A recording consisting solely of the sound of water droplets? As the practice of field recordings continues to expand and extend in to multiple forms of music, that notion is not as odd as it once might have seemed. But this reissue of Shizukutachi by Japanese sound artist Masaaki Takano confounds categorization. Takano began his career in the 1950s developing sound effects for stage, film and broadcasting and working as a recording engineer at music studios. By the 1970s he moved away from sound effects and began performing using self-made sound instruments and collecting field recordings of natural sounds. These two practices intersect in Shizukutachi, his first release from 1978. The project was inspired by a Japanese garden ornament and sound device called a suikinkutsu, a large earthenware jar with a small opening which is buried and covered with small stones. When water filters through the stones, it drips into the opening and the sound of the droplets reverberate in the buried jar.
Rather than head out to conduct field recordings, Takano began conducting experiments in his recording studio, consulting with a scientist who had written an article about the sound of water droplets. He explained the process they went through, noting “We raised a tank on a scaffold and ran experiments not only with water but also with milk, oil, hot water, and ice water — with Professor Isobe’s guidance. In the end, it was the temperature of the material and the shape of the receiving dish that made the difference. But it still took a year and a half to complete the record.” But Takano went further, devising his own wakatake no suiteki ongu (young bamboo water droplet sound instrument) from thick lengths of bamboo filled with water, recording and adjusting the size of holes drilled in the bamboo and the placement of microphones to capture the resonance and full register of the sound of the dripping water. The two pieces, each 22 minutes long, while connoting the sound of nature, is more a deeply considered study in sound.
Listening without information about how the pieces were recorded, one could easily assume they were created in an electronic music studio. Reverberant, deep pings and trebly clicks are panned across the sound plane, carefully placed against silence. Takano utilized multiple instruments and fleeting patterns of sound begin to accrue as the recordings were mixed and layered. Open pulses play off of each other with measured deliberation. While clearly composed, the pieces progress as open-ended sonic documents, their intentionality eschewing any notion of ambience. In the first piece, the pace is slower, accentuating the way each sound rings out. On the second, Takano quickens the pace, adding density and introducing further registers and reverberations of sound, creating engulfing waves of freely overlapping rhythms.
It is worth noting that the reissue was remastered by Giuseppe Ielasi and the pristine recording reveals a stunning depth of nuance. In the informative liner notes by Tomotaro Kaneko (owner of the Japanese Art Sound Archive), he references a number of other works by Takano including Oto Asobi (Sound Play) which involved performances with self-made and traditional sound instruments. One hopes that eventually, some of these might be issued.
Diamond Seas (Geffen) is plunderphonics virtuoso John Oswald’s treatment of Sonic Youth’s “The Diamond Sea.” The song, among the longest that Sonic Youth ever recorded, first appeared in 1995 on Washing Machine (DGC). Thurston Moore noted that the LP “hearken[ed] back to records like Sister where [Sonic Youth] would write a bunch of songs, go into the studio for a month, put them down, then go on the road and play them for a year. By the end of the year, they’d mutate into something much more excited.” This reviewer really likes Moore’s usage of “excited,” rather than the more conventional “exciting” — as if the songs took on their own moods, explored enthusiastic potentialities of their own making.
Oswald might be more engaged by Moore’s notion of “mutation.” The two tracks on Diamond Seas are constructed from multiple instances of “The Diamond Sea” out on the road, being played live night after night. Side A is Oswald’s layering and sequencing of performances of “The Diamond Sea” from 1995; Side B comprises sounds from versions of the song from 1996. The plunderphonics approach might be an effective vehicle for indexing some of the mutations the song underwent over the first couple years of its life (emphasis on that “might”…).
Diamond Seas recalls Grayfolded (1994), Oswald’s storied plunderphonics version of “Dark Star,” one of the Grateful Dead’s early career launchpads for longform improvisation. The comparison may extend beyond Oswald’s methodology: “psychedelic” and “jam” are frequently used terms in discussions of “The Diamond Sea” and are all but synonymous with the Dead. One wonders about the adequacy of those terms, in either case.
Intro by Jonathan Shaw
Jonathan Shaw: I am finding Diamond Seas a lot more interesting than I thought I might, though most of that interest has been generated by the 1996 side, which departs more intensely from the original song. What are the rest of you hearing and thinking?
Bill Meyer: When it came out, I warmed up to Washing Machine right away, more so that other mid-90s Sonic Youth records, and “The Diamond Sea” had a lot to do with it. As a whole, the album seemed to reconcile SY’s pop and improvisational sides more naturally than anything that came before it, and I equally liked the material from either end of the spectrum. But I also remember skipping the rest of the album and cueing up “The Diamond Sea” on the CD player many times. The very existence of this project suggests that someone in the SY camp sees “The Diamond Sea” as their “Dark Star,” so it makes sense that they’d give it the Grayfolded treatment.
Jennifer Kelly: I know that Lee Ranaldo was a big Dead Head early on, and Thurston has talked about them, too. So it makes sense that they might see parallels between their longer, more improvisational stuff and the Dead’s.
I’m shocked to find that I like Grayfolded LOTS more than Diamond Seas, the reverse of how I feel about the originals. The Sonic Youth mixes have so much chatter and crowd noise and the Dead ones focus almost entirely on the music. Also, the more you like something, the less you want it fucked with. Could be that.
I’ve been looking for articles/interviews about Oswald’s process and not finding any. Anybody know any good ones?
Bill Meyer: First of all, here is a link to some fairly old interviews with Oswald on his plunderphonics site. He was an early practitioner of what one might characterize as skeptical, critical sampling. He has also been a free improviser, playing saxophone.
Jonathan Shaw: Like Bill, I really like Washing Machine, but more for the spikier songs on it: “Junkie’s Promise,” the title track, “Becuz.” I can lock in on “The Diamond Sea” sometimes, but I would rather listen to “Expressway to Yr Skull” for that extended SY thing. Might be why I respond to the 1996 side of Diamond Seas as strongly as I do. The defamiliarizing and the way crowd sounds and the long periods of aggro amp abuse dig into the structure of the original tune reveal a different experience.
For me the overlaps between this record and Grayfolded feel right because I was going to Dead shows at the same time that I was tuning in to Sister and checking out SY live. Unfortunately, even in 1987, which a lot of Heads are fond of, the Dead were pretty brittle as a live act. The SY shows I saw were musically thrilling, the Dead shows were primarily a social environment.
So I am having the inverse experience from Jenny’s. Grayfolded is interesting, but Diamond Seas — especially that second side — lights me up musically.
Jennifer Kelly: Thanks, I did read that one, but I was more interested in how it works. Like are the different samples of the same thing arranged sequentially or do they overlap? Could you have the bass from one show and the drums from another at the same time?
I guess I see the point of making sound collages from multiple sources (it’s another way of composing with prerecorded notes instead of instruments) but not so much of the same song.
I gather that the respective bands commissioned both of these projects?
Bill Meyer: Regarding Grayfolded, I can easily imagine it appealing even if you aren’t a Deadhead. “Dark Star” is very much its own thing. What Oswald did with it is pretty different from what he did to “The Diamond Sea,” and the outcomes are correspondingly different.
Grayfolded is like a stretch version of “Dark Star” that does not mess with its essential structure. The tune’s landmarks happen in roughly the same spots as when the Dead played the song, it just takes a lot longer to get there. However, I think that Oswald had access to every “Dark Star” recording in the Dead’s archive, so he could jump between years and versions of the band with every edit. Each side of Diamond Seas is drawn from one year, but neither side retains the tune’s original structure. Instead, they’re like three-dimensional sculptures made out of pieces of a given year’s “The Diamond Sea.”
Oswald did plunderphonics first under his own steam. I think that commissions came after he got cool because he got into predictable trouble for appropriating copywritten material, but doing something recognizable artistic with it.
Jonathan Shaw: I don’t get the sense that individual instruments from individual performances were isolated and then sequenced alongside one another. In the case of Diamond Seas, for sure there are instances in which multiple performances are layered. I really like the density of those moments.
My sense of Grayfolded is that Bill is largely right about the stretched nature of the thing, especially if the Spring 1969 versions of “Dark Star” are considered the foundational texts of the song. There are some later “Dark Stars” that dispense with the intro and outro verses entirely and only briefly engage the key melody. Interesting to think of “Dark Star” having “landmarks,” a cognitive map of the song to hang on to while the Dead drifted and cooked and audiences did their thing too.
Christian Carey: John Oswald certainly treats it as something as durable as “Dark Star.”
Bill Meyer: My impression is that Diamond Seas is made from bigger and smaller pieces of performances. Occasionally a structure is emulated for a spell, as when the lyrics are laid out in the original sequence on the 1995 piece, but each line sounds like it comes a different version recorded in a different theater. But especially on the 1996 version there’ll be a recognizable fragment mixed into the foreground with two or three chunks of chronologically unrelated noise deployed around it. It’s more of a collage made out of Diamond Seas than a stretch limo edition.
Jonathan Shaw: I think the least effective portion of Diamond Seas is in the 1995 side, when Oswald splices together Moore’s vocals in the song’s first verse. A travelogue of sorts, from room to room and performance to performance. But sonically it doesn’t work. Maybe the less he attempts to follow the song’s logics, the more interesting ideas he has.
On the other hand, I like all the stage banter he puts in. SY’s personality and name-dropping tendencies are trackable. No particular shade, there. They knew lots of interesting people.
Ian Mathers: Well, as our resident Sonic Youth... let’s say “skeptic,” first I had to go back and listen to the original “The Diamond Sea” (it’s possible I played it a few times ago years ago, when I kept listening to different SY albums hoping I’d start loving them like I expected to, but I retained little if anything about the experience). One of my big roadblocks with the band is my visceral dislike of Moore’s singing/vocals, so the very beginning didn’t do much for me. But once the whole thing spins off... I may have heard very little Grateful Dead in my life so far, but I was raised by a man who loved the Allman Brothers Band and Neil Young, and safe to say “The Diamond Sea” instantly vaulted onto my short list of good SY tracks by virtue of sounding a bit like some of the latter more extended live explorations.
So it’s maybe not surprising that I agree with Jonathan that the noisier, denser 1996 side of Diamond Seas is my favorite. And I even like the aggressiveness of how the crowd noise is mixed in mid-track on both sides, although fitting with what Jenny said, I am pretty open to Oswald messing with the track a lot.
I’m not super familiar with Oswald’s efforts, and still have to listen to Grayfolded (which I’ve been intrigued by since reading the Rolling Stone review of it back in the day). I’ve also just realized the Bandcamp edition of it appears slightly different than all the other ones I’ve seen? It’s even got version notes!
Christian Carey: The question always for me with Oswald’s work is intention. Is plundering meant to take a celebratory, intellectual, ironic, or destructive stance? What value does he impart to the material? I find the use of spoken word to be a clue that this is a celebratory project. What do you all think?
Jennifer Kelly: And one that Sonic Youth commissioned. Maybe that’s why I found the crowd noise self-serving.
Bill Meyer: Yeah, this was commissioned, and while I have not heard all of Oswald’s commissions, I am not aware of him biting the hand that feeds him.
Bryon Hayes: My belief is that Oswald originally meant sonic plundering as a means of questioning what a musical instrument is, what constitutes a composition and the ownership over it, and so on. He writes about it in his paper“Plunderphonics, or Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative” from 1985. As Bill said earlier, bands started commissioning him to plunder their works, as he became sort of a “cool” transgressor of copyright laws, I guess. So his intentions have likely shifted over time, as well as his M.O.
This particular record is kind of a walk down memory lane for me, as Sonic Youth soundtracked my high school years and if the Detroit shows from 1995 are included in the mix, then I was there (getting kicked in the head by a stage diver during the Washing Machine show at State Theater). I remember when that album came out, thinking that Sonic Youth finally made a “pretty” song with “The Diamond Sea,” wrestling with it. I preferred their noisier side, so I thought that it was a tip of the hat to the fans of their earlier material that they made the song so long and jammy.
I am really enjoying this release, and the nostalgia factor amplifies my enjoyment even more!!
Jennifer Kelly: I’m puzzled about intent, too, though. I’m not sure what this adds to what we know about the song or Sonic Youth.
Bryon Hayes: And to your point, Jenny, reading Oswald’s paper leads me to a question: is this a Sonic Youth record, or a John Oswald record, or both?
Jennifer Kelly: I feel like the multi-source plunderphonics records — like DJ Shadow’s Entroducing and Avalanches and Jason Forrest’s stuff — do make something new out of their material. I’m not sure this does. Though I also have some nostalgia for Sonic Youth live, it was mostly the music, not the interstitial banter.
Both of these records are conceptually interesting, but I wouldn’t run out and buy either one.
Bill Meyer: I suspect Oswald would prefer to muddy the waters of authorship and ownership.
Jonathan Shaw: Great questions from Christian and Byron. Diamond Seas seem clearly to be an Oswald record to me. That may explain some of the disappointment and discomfiture among SY superfans.
My intellectual training has made questions of intent hard for me to think effectively. I am more interested in what can be heard and interpreted — not saying that’s the right way to see things, but the post-structuralism can do a long-term number on you if you read a lot of it in your 20s. Inasmuch as I understand the “plunder,” I like the usage. Pirates plunder stuff, and exert a measure of control over it, but that’s not ownership, as Bill notes. Rather it moves the material into an unregulated zone. Sam Delany argued in his SF books of the mid-70s that those sorts of sites, of free investigation and play, are especially crucial for innovation.
Christian Carey: Is it a Sonic Youth or a John Oswald record is a great question. If you were looking for it at Princeton Record Exchange, they would certainly file it under Sonic Youth.
Mason Jones: It’s taken me some time to listen and think about this, and I’m still unsure what my take is. I appreciate Oswald’s ideas, but somehow, I don’t feel that this is a successful application of them. Ultimately, I’m left wondering what this adds, and what purpose it serves. Perhaps comparing it to Grayfolded is too simple, but that work took the original and expanded it while to my ears staying within the same philosophical approach, and as a result it became a larger, more extended version that was in some ways “more” than the original. While I’m very much not a Deadhead, I can still appreciate what Oswald accomplished, and I think Dead fans can find in it something new yet connected.
In the case of Diamond Seas, I’m not feeling that. I know the original song well, and heard it played live at least once or twice. For me, this release doesn’t add to it, but simply swaps parts in an approach that feels both too easy conceptually and too lightweight compositionally. I don’t find any reason why I might prefer to listen to this rather than the original song, since I don’t find “more” or really anything very different. It comes across as clever trickery in search of aesthetics, rather than something aesthetically pleasing with elements of cleverness.
Jonathan Shaw: Mason’s and Jenny’s criticisms of Diamond Seas are well put, but they assume that “The Diamond Sea” is the principal aesthetic object or text against which Oswald’s record should be judged. I don’t, so I am not hoping to “find more” or “learn something new” about SY. I love that big, dissonant middle section of the 1996 side. The layering and sequencing gets me somewhere.
I know a bunch of “Dark Stars” very, very well, and for the best of them, I prize them in their individual instances as the particular things they are. That might also contribute to why I don’t respond as strongly to Grayfolded as a musical experience. In that case, I’d rather listen to one of the “Dark Stars,” situated in a specific show from 1969 or 1970 or 1972.
Bill Meyer: I appreciate your first point, Jonathan. 40-odd years after I first heard them, I don’t feel like I need to learn anything about Sonic Youth. I just want to hear their best sounds. I will echo the appreciation for the 1996 side because it’s less concerned with the structure of the song and more concerned with collaging hunks of noise.
Ian Mathers: Relistening to Diamond Seas again last night, the difference for me between the two sides is getting pretty stark (and in ways that are maybe in line with some of the discussion here). I equally feel like I don’t need to learn anything about SY, from the other direction. It felt like I was sitting through “Diamond Seas 1995,” although it passed quickly enough. I don’t have much nostalgia here (my high school engagement with the band was trying to get through all of Daydream Nation instead of just playing “Teen Age Riot” again), like Jenny I don’t get much out of the crowd noise, and it just feels like a lackluster version of what’s going on with “Diamond Seas 1996.” If they’d released the latter as a one-off, I’d be more into it.
I do appreciate that Oswald appears to be something less straightforward here than, say, this compilation of 11 versions of the Stooges’ “Dirt” from the Fun House played at the same time.
And yet, I ultimately have more fun listening to “Dddddiiiiiiirrrrrrrrrtttttttt,” and I suspect that’s not down to just preferring the source material. Something about randomness versus conscious shaping, maybe? I did a quick look to see if Oswald has done any interviews around his work here and didn’t turn up anything, but did find out that 1996 was the last year they ever played “The Diamond Sea live. Here I had been assuming Oswald/the band had just picked a couple of prime years for its live incarnation, instead of the last. Correctly or not, that feels connected to either the performances from 1996 or how Oswald has piled them on.
I also see that at least a good chunk of the vocal SY fans on reddit do not like this album. “Unlistenable” has been thrown around, which feels funny when if anything I wish “Diamond Seas 1996” took things even further into noise.
Justin Cober-Lake: I’m sort of in the middle of opinions on this work. I don’t see why SY fans would find it “unlistenable” — it seems to work for me in a lot of the same ways that Sonic Youth works (and while I’m a longtime fan, this track isn’t one I’ve returned to regularly). I feel a little bit like Mason does in wondering why I would go for this version rather than the original, even if there’s something interesting about it. In that sense, the conversation makes me think that there are multiple ways of approaching this record, which, in my own listening, sometimes come together and sometimes don’t:
1) Is it a good/enjoyable piece of music? Yes, especially 1996 for the reasons that everyone (here and elsewhere) is hearing. Devoid of context, I kind of like it, even if “devoid of context” is an unreachable state.
2) Is it good as a theoretical/aesthetic/compositional/whatever project? I don’t have a strong opinion here, having not taken a dive into Oswald’s whole thing not spent proper time with Grayfolded or other plunderphonic works. I can see how someone else might want to nerd out on it, though, in probably fruitful ways.
3) Does it add to my understanding of or thinking about Sonic Youth or “The Diamond Sea?” For me, it’s a no. It is certainly much better that the “Dirt” thing Ian mentioned, partly just by being a more sincere look at the music. Like Ian, I wish the original went further into noise, too, but there’s SY that does that. This feels a little bit like play to me, and I have no objection to that, but I’m not likely to reach for this over the original and, having listened to it a few times, I haven’t really been compelled to push more into, and I probably wouldn’t even have reached for the original again had it not been for this conversation. Even so, I like that it exists, because the idea at least is provocative, even if this particular release leaves me a little uninspired.
Bill Meyer: As far as context is concerned, I think that Diamond Seas can be seen as part of a long-term project to keep SY alive in people’s minds a decade and a half after the band packed it in. Like many other long in the tooth / retired artists (Can, Wire, Neil Young, the Grateful Dead), they have released a stream of archival live material. They even relented and put out an official version of Walls Have Ears, which was conspicuous by its absence, a couple years ago. This might seem to them like a more creative way of nurturing their commercial presence than another live album.
Michael Rosenstein: I’m curious as to what, if any, connections Oswald sees between his plunderphonics projects and his alto sax playing in improvised settings. Oddly, while I’ve heard Oswald as an improviser, I’ve not heard any of his plunderphonics. I have zero interest in Grayfolded. I listened to and saw the Dead a bunch in the early to mid 1970s. But after seeing Pharoah Sanders live in 1973, I increasingly lost interest in the Dead’s noodling. And I only saw Sonic Youth once, shortly before their breakup and have barely listened to any of their records. But I’ve been listening to Oswald as an improviser since the early 1980s. I think I first came across his playing on Moose and Salmon, his trio with Henry Kaiser and Toshinori Kondo.
I also got a chance to see him with CCMC, the Toronto-based collective including Michael Snow and Paul Dutton, as well as in a duo with pianist Paul Plimley. Taking a quick look at Oswald’s Discogs page, it appears that he still occasionally plays in improv settings. From what I know about his plunderphonics projects, I don’t hear any of those strategies coming through in any of these improvised settings, but I may be missing something.
Bill Meyer: I have never encountered any discussion of the links between his sampling work and his improvised work. The interviews I have seen barely acknowledge his playing.
Joyful and unique, Bay Area band Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 bubbled their way through the late 1980s and 1990s with an unheralded superpower: a great sense of humor. The band wasn’t snotty like Pavement, arch like Sonic Youth, nihilistic like Trumans Water, nor shocking like Butthole Surfers. They were quirky, dorky even, but also charming. Like the weird kid in middle school who could talk the bully out of stuffing him in a locker. This sly, offbeat sensibility emanated from the group’s music, words and their presentation as a unit.
The Thinking Fellers’ earliest output bounced around between noisy, elaborately structured post-punk with odd duck lyrics (see “I Don’t Know” from their debut cassette Wormed by Leonard) and melodic, catchy out-rock that was also structurally unique (see “Hell Rules” from the same album). They were often compared to Sonic Youth, but the acid-drenched spirit that permeated San Francisco ensured that the Fellers weren’t easy to pin down. They invented their own oddly shaped orbit and travelled within it. Like most clever indie bands, they eventually joined forces with Matador Records and released a trio of increasingly accessible albums and an enticing EP. After an unsuccessful tour with Live, during which the Fellers failed to woo the Alternative Generation (they probably didn’t try very hard, but who can blame them), they eventually parked their spaceship and wound down.
Cue Sublime Frequencies’ Hisham Mayet, a friend of the band and their dedicated cheerleader. He pushed them to open a Bandcamp page and eventually started a new label, Bulbous Monocle, to get the Fellers’ music onto vinyl again. He enlisted former Bay Area engineer and musician Mark Gergis (Porest, Sublime Frequencies house engineer) to remaster the material from the original tapes. The label kicked off their mission with reissues of the Matador-era outings Strangers from the Universe and Admonishing the Bishops. Gergis added a sparkle to the Fellers’ music, widening the sound field and adding a sense of clarity, and the new cover art is wonderful to behold for those of us who have held on to the band’s CDs over the decades.
This year Bulbous Monocle released Tangle, originally issued by the band on their own Thwart Productions imprint. It’s TFUL282’s second official full-length and really shows the band coalescing as a unit following the eclectic Wormed by Leonard cassette. For me, Gergis’ remaster is immediately striking. Previously, I only had the Scratch CD reissue from the mid-1990s, and I used to jump every time the chorus to “Sister Hell” kicked in. It seems like he’s added a much-needed sense of balance to these songs. What are you all hearing?
Intro by Bryon Hayes
Jennifer Kelly: I’ve connected with this band only tangentially over the years. I bought Lovelyville used sometime in the aughts and enjoyed it and thought that it was bonkers that they covered “Green Eyed Lady,” but never pursued it any further. I missed them completely in the 1990s. I had my son in 1995 and missed a lot that decade, music-wise, honestly.
But with Tangle, I guess I’m struck by how much oddity they manage to cram into even the surface conventional blues rock songs like “Sister Hell” and “Keeps Repeating,” and how much semi-accessible rock they get into the weirder, sample-y stuff, which reminds me a lot of Bailing Man-era Ubu. I also think a lot of the out-there bands think they can skate on the playing skills, but this was just a very good band, as evidenced by a live recording from 1994, about five years after Tangle.
Bill Meyer: Jen, the playing skills you mention are what initially won me over. I bought Tangle from Ajax Records c. 1991-2 and was more bemused than seduced. It was seeing them a couple years later at Lounge Ax in Chicago, where they caromed from one catchy riff to the next through all manner of decidedly non-catchy debris and never collapsed, that made me a fan. After that, I tried to catch them in concert whenever I could, finishing up with the Lounge Ax farewell gig at the turn of the century. Coming back to Tangle 33 years later, I dig that paradoxical extreme-stuffing that you note a lot more than I did back then. It feels like a really compact amalgam of the Fellers’ extremes.
Bryon, I’m also impressed with the remastering. All of the Bulbous Monocle reissues have benefited from this treatment, which makes previously obscured details pop out.
Bryon Hayes: Sadly, I never got to see the band live. That set from 1994 definitely shows how tight the band was, how inventive and musically proficient they were, and even shows off some of their dorky humor with the between song banter (and a cover of “Holiday for Strings”, which I read was the theme to a comedy/variety show from before my time). It’s definitely a suitable portrait of a band that teetered at the edge of chaos without falling overboard.
I recently read a book called Who Cares Anyway (by Will York), and have been listening to the accompanying podcast. It documents the SF scene from the punk era onward, including the period that the Fellers were active. There seems to have been something unique about that scene, such that chaos, surrealism, and comedy wove their way into many projects from that time: the Fellers, Caroliner, Mr. Bungle, etc. Even “serious” musicians like William Winant joined the fray!
I just had a quick look and Mr. Gergis has over 100 technical and production credits listed on Discogs, many of which are associated with Sublime Frequencies; we’ve covered many of the label’s releases over the years. I’m curious as to if the Bulbous Monocle releases are his first foray into remastering ’80s/’90s rock music.
Mason Jones: “Dorky humor” is a good way to put it. I remember seeing them several times after moving to SF; they were very present, and connected to the city’s indie scene of the time. At the very least, a thread of consistent irreverence was present in many of the bands, and TFUL282 followed suit. Ironically it was partially that which kept me from really liking the band, as at the time I was looking for music that was less concertedly quirky. Not that I think they were quirky for the sake of being quirky, but it just wasn’t my thing. Caroliner’s surrealist creations felt more joyful (and what a fun live show they were), and almost represented the polar opposite in terms of musicianship: chaos over technique. TFUL282 were great players, and did unexpected things with that, and I can appreciate them more nowadays.
Jonathan Shaw: I have a similar past experience with the band. An ex had Tangle, and we played it a few times, but it was very much her music. I was toggling between Neil Young and Crazy Horse-worship and serious infatuation with early Mudhoney groin thunder at the time. I also really loved Bongwater’s Double Bummer, and thought Kramer’s use of found sound and the detritus of domestic experience was somehow more *important* than what TFUL282 were up to. Whatever. Today I am really digging the background sounds in the first minute of “Prelmnlrl” — music in a room in which life is also happening.
Christian Carey: The band seems to revel in their capacity for inconsistency. When they want to, TFU can really play, and are impressive, but for me the lackadaisical stretches are disorienting. And for everyone who isn’t wearing a red baseball hat, things have been difficult this year, so dorky humor isn’t where my head is at.
Jennifer Kelly: I don’t know Christian. Goofy humor drives the authoritarians nuts, see Dada and first wave fascism. It might be all we’ve got.
Jonathan Shaw: The Fellers are definitely Dada, Bongwater were surreal. We need a lot more degenerate art.
Christian Carey: I stand corrected! Dada it is.
Bill Meyer: The first TFUL282 reissues from Bulbous Monocle were the titles that won me over to the band as record makers back in the 1990s — The Funeral Pudding and Strangers From The Universe. Both de-emphasized the chaos and racket, and played up the tunefulness, which is why they connected with 1990s me. But when I returned to them post-pandemic, I was struck by how wacky they could be. It felt very distant and 1990s, out of place with this time. It made me really miss the 1990s.
Jonathan Shaw: Seems like there was a surfeit of wacky bands in that indie-rockish period. King Missile, Coctails, Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black (a different variety of wacky...). TFUL282 seem more musical than any of them.
Bill Meyer: It was the same time period as Peewee Herman. Wackiness was part of the zeitgeist. But TFUL282 were such a great playing unit, you can feel it on Tangle and it ruled the stage live.
Jennifer Kelly: Who, in the band, do you see as the best players?
Bill Meyer: Jay Paget (who joined after Tangle) is a great rock drummer, Eickelberg a very melodic bassist, and the guitarists unerringly achieved great tones. But it’s the way they fit together that made them great. All that gigging paid off.
Christian Carey: I’m curious, perhaps you know Bill, with whom did they play, either headlining or opening?
Bill Meyer: They did a nationwide tour with Sun City Girls. They did the indie circuit repeatedly in the early and mid 1990s. Then they did a big arena tour opening for Live and stopped touring after that. The last time I saw them was a special one-off observing the imminent closing of Lounge Ax. They had already been off the road a while by that point.
Ian Mathers: So, I’d certainly heard of TFUL282 on and off over the years, but prior to this my only actual exposure is an MP3 I probably downloaded off of a blog back in the old days which is apparently them playing “Theme From Sunset On Hair Mountain,” except looking it up on Discogs it’s apparently from a compilation album issued with a paperback compilation of the first four issues of Bananafish magazine and there it’s credited just to band member Hugh Swarts. It’s a pretty great little instrumental (there’s a reason I kept it all these years), but it only partially prepared me for Tangle.
After listening a few times, I started doing some basic reading on the group, and was very happy to see on Wikipedia that apparently the shorter, more interstitial tracks on their LPs were sometimes referred to as “Feller filler.” I don’t mind them at all, and in fact the sprawl and (well) tangle of even a less lengthy album like this one is a large part of the appeal to me. Songs like “Prelmnirl” and “Sports Car” remind me a bit of the joyous, frazzled chaos of my beloved early Mercury Rev (although Tangle came out two years before Yerself Is Steam and isn’t even TFUL282’s first album, so any influence probably went the other way). I’m definitely hearing what others are mentioning as far as humor, Dada, playfulness, etc., and some of those elements are ones that often don’t work for me in music. But here they suit me just fine.
I’ve never heard the older version so I can’t compare the remaster directly, but I agree this version sounds great; even with things flying every which way it’s all parsable and any messiness feels deliberate and effective. A pretty great introduction to the band, far as I can tell.
Bryon Hayes: Like Bill, my first TFUL282 experience was with their most accessible outings, likely beginning with Strangers From the Universe. At the time, I was in high school and Trumans Water was on my mind, as they had recently passed through Detroit and dropped a nihilistic chaos bomb on my impressionable mind. The Fellers seemed to be at the time to be a distant cousin of theirs, more wacky and musically adept than Trumans who were careless and sloppy, but still fun.
I then discovered the Fellers’ opus, Mother of All Saints, which is quite a challenge. The entire back half could be considered “Feller filler” if you don’t listen hard enough to the songs. Even the “normal songs” teeter toward chaos (on that live set Jenny posted, they play “Cistern” from MoaS, which sounds so much tighter in the live setting than on the record). I read that recording the album was a slog for the band, and their later more accessible records like Strangers… were their attempt at bouncing back. Tangle to me feels like a happy medium: the songs aren’t their most accessible, but the “Feller filler” is more solid material than it is on other records.
Bill Meyer: I think the term “Feller filler” was imposed from the outside, not generated by the band. They loved doing that stuff, and it adhered to their pattern of combining goofiness and craft just as much as a tune like “What Time Is It?” Did by combining funny voices and full-on guitars. There’s an interview on Perfect Sound Forever where Brian Hageman says, “My only exception to the term “Feller filler”is, if you really want to hear filler, I’ve probably got 75 reel-to-reel tapes of two- to four-track stuff.”
One thing I appreciate about Tangle is that the home-recorded tapes get collaged with the rock music. I’ve never really pondered what “Sports Car” was about, I just love the way it lurches between chaos and full-tilt rocking again and back again.
Bryon Hayes: Oh man, I always thought that term was more absurdist humor originating from the band themselves, but it makes sense that it was foisted upon them. The word “filler” doesn’t have the most complimentary of connotations.
I wouldn’t mind hearing Hageman’s reel-to-reel tapes, though. I have his solo album and it’s worth investigating if you enjoy the Fellers.
Bill Meyer: I don’t think I have listened to the Mr. Hageman CD in a long time, I should pull it out.
Michael Rosenstein: Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 is way outside of the music I’ve listened to other than maybe Jenny’s reference to Pere Ubu. But giving it a listen, I’m reminded of the collective anarchy of groups like No-Neck Blues Band, The Nihilist Spasm Band or Shaking Ray Levis who were all coming from an improv background. Bryon mentioned that William Winant participated at times and I noticed that Bay Area percussionist Gino Robair did as well. The Bay Area music scene seemed way more permeable back in the 1980s-90s (like many other cities) based on the improvisation that I heard from musicians out there like Splatter Trio, Matthew Sperry, John Shiurba, Dan Plonsey and others. I wonder how much, if any interchange there was between musicians from that improv scene and those coming out of Mills College with the local rock scene.
That notion of Dada theatricality certainly comes through in what I heard. I’m not sure I’m going to rush out and listen to more music by TFUL282, but I’m glad I had a chance to hear this.
Joshua Moss: Not only do TFLU282 make great music, but one of the guys (Mark, I think) owns/partly owns this bar here in Portland called Turn! Turn! Turn! which is among the best places in town to catch underground music!
Bill Meyer: don’t know how much they had to do with the Bay Area improv scene; half the band had moved to town from Iowa in the mid 1980s and Hageman said that they hadn’t even heard Captain Beefheart, the Fall, or Swell Maps until the comparisons started flying. If you look at the band’s website, the only input they acknowledge is the Iowa contingent (Anne, Brian, Mark) playing two big band stations at a time and drinking generic burgundy. But I vaguely recall from some interview I might be remembering correctly from the 1990s that said that they were all Residents/Ralph Records fans when they came together.
Did the Bay Area even have two big band radio stations in the 1980s?
Mason Jones: I’m not quite sure what “big band” stations means, but In the ’80s we had a number of great radio stations: KPFA, KUSF, KFJC, KZSU in particular, maybe KSJS too, were all playing lots of weird, interesting stuff so maybe that’s it. Ralph Records was basically the first underground indie label around here, and was responsible for a lot of weirdos coming together right as the punk scene in the Bay Area was getting started — they even released the first Bay Area industrial record, the debut from Rhythm & Noise in 1984.
The improv scene had a little overlap with the experimental scene, thanks to a sort of acceptance of noisy stuff alongside free jazz. In the late ’80s there were a few series of “free music” shows that encompassed free jazz with folks like Robair, Shiurba, and Plonsey alongside noise and more. But that was generally pretty separate from anything that was much rock-aligned. The Molecules were one of the few that straddled that line, but TFUL282 were pretty firmly in the rock scene. I don’t remember anymore who I saw them playing with around SF, but it would have been folks like Stick Dog, Tragic Mulatto, Steel Pole Bathtub, Mudwimmin, Three Day Stubble, and so on. Later on, they started headlining somewhat bigger venues, as they get a bit more accessible, but they’d still always be the oddities on the bill!
Christian Carey: One of my favorite things about these exchanges is learning from others what their scene is/was like.
If the term “Feller filler” was imposed on TFU, I think it was unfortunate. They don’t create filler; they create space for humor. As I mentioned above, not all of that is landing for me, but I don’t think they were just messing around.
Petr Válek, Ondřej Merta, Jara Tarnovski — Punctum (Flaming Pines)
The Czech trio of Petr Válek, Ondřej Merta and Jara Tarnovski are intrepid musical explorers. As musician, painter, and illustrator, Válek constructs electro-mechanical kinetic sound objects and diy synthesizers. Merta balances music making, teaching and electronic instrument design at Bastl Instruments which he co-founded. Tarnovski is in a plethora of musical projects and runs the label Jipangu, which focuses on experimental music and sound art. The trio previously released Metal where they performed utilizing Válek’s sculptures and synthesizers along with metal ball bearings, kitchen utensils and junk.
Punctum, recorded live at a community space in Prague, takes a similar tact. Before the performance, the three combed the basement, dragging up pots, pans, junk appliances and old bicycles, and headed outside to collect tree branches and stones. Over the course of two improvisations, the group attacks their collected detritus and Válek’s electroacoustic machines with unbridled vigor. First up is the 18-minute “cut pum n” which begins with restless clatter, gradually building in velocity and density. The three are pensive listeners, weaving together the variegated layers of interstitial sonic textures and timbral detail. There is always an underlying sense of intentionality to their collective clamor, with metallic jangling dings chiming out from the cyclical clatter and pommeling, percussive bustle.
For the second improvisation, “cut pun m,” the trio is joined by SunDog (vocalist Isabelle Duthoit and eRikm utilizing various electronics). The addition of two additional voices into the mix might suggest that the proceedings would get more cluttered and anarchic. But while the palette is expanded, the strategies of the first improvisation carry through. It is impossible to pick out extended vocalizations from electromechanical squeaks and chirps or percussive clanks and sputters from electronic oscillations or the rustling and scrapes of the flotsam and jetsam scattered around the space and the five make the most of those synergies. Here in particular, they are attentive to building densities without overwhelming the sonorities of their expansive auditory assemblage. There is a more clearly defined arc to the improvisation, starting with a more open array of sounds that accrue around a ground of electronic hum. Percussive patterns emerge, get layered across each other and are woven in to threads of abraded tonality, teetering gesticulations, and spectral howls with deft control. In the final few minutes, they slowly unwind the layers, as if preparing to distribute the collection of devices back to where they were found, advancing a natural statsis out of the spare creaks, shudders, and clangs.
Mdou Moctar is, without question, one of the pre-eminent rock guitarists of our time, as much a master of heavy, hazy grooves as of double-tapped Van Halen-esque shreddery. His music is steeped in a very specific desert blues aesthetic, the swaying, side-to-side rhythms that evoke camel caravans, the keening call and response that suggests lonely attempts at communion in remote campsites, the hard-bashed but intricate percussion, the silky multi-colored tunics that the band sports onstage. And yet, it’s universal in the same amp fried lineage as Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Eddie Hazel and, oh right, Eddie van Halen.
Dusted has been enamored of Mdou Moctar for quite some time, beginning with Patrick Masterson’s highly entertaining review of the Akounak Tedalat Taha Tazoughai OST in 2015—the music for a remake of Prince’s Purple Rain in the Tamashek language— on Sahel Sounds.Masterson observed, “The idea of a Tuareg Purple Rain would have been unthinkable in 1984, not least of all because —and I cannot stress enough how funny I find this — there is no Tamashek word for ‘purple.’ Yet, 31 years later, here we are — the magic of a smaller world has helped bring an academic outsider’s joke to life. The punchline, of course, is that it’s as good as advertised.”
We collectively fell for Ilana (The Creator) and its out-of-hand shredding in 2019.Isaac Olsen noted, “If you still have a punk-induced allergy to flashy guitar solos, be warned; there’s not a track on Ilana where Moctar doesn’t take every available opportunity to — no other word for it — shred. Fortunately, Moctar earns the right to play his ass off by recruiting a band whose hungry energy matches and spurs on his own and by, for the first time, writing a whole album of tunes worthy of his chops.” The record brought a normally fractious Dusted roster to unity and dominated the 2019 Mid-Year feature.
Two years later, Afrique Victime won praise for its less showy, more groovy vibe. Said Jennifer Kelly in her review, “While he’s been one of rock music’s best guitarists for a while, the larger platform takes him out of the niche desert blues category and into the broader multinational arena. He might be excused for capitalizing by leaning into the rock elements of his sound, but instead, he’s putting forward the droning, mystic, call-and-response twilight magic of northwest African guitar music.”
And so we come to Funeral for Justice, another scorcher. The new record is as sharp and impassioned as any Moctar and his band have done so far, and it is inflamed with political energy. It comes after a period of exile after civil war in Niger. It calls out the injustices of colonialism, economic inequality and exploitation in cuts including the title track, “Oh France” and “Modern Slaves.” It cooks on the strength of a band that has never sounded better or more locked in, and it has one or two guitar solos, too.
Intro by Jennifer Kelly
Jennifer Kelly: How are you all liking the new Mdou Moctar? I’m feeling like it’s the best thing he’s ever done, not different exactly but more intense and volcanic. Definitely turned up to 11.
Bill Meyer: My first reaction is that while Funeral For Justice definitely foregrounds the shredding, I miss the layered sound of Afrique Victime. But I’m tickled to hear the increased prominence of electronic percussion and autotune. It’s kind of a roots move, given that the first time a lot of people heard him was on a tune originally identified only as “Autotune,” which appeared on the Sahel Sounds compilation, Music From Saharan Cellphones.
Tim Clarke: I saw Mdou Moctar live last year at a music festival, and it was very loud and thrilling. This is the first time I've listened to a full album. It makes me realize how little I'm drawn to fast guitar playing! And the band's trademark "cantering" rhythm feels like a bit of a musical rut. But when they explore outside these parameters, things get more interesting, especially when they play around with a mix of recording fidelities at the start of second track, "Imouhar." I also like the fact the record is concise and well-paced. Definitely piqued my interest to hear more of what the band can do.
Christian Carey: The combination of desert blues and intense rock solos is amazing - and fairly singular. The group vocals create an appealing contrast to Mdou's shredding.
I'm not sure that he can raise the intensity level any higher than this — turned up to 12?
Jennifer Kelly: I'm so glad you guys picked up on this. Lots to think about.
First regarding Bill's comment about a "rootsier" sound, it's complicated isn't it?
We look to third world artists for authenticity, which in its most reductive form means less electrification, fewer electronics, etc. But as Bill points out, Mdou's early stuff was heavily autotuned, as for instance here:
And a lot of the Sahel Sounds’ (and thanks, Bill, for making sure we gave them credit for being first with this stuff) cellphone compilations have a very slick, disco-electronic vibe. And that's music largely produced for African audiences without much consideration of a global audience. So which is authentic?
Also, my understanding, Tim, is that the rhythm is based on the way camels walk and a nod to West Africa's nomadic culture and heritage? You hear the same beat in Tinawarin's stuff.
Tim Clarke: I can definitely hear the camel's gait in the cantering rhythm section, that slightly awkward, loping feel. It's certainly unique.
Bryon Hayes: The almost hard rock riff in the intro of the title track originally confused me (did I put the right album on?), but I found it really powerful upon further spins of the album, especially how it segues into the cantering rhythm. Also, the roar as the lower fidelity section of “Imouhar” transitions to a higher fidelity is downright mind-melting! He’s experimenting with song form, and it really works.
Michael Rosenstein: As much as I've liked Mdou Moctar's music, I have to admit that this one is starting to lose me a bit. But that has way more to do with my musical proclivities than it does to the music at hand. What originally drew me to Moctar's music was the rawness of it; that uneasy balance of "shredding" that others have mentioned with a trance-like, cyclical flow. That was really foregrounded in his early albums like Afelan or Anar both of which were released a decade ago. This new one sounds, to my ears, much more heavily produced and fussed over. I admit, though, that I'm really uneasy with my assessment in that, as much as I hope I'm not, I fear I am just bringing my old, white, privileged judgement to bear. Is this just me judging that the music is no longer "authentic" enough? Or is it just that he is embracing the rock leanings inherent to his music and that just resonates less with me?
I do find it curious that, as far as I can tell, none of Moctar's music on Sahel Sounds is available anymore (including the one track on Music from Saharan Cellphones: Volume 2 referenced by Bill.) I have no idea if that is by his choice, by contractual obligations with Matador, or by the choice of the Sahel Sounds folks.
Jennifer Kelly: I noticed that those records were missing, too, when I looked for the Sahel Sounds records to hear the autotune. I wonder what happened?
Some of the songs are still very trance-y..."Imouhar," for example, especially at the beginning (it gets loud later), "Takoba" all the way through. The production seems about the same as on Afrique Victime to me, clean but not overly so. (Though, I will admit that I probably like the rock stuff more than Michael does.)
We haven't really talked about the political backdrop to this record, have we? The fact that Civil War in Niger has left them stranded in the States since 2023. I don't speak Tamshek but it seems that a lot of the songs with English titles are about politics and colonialism, which may affect the way they play and present the material, yes? It's different from writing songs about village life or falling in love with the local beauty.
Ian Mathers: I'll admit, there's at least a part of me that wishes this whole record was just unabashedly Going For It as hard as the opening title track does. Not that I don't like the relatively more restrained material; I'm not terribly knowledgeable about African music in general but "Takoba" reminds me of one of the few records from the continent I do very much know and love, the one Ali Farka Toure did with Ry Cooder (Talking Timbuktu) that my dad played all the time when I was in high school. Toure was from Mali, which at least shares a border with Niger, so hopefully I'm not being too ignorant hearing similarities in some of the guitar playing there. The more monomaniacally the band gets cooking here, generally, the more I like it (I really like "Sousoume Tamacheq," for example). I think I probably like it a little more than (the also excellent!) Afrique Victime, although I think for similar but opposite reasons to Michael, that it's just more to my taste and not necessarily a better record.
I'd also love to see a full set of lyrics/translations, and everything I've read about the sociopolitical context of the band and this music has been fascinating, but mostly right I'm just appreciating and enjoying this record in a similar way to, say, Oneida's "Sheets of Easter" or that U SCO record I picked for our 2023 Slept On round up.
Tim Clarke: Further to what you're saying about enjoying the "everything on 11" aspect of Moctar's sound, I can't help wondering what the band would sound like recorded by Steve Albini. That I'd like to hear!
Ian Mathers: Oh, good point; maybe because we talked about African Head Charge a while back I'm now also wondering what Adrian Sherwood would make of them.
Bill Meyer: I don’t think you’re too far off the mark in seeing a similarity between Moctar’s and Ali Farka Toure’s music, Ian. Toure worked with the languages and styles of several ethnic groups from the Malian interior, soI’m sure he would have been acquainted with the precedents for what Moctar does. Moctar is from subsequent generation, so his music is more in touch with what has been popular in the Sahel in this century. But another thing they both have in common is that they’ve been worked a lot on non-African stages, gotten hold of gear that isn’t particularly available back home, and undergone a personal course of development on a world stage.
Their politics are different, though. I think Toure was the mayor (or something similar) of his town. He was pretty invested in fostering the stability of the existing Malian state, thus all the songs in different languages that encouraged people to get along. He was the big man in town who responsibly leveraged his popularity as a musician to obtain resources for his community. Your CD purchases generated income for Niafunke’s farming community. Moctar, on the other hand, was just another guy on the street, albeit an artistically ambitious one, until musical opportunities permitted him to tour and make records outside of Niger. His stance, as far as I can grasp it, is critical of African leaders who don’t look out for their people, and even more critical of the foreign powers that have run roughshod over his country (mostly France and the US).
Matador came through with the lyrics.
[Here are some excerpts.]
“ FUNERAL FOR JUSTICE”
Dear African leaders, hear my burning question
Why does your ear only heed France and America?
They misled you into giving up your lands
They delightfully watch you in your fraternal feud
They possess the power to help out but chose not to
Why is that? When your rights are trodden upon
Why is that? When your rights are trodden upon
“ MODERN SLAVES”
Oh world, why be so selective about human beings?
Oh world, why be so selective about human beings?
My people are crying while you laugh
My people are crying while you laugh
All you do is watch
All you do is watch
Oh world, why be so selective about counrties?
Oh world, why be so selective about counrties?
Yours are well built while ours are being destroyed
Yours are well built while ours are being destroyed.
Jennifer Kelly: Wow, that is fiery stuff.
Ian Mathers: I can also see in the translated lyrics even more of a connection between the two countries, with Tamasheq described as "A helpless orphan abandoned by 3 countries / Mali-Niger, Niger-Mali and Algeria as the third." Interesting to note the gap between Toure and Moctar's respective places in society (at least right now, for Moctar). I didn't specifically think of reggae when I was reading the lyrics, Bill, but once you point it out there does seem to be a number of shared themes, maybe even some metaphors and imagery, there.
Milford Graves, Arthur Doyle, Hugh Glover — Children of the Forest (Black Editions)
Children of the Forest by Milford Graves, Arthur Doyle, Hugh Glover
Drummer Milford Graves rarely recorded during his lifetime, and, until recently, most of his releases were long out of print. Corbett vs. Dempsey began to rectify that with key reissues of Bäbi, his trio with reed players Arthur Doyle and Hugh Glover, and The Complete Yale Concert 1966, his duos with Don Pullen. TUM records stepped in with Wadada Leo Smith’s Sacred Ceremonies, a 3 CD set including an incendiary duo with Graves along with a trio with Graves and bassist Bill Laswell. Since his death in February, 2021 Black Editions Archive has stepped up the game, digging in to Graves’ vaults, first with an issue of a trio set by Peter Brötzmann, Milford Graves, William Parker, and now, with Children of the Forest, a set of recordings captured in Graves’ Queens workshop with Doyle and Glover in the months leading up to the Bäbi session. The two-LP set documents a January 1976 duo session with Graves along with Glover on tenor saxophone, a brief drum solo from February of that year and a March trio session with Graves, Glover on klaxon, percussion and vaccine (a Haitian one-note trumpet) and Doyle on tenor saxophone and flute. The torrid rawness of these recordings looks toward the torrential barrage of Bäbi but brings out a more ritualistic edge to the playing.
Graves had spent his early years studying African drumming, tablas and playing timbales in Latin jazz bands and that sense of time, extended from African and Caribbean ceremonial music and ritual imbue these sessions. Hugh Glover talks about this and the time he spent with Graves, whom he refers to as Prof, in the extensive interview included with the LP set conducted by Jake Meginsky. “We were listening to the music of the peoples of the interior forest of the Congo… First, the Prof’s mood sets up a tribal-like atmosphere. It’s Congo-like — possession states. The rhythms, I think they immediately stimulated the need to dance… The next thing one must know and be aware of is that Milford Graves, he is not a time-keeping drummer like most jazz drummers. Prof represents the epitome of traditional hand drumming. I’m talking about ceremonial music and ritualistic sounds most familiar with divination.”
Hugh Glover only recorded a few times so the January duo session with him and Graves is a particular find. The first of the four improvisations starts out with the percussionist’s churning thunder, leading to the entry of the tenor player’s hoarse, braying cries. The two had known each other for a decade at that point and Glover had been part of a European tour of Graves’ quartet along with Joe Rigby and Arthur Williams. That symbiosis is immediately evident. There’s a fluid sense of polyphony and elastic polyrhythms at play as the two bound along with ebullient intensity. The music is charged with open, spontaneous interchange and while the intensity level is high, they never overpower each other. Graves’ percussion work is revelatory here, spilling across his kit with a limber, propulsive dynamism. One can hear the legacy of African and Latin American rhythms exploded out with the drummer’s lithe control of tuned skin and slashing cymbals, with masterful control of dynamics and timbre. The inclusion of a short, 2-minute recording from the session reveals their careful attention to detail as the two sound-check the room and their balance and then charge into a compact give-and-take. Their concluding 7-minute improvisation is a particular highlight as they ebb and flow with synchronous fervor.
The inclusion of a three-minute drum solo, recorded in February, is a brilliant addition to the set, particularly since Graves didn’t release any solo recordings until his two discs on Tzadik that came out in the late 1990s. On this 1976 recording, Graves distills his unified, multi-limbed attack into a roiling tempest of energy. Each thundering salvo, each cymbal crash, each resounding wallop of the bass drum is meted out with focus and intention. Glover remarks that listening to the solo recording he was struck by “the melody, and the melody of the tones that he gets, the way he rocks from one melody pitch to another. It has always been a mystery to me how Cuban drummers in Bata were able to modulate the rhythm and the meter. Well, it takes more than one player to do it Cuban style. Prof shows you can do it as one player.”
The three March improvisations with Graves, Glover, and Arthur Doyle provide a notable link in the trajectory toward the session recorded a few weeks later that would be released as Bäbi. Glover reminisces about the March session here, noting “When we played, though, Doyle and I, we weren’t thinking of BÄBI [a name Graves used for his conceptual approach to improvisation]. We were thinking of… well I know I was thing of, and I’m pretty sure he was thinking, how do we keep up with Prof!” While that may have been going through their minds, that uncertainty never reveals itself in their playing. Graves begins the 12-minute improvisation that opens the set with tuned cascades of rim shots and toms and the two quickly join in, with Doyle’s raspy tenor crying out against the shifting percussion. The modulating rhythms and meters of Graves’ solo are the foundation of the buzzing whorls that develop in three-way, spontaneous orchestration which never flags for a moment. The shorter second piece kicks off with an extended section of chattering drums, making way for the two partners to interject barking, ecstatic exclamations that mount with intensity as Graves hurtles in with clanging cowbell. The final piece is the most abstracted, with Doyle’s high-pitched flute skirling against the chafed yawp of Glover’s klaxon and Graves’ coursing flow. Here, improvisation and ritual are melded together with pelting focus.
Glover concludes his interview reminiscing that “It was like Prof was saying, there is no ensemble, there is no musical configuration that I can’t play with as long as I’m allowed to play what I want to play. In other words, his confidence factor was like, I know I have the essence of where any group wants to go. If they allow me to do my thing, I’ll take them there.” The sessions released on Children of the Forest are a fitting testament to that belief and provide a welcome addition to the documentation of the lineage of Graves’ musical legacy. Here's to hoping that Black Editions continues to mine the Prof’s archives.
