, one commendable human or another has uploaded a YouTube playlist of the three Plug EPs, which is almost 90 minutes long and a very beautiful thing.
THIS WEEK IN CLASSIC JAZZ DEPT.: A Sunday morning listen to Andrew!!! by pianist Andrew Hill, one of the more subtly avant garde musician/composers to record for Blue Note, Lee Morgan’s “Search for the New Land” notwithstanding. This album has Sun Ra’s John Gilmore on tenor sax in a rare appearance outside the Arkestra, as well as Bobby Hutcherson on vibes, Richard Davis on bass, and Joe Chambers on drums. Recorded in 1964 but not released until 1968, which leads me to another incredible Hill album Judgment! (spoiler alert: they’re all incredible), recorded in 1964 (and unlike Andrew!!! also released that year) and also with Bobby Hutcherson on vibes and Richard Davis on bass, here part of a piano/vibes/bass/drums quartet, but this time the rhythm section is rounded out by a little drummer you might’ve heard of named ELVIN JONES. And now I’m thinking about how Bobby Hutcherson and Richard Davis also played on Eric Dolphy’s massive Out to Lunch from 1964, also on Blue Note, and now I want to just do a damn sessionography on those two right now, even just for 1963 and 1964 alone, and see how many brilliant albums they made in how short of a time, both together and separately. I’ll see if my intern can get right on that.
WAIT! MORE GIL EVANS INCREDI-JAMS DEPT.: Speaking of Elvin Jones and Gil Evans, have you ever heard a long-unreleased track they did together called “Time of the Barracudas”? This was a song Evans wrote with Miles Davis during the aborted sessions that became (against Miles’s wishes) the 1963 album Quiet Nights. Wikipedia says that “Barracudas” was “written as a commission from Peter Barnes to accompany a production of his play of the same name starring Laurence Harvey and Elaine Stritch. It is unknown whether the music was actually used for its intended purpose.” Miles and Gil did record a nearly 13-minute version in October of 1963, with Tony Williams, Ron Carter, and Herbie Hancock accompanying Evans’s usual mini-phalanx of glorious reeds and woodwinds, but it didn’t get released until 1997 as a bonus track on the Quiet Nights CD reissue. That version goes through several different themes (or it’s different takes edited together, I didn’t listen that close, but Teo Macero was involved after all), while the version embedded above is half as long and is just the main theme with solos. It was recorded nine months later on July 9, 1964 by a possibly even more incredible lineup, again with the swooning and swirling Evans arrangement (here trombone, tuba, reeds & woodwinds, two french horns, and a harp) accompanied by Jones on drums, Gary Peacock on bass, Kenny Burrell on guitar, and Wayne Shorter on tenor saxophone, all four of whom absolutely smoke.
I just can’t seem to listen to new music, even when I try. The curse of the constant shuffle. The curse of always having a pile of (give or take) 200 albums on deck, “up next” as it were, and they’re from every decade and region and genre there’s ever been albums made in. Just found myself listening to Air Music International and their cumbersomely titled album Pass the Santa-Lucia Gate in Manila [sic], thinking “oh cool here’s a new group doing trendy lo-fi dub punk but this time with some actual heft,” only to find out this LP is old too, recorded and released in 1984 by some Upsetters freaks in Japan. The liner notes do after all say “THIS RECORD ALBUM DIDECATED [sic] FOR [sic] LEE " SCRATCH " PERRY.( WE LOVE YOU)” [sic]. Interesting that it’s from Japan, because before I knew I wrote a sentence (the very one you’re reading) calling them “the Speed Glue & Shinki of 1980s dub-influenced post-punk.” The first two songs are heavy and crudely rendered reggae rhythm tracks, based on originals by the Upsetters and credited as such on the sleeve. Morbid dry vocals emerge every now and then but it’s mostly Takasa Kukuni’s very fat bass guitar playing the dub lines while the drummer Hirosi “Yukue-Fumei” Nakagawa keeps the groove locked. In the space without vocals there is crude and restrained echo guitar by Susumu “The Guiterlist” [sic] Takayama and other intangibles, perhaps mostly provided by the vague credit “DAFF. INDIANA BELLS” [sic] given to one Masayuki “Jinja” Sueoka. But after these two opening heavy dub tracks, the album just kinda goes nuts with the band airing out a few different styles. The third track is an instrumental college rock guitar demo called “College Alternative,” and the fourth track a 9-minute noise-blues-guitar trio jam (“The Guiterlist [sic] in a Hole”) that starts to hint at that Afflicted Man/Fushitsusha nexus. Side two has saxophone blurt punk, Holger Czukay homages, and more, none of it as specifically dubby as the first two tracks at all. The credited “director” of the album is Tetsuji Kanuki and, speaking of intangibles, he supplies “alto saxophone, second time chainease musset [sic], vocorder [sic], voice, vocal, radio & tape,” seeming to take that Czukay-at-Inner Space role. It’s a wild album, but the actually-new record I’m listening to the most this week, and should be reviewing over at Recent Listening #36 (forthcoming) and not just mentioning here, is Mammal’s Deserted (2024, Impermanence).
I did get so concerned about not listening to enough new/recent/contemporary music that I analyzed the songs on my latest (#131 and counting) essentially-stolen-music-via-meagerly-paid-subscription-to-unethical-tech-giant “GOOD TRACKS” playlist by year of release. A cursory look at everyone’s favorite measures of central tendency reveals the range of release date to be 1964 (“Alfred” by Andrew Hill) to 2024 (“Life Is” by Jessica Pratt), so 50 years. The median year is 1993 (“Dis is da Drum” by Herbie Hancock and “Skull” by Sebadoh from 1994, “Pretty Little Girl” by Bobby Brown from 1992), the mean year is 1994.75, but the mode is in fact 2023, all of which suggests that my listening is balanced between old and new, but definitely skews towards newer music. If you count both 2023 and 2024 together, there are six such tracks on here, five from 2023 (“Krumville” by Oneohtrix Point Never, “Class Spectre” by Facs, “Support the Youth (with Sound)” by Damon Locks/Rob Mazurek, “Violently Rooted” by Niecy Blues, and “You Burn Me” by Laurel Halo) and one from 2024 (the aforementioned “Life Is” by Jessica Pratt). Counting 1970 and 1971 together comes close with five tracks, three from 1970 (“All We Ever Got From Them Was Pain” by Alex Chilton, “Another Day” by Roy Harper, and “I Just Can’t Lose Your Love” by the Whatnauts) and two from 1971 (“Goldfarb’s Fantasy” by Michael Small and “The Soul of Patrick Lee” by John Cale and Terry Riley).
Speaking of “The Soul of Patrick Lee” from 1971 as credited to John Cale and Terry Riley, I’m spinning it right now for the first time in quite a few years and it’s as beautiful and heavy of a ruby-red ballad gem as ever, and I finally want to get to the bottom of this thing, the whole John-Cale-wrote-it-but-had-a-doppelganger-sing-it-and-is-Terry-Riley-even-on-it-and-isn’t-it-like-Kooper-era-Blood Sweat & Tears-doing-the-basic-tracks thing. I know I could just grab Unterberger’s White Light/White Heat book off the shelf and find out… well, Richie doesn’t know a lot of details either, saying “At some point in 1970, on unspecified dates and at an unspecified location, four of the five tracks that will eventually make up John Cale & Terry Riley’s Church of Anthrax LP are completed . . .” He does say that, in addition to Cale and Riley each playing multiple instruments, “two drummers are brought in,” Bobby Colomby from Blood Sweat & Tears and Bobby Gregg, the latter having “played on numerous 60s sessions, including some of Bob Dylan’s first electric recordings.” It doesn’t say anything about the credited Cale doppelganger, Adam Miller, and I swear I was about to be the 1,000th person to still be proposing that “Adam Miller” is just a pseudonym for Cale, but Miller really does appear to be a separate person with enough of a progressive folk/rock career to merit his own Wikipedia page, including background vocals on Nico’s Desertshore and a couple solo albums with L.A. studio legends like Larry Carlton and Hal Blaine in the band, which I almost care to hear, but currently do not.
And finally, this week on Larry “Fuzz-O” Dolman’s TwitterWatch 2024™, there was @GoodWillsmith proposing this deep context for Kim Gordon’s new record The Collective (Matador, 2024):
I went ahead and threw every single one of those albums, followed by The Collective, on a Shitify playlist that is 8.5 hours long and very good to listen to on shuffle. I can’t help but think of it like an amazing festival gig, an outdoor show on an actually beautiful day with comfortable weather when, not only are you well-hydrated without having to pee too much and whichever you choose between substances and sobriety is working very well for you, you’re watching killer sets by Three 6 Mafia and Robert Ashley and Death Grips and a quirky ironic/not-ironic set by Farrah Abraham herself, knowing that goddamn Kim G herself is going to close out the night with a weird banger of a set. Also nice to see the Tiny Mix Tapes shout-out, as it really was excellent, and a publication you can still read online, even if they stopped updating in December 2019.
Also this week on TwitterWatch™ we’ve got @MineralDisk coining the “inept french cosmic prog lps” genre, followed immediately by the coinage of a prog-rock descriptor that has been needed for a long time, something that inept french cosmic prog LPs apparently mercifully lack but UK and USA prog LPs certainly don’t: “wailing bachelor vox.”
