Time for another collection of short, sharp reviews, covering a gamut of styles. Our most tireless contributor, Bill Meyer, turned in a record eight Dusts this time, so if you like jazz, improv and experimental music, this is your edition. Other writers included Ray Garraty, Jennifer Kelly, Justin Cober-Lake, Tim Clarke and Ian Mathers.
Max B — House Money (Self-released)
Max B is doing 75 years in prison, yet before his bid he recorded a lot of music to be used by trusted collaborators. Last year’s Coke Wave 5 with French Montana felt authentic enough to be confused with Max’s pre-prison mixtapes, only a bit more polished. This new EP is no less wave-y and goofy, but too many guest verses dilute the fun. If French, with whom Max B recorded a lot of mixtapes together, seems like a natural collaborator, the rest of the guests are an uneasy fit. House Money is a Frankenstein-y affair exactly because Max himself wouldn’t invite them to his booth (not that they are lousy talents, they are just on a different frequency with Max B). It is probably mixed and produced by someone who thought that these collaborators would attract additional audience, yet the result is the opposite: Max B’s fans would feel alienated by impostors in his own domain.
Ray Garraty
Jeb Bishop / Jaap Blonk / Weasel Walter / Damon Smith — JaJeWeDa (Balance Point Acoustics)
Pioneer Works Vol. 1 BPA 19 by JeJaWeDa (Jeb Bishop / Jaap Blonk / Weasel Walter / Damon Smith)
No matter how big the stage they occupy, it isn’t big enough for Jaap Blonk and Weasel Walter. Both men are masters of strategic exaggeration. Put them together and a clash is inevitable. Blonk not only spews sound poetry like a symphony of pan-lingual news broadcasts and surreptitiously recorded mouthwash experiments, he manipulates electronics with a video game controller that looks especially ridiculous in his gangly hands. Walter mugs and wallops, each movement lunging simultaneously at your ears and your funny bone. Perhaps you’re wondering, “isn’t this a record review? How will these visual descriptions clue me into the sound?” Play this record and you will know. And you will also marvel at the way bassist Damon Smith and trombonist Jeb Bishop balance the other half of the band’s nuttiness with seriousness so unfailing, you might put your money on them against Roscoe Mitchell in a game of poker.
Bill Meyer
Ben Carey — Antimatter (Hospital Hill)
ANTIMATTER by Ben Carey
Sydney-based electronic musician Ben Carey played saxophone before he took on modular synthesizers. This may explain the quivering, palpable presence of the sounds he devises; he makes static pulse and shake like swollen lips engaged in the act of vocalizing. His deployments of attenuated tones, sudden swells, and insistent chimes are discontinuous and episodic, but also quite thoughtfully planned out. Both the sudden shifts and the long considerations of discrete elements feel as essential as the unforgettable bridge in a bubblegum cart hit, and the qualities of the sounds Carey ponders amply reward the attention required to follow their shifts in and out of audibility and back and forth across the stereo spectrum. If you’re inclined to get well acquainted with Antimatter, consider springing for the LP. Since both Carey and his label are situated in Australia, it might take some looking and spending, but Rashad Becker’s cut and the 45-rpm playing speed guarantee maximum presence.
Bill Meyer
John Chantler — Tomorrow Is Too Late (Room40)
Tomorrow Is Too Late by John Chantler
From the pig’s ass on the sleeve to the titles of the album’s two tracks, John Chantler’s Tomorrow is Too Late promises to deal with endings. But when you put the record on, you find yourself adrift in events that defy linear description, let alone the definition of a final point. Oh, sure, both of them end, but they don’t spend the time leading up to those terminations making sure that you know where they’re going. The title track was commissioned for the 2018 iteration of the French electronic music institution INA GRM’s Présences Électronique festival, and most of its sounds were obtained from a François Coupigny synthesizer that is over 50 years old. Rare earl synths are like worlds unto themselves, and the listener is adrift with Chantler as he invites sounds to converge, dispel, and recongregate in winking, restless masses. On “We’re Always at the End,” the electronic sound convergence make way for a pipe organ, which coheres into a solid sonic presence, but when it disappears, the piece does not. This is music to inhabit, over and over again.
Bill Meyer
Richard Dawson — 2020 (Weird World)
2020 by Richard Dawson
This sixth full-length from cult songwriter Richard Dawson unspools like a series of linked short stories, the characters sharing a blighted, latter-day English backdrop and perhaps avoiding one another’s eyes as they pass on the streets. Sung in Dawson’s wavery tenor — with flights up into a very uncertain falsetto — and backed with the most straightforward of rock-ish instrumental arrangements, the songs flourish in their specificity. The metal-riffing “Jogging,” for instance, tells the story of a mid-life crisis with startling exact-ness, an ex-school counselor, laid off and too anxious to leave the house, advised by a doctor to take up jogging. The story is told first person, in the most straightforward way possible, with minimal embellishments. If it weren’t for the crashing guitar chords, the squiggly lines of synth, you might be listening to a friend over coffee. The scenarios are mostly dreary, of people stuck in soul-sucking jobs, in towns where things go wrong through neglect and inertia. Yet, once in a while the sun comes piercing through, and life, however stunted and bare and grey, turns ever so slightly hopeful. I’ll leave you with verse from lacerating “The Queen’s Head.”
“The guy from the vape shop
Ferrying his chocolate labs
Waves to us cheerily
From a leaky kayak
‘I've lost everything apart from what counts’
Pointing to his dogs and then at his heart.”
Now that’s a pre-chorus.
Jennifer Kelly
Frank Denyer — The Boundaries of Intimacy (Another Timbre)
On The Boundaries of Intimacy, composer Frank Denyer explores volume dropped to a soft level. The approach produces a sort of intimacy, nearly everything sounds hushed, although it remains unclear whether, as listeners, we're leaning into a confidant or cupping our hand to a wall to eavesdrop. Regardless of our position as listeners, Denyer continues his work with unpredictable instrumentation, highlighting sneh and koto playing in various places (including two version of a koto piece), and combining flute and electronics for a strange tonal study called “Beyond the Boundaries of Intimacy.” When he works with a more traditional set of instruments, as on “String Quartet,” the ostensibly comfortable sounds become unfamiliar, an experienced aided by Denyer's play with dynamics, turning from a crescendo to a near disappearance. Denyer presents those sorts of challenges across these pieces (written over the past 40 years). He requires attentive, patient listening, but rewards it with unsettling experiences.
Justin Cober-Lake
Avram Fefer Quartet—Testament (Clean Feed)
This record is credited to the Avram Fefer Quartet, and it’s true that the Brooklyn-based alto and tenor saxophone wrote the tunes and leads the band. But he’s not necessarily the guy you will listen to every time that you play it. Not that there’s anything wrong with Fefer’s playing, which combines Sonny Rollins’ muscularity with an affinity for bold melodies rooted equally in soul jazz and West African pop music. He’s got ideas, emotion and chops to spare. But damn, what a band! Fefer and bassist Eric Revis have an association going back to the 1990s; no matter which way the music rolls, the foundation is solid. Drummer Chad Taylor is a regular member of a trio with Fefer and Revis which made a couple records a decade or so back, and he’s also a member of bands led by Revis and guitarist Marc Ribot. Taylor never misses a chance to turn the music up a little closer to a boil, and the blues-rooted tone that Ribot favors here adds steely sentiment to the blues, mass to the Afrobeat repetitions, and confident complexity to the free interludes in this music. So, if your attention wavers from the saxophone for a second, it’s probably because you’re listening to how one of his accompanists is playing off of another one. Wotta band!
Bill Meyer
Roc Marciano — Marcielago (Self-released)
In “Saw” Roc Marciano says, “Sometimes I pinch myself in disbelief,” referring to a level of fame he’s achieved after 20 years in the rap game. The listeners are pinching themselves as well, but for a different reason: Marciano doesn’t repeat himself. Roc Marci works with his lyrics on two levels: line by line as well as bar by bar. As defined by Marci, his songs are “poetry over beats.”Marcielago is a quieter effort, closer to Rosebudd’s Revenge 1 and 2, than to 2018’s KAOS and Behold a Dark Horse. To rephrase the poet himself, on Marcielago he’s more like a pimp than a mack. The standout here is “Ephesians” which starts with early electronica and then explodes into a full-scale attack. Marci’s long time collaborator Ka spits here a verse which does an impossible thing: Marciano is murdered on his own turf.
porous structures by Machtelinckx/Badenhorst/Cools/Gouband
This quartet comprises two steel-stringed acoustic guitarists, one percussionist prone to placing stones on his drums, and one clarinet and a saxophone player who likes to sing. The album’s title implies permeability, and the music delivers by creating the impression of actions happen in different places at the same time. Ruben Machtelinckx and Bert Cools’ guitars create structures made of slow-moving, finger-picked patterns. Toma Gouband and Joachim Badenhorst often sound like they are playing in some resonant space outside of the guitars’ sanctuary, where their sounds can spread a halo of echo around and occasionally blow through the dry, close-miked string sounds. The former’s rattling rocks create more texture than motion; the latter’s distant croons and spare tones create a sense of distance. In their own quiet way, these musicians have arrived at a sound that can’t be mistaken for anyone else’s.
Bill Meyer
Salim Nourallah — Jesus of Sad (Palo Santo)
The narrators of Salim Nourallah's songs don't often find things going so well. Nourallah's taken that point to its logical conclusion on new EP Jesus of Sad. Rather than indulging depressive tendencies, though, the songwriter brings his sense of humor for a parodic take. “So, you think you've suffered?” he sings to open the disc. “I sip the tears of the world from my coffee cup.” The hyperbole might immediately develops his exaggerated character. Accompanied by multi-instrumentalist Billy Harvey, Nourallah moves on to “Born with a Broken Heart,” a funky number owing something to Soul Coughing while providing one of the best bass lines in his catalog. The cut's full of wit while addressing serious questions about faith, gender equality, and more.
“This Doesn't Feel like Peace, Love, or Understanding” (the second track here to echo a Nick Lowe title) sounds like quintessential Nourallah, with a pop-rock sound that would have fit on any of his last few records and a relatable sentiment conveyed in smart lyrics. Two versions of “Misanthrope” close out the disc. Nourallah co-wrote the song with Rhett Miller, but here he turns away from the Old 97's' bouncy version (called“She Hates Everyone”). Nourallah slows it down, building complex feelings; he can't fully enjoy his strange love now under his anxiety about the future. It closes the EP well, being yet more honest emotion that manages to misdirect and complicate things, the true heart covered by the knowing satire of “Jesus of Sad.”
Justin Cober-Lake
Parashi—Tape From Oort Cloud (Sedimental/Skell)
When a record provokes images of a Captain Beefheart lyric turned inside out, you know its makers are on to something. The squelchy sounds that usher in “The Vanishing Coast,” which is the first of this LP’s four tracks, does not bring to mind synthesizers, even though that’s what Mike Griffin (that’s Mr. Parashi to you) probably used some time them. Nor does it bring to mind someone else’s record. Rather, I hear the words “slow and bulbous” as the music sinks slowly into its own swampy stealth. “Broadcast Failures” leaves even those alinear coordinates behind as it pings its way woozily into the depths. The titular malfunctions might be echoed calls which fail to distract the sonar-like main body of sound, or the squashed, distant carousel that follows. Or maybe it doesn’t. File this under best practice befuddlement, but be sure to tape a bookmark to the plastic outer sleeve to remind yourself of the necessity of playing it.
Bill Meyer
Tom Redwood — The Glue (self released)
The Glue by Tom Redwood
With The Glue, his fourth album, Melbourne-based singer-songwriter Tom Redwood has tapped into a rewarding strain of country/folk that pulls hard on traditional roots, while adding a knowing wink, flowing performances, and plenty of tuneful song craft. As in Jim O’Rourke’s beloved series of Drag City albums, the music-making is taken seriously but is undercut by self-deprecating humor. On “Easy Love” Redwood sings, “When I was young I was easy loving / But now that I’m old, I’m not so dumb,” and on the title track he makes a playful reference to “round, gorgeous thighs.” He’s not afraid to play it straight, though, such as on the haunting “Cold Mother Night,” and reflective closer “Shut the Door.” There’s superb lap steel playing by Kier Stevens, smart counterpoint on guitar and “cheesy keys” from producer Matt Walker, and ethereal backing vocals from Rosie Luby, which contrasts nicely with Redwood’s aw-shucks delivery.
Tim Clarke
Grisha Shakhnes — Being There (Unfathomless)
being there by grisha shakhnes
Being There presents the listener with a document of actor, action and the arena in which the former enacts the latter. Essentially, Grisha Shakhnes recorded himself recording and recorded the room in which he was recording. Sometimes a recording device filters the subjects of his inquiry on the way to the recorder; while the sounds were captured by a Zoom digital recorded, some of them went through a Rvox reel-to-reel tape deck along the way. Equipped with the knowledge that you’re hearing Shakhnes making recordings, you quickly find yourself making decisions about what sounds to follow, and then dealing with the consequences of the choices you made as your act of following draws you into the chain of events that made the album in the first place. You are present with Shakhnes, sharing in the creation of Being There.
Bill Meyer
Six by Seven — Dream On (Cargo)
D R E A M . O N by six by seven
One of the great shoulda beens of 1990s British rock (on the other side of the Atlantic, it’s doubtful anyone not reading something like the NME at the time would have heard much of them), Six by Seven are also one of the few from that era to keep going in a way that’s not just repeating old glories. Now almost entirely just frontman Chris Olley (his son Charlie drums here, but otherwise it’s a solo show) you wouldn’t guess it from the massive, warmly analogue psychedelic/motorik drones and drifts here. Stylistically speaking, Olley can be a restless guy, never really revisiting the glory of Six by Seven’s first three albums (what you might call their classic period, and well worth checking out) but also covering an astonishing breadth during the years since. The recent Dream On is as good a place to dip into his stream of work as any, boasting three massive soundscapes (the best of which might be “And No One Knows Your Name” as well as briefer, dreamier song like “Hey Kid” and the title track. Both his muse and the demands of making music your day job keep Olley forever moving, though — even writing up this release was marked by the appearance of a double album-length Dream On 2, so anyone on Olley’s wavelength can expect a lot to keep up with.
John Chantler — Logic Being the Lowest Form Of Magic; John Chantler — Move Along, Nothing Here to See; John Chantler/Steve Noble/Seymour Wright — Front and Above (1703 Skivbolaget)
Logic Being The Lowest Form of Magic by John Chantler
When it comes to ways and means, John Chantler is a slippery guy. Some might recall his older recordings on Lawrence English’s Room40 label, his membership in the duo For Barry Ray or his past work as a talent wrangler and dogsbody at Café OTO. Nowadays the Australian expatriate lives in Stockholm, Sweden, where he organizes the annual Edition Festival. On these three recent releases, Chantler moves between formats, music production methods and geographical locations. What ties them together is Chantler’s understanding of sound as a life-like force that can be invoked, invited and guided, but never quite controlled.
Logic Being the Lowest Form Of Magic is an album-length, download-only release that Chantler developed over a year and a half at electronic music studios in three countries to be played at Audiorama, a 21-speaker listening space in Stockholm. Boiled down to a stereo mix of reed organ drones and fluctuating Serge synthesizer tones, it remains an immersive piece of music, albeit one that depends upon the listener to run it through some decent speakers. The sounds accumulate like tumbleweeds against a fence, building up and bustling around, and the piece’s 36-minute duration gives one plenty of time to notice first the grain of each sound and then the way layers give way to more layers. The listening experience replies to the title’s unanswered question — what forms of magic are higher than logic? They are legion, and among them is the sensate experience of sound as it washes over and through your body, transforming your emotional and physical state and perhaps your spiritual orientation as well. Stray thought — the day we melt our weapons down to build a surround-sound, communal listening space in every town is the day we will know that humanity really can transcend itself. That’d be magic indeed.
A baser but still community-boosting impulse was the genesis for the Spreckels Organ Pavilion. John D. and Adolph B. Spreckels, the heirs of a sugar fortune, built it in the wake of the opening of the Panama Canal as part of a scheme to draw commercial interest to the city of San Diego. At one point its instrument was the biggest outdoor organ in the world, and while the pavilion’s fortunes have waxed and waned over the past century, it’s currently the site of weekly year-round free organ recitals and a special summer series of concerts sponsored by the San Diego Parks and Recreation Department. In 2017, a group of experimental composers wrote pieces for the Spreckels organ; four can be heard on the LP Organ For The Senses (Marginal Frequency), and while it doesn’t include Chantler’s contribution, you can get that from his Bandcamp page. You want immersive? Petition the return engagement and pack your bags for San Diego, where the force of the organ’s 5,017 pipes will turn your belly to jelly. Nothing you can fit into your computer can do that, but this ten-minute piece nicely sketches out the instrument’s potential. Chantler builds up ranks of sound, which part to reveal whorls of overtones and a sub-bass presence so solid you could herniate a disc just listening to it.
Front and Above approaches sound from another angle — instant music production. Chantler’s tenure at Café OTO put him in the room with London’s best improvisers, and this CD documents his first concert with two of them. Between them, saxophonist Seymour Wright and drummer Steve Noble have played with a formidable who’s who — Evan Parker, Eddie Prévost, Peter Brötzmann, John Butcher, Alan Wilkinson, etc. If you’re hearing him for the first time, Wright sounds like a successor of John Butcher; he’s alert, abrasive, able to change the temperature of a room with a single coarse note. Noble can fill the room with sound if he likes, but his playing is also highly detailed and endlessly variant. It’s handy to have a percussive thesaurus in the band with the third guy’s as likely to trigger a rain of mechanical pecking as he is to displace space with amorphous ghost tones. Sometimes Chantler is like a sound designer, influencing the atmosphere with subliminal presences, but he can respond timbre for timbre and gesture for gesture. This CD imparts an experience of constant unfolding, which makes sense given that it was the trio’s first encounter. Since then it has become an ongoing concern.
'Which Way to Leave?' is the latest record by Stockholm based musician John Chantler. The self-reflexive sequencing that tracks the sub-harmonic series in the opening blast of 'Falling Forward' positions the record as Chantler's most explicitly melodic. These melodies however do not exist in a mono-dimensional vacuum; rather they co-exist in a meshed framework of dynamic timbral layers. The record’s abrupt cuts, deft variations of density and unexpected diversions are happily explored with headlong dives into ravishing texture and extended stretches of surface stasis. The music draws on a domestic reimagining of the traditions of studio based electronic music/musique concrete and 20th century minimalism and delivers this with brash revitalised energy… We talk to John Chantler about having a freeform approach, collaboration and London architecture…
TSH: As you began work for the stellar ‘Which Way to Leave?’ did you anticipate a certain course or was it more of a freeform approach?
John: I’m glad you like the record. The approach is fairly freeform. Work on it until it comes together which is mostly a process of pairing things away until you end up with a big gap that you need to make something new for. Some things hung around for a while and others came together quite spontaneously at the end.
TSH: What can you tell us about your time spent in London forming music with an organ and modular synth…
John: For ‘Still Light, Outside’ I got access to the organ at St John at Hackney where I could go and play and record pretty much anytime over the period of a few months just before I left London. I did some work at EMS on the electronic parts just before I moved here and then spent much of my first winter in Stockholm working on the editing/mixing. This latest record was subject to the same mixing/editing process over the following winter. I like the onset of autumn for this — it brings a focus to being inside working.
TSH: You took your recordings to the famed Elektronmusikstudion EMS studios in Stockholm and processed them through wall sized modular synths, what was the level of focus like as you took on this task?
John: I have some similar stuff to EMS at home, but the environment there — from the studio arrangement to the killer monitoring — really helps in getting stuff done. ‘Which Way’ was probably done 2/3 at home and 1/3 at EMS — but I try to spend some time there for the mixing to make sure everything is right and to get another point of reference especially for the bass, which is always hard in a small apartment type room.
TSH: Do you feel the record has a clear sense of trajectory at times?
John: Yeah, I do. I hope it has clear sense of trajectory all the time. Of course, I’ve no expectation that that trajectory will be clear for everyone else and with any luck it can change each time you listen to it.
TSH: You had guest appearances by Carina Thorén and Okkyung Lee, how valuable was it to have their imprint on the music?
John: It was really great to have them involved. I’m a big fan of Okkyung’s music and she is great to hang out with. She has lots of good ideas and I just took a small bit from what she did in response to the music… Carina is the primary source for trying to make my music better. She is an incisive critic of what does and doesn’t work and she helps me to listen to what I’m doing in new ways. It can be pretty rough at times, but that kind of honesty is crucial. Her playing on the record came about almost by chance — she picked up the bass I’d been trying to record and just nailed a part I’d been trying to work into ‘First December’ — much more direct than anything I could have done.
TSH: What was the trickiest part in forming the title track?
John: This is based on a feedback/cross-modulation of a couple of slopes patched as sub-harmonic generators — no real sequencers or anything and at some point it hit on this kind of riff for several minutes. I edited this version down from that recording and added a couple of parts from the same session (re-recorded via some heavy-handed fader riding on the mixing desk). I like these kind of ‘accidents’ that come about from tweaking the same thing. The same kind of patch is also the basis for ‘Fixation Pulse’ as well (though done on the Serge at EMS). It has similar sounds / frequency relationships but there is a different outcome in the end.
TSH: Also, with a track like ‘All Visible Signs’ can you talk us through what your aims were…
John: This started out — as a number of things do — with trying to learn how to do something specific and then spun out from there — you hit a point where it feels like music and ceases to be about that initial learning thing and take it from there. In the end this piece is kind of about having something that just sounds the same all the time — a kind of non-repetitive repetition — but then has loads of stuff actually going on and hopefully a kind of rough physicality to it as well, even though it doesn’t have the physical impact of louder music.
TSH: Is your favourite piece of musical equipment still the Serge ’73 Filter?
John: I still like the filter very much — it’s what was used for almost all of ‘Beginning Again’ for example — being ‘pinged’ and resonating at the feedback threshold, but more and more I’m using the Serge Slope Generators as the starting point in a lot of my music right now — 40 years on and still an ingenious piece of electronics.
TSH: How much of what you do would you say is a constant task to make something memorable without being generic?
John: I think you want to try and make something that feels like it is yours but without pinning yourself down. Best way is generally not to think about and just go with those things that give you a rush of sorts.
TSH: You were a part of the First Edition Festival for Other Music in Stockholm this February. What was this like for you?
John: Yeah, this is a small festival that I organise. It was great. The music was exceptionally good — everyone really gave it their all — and lots of people came out for it which means I also get to do it again next February. It feels good to make something like this happen and to make a space for people to do their thing. Would be nice if I can keep it going for some time to come, but let’s see.
TSH: Also, what were the highlights of your recent UK tour?
John: The PA at Fort Process was pretty ridiculous for the room and my synths were behaving themselves. The power had cut out when I kicked in some bass during soundcheck so I spent most of the set trying to see if I could get it to cut out again but it held strong. Was a lot of fun trying though.
TSH: How poor was the architecture opposite the OTO venue in London?
John: It’s not good. But any place that is built for the accumulation of capital over creating a place for people to live in is going to fail architecturally as well as on so many other levels.
TSH: What do you admire mostly about Beaches & Canyons by Black Dice?
John: I love the utopian radiance of it — DIY means stretched into a grander form because all of that should be and is possible… It sounds wonderful, too — of course most things generally sound better through heavy tremolo!
TSH: Do you have strong views about the state of the UK’s politics in the wake of voting leave?
John: Yes, but I had strong views about it before then also. The problems remain the same, if perhaps the need to do something becomes more acute.
TSH: What TV and movies have you found most inspiring in recent times?
John: I don’t watch much TV. I watched the third series of The Bridge last year to practise my Swedish a bit. I’ve had more time to watch films since moving to Sweden — I just wish there were better options at the cinema instead of having to rely on streaming and such. I really enjoyed The Lobster. Lanthimos is making great films and it hasn’t been fucked up in the switch to English though Dogtooth is definitely a heavier punch to the gut.
TSH: Finally, what are you mostly observant to with your future musical endeavours?
John: I’m going to start work on another organ recording soon, so that is probably going to take up a bit of headspace over the winter alongside playing a bunch of shows and the ongoing process of trying to make those work — always an interesting challenge!
