Ivan the Tolerable – The Aleph

This one came from the bandcamp feed, someone I follow had bought it and I salute them. They have impeccable taste.

Looking at the blurb, there is a connection to the wonderful Haress, but there is very little similarity between their sound and this. This comes under umbrella term of ‘jazz that I like,’ which is a small but growing field. I think ‘jazz that I like’ is where jazz meets psych, drone, groove and repetition. In fact, any genre that has a party in that area will probably do it for me.

This fella’s catalogue needs exploring, I feel. Just as well I haven’t got much else to listen to at the mo… oh, wait…

And also, this is the first time I have used ‘Middlesborough’ as a geographical tag.

Oriente Lux (self titled)

So, that thing I was saying the other day, about seeming like a proper fanboy. Well, I must seem like a PR plant for Valerio Cosi sometimes. Or, at least I would if Soundbergs had a following.

Here Valerio collaborates with Brad Rose, something that took longer than a decade to bear fruit. It is a truly sturdy resulting flower of music, as eclectic as I’ve come to expect, and as difficult to describe. (Cue rambling old man rant about how music shouldn’t be described because it can’t be described, just experienced).

Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp – We’re OK. But We’re Lost Anyway

I could imagine the Fire! Orchestra doing this in their more accessible moments.

Probably this would not be considered accessible by most people, but I may or may not be most people. For all I know, these, and indeed many other artists I post, could be so ubiquitous in your lives that you look upon these posts with scorn and say ‘you call that obscure?’ My finger has dim and distant memories of the pulse; the pulse knows not what my finger is and cares even less.

I’ve started using that ‘may or may not’ phrase quite a lot recently, which may or may not be influenced by both my children now using it regularly.

The youngest of these – currently 11 – said to me she had an idea for a song title – ‘Slave to the algorithm.’ I thought that if, when I was 20 or so, these hyper-connected times in which we live were going then, that may have been an angle I’d be going so it goes without saying I’m pleased to see she shares my cynicism. Doubt I’d have got there at 11, though.

Valerio Cosi/Enzo Franchini – Live Archives I: Batcave, Tilburg MMVII

It’s that Friday where Bandcamp do that good thing they do again. As promised, I bought myself the Follakzoid album that I promised myself last time, but I also added this to the cart, because I like this. But I almost always like what Valerio Cosi does.

 

Wart Biter

And this is why I hate trying to describe music and gave up the futile effort. So non-sequiturs it is.

There is a pyramid above me, but it goes in both directions i.e. point up and point at the top. It’s really difficult to put it into words, bit like trying to describe music, really. But contained within those bounds are an infinity of possibilities.

Imagine: there are two lines on a single page. The lines themselves never actually meet, but the page they are on is finite. Nevertheless, the possibilities are infinite.

I could talk all day, and much to my children’s chagrin, I sometimes do. However, I only know so many words (roughly a hundred and thirteen) and yet, nevertheless, and although I often repeat myself, the possibilities are actually infinite.

The problem with infinity is that no one knows what it actually is, or even if it is. This, ladles and gentlespoon, is what I now suspect may be the true purpose behind the creative impulse (a.k.a. life) – trying to find out whether infinity is actually infinite.

So, what makes your head hurt more? The picture on the above album, or my essay? Me, it’s the lurgee.

Fink’s Sunday Night Blues Dubs

Gambling for life, then.
Sounds dramatic, does it not?
but if we broaden our definition out to a bigger one
than a mere chemical reaction with added respiration and awareness
then maybe it has more utility as a concept
Is not life a pathway?
What if that pathway should seem blocked?
Then the traveller must decide on a course of action:
remain at the blockage
choose a different pathway
remove/overcome the blockage
The latter is a direct combat, which is a gamble
The first is yielding, or biding time, but always a gamble
But the second is the biggest gamble although it requires travelling in order to know
and the blockage may follow, if it be perceptual

In many ways, words are judgements. The label is a judgement. Yet judgement is an incomplete process; the true goal is understanding. Understanding is much harder, as it may mean the assimilation of uncomfortable perceptions that would prefer to be ignored, hence why it is so easy to stop at judgement.
The attempt to understand is a gamble, as you may end the world as you know it when you understand it.
The good news is that it will be replaced by a more coherent one.

 

Lonker See – One Eye Sees Red

 

 

I transformed the light into darkness
simply by closing my eyes
I transformed the darkness into light
simply by opening my eyes

I am you

Disguised as me

Remember that in your dealings

The dinosaur chases the Christian and hounds him till the end and says
‘when I come back, I want to be a materialist.’

Abronia – Obsidian Visions / Shadowed Lands

In the first place was the winner of the people chase, a lank haired fox named Orville, who won because of the magic imparted by his evil anvil. Orville, who counted several devils amongst his drinking accountants, promptly took his previous second best certificate and rolled it into a ginormous reefer which hit him harder than his hammer and he had to put it down. The people got away again, thus setting up a new race, this one won by His Majesty Gumley St. Helene-Trouser Slew, whose corpulent incompetence was passed through the ages to a present that neither knew nor cared as now is the time and cares nothing for tradition because tradition is history and history doesn’t exist. So the people got away again, the shackles giving up in a wimp of smoke and this time the moguls went after them – by this and by that they did keep gesticulating, transforming life into matter and then selling it as the status they craved. But the moment ignored them – after an enlightening experience it takes long persistences of abuse to make one forget that light but it only takes one instant flash to undo all that damage and see all the abuse for what it really was.

Luísa Maita – Fio da Memória

Another completely contrasting Soundberg, this is from Brazil. We have previous with Brazil, but this is a completely different kettle of sonic fish; although, in common with Rakta the tags on the bandcamp page are: Brazil, world…. gotta love it.

The music is impossible to put a single simple label on. One tune will be a sort of loungey-jazzy feel with mild inflections of dub, beats, etc and the next will have a low key Garbage-like synth-grunge feel to it. The predominant mood is downbeat electro with guitars and hints of r’n’b (the modern iteration of that genre), I suppose, but as this isn’t my usual area I am even less knowledgeable than is usually the case.

Back at the beginning of the millennium, I used to spend a lot of time listening to the Nortec Collective. Through them, I discovered the wonderful Julieta Venegas, who has a voice to die for, or at least, listen to in pleasure. And the reason I tell you this is because I thought of her whilst listening to this. Another artist I think of is Cibelle,who is also Brazilian (which I didn’t know until just now – I thought she was Portuguese!)

 

Fire! Orchestra – Ritual

 Honestly, what is it about Sweden?

You know when music is special when you listen to something whilst in the midst of a fairly drawn out grumpy period, and that music makes you feel alive, positive, and like all the petty crap really just does not matter, which it doesn’t.

People, I give you Fire! Orchestra.

I’ve been more and more of a jazz head, I must admit. This is where the genre really does it for me. It isn’t about technique, it’s about consciousness exploration. That’s why it’s a ritual. That’s why I consider music like this to be psychedelic, and a million revivalists who call themselves that to be not, although everyone has to start somewhere.

The opener, which you will find embedded in this post somewhere, is 10 of the fastest moving minutes in history, it feels like less than half that duration. To me, at least. This is music to get completely lost in. Throw maps in the bin.

There is a strong emphasis on the groove, the many horns don’t get in each others way, and the two vocalists are absolutely incredible.  The album is both propulsive and meditative, noisy and musical.

There simply aren’t enough superlatives to describe how I feel about this album. A true ritual, and a triumphant one at that. A perfect illustration of why humans picked up objects and started hitting, plucking and blowing them. Its purity makes it impossible to pigeon-hole.

This also makes for two posts in a row where the album cover seems somewhat random, although I think art purists will probably prefer the term collage.

Those who are inspired enough to want a physical copy will find one here.