simon hopkins

Xu Feng

[ review of: Xu Feng by John Zorn (CD Album) ]

John Zorn's 'game pieces' are among the most notorious of his already pretty notorious oeuvre, not least because so damn little is known about what they are, how they work or what they mean. Between 1974 and 1992. he composed some 27 of these works, which are in essence, sets of organizational rules to be followed by groups of improvisers under the guidance of a prompter, with the degree to which they pre-or pro-scribe line-ups, structure, mood, and even genre, vary from piece to piece. In terms of how the rules actually work, Zorn has always kept his cards close to his chest, preferring to work with players he knows well and explain the rules to them, as he puts it 'as part of an oral tradition'. The Archival series of Zorn's label Tzadik has already begun re-releasing the now-classic game piece recordings the composer made in the late 70s, but now the label is presenting new interpretations.

Xu Feng, a piece for two guitars, two keyboards and two drums (or for six drummers), was composed in 1985, right after the completion of his most famous game piece, Cobra. The piece was inspired by the films of the eponymous martial arts actress-turned-producer, and Zorn deliberately set out to achieve something of the violence and kinetic energy of her films, giving more precise instructions to the improvisers than in previous pieces. For this recording, he has assembled a sextet well up to the task: guitarists Fred Frith and John Schott; electronics manipulators David Slusser and Chris Brown; and drummers Dave Lombardo and William Winant. I've personally been lucky enough this year to have seen several of these players performing live; Winant's performance with Mr Bungle in London and Zorn, Lombardo and Frith together (with Bill Laswell) in Paris had prepared me for some of the dynamic aggression of this session. But not all. Talk about action-packed! Single-sitting listens to this CD are exhausting, but huge fun. Which isn't to say that this is an undisciplined noise-fest. On the contrary, both the instrumental control of the players and the piece's compositional complexity give the proceedings the feeling of an extremely tight narrative.

Can't wait to hear a six drummer version with Lombardo, Winant, Baron, Baptista, Jim Black and Susie Ibarra!

PS. Fred Frith is sooooo on form at the moment.

Posted by simon hopkins at 00:00, 17 Nov 2000

OHAYO!HOAHIO!

[ review of: OHAYO!HOAHIO! by HOAHIO (CD Album) ]

To all intents and purposes, this eccentric, perverse and altogether delightful Tzadik album, the second by all-female Japanese noise-pop-improv trio HOAHIO, is actually a posthumous release. The group came together in 1997 as a trio of singer-songwriter-multi-instrumentalist Haco (of After Dinner fame), the extraordinary koto abuser Michiyo Yagi and sampler specialist Sachiko M (perhaps still best known for her long-standing association - in various contexts - with Otomo Yoshihide). In the three years since they've managed to record two albums (97's Happy Mail, Amoeba Records, Japan) and this follow up, tour Europe, Canada and Japan and, I'm afraid, split up. The highly recommended Improvised Music from Japan website tells us that as of Spring this year HOAHIO became a loose collective of two, three or four female musicians led by Haco and that this particular trio will no longer perform.

More's the pity, on the strength of OHAYO!HOAHIO! which somehow blends these three musicians' highly diverse talents, inclinations and instrumental resources with apparent ease. In terms of tone, the album runs the gamut from cute kitsch to angry dissonance. Generically, it's as happy to reference bubble gum pop or three-minute punk as it is improv, folk music and minimalist electronica. The results could be argued as throw-away, but I don't think so. There's a mutual respect and shared sense of fun and even wonder here that lift the music above the merely playful (though it's that, too, very often). I'm hooked.

Posted by simon hopkins at 00:00, 14 Nov 2000

The City Wears A Slouch Hat

[ review of: The City Wears A Slouch Hat by John Cage (CD Album) ]

In 1942, the then-still-emerging young composer John Cage spent some time in Chicago; while there, he was approached by some officials from CBS Radio to collaborate on a radio play with the poet Kenneth Patchen. The play was to be called The City Wears A Slouch Hat and was a surrealistic take on the imaginary visit to Chicago by the Messiah. With typical far-sightedness, Cage composed a huge 250 page score which would incorporate the sounds of the city as part of the 'music' - a revolutionary notion then, and scarcely less so over half a century later.

Unfortunately, with only a week to go before the live broadcast, engineers at CBS informed Cage that his score was impractical on every level, and he had to perform an entirely new piece in only seven days. He decided to put together a piece for percussion group and sound effects. In the event the broadcast was quite a success and, significantly, its reception encouraged Cage to move to New York - an important turning point for him.

But this CD - the first commercial release of this broadcast - has far more than simply historical significance: City really is quite extraordinary, a frenetic collage-like summation of mid 20th Century urban life, with all its chaos, anger, exhilaration, illogic and speed. The CD also features two other pieces by Cage from the same period. Credo In Us for shortwave radios, prepared piano and percussion comes on like a bunch of especially talented children let loose in a music shop. It was originally composed for a Merce Cunningham duet, so that may well have been the idea. Imaginary Landscape, the first of a highly influential series, is a slightly earlier piece, from 1939. While composer-accompanist at the progressive Cornish School in Seattle, Cage had access to a (for then) highly advanced recording studio which allowed him access to electronic sound-makers. Imaginary Landscape, for electronics, prepared piano and percussion has something of the early science fiction soundtrack about it but is no less charming for that. Christ alone knows what it must have sounded like to Cage's contemporaries.

Top marks to the ever-quality Cortical Foundation for this impeccably mastered and package reissue. A final word of caution: this CD is strictly limited to 1000 copies worldwide, so get it while you can.
Posted by simon hopkins at 00:00, 03 Nov 2000

The Great Learning

[ review of: The Great Learning by Cornelius Cardew (CD Album) ]

Based on the Confucian classic of the same name, The Great Learning was a piece instrumental in leading its composer, Cornelius Cardew, to form what became known as The Scratch Order: a significant moment in any history of experimental music. For Book Two of this giant piece, Cardew found that the group of about twenty musicians and composers he'd assembled to perform the premiere in May 1969 simply didn't supply a big enough sound. So these performers - Gavin Bryars and pianist John Tilbury among them - set about teaching the piece to friends and family members. The idea took root, and various Scratch Orchestra line-ups followed - often comprised of 'non-musicians' - taking a program of defiantly experimental music by such radical composers as John Cage, Terry Riley and Christian Wolff around Europe to audiences unaccustomed to such a repertoire. As important a politico-aesthetic act as any from a period that saw so many.

The version of 'Paragraph 2' featured on this Cortical Foundation CD reissue was recorded in 1971 and is utterly exhilarating, as a massed choir literally fights to be heard over even more massed 'tribal' drumming. After 20 minutes or so, it's easy to empathise with the exhaustion Cardew claimed the singers felt in performance.

The CD also features 'Paragraph 7 and "Paragraph 1". The Seventh was recorded at the same time as the second and is quite beautiful. Cardew wrote that it was "about the individual voice and the sound it makes in relation to other voices". A huge choir mumbles, moans, and occasionally even 'sings' - but quietly - and the results are as disquieting as they are ravishing. It's the single most engaging piece of music I've heard all year. And it's thirty years old. The album opens with a recording of "Paragraph " made over a decade later, in concert in London in 1982. It forms a contrast to the other pieces, making its way from sparse percussion environment, through grating organ solo to the remarkable heart of the piece, in which a large group of vocalists intone lines from Confucius over an edgy soundscape of electronics and 'ethnic' wind instruments.

An important document then, but also a wonderful record.
Posted by simon hopkins at 00:00, 03 Nov 2000

Lewis II

[ review of: Lewis II by Lewis Taylor (CD Album) ]

So the year kicked off with one long-awaited follow up to a groundbreaking debut soul album - D'Angelo's dark masterpiece Voodoo, and draws to a close with another, an album I personally hadn't dared hope to hear: Lewis Taylor's Lewis II. North London soul boy-cum-prog rock guitarist Taylor's mid 90s eponymous debut appeared around the same time as D'Angelo's Brown Sugar, Tony! Toni! Toné!'s House of Music and Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite, as well as a plethora of lesser offerings from artists banded together under the ludicrous tag 'Nu Classic Soul'. For my money, Taylor's record was the best of the bunch (and I love D'Angelo), and easily the most musically audacious. Taylor recalled the Beach Boys and Miles Davis and even Yes as much as he did Marvin Gaye and The Temptations. Hell, the album even opened with an extended Joe Meek sample. Yet the album seemed to pretty much disappear.

If Lewis II does the same, it will be a crime all over again. For Taylor has returned with yet another rich gumbo of deep grooves, soaring lead vocals, flawless - and often pretty damn bombastic - guitar solos, rich harmonizing... yet a mix which constantly wrong-foots the listener. You think you get where a songs going and it'll take off in another direction altogether. Bottom line: Taylor is an extremely sophisticated musician and writer. And I don't mean glossy (though he can be that too), I mean knowing and knowledgable. A man who knows just when a song needs an Albert King guitar break or some Van Dyke Parks- vocal harmonies or even a harpsichord solo. And those chords! Taylor's songs have the most arresting and unique harmonic progressions of any soul songwriter's since Prince first emerged.

That all of this is almost entirely Taylor's own work (drum parts on three tracks are the only occasions when Taylor isn't playing - or singing) puts him in a direct line of soul auteurs that includes Stevie Wonder and the aforementioned Prince and D'Angelo. But for all that, he's defiantly his own man. The eyes-starward and generally Apollonian tone of Taylor's music sets him apart from the darker strains of, say, D'Angelo's warped explorations of the soul's more chthonic side. And the ease with which he reaches beyond soul and R&B for inspiration demonstrates a musical mind unfettered by such concerns as genre and fashion - and an artist whose work will stand up for a long long time.

Let's hope someone takes some notice this time.
Posted by simon hopkins at 00:00, 03 Nov 2000

Kid A

[ review of: Kid A by Radiohead (CD Album) ]

Without wishing to drag up the whole punk vs prog argument, let's begin with this: while punk's positive achievements remain, for me, questionable at best, one of the movement's many downsides is that for years, one thing above all has been verboten in rock music: creative ambition. (Curiously, this kind of ambition has remained unchallenged in dance music, an artform punk has claimed as an offspring. Go figure). Someone forgot to tell Radiohead. Thank Christ.

I'd personally been untouched by Radiohead's first two albums, and consequently took little notice of OK Computer on its release. But I then I kept hearing 'Paranoid Android' and little by little its magic worked its charm on me, what with its anthemic melancholy. Three years on, OK Computer remains the standout 'mainstream' rock album of the 90s, a record unashamed about pushing the envelope, a record that celebrates the arts of arranging and production and, well, playing, as much as that of songwriting. Barely 'mainstream' at all. And barely rock, for that matter.

And somehow, despite a pessimism seemingly out of step with the happy-clappy, feel-good 90s, OK Computer was hugely popular with former fans. For other groups, this might have brought down a great deal of pressure, but Radiohead have the confidence to ignore that, at least on the evidence of Kid A. This is an album plainly unfettered by others' expectations, an album of such forthright self-command that this alone makes it essential.

But then there's the actual music. I've not lived with the album long enough to make any honest comparisons with its predecessor, but my hunch is that its bettered it. It's richer, more diverse, more experimental, more them... and OK Computer was already way ahead in those stakes. The critical word out there is that the album is less 'guitar-based' and more 'electronic' than OK Computer. Well, I'm not sure about that. I'm reminded of John Zorn commenting that English audiences were amused by his claims that Brian Wilson was one of the 20th century's key composers. 'It's not as though I was talking about Ted fucking Nugent.' Quite, and it's not as though OK Computer was AC fucking DC either.

Actually, there's guitar all over Kid A; Jonny Greenwood is undoubtedly one of his generation's most interesting guitarists precisely because he understands the power of the guitar's timbral possibilities. If Kid A doesn't have quite the riff-count of OK Computer, it's nonetheless rich with guitar, from sublime, soaring slide to angular, gnarly rhythm figures. Yes, there's a lot of electronics at work, but only as part of a very wide sonic palette, a palette that includes a fiery avant-jazz brass section, a full string orchestra, harp, church organ... you see where this is heading. And they know how to marshall this stuff so well. A discordant, held violin note kicks an otherwise beautiful ballad completely out of kilter; a whole orchestra appears for single bar only to be pitch-bent into the aether; squelching two-step electronica shapeshifts into odd metre Beefheart riffing.

And then there's Thom Yorke. Much has been written elsewhere about Yorke's lyrics, but I genuinely couldn't give a shit about them. Jesus, I can't even make most of them out. Yet seldom have I heard anyone convey as much emotional information with the sheer sound of their voice. Yorke isn't a singer, he's a vocalist, in the way that someone who plays a saxophone is a saxophonist; he's simply another of the group's instrumentalists. In fact, minute after minute of Kid A go by without a single vocal. When he is there, however, he's devastating. 'I'm lost at sea/Don't bother me/I've lost my way/I've lost my way' Yorke whines at one point, but the despair in his voice goes way beyond the sentiment of those words. It is a sound close to death, on the edge of oblivion.

Oh, and quite a bit's been said about the brevity of the album, which clocks in at about 45 minutes or so. Well excuse me, but didn't albums used to be that length? One of the few other major pop acts I can think of that's unafraid to release albums of this length is Björk (with whom Radiohead share much else - principally that creative ambition - but that's a topic for elsewhere). What both acts have the courage to say is: 'This is it; it's all in here; anything else I've got at the moment isn't up to scratch'. You don't buy music by the second. There's more emotional, musical and intellectual information in here than in your average artist's entire oeuvre. To sit through Kid A in a single, attentive sitting is almost too much. Any more would kill you.

Let's be bold about this, then: Kid A is a masterpiece.
Posted by simon hopkins at 00:00, 05 Oct 2000

Last Concert

[ review of: Last Concert by Ground-Zero (CD Album) ]

This CD, claims its own sleevenotes "will have a place of great importance... for musicologists." It'd be nice to think so; in the meantime it's a remarkable document of the closing moments in the career of one of the 90s' most important musical projects. The album presents almost the entire concert given by Otomo Yoshihide's Ground-Zero at On Air West in Shibuya, Tokyo, in March 1998 - indeed, their last ever live performance. As an epitaph, a bookend, endpiece, whatever... it's remarkable,

As I write, there's no question that Otomo is one of the half-dozen most important musicians on the planet. By the time he founded Ground-Zero at the beginning of the decade, he was already a renowned improvisor. But it was during the G-Z that his talents really emerged - as an improvising turntablist rivalled by no-ne, as a guitarist, as a composer and, increasingly, as an electronics manipulator. Since he disbanded the group, he's concentrated on this last aspect of his musical persona. What's intriguing about this live album is how that style is integrated into 'played' or 'instrumental' improvisation.

By 1998, Ground-Zero had grown into a massive group: two drummers (Uemura Masahiro and Yoshigaki Yasuhiro), three saxophonists (Hirose Junji, Kikuchi Naruyoshi and Okura Masahiko), Sachiko M (Otomo's current colleague in Filament) on sampler, synth players Chino Shuichi, Masuko Tatsuki and Nagata Kazunao, koto player Tanaka Yumiko and bassist Nasuno Mitsuru. Kondo Yoshigaki was resposible for live mixing and Otomo, of course, abused guitar and turntables alike.

For a group of this size - and instrumental diversity - to turn in an hour of group improvisation could lead to chaos. Instead, there's a keen sense of structure here, as the piece builds and builds and builds. Along the way, we encounter Free Rock jamming, warped 'ethnic' settings, ambient abstraction, nods to film soundtracks and explosive jazz. By the end, the music self-combusts and we're left with minute after minute of sine-wave minimalism: Otomo's future direction plainly stated. The results are, above all else, exhilarating. If you listen closely to Last Concert you'll have the sense of having to hold on to something very fast - very tightly. Ground-Zero RIP. Or not.
Posted by simon hopkins at 00:00, 17 Aug 2000