Twittering Machines

Padang Food Tigers
Born Music

I was going to create a new category of “Going to be an LP” for this one, as the chaps at Blackest Rainbow are rumoured to be doing a limited press of this. Actually the CD was pretty limited at 250 copies.

This is one super bit of music.  With a judicious use of field recordings, Messrs. Grady and Lewis weave a marvelous tapestry with sparse banjo and acoustic guitar plucking.  Their restrained and measured approach lends this music an almost ambient quality.  At times I was reminded of that unhurried, we got all morning and night raga kind of vibe but in smaller, more easily digestible morsels.

Awesome stuff and a killer cover to boot!

I was looking through my Winter 2010 Vol. 8.3 Acoustic Sounds Catalog and noticed this on page 16 -

Apparently there is very limited stock and you need to get them while you can. But I have to wonder, why $249.99?  Is it the 200 gram vinyl? The Quiex SV-P technology? After all, this record hasn’t been re-mastered, there’s nothing extra, no free CD or download coupon, no poster or limited edition backward-playing devil worship message. Heck, it only spins at 33 and one third and other 200 gram LPs from Classic Records, even other Led Zeppelin 200 gram LPs from Classic Records, sell for as low as $99.99. What gives?

The value proposition obviously is – it sounds better. It sounds better than the regular old pressing (I recently saw two very nice copies of the regular original pressing – there must have been tons pressed – for $14.99 and $11.99 at PREX). The Test Pressing for this 200 gram release is also available for $500 and that must sound a lot lot better. And Houses of Holy [sic] must be more popular and more limited (by what?) than the $99.99 Led Zeppelin III. Why you can get Muddy Waters’ Folk Singer on 200 gram Quiex SV-P vinyl for $39.99 just deepens the mystery.

But what am I doing. Why am I questioning sound quality and value? Here I go doing essentially what I was complaining about just one post ago. For shame. ‘Tony’ comments on the Acoustic Sounds website, “If you have never listened to Zeppelin on 200 gram vinyl then you really don’t know what you are missing. There really is nothing quite like it, the sound will blow you away.”

Just remember, “It’s the [sound of the] music that matters™”.

“It’s the music that matters™”

As I flipped through my 2011 Music Direct Catalog what do you think would leap out from among the $24.95 (and up) audiophile fuses and $49.99 45rpm LPs and make me jump for joy?

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This is some of the most creative nomenclature I’ve seen is sometime.

A bizarrely named headphone amp from ex-Theta and Sumo designers.

Eric Burdon and War
Eric Burdon Declares “War”

“We the People, have declared War against the People, for the right to love each other”

Eric Burdon and War released two LPs in 1970 – Eric Burdon Declares “War” and The Black-Man’s Burdon. Then Eric left leaving just plain War (ABC put out Love Is All Around in 1976 featuring previously unreleased tracks from 1969/’71 with Eric Burdon ). This debut LP opens with New Orleans-tinged piano backing Eric Burdon and slowly breaks into an all out funk workout / dedication to Roland Kirk with shout outs to Jelly Roll Morton, Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker and John Coltrane. Next the boys slip down “Tobacco Road” for an extended rest-of-side jam even though the liner notes try to convince us there are actually shorter songs contained within for what I assume were commercial reasons.

Side two opens with their biggest hit “Spill The Wine” a super-groovy sexy slow burner then meanders around the sleepy slow blues suite “Blues for Memphis Slim” which contains a monster sax solo from Charles Miller followed by an extended harp-fest from Lee Oskar “When the acid trip is over, you have to come back to Mother Blues”.  Things close out with “You’re No Stranger” a straight R&B Vegas-styled crooner’s harmonic delight. Oh baby.

Eric Burdon and War was a fairly straight-forward concept – grab a great super-tight super-funk band with latin and free jazz leanings, throw in some Lee Oskar on harmonica, let Eric Burdon “an overfed long haired leaping gnome” let loose up front, add drugs, shake and just let it spill. Works for me. With cover art fusion designed by “The Visual Thing’, concept by Eric Burdon.

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Jakob Bro
Balladeering

Guitarist Jakob Bro first surfaced for me on Paul Motian’s Garden of Eden, a CD from 2006. So, when Balladeering showed up while reading about Motian on the internet — and when I saw the other players, and that this was a vinyl release — I jumped on it. And have fallen hard.

The title’s pretty perfect, in that all the songs are played at a relaxed tempo, full of space and color and time. All original Jakob Bro compositions, and so wide open that I can easily imagine John Martyn or Van Morrison singing along. There was a comment in an interview with the guitarist, mentioning Nick Drake and, if memory serves, Neil Young, as singers he’d been listening to quite a bit — and the comment is borne out by this record, which isn’t even particularly jazz, so much as songs, each part of an unbroken mood that doesn’t repeat so much as expand.

Balladeering has been out for a year, although I found it just a couple of months ago. Limited issue on vinyl, and available direct, from http://www.jakobbro.com/. Comes with the CD and a DVD of the recording session, at Avatar in NYC, which is very good. Also a 20 page booklet and a double gatefold jacket, on Bro’s own label. Looks like a labor of love.

Enrico Rava
New York Days

I was reminded of another recording of contemporary jazz, as opposed to another 200 gram, 45 rpm, deluxe reissue, which came out on vinyl in 2009 and drew my attention through the participation of gateway drummer Paul Motian.  New York Days, on ECM records, came out under the leadership of trumpeter Enrico Rava.  Was already enjoying the CD when word came that ECM would put it out on a double LP.  Good news for ECM fans, since that label put out fine-sounding recordings of good music for many years.  So I put my money where my mouth is, and will be happy to suggest  to Manfred Eicher other records I’d like to see on LP.

Deluxe reissues are cool, no doubt, and I have some of those as well.  Still, the fetish object aspect of the “perfect” version doesn’t bring nearly the pleasure of a new find.  For me.

Duty as a fan compels me to push on.

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Grinderman
Worm Tamer

12″ single on green vinyl + poster (Mmm). Go team!

Side A:

A1. Worm Tamer
A2. Worm Tamer (A Place To Bury Strangers Remix)

Side AA:

AA1. Worm Tamer (Grinderman / UNKLE)

“Shortly after the Second World War, a medical facility for returned soldiers was built in the small town of Marsfield.

The patients were in some way incapacitated by that great and monstrous war; some missing limbs, some deafened or blinded by explosions, others driven out of their senses.

A few muttered old military secrets, a few sang long-forgotten ballads, a few built small ships inside milk bottles; others walked the corridors and grounds, scanning every dark corner for an unseen but ever present enemy.

It was not an unhappy place; there was a sense of deep friendship amongst the patients, bound as they were by the collective hell of battle. One of the most popular amongst the men was Lieutenant Wilson. He was no more than a Lance Corporal but earned the nickname Lieutenant during his stay at the home. Wilson had the remarkable ability to receive radio signals through the metal plate in his head. He would touch a metal window frame or steel bed head, incline his head at oblique angles, open his mouth and a sort of popping static would emanate from within his dark mouth. Subtle manipulations of his jaw, the inclination of his head or his physical location in the room would alter the signals he received.

As it happened he was the longest surviving member of the facility. When it was decommissioned in 2000, he was to be moved to a neighbouring hospital to see out his final days. Wilson resolutely refused to be moved. Barricading himself in his room, he declined food, water and medical attention until he was eventually moved to the west wing of the home and cared for by a rotation of staff members from the nearby hospital. He finally passed away in the later months of 2002 when this album was recorded.”

Recording info supplied in newsletter from Faraway Press.

With drone, ambient, or whatever you want to call it being so much in vogue these days, it is gratifying to see one the genre’s masters delivering the goods once again.  With the help of Brendan Walls, Andrew Chalk has created a highly evocative and completely immersive sound work.  This one shimmers and resonates like all the best drones should.

Like all of Andrew’s LP issues, the packaging is hand made and up to his (usual) exacting standards.

James Hamilton
You Should Have Heard Just What I Seen

Published by Ecstatic Peace, You Should Have Heard Just What I Seen is photographer James Hamilton’s (Village Voice, Crawdaddy!) ode to people that made music in NYC from the 1960′s to the ’00s. Here’s what Thurston Moore has to say from the preface:

We depend on history to recount what is vanished, missed, dreamed of, and mythologized. In James’s archive I encounter a universe of sweetness, of salaciousness, and a spellbinding grace and natural wonderment that keeps me coming back to the city that defined romance for me and so many others. The romantic eye as love, as music.

Debbie Harry at home, 1977

U.S. LIST PRICE: U.S. $75.00
ISBN: 9781616234959
FORMAT: Hbk, 10 x 11.75 in. / 304 pgs / 300 duotone.
PUBLISHER: Ecstatic Peace Library
PUBLICATION DATE: 11/30/2010

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If you don’t know much about or have little interest in a group of like-things it can be difficult to tell the difference between them – trees, beer, art, cats, boots, brown cotton coats, cigars…The more interest and knowledge, the more discernment – evergreen, ale, expressionist, domestic, work, chore, lancero…And even more – Douglas Fir,  Dale’s Pale Ale, Emile Nolde, Chartreux, Red Wing, Carhartt, San Cristobal…

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From The Island of Dr. Moreau one of the great film fuckups of all time. Brando stole Val Kilmer’s midget (according to Kilmer) played by Nelson de la Rosa the inspiration for Mini-Me, they went through two directors, three lead actors (Kilmer demoted himself), endless script re-writes with everyone lending a hand including Brando pulling a John Cage by carrying around a portable radio and repeating random police reports “There’s a robbery at Woolworths’” and Director John Frankenheimer’s famous quote “Will Rogers never met Val Kilmer.”

Gloriously silly, menacingly bestial.

Jimi Hendrix
West Coast Seattle Boy: The Jimi Hendrix Anthology (8LP Box)

No, I don’t have this but I figured it was worth posting about. Eight LPs-worth of previously unreleased live, demo and studio tracks as well as early tunes as backing guitarist for people like Little Richard, Don Covay, King Curtis and the Isley Brothers (track listing).

Back before I sold all of my LPs, I owned something like 40-something Hendrix records. At some point, fairly early on after The Experience’s three studio records (Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold As Love and Electric Ladyland), the unfinished last LP originally released as Cry of Love, a few live records and a few choice bootlegs like Loose Ends, things get sketchy. Maybe the most infamous and sketchiest is “Morrison’s Lament” featuring Jim Morrison and Johnny Winters (although Winters denies it and I don’t blame him) from the aptly titled Woke Up This Morning and Found Myself Dead where Morrison sounds like the microphone stand is standing in for his legs and nothing is standing in for good sense as he screams repeatedly mainly about his interest (obsession?) in being a back door man. It comes off sounding like a SNL sketch “The Wrong End”. My point is sometimes less is more.

From early reviews, a similar story holds here – some tracks are amazing like the acoustic home recording of “1983 (A Merman I Shall Turn To Be)” and others less so like the sounds-great-on-paper “Young/Hendrix” jam with Larry Young. Another take from this jam session appears on the posthumously released, Douglas produced  Nine To The Universe.

You can hear a few tracks from West Coast… on NPR including the Isley Brothers “Testify” and the previously unreleased “Houndog Blues”. I’d offer the obvious – if you don’t have the first three Jimi Hendrix Experience releases (ideally the first pressings and maybe even the UK Track Records version of the first LP) and if you don’t know them by heart, every pop and tick, I’d save this set for a future rainy day.

“Following four killer sold out, sought after 45s, London’s The See See release their wondrous debut full length on vinyl here through The Great Pop Supplement (home to their first 2 7″‘s, with a CD release pencilled in shortly, on dell’orso).

12 stunning tunes recalling the west coast vibe of the Byrds and the Burritos in their pomp and the pioneering, country / rock fusion of the International Submarine Band.

Personally chosen by Jack White for a support slot with The Raconteurs and openers for The Brian Jonestown Massacre, the album also features guest slots from the Olivia Tremor Control’s Bill Doss and Hush Arbors’ Keith Wood.

A dozen super tight, hazy sunshine pop songs make for an epic first full length. Think classic prime period Elektra label. Released in a numbered edition of 250 copies…

This record had me smiling big time.

Here’s a pretty nice video.

The See See – Keep Your Head