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Level The Playing Field

[ review of: Level The Playing Field by Gary Lucas (CD Album) ]

Subtitled "Early Hurly Burly 1988-1994", this collection on French label Last Call aggregates a gloriously rag-bag bunch of Gary Lucas tunes, illustrating both the dizzyingly diverse styles summoned up by this legendary guitarist, and his singular, distinctive voice writ large across these songs. The "Early" in the subtitle perhaps relates to the period, post-Beefheart, when Lucas began to develop the notion that he could be a solo performer, testing his searing guitar style out across a diverse bunch of group and solo formats (and some occasionally lo-fi recording environments). As such, it's a great collection of smart, open-minded and big-hearted rock tunes, featuring an utterly extraordinary musician.

The piece here are largely songs, rather than the ambient soundscapes or Wagnerian 'soliliquays' he's also capable of, and they generally feature his band Gods and Monsters, often working with a set of singers including Sonya Cohen, Rolo McGinty, Dina Emerson, Jon Langford, and the brilliant Mary Margaret O'Hara. The most celebrated singer in Gods and Monsters was the late Jeff Buckley, for whom Lucas clearly had the greatest respect, and for whom he wrote two songs which eventually became 'Grace' and 'Mojo Pin', launching Buckley's sadly brief but radiant career. These are included here as Lucas solo pieces, and work brilliantly in their own right but also produce a spooky internal echo of Buckley's extraordinary vocal lines. Other standout moments include a scintillating 'power trio' with Jared Nicholson and Michael Blair treating the Knitting Factory crowd to a blazing cover of Miles Davis' "Jack Johnson" segueing into Suicide's "Ghostrider"; or the rock-hip-hop collision featuring K-Rob, "The Crazy Ray"; his virtuoso solo acoustic piece "Dream Of A Russian Princess"; or the incredibly raw, drum machine-driven "The Brain from Planet Eros" recorded in Lucas' NYC living room in 1991.

He's a truly broad-minded musician, with a personal taste for music related to blues in some way, or rather, featuring 'bent notes' at some point in the proceedings, "the voice of god is in the bent notes" as he says! Of course, this can lead to a rich pickings (pun intended), such as music from the Indian sub-continent, Africa, 30s Chinese pop songs, Celtic folk music, the Stones and Beefheart, as much as it can Robert Johnson. The fact he's a supreme player helps, I guess. I was privileged to witness his extraordinary one-man show at the Mixing It live shows in London recently, when his warmth, intelligence, humour, and vast musical knowledge and ability shone through with a certain hazy exuberance. What was also a pleasure to witness was his utterly genuine, humble sincerity and delight at the deserved adulation he received from the crowd. A true musician.

Posted by dan hill at 00:00, 30 Nov 2000

Megaton/Classical Homicide

[ review of: Megaton/Classical Homicide by Techno Animal, D�lek (CD Album) ]

D�lek's "Negro Necro Nekros" remains one of the finest hip-hop albums of recent years, proving as durable as the equally brilliant, but rather more lauded efforts by Anti Pop Consortium, Quasimoto, or the AntiCon, Ozone, Mush Records outfits. Techno Animal stand proudly alone in their soundworld, smartly outside fashionable fripperies or simple genre boundaries, ramraiding dub, hip-hop, industrial, metal, dnb (and gawd knows what else) with true integrity. This 12", number 5 in Matador's hip-hop series, pays witness to a soundclash between these two explorers of the outer reaches of avant-hip-hop, featuring a new track by each artist, and a remix of each other's contributions.

The New Jersey trio D�lek (comprising the eponymous rapper/leader, and DJ Octopus and DJ Rek) have already developed a uniquely dramatic sound: a boldly abrasive approach to sculpting samples, unafraid to harshly slam sounds together in uncompromising fashion. Here, "Classical Homicide" delivers big time, it's a massive track. Massive literally, in that its mass shifts according to a sense of dynamics which finds time for vast sparsely populated, empty spaces and then sudden breeze blocks of raw noise. It not so much musique concr�te as music which seems to have actually been roughly hewn from concrete, dropping coarsely textured dense slabs like some kind of crazed 60s slum redeveloper. D�lek's convincing, committed delivery perfectly suits the spiralling collages sprouting around him, and personally I can't wait to hear more stuff from this crew.

As with their brilliant split album with Porter Ricks, collaboration often brings out the best in TA's Kevin Martin and Justin Broadrick though interestingly, given the hip-hop terrain, the remixes don't sound that much like Ice, TA's hip-hop offshoot. Both their mix of D�lek, and D�lek's mix of them aren't quite as strong as the originals (as is often the case) but they're fine pieces none-the-less, both acts realising the epic potential inherent in their different sounds. "Megaton" is classic Techno Animal, the relentless, insistent beats of "Demonoid" punching holes in a backdrop of paranoiac migraine haze, gigantic d'n'b bass stabs scraping across a dull ache. I can't think of many groups that pursue a musical vision with such intensity and integrity. A new Techno Animal album, apparently featuring a stellar cast of guest MCs and called, with characteristic flourish, "The Brotherhood of the Bomb", is due out next year. Can't wait for that either. In the meantime, this 12" will do nicely.

Posted by dan hill at 00:00, 30 Nov 2000

Roots and Wires

[ review of: Roots and Wires by Koch-Sch�tz-Studer plus DJ M. Singe, ...(CD Album) ]

This album's been in my life for some time now, I've repeatedly returned to it, and despite the immediate impression it makes, it's only over the course of a few months that I've come to realise it's one of the best records of the year. This probably reflects more on me than the music(!), but none-the-less, what a release. The trio of Hans Koch (bass clarinet, soprano and tenor saxophones, electronics, sequencer), Martin Sch�tz (electric 5string cello, acoustic cello, more electronics & sequencer), and Fredy Studer (drums, percussion), are joined by two turntablists, DJ M Singe and DJ I-Sound, to generate another edition of "hardcore chambermusic".

The first piece, "The background is the foreground then delirium", is a phenomenal 10-minute introduction. An insistent groove is slowly augmented by the other players, following the relentless gritty patterns, until it finally collapses, twitching, in a glorious barrage of free noise. It's both complex and funky, dealing in harsh abstraction and improv as well as generating rhythmic hooks and warm acoustic textures, and in this sense it's akin to Radian's supreme "TG-11", Pluramon, or Orchester 33/3. With Bernd Friedmann now working with Jaki Leibezeit too, it's clear that the integration of electronics, turntables, and improvised live-playing have found their finest exponents in German speaking countries. And I guess Can inevitably spring to mind as a possible precursor.

But, where previous outings by Koch-Schutz-Studer have engaged with music from Egypt and Cuba, here it seems they've musically washed up on Manhattan's shoreline, working with two "illbient" musicians whose turntables complement their sound perfectly. There are very few turntablists who have really engaged with the idea of being an "equal musician" in such a context, and even fewer who were able to. But M. Singe and I-Sound really do succeed here, with a sense of constucting the music's architecture over time and inter-reacting with the other musicians, working with abstraction as much as discernible "samples". It's often difficult to pick apart the scratching from the saxophones, and indeed, why should you? Just enjoy the furious collages generated on tracks like "Thai Speed Parade" and "Loop Eleven". On this track, Koch plays with Zorn-like intensity, before a post-rock-like bass line and drum pattern drop, skittering saxophone interwoven with scratching hot on their heels. Throughout the whole album, it's an utterly seductive mix of sparse, spacy jams and deep, demanding, abstraction. But, as it says in the smart sleeve notes, "these are only words, they do not sound". You need to hear this record to judge for yourself. And give it time.

Posted by dan hill at 00:00, 30 Nov 2000

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