Micro album reviews 04
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It's been, yikes, over a year since I did some short album reviews.
I stopped writing but I didn't stop listening. In fact, the quest
I embarked on some years back to expand my musical horizons and to
be less passive in my consumption of music has been an unmitigated
success. I listen to and enjoy a much wider range of musical styles
and eras today than I ever have in the past. And I'm not done yet!
No over-arching theme to today's three, just a hodgepodge.
John Hassell's "Aka / Darabi / Java" (1983) [1]
This album feels, to me, waaaay ahead of its time. I've never
heard anything else like it that isn't a decade younger or more,
but maybe that's just ignorance on my part. This album is the ~45
minute (cassette enthusiasts rejoice!) result of the enthusiastic
application of early digital audio technology to recordings of
Hassell's own Indian raga-inspired trumpet playing plus recordings of
a diverse range of traditional ethnic instruments. Hassell called
this a "unified primitive/futurist sound". It's repetitive and
trance inducing and unmistakably digital/electronic, while also
being smooth and mellow and organic sounding, like the incredible
and unexpected lovechild of ambient/minimal techno and record store
bargain bin "world music" compilation discs that violently outshines
both of its parents. If you can recommend me more stuff like this,
please do!
Donald Byrd's "Fancy Free" (1970) [2]
It took a long time, and a circuitous route via jazz rock and jazz
fusion, if that's a distinction you care to make, but it finally
happened and I've become a fan of "proper" jazz, whatever that means.
Donald Byrd is a *firm* favourite and I could easily have made
a post just recommending three of his albums, but let's not get
carried away. I might hesitate to dub "Fancy Free" my favourite
of the Byrd albums I enjoy, but it is, to my neophyte jazz mind
without the proper taxonomic skills to explain how or why, the one
which feels the stylistically purest and simplest. The album name
and the album art (sea birds soaring against a lovely cloudscape)
fit the music perfectly. It's cheerful and playful, relaxed and
unhurried, sure to induce a good mood.
Ose's "Adonia" (1978) [3]
Goodness me, I'm not even sure what to call this. Electronic
progressive rock? The French answer to Krautrock? Ose was a
short-lived (well, originally short-lived anyway, back in the 70s;
astonishingly, they resurfaced with a new release on Bandcamp in 2021
after a multi-decade hiatus! [4]) project lead by prolific
experimental musician Richard Pinhas who recorded many more albums
with his earlier band Heldon, and if you enjoy "Adonia" you will
likely enjoy Heldon's output and Pinhas' solo work, too. I'm sharing
"Adonia" here rather than anything else simply because this album was
*my* gateway into this little world, so it might as well be yours,
too. This is science-fiction inflected Krautrock, or actually, maybe
it's more rock-infused Berlin school electronica? Lots of synths,
cold and crystalline, befitting the mood set by the
reminiscent-of-Dune album art, with plenty of step sequencer goodness,
but with lots of great electric guitar work, too. Actually, yes,
this really is progressive rock meets Berlin school, not French
Krautrock. There's no propulsive motorik drumming here. There *are*
drums, but the sequencers steal the show in terms of rhythmic
elements. Guitar soars meanderingly over the top of steadily plodding
synths while banks of blinkenlights (in God-fearing traffic light
colours, not a blue abomination amongst 'em) do their blinky business
in the darkened control room of a drifting, derelict spacecraft. Yep,
nailed it. Front row candidate for the national anthem of the Mare
Tranquillitatis People's Circumlunar Zaibatsu.
[1]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQyFULobOG4
[2]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRRouasfWEc
[3]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wImHbQiRmw
[4]
https://osemusic3.bandcamp.com/
