The nature of a long-running project like Jon DeRosa’s Aarktica (in existence for over 25 years) is such that most listeners of the new Ecstatic Lightsongs are likely to be those who’ve been following his work for some time now. It’s the eternal struggle of the long-term working artist, but in this case also offers a lovely silver lining; those same listeners are the ones most likely to both notice and appreciate what makes this record stand out from the many ambient classics released under the Aarktica name (as opposed to his other endeavours). For one thing, here DeRosa’s vocals take center stage on nearly every track as opposed to just a few; but what might be even more striking to long-term fans can be summed up in one word. Drums.
DeRosa has been upfront when discussing Ecstatic Lightsongs about this being an Aarktica record that overtly nods to the post-punk, new wave, and post-rock music he loves, singling out late-period Talk Talk as a rhythmic inspiration. And sure enough, mere seconds into the opening “Trick of the Light” you can hear Mike Pride’s gently rolling fills setting the scene just as much as DeRosa’s ringing guitar. That Laughing Stock influence is most notable on “Laughing in the Rain,” where Pride and bassist Lewis Pesacov (who also produced most of the LP) immediately sketch out a similarly expansive, open space for the song to exist in. But the percussion here takes on more than one form, like the dusty, looping playing that opens “To Love Is to Believe” until it fades out as the track swells into an echoing, faintly dubby cloud.
Pride, Pesacov, and cellist Henrik Meierkord even put a shuffling spin on “Destination Paradise” that comes close to trip hop, not least because that’s also one of three songs here that features Britt Warner’s singing. Her and DeRosa’s interplay on those tracks is immediately compelling in a sandpaper-and-honey kind of way. DeRosa’s vocal tracks are often highlights on Aarktica albums, and their predominance here only confirms that they can carry a song practically on their own instead of just being an occasional ingredient.
Which is not to suggest that Ecstatic Lightsongs is a radical change from the kind of beauty Aarktica normally deals in, nor that DeRosa has abandoned his traditional strengths; although he adds synths here (in a less immediately surprising but equally significant departure from most Aarktica releases) his guitar remains the mainstay of the sound throughout and it’s always gorgeous, whether in the increasingly distorted solo playing on “Why Say Anything?” (the vocal track that most sounds like it could be plucked out of a past Aarktica release) or on the two instrumentals, especially the gorgeous duet with Meierkord that makes up “The Bird That Hides Itself.”
The digital release of the album closes with a bonus track that’s almost a proof of concept of the idea behind the whole LP, a cover of the Chameleons’ 1983 “Second Skin.” The original is great in a very characteristic way, both murky and confrontational with a great whacking beat and increasingly tormented vocals. The Aarktica take doesn’t try and beat the original at its own game; the beat is still central but, diffused a touch and surrounded by cello and DeRosa’s smoother baritone, the result feels more sweeping and darkly romantic. By taking on one of his inspirations directly and offering a fantastic, significantly tonally distinct version of it, DeRosa is showing both how this iteration of Aarktica is fully capable of standing with the works and artists it seeks to join, and that his own originals hold up well in their company. “Second Skin” is a classic, and it fits right in here.
Mike Pride has taken material from punk band MDC’s iconic 1982 debut album, Millions of Dead Cops and reinterpreted the songs as jazz standards. On the album, entitled I Hate Work, the virtuosic drummer Pride is accompanied by pianist Jamie Saft and bassist Bradley Christopher Jones. It was released on Nov 19 2021 on Rare Noise Records.
JG Thirlwell guests-vocalizes on the track ‘America’s So Straight’. A video for the song was directed by Anais Blondet, which you can see at the link.
The album also features appearances by Mick Barr (Ocrilim, Krallice), Sam Mickens (The Dead Science) and MDC frontman Dave Dictor.
Three-Layer Cake - Stove Top - “free rock” trio of Mike Watt, Mike Pride, and Brandon Seabrook (RareNoise)
The past year’s lockdown has proved undeniably challenging to improvising musicians who typically thrive on face-to-face interaction. But bassist Mike Watt, drummer/percussionist Mike Pride, and guitarist/banjoist Brandon Seabrook have all built their careers on kicking down the barriers between genres, so why would they let a little pandemic-induced isolation and geographic distance stand in their way? Convening for the first time as Three-Layer Cake, these three dizzyingly inventive artists bake up a long-distance set of singular, boundary-defying collaborations on their combustible debut, Stove Top.
Stove Top is uncategorizable in the best sense of the word, patching together elements of punk, free jazz, new music, no wave, doom metal, dub, avant-funk, and various subsectors of the experimental in such freewheeling and raucous fashion that the very idea of divvying them up into disparate inspirations seems laughable.
The basic idea for the project is embodied in the name, which came to Watt fully-formed along with the concept itself: Pride would record drum tracks and send them to Watt, who would respond on the bass. As Watt summarizes, “There's a lot of fucked up things about the Internet, but this is one of the good things: instead of spreading lies you can trade files.”
Watt then tasked Pride with finding the third layer for this improvisational concoction. “I knew Brandon was a big fan of Watt’s and kind of carries a lot of that ethos that Watt carries around in his own work,” Pride continues. “And Brandon is amazing, so I thought it would be musically cool and karmically cool to connect those two guys.”
The guitarist was immediately on board. “I was excited,” Seabrook says. “I discovered the Minutemen in high school, and they were my break from the jazz and classic rock that I had always listened to. They were a big influence that broke open the world of the punk rock movement. They also taught me words like ‘malleable’ and ‘foist’ and ‘fascist’ that I wasn’t used to hearing in Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath songs.”
mike: who’s mark ashton? i don’t know someone by that name *he trips and thousands of joe’s photos of mark fall out of his coat* no these aren’t mine i swear *adjusts his hat and hundreds more fall out* no i swear i’m just looking after thhes for a friend *bag opens and a framed painting of mark falls out* fuckign jonathan and gethin must have planted it *jacket falls off to reveal a t shirt which says ‘i heart mark ashton’*
Chris Forsyth — Solar Motel (Expanded) (Algorithm Free)
Chris Forsyth marks the ten-year anniversary of his turn from towards rock with this expanded edition of Solar Motel, augmented with two previously unreleased studio tracks and a side-long live WFMU recording of “Paranoid Cat.” The two newly released tracks are a revelation, solidifying and reaffirming Forsyth’s connection to Television (he studied with Richard Lloyd) with cartwheeling guitar riffs and roiling, surging percussion in the epic vein of Marquee Moon.
Forsyth was just off his 2011 release of Paranoid Cat when he made Solar Motel, stillstruggling for a way to incorporate a palette of influences—Television, Takoma-style fingerpicking, psych and drone—into a coherent aesthetic. Our own Bill Meyer saw him as only partly successful at this on the previous album, calling Paranoid Cat, “an album that is full of good ideas lifted from other people’s work, but he makes such good use of them that it’s easy not to care.”
Solar Motel, Forsyth’s first full-band album, was a big step towards the driving, boogie-ing, rock-leaning long grooves that we have since come to associate with the guitarist. In the notes, he says, “Solar Motel is the first record on which I overtly took rock tropes and twisted them into new shapes, incorporating so many of my interests and influences - the twin-guitar elegance of Television, the sprawl of West Coast psych, the boiled down Rock Minimalism of Rhys Chatham, the abstract tangles of free improv, an undercurrent of ecstatic jazz energy, and the studio textures of Eno/Cale/Roxy ‘70s art rock.… Solar Motel basically set the template for much of what I did for the remainder of that decade.”
The band for Solar Motel included Forsyth, drummer Mike Pride, bassist Peter Kerlin and keyboard player Shawn Edward Hansen, all musicians that Forsyth had worked with previously in various roles and configurations. It was recorded mostly live, though Forsyth put in additional guitar after the fact to build up Television-like layers of interplay. The music took shape in four numbered tracks Solar Motel I through IV. “Part I” opens with tense, staccato guitar, at first alone, then joined by a second guitar and bass. The groove is insistent, cleanly minimal, and over it, Forsyth improvises warm, fluid arcs of solo guitar, and as it goes, the texture becomes less of a drone and more of a warm, living jam. This becomes a pattern over the next three track, as taut, disciplined motifs blossom into full-band free play. Repetition becomes a launching pad for the wildest swirls of improvisatory ornament, with sweet lyrical mid-range guitar vaulting over motorik grooves.
All that is still there, still striking in the way it marries austere experiment to lighter flaring guitar solo. If you haven’t heard it—or haven’t heard it in a while—all four original tracks remain very much worth a listen. However, it’s the new stuff that you’ll want to spin right away, because these two unreleased tracks take the basic experiment and launch them into richer, more exciting directions.
“Harmonious Dance,” at just under nine minutes, is the expanded release’s best tune. A slow chime of guitar notes hitting turbulence early on in Pride’s swelling drum roll. The notes get bigger, more resonant, more sustained as they go, taking on the burnished glow of Lloyd and Verlaine in tandem (though without the trebly yelp of vocals). “Long Warm Afternoon” starts out with warmth and sustained tones, building shimmering textures of guitar over a steady thump and roll. Both cuts feel less restrained, less tightly disciplined than the original Solar Motel cuts. It’s as if Forsyth had a concept for setting down guardrails and eventually swamping them with sensory data, and it took him a while to implement it fully.
The WFMU recording is fine, too, letting the twitchy glamor of “Paranoid Cat” stretch out, catch fire in a truly insane instrumental freakout and somehow stuff all that back into the bottle for a reprise of the original melody. But if you need a reason to check out this ten years after reissue, I’d look at the two unreleased tracks, where Forsyth and his band hit a groove they’ve been riding ever since.
Ross Hammond / Oliver Lake / Mike Pride — Our Place on the Wheel (rosshammond.com)
Our Place On The Wheel by Ross Hammond
The blues and jazz are the closest of kin, and their tradition-bound paths cross and combine too much to untangle. This is just one reason why it’s hard to find a fresh way to put them together. Sacramento-based guitarist Ross Hammond has been making records with jazz musicians and boundary-crossing improvisers for years, but his sound and choices of instruments have grown increasingly blues-oriented in recent years. Our Place On The Wheel is his attempt to make a straight-up blues record while remaining true to his roots in jazz.
Composition takes many forms; for this session, one of them is Hammond’s choice in accompanists. Drummer Mike Pride is an old friend of Hammond’s with a long list of recordings for Aum Fidelity, Public Eyesore, Utech, and his own Funhole label. Alto saxophonist Oliver Lake was a member of the Black Artist’s Group, which was St. Louis’ counterpart to the AACM, as well as a founder of the World Saxophone Quartet. Instrumentation is another compositional choice, and Hammond’s decision to restrict himself to a steel guitar and play it in an idiomatically bluesy way centers the music that the group makes. His tone shimmers and his notes slide and swoop. Even when he departs from overt blues licks, as on the raga-like “Mosaic,” he never loses the vibe. Lake also knows how much tone matters, and the slight sourness he stirs into both chopped-short notes and softer, drawn-out ones adds an essential pungency to the mix. He flies briefly into the altissimo register on the opener, “Low Rent,” but most of the time he eschews overt free jazz moves.
Pride plays with the most freedom. While he isn’t averse to laying down a simple backbeat, as he does on “We’re Well Into The Fall,” more often he elaborates on the groove in ways that depart from both blues and jazz models of drumming. He’s the session’s most frequent agent of surprise, but never at the expense of Hammond’s intentions. His looseness also works to affirm the project’s humility. Hammond and his associates may love the blues, but they aren’t trying to make a big deal about their ardor. Available as a short-run CDR or a digital download, this is one in a steady stream of spontaneous but engaged recordings that the guitarist has kept making while the live music scene has shut down around him.
