Twittering Machines

Grinderman
Grinderman

Nick Cave and a few Bad Seeds team up for an ’07 release that leaves the spooky piano in the dust. Quartet stomp with Cave, Warren Ellis, Martyn Casey and Jim Sclavunos banging out some simple old fashioned raunch n roll.  Get it On, No Pussy Blues, Electric Alice, Depth Charge Ethel…You get the idea. If Nick & the full blown Seeds were too theatrical for ya, maybe this paired-down version might just float your monkey.

Marion Brown
Afternoon of a Georgia Faun

Free jazz tone poems from 1970 on this early ECM release. Played on mainly home-made instruments, the all-star crew remains nearly anonymous as they free-form their way around the various ‘stations’. Wooden flutes, sax, piano, bells, whistles, bass, vocals and everyone lending a hand on percussion. Marion Brown and then wife Jeanne Lee, Chick Corea, Anthony Braxton, Andrew Cyrille, Larry Curtis, William Green, Jack Gregg, Billy Malone, Bennie Maupin and Gayle Palmore. The Debussy reference isn’t literal but it’s there.

From Brown’s liner notes: “It ends as it began, with wooden raindrops.”

TAS?

Devendra Banhart
Cripple Crow

OK maybe I’m a hippy. But maybe you don’t have to be to enjoy Devendra Banhart’s double LP Cripple Creek.  A cornucopia of trilled minimal excess (if’n you know what I mean) this is beautifully recorded freakishly talented folk. Devendra sings about the end of war (“It’s simple, we don’t want to kill.”), beer and dragonflies, the Beatles, and more but this is overall very cheery stuff. Recorded near Woodstock of course and reminiscent of all that was and still is groovy.

(more…)

Mongo Santamaria
Afro Roots

This double LP culled from Mongo S’s first 2 releases on Fantasy from 1958/9 is pure afro cuban roots joy.  Including Willie Bobo, Armando Peraza, Francisco Aguabella and featuring Cal Tjader and a full suite of conga percussion . Hot, beautiful and fresh. The perfect partner to summertime steamy days and nights.

Seismographs. Another way of thinking about this would be in comparison to a seismograph. If you’ve ever watched a seismograph’s needle (analog of course) bounce with complete freedom, this is how I think of music being played in life. The seismograph needle represents the musical impulses. To replay these micro and macro impulses we need a very efficient system – one that does not lose any of the swings of the seismograph needle.

Low powered amplification with a minimum of power output tubes and high sensitivity speakers with minimum numbers of drivers seem to be just a few of the necessary ingredients.  Heavier cones, multiple cones, complex crossovers, braced and damped cabinets, damped cones etc. seem to sap away these micro nuances leaving the needle sonically dipped in silicone. If we think of this needle with some silicone damping we see a needle that isn’t free to move with each impulse. Its now starting up slowly and then staying in motion a bit too long. The edges are blunted as the needle begrudgingly makes a U-turn. The smallest of impulses are glossed over since the needle is not agile enough to record them.

In my opinion it takes a very special, well designed, well set up system in a room that is quiet enough to reveal every microscopic grain of music.