American Analog Set and White Magic's Songs of Hurt and Healing EP

For whatever reason, Tylenol felt it needed to up its presence in the indie hipster demographic (yep!) and released this split EP in a variety of magazines in 2004/2005, providing further proof to the world that the pharmaceutical companies want to increase their deathgrip stranglehold on you, me and everybody we know (kidding!). The 6 song EP features three songs by American Analog Set, three songs by White Magic. I've never heard of White Magic, always identified this EP with the AASet, and thus here we are in the tail end of the "A" reviews.

That said, I hadn't ever listened to this EP until this morning. I've avoided the American Analog Set over the years, associated it with the passive/passive melodramatics of the indie hipster cardigan set. I tried listening to Golden Band without much success, lumped the AASet with that bulk of fragile-pop that seems like it'll break with too much attention. I'm a fan of the bedroom recordings as much as the next guy, but this was stuff that needed a nightlight. To listen to an EP actually called "Songs of Hurting and Healing," then....

...It would've been funny if they could've stuck with the Tylenol joke, but the EP's pretty much what I've already described, and the three songs by the AASet are as light weight as expected, and, thus, forgettable. I had to go back and re-listen to it one song into the latter half of the album to try and remember the AASet's three songs...and that was only ten minutes past, give or take.

The White Magic songs are related, but more adventurous. The group turns in a psych-folk set reminiscent of a less melodic Animal Collective, nods to the Velvet Underground in check. What results is slightly more interesting, though the songs are ultimately too meandering and devoid of premise to be worthwhile of re-listening.

It's a good thing, then, that this EP came out for free. Still not sure as to what Tylenol was trying to accomplish, as I'm quite certain that the pill won't heal whatever pains fans of the AASet or White Magic may have - that shit can't be healed by acetaminophen. Unfortunately (and let's hope they figure this out soon), they probably can't be healed by the AASet or White Magic, either.

the Art Ensemble of Chicago's Les Stances a Sophie

The Art Ensemble is a heady topic to write about, and any one of their landmark albums, of which Les Stances is, makes it even more difficult. Here you have one of the foremost free jazz/experimental music outfits of the past four decades (probably of all time), a group that theses and books are written about. For a blog like this to pass judgment on Les Stances, then....

...Well, to some extent, it's kinda easy: Les Stances is certifiably a masterpiece. That's a no-brainer. The soundtrack (haven't seen the film - it's a French new wave flick, coinciding with the Art Ensemble's temporary relocation to Paris in the early 70s) is the Art Ensemble at their most accessible, but with the bubbling tension of experimentation, free jazz noise, and ethno-rhythms that dominate the rest of the Art Ensemble's catalog.

The focus of Les Stances is easily "Theme de Yo Yo," featuring Fontella Bass, who had a pop hit with "Rescue Me" in the 60s and who was married to Art Ensemble member Lester Bowie at the time. Bass belts it out on "Theme de Yo Yo," which is the quintessential funk-jazz hybrid of all time. Bass rumbles "Your love is like an orwhale," with Bowie, Roscoe Mitchell and Joseph Jarman following suit with free jazz blurts, shaping the song into the growliest of growls, the most gutteral of funk. The song, quite simply, can not be perfected further.

The rest of the album is more along the experimental vein, with the Art Ensemble tackling 17th century classical composition. "Variations Sur Un Theme de Monteverdi" is what the title implies, a performance of "Lasciatemi Morire" from Monteverdi's Lamento d'Arianna. The first version is more cut and dry, an almost gothic performance of a classical piece. The second version is a New Orleans funeral romp, still tinted with darkness, but with a boisterous party atmosphere, a constant theme in much of the Art Ensemble's work - the re-shaping of more 'classical' notions of jazz into modern experimentation.

Or at least I think it is - the Art Ensemble's too complex to summate in a few paragraphs. Couple what I just wrote with the Art Ensemble's involvement with the AACM, American race politics of the time, an arguable Afro-American renaissance of the time...this could go on for days, if not years. Les Stances is a good place to start with the Art Ensemble, if only because "Theme de Yo Yo" could easily be a pop hit on its own (if not for its incredible length), but to start unravelling the album further would require me getting an academic research grant. Until then, check this out: Joseph Jarman's opened a Karate dojo. From preeminent jazz experimentalist to Karate Kid...anything is possible with the Art Ensemble, I suppose.

A:xus' Soundtrack for Life

It's always surprising when an album as diverse as A:xus' Soundtrack For Life hails from Canada, land of gazillion-member-bands-that-could've-done-fine-with-two-people bands. Our country's not particularly known for musical diversity; even with its critical acclaim, the glut of new Canadian bands all pretty much sound the same. This was particularly so when Soundtrack for Life came out half a decade back.

While Soundtrack for Life comfortable sits within one genre (light electronica), A:xus (nee Austin Bascom of Toronto) explores the four corners of said genre, and delivers up a surprisingly mature debut the likes of which our country ain't seen in awhile. It's all here - dancefloor jazz, breaks, deep house, electro - served up in your quintessential coffee table lounge format. Soundtrack for Life can be pedestrian as electronic music, but taken as pop music, it's well-rounded and thought-out, much more so than usual rough-hewn debuts.

Bascom really hit the nail on the head with the lead single, "Callin' U," a cover of Jevetta Steele's track on the Baghdad Cafe soundtrack. Instead of the soul torcher that the original was, Bascom updates it to a subtle jazzy samba number, and Namoi N'Sembi supplies amongst the best vocals of this sort, within Canada and without. The other single, his deep house cover of "When I Fall in Love," was the huge hit, the UK crowd apparently never tiring of Esthero, who does a much better job on this track (and on her other guest appearances with Ian Pooley and DJ Krush) than on her own material.

The rest of the album is thoroughly pleasant, the only stinker being the cheesy "You Make Me Feel Like (Peace, Love and Happiness)," which plays out like a Hallmark card. This is thoughtful Sunday brunch stuff, undemanding yet deserving of attention. It still feels odd that our generally suburban country can produce something this uniquely urban, so maybe it's the context that makes Soundtrack for Life so enjoyable, but either way, it is.

Tsuji Ayano's Haru wa Touki Yume no Hate ni

I first heard Tsuji Ayano (NPR feature here) in Osaka, killing time before catching the train. Her first EP had just come out on Kitchen Records, which had been previously known for more famed Japanese garage rock releases from the likes of the 5,6,7,8's. I gave pretty much everything on the listening booths a shot (including a CD of some car or stereo commercial (couldn't distinguish) of Ryuchi Sakamoto's), most of it being innocuous J-pop. Ayano stood out of the pack immediately, a girl and her ukulele. I bought the EP, thought it was a charming postcard-souvenir from a horrible trip, didn't think I'd ever hear any other music from Ayano, and somehow lost the EP somewhere along the way.

It was a huge surprise for me, then, that Ayano blew up huge in Japan shortly after. In my first few weeks back in Asia following, Ayano was on the radio. Most of the time, this would've been a mistaken occurrence: Ayano's voice is that same little Japanese girl voice that is pretty typical of anything left of centre, particularly of the Shibuya stuff. But that ukulele is some of the most fucked up shit Asia's ever heard, and stuck out like a sore thumb immediately (it's perhaps telling that Ayano's rise to fame was due to soundtrack work for a Ghibli Studios cartoon).

It's odd that any music like that would make it to mainstream radio in North America, much less in Asia, where over-produced lite pop reigns supreme (somebody's got to feed new material to the karaoke bars). I headed over to the CD stores and sure enough, Ayano was huge, but in a kind of novel way akin to...well, akin to nothing. It's an oddity, to be sure.

I picked up this album (the translated title I swiped from an online CD store site; there's nary a word of English on the packaging), which is primarily a re-recording of the aforementioned EP on a major label. Most of the songs have been taken from their no-frills ukulele-only versions into more produced versions, complete with backing band, orchestra, etc. It's still charming, though not as charming: it approximates accessibility a little more, and thus the sheer eccentricity of the matter diminished. The better songs on the album, then, are those that repeat on the same: Ayano and her ukulele, sometimes backed up with a sole trumpet.

If Ayano can make it big in Asia, it's a topsy turvy world. Ayano's fame is a bit affirming, and should give every oddball in the world some hope. Will ukulele players make it big on American Idol? Probably not, but at the very least they'll be big in Japan.

Richard Ashcroft's Alone With Everybody

To get this out of the way: I never really listened to the Verve. I liked "Bittersweet Symphony," maybe listened to that album one afternoon while stuck at my sister's. That's the extent of my experience with the Verve, and thus I'm not going to give any insightful comparisons between Richard Ashcroft's solo output and that.

I can't really remember if I bought Alone With Everybody first or the first Unkle album, which Ashcroft appears on (and does a tremendous job on "Lonely Soul"), but the general theme of what I associate with the man runs constant: strings. The opening strings on "A Song For the Lovers" is a tremendous rush, and was enough to entice me into the rest of the album.

Luckily, said strings feature prominently throughout the rest of the album, and used to great effect (what is it with Brits and their love of anthems?). Apart from aforementioned single, Ashcroft delivers a great affectionate haze throughout the first 1/3 of Alone With Everybody, with it only succumbing to twangy slide guitar in the last 1/3 (thus making that portion a lot less enjoyable). The first 1/3 features solid, yet self-conscious, love songs, and though one could easily see Ashcroft giving into melodrama, it's well-balanced here, and more warming than cliched (the segue from "A Song for Lovers" into "I Get My Beat" is quite effective). The rest of the album's not bad, but doesn't quite live up to the peak that the album sets for itself, particularly on "New York."

For the most part, then, Alone With Everybody's perhaps a little too caustic, touches on perhaps a little bit of self-importance, and maybe a little inconsistent, but enjoyable nonetheless. I've no idea how it stands up next to the Verve, but the first two songs are enough to stand on their own.

Active Ingredients' Titration

I have no hesitation in saying that Chad Taylor is my favorite jazz drummer - nay, my favorite drummer period - around today, since hearing his work on the Chicago Underground albums, wherein he outshines Rob Mazurek at times by leaps and bounds, and his work on pop albums like Sam Prekop's solo material. Taylor's a versatile machine, subtle in approach but with surgical precision.

My curiosity piqued when I had heard Taylor finally pieced together his own outfit, Active Ingredients. The group features three Chicago players, three NYC players, and Taylor - a good overview of his work in the Windy City and his current work having relocated to New York. It's largely what one would expect, modern compositions heavily dependent on free atonal solos (and thus not strictly free jazz in the purist sense), but with Taylor leading the charge, instead of the usual frontman trumpet or sax.

Taylor's playing here is meticulous and aggressive, often working in differing time schemes, but still understated and minimalist when compared to more famous Chicago drummers like John Herndon (probably not the most fair of comparisons, but whatever...). His pieces are set up to provide healthy frameworks for the horn players to blast through, with David Boykin (tenor sax) giving the greatest of perforances here, particularly on "Slate" and "Modern Mythology," matching Taylor's balanced mix of technical and emotive (this was sometimes a problem with the Chicago Underground, as I've always found Mazurek to be more a technical player (though a great one at that), until they released the amazing Slon).

Titration's a worthy debut for Taylor, providing just enough time for Taylor to showcase his own playing without being overbearing. With less talented players surrounding him, Active Ingredients might not have worked, as Taylor's understated enough to require more push in the front line. Here, Taylor's found the perfect accompaniment and cohesion, making Active Ingredients one of the most exciting jazz outfits around today.

the Angel's No Gravity

I've been procrastinating about reviewing No Gravity, and have oscillated between reviewing this album and the other album the Angel had produced under the name "60 Channels." I've listened to both a number of times now, with nothing grabbing me from either. Both are quite boring, with No Gravity perhaps being the more hip-hop of the two, with heavy inflections of dub throughout.

Neither album is particularly noteworthy, apart from context. The Angel remains one of few female producers in the world of both hip hop and electronica, and certainly one of few female producers that have been at it for over a decade (nothing of note, though, apart from working with Monday Michiru and a few soundtracks). Negating that minute point of interest, though, and what remains is dull. It's not that No Gravity or any of the other work is mediocre (in fact, her remix of Donald Byrd's "Kofi" on The New Groove: Blue Note Remixed was quite good), it's just that it's overly average, with nothing that sets it apart. I've been procrastinating about writing about either, because neither album provides anything noteworthy enough to discuss.

Animal On Wheels' Designs and Mistakes

Animals on Wheels' Designs and Mistakes is largely full of the latter, the largest mistake of which was to release the album in 1997, at the tail end of a glut of experimental electronic music. Whereas Ninja Tune had once been the forerunner of innovation in the genre, it was merely playing catch-up with Designs and Mistakes, what with Squarepusher et al already having dumped album after album in the two-three years preceeding. Simply put, Designs and Mistakes, at the time, just seemed like more of the same...boring.

Remove it from that context, however, and Designs and Mistakes isn't that bad. It's surely lifted from the blueprint of Squarepusher's Feed Me Weird Things, but perhaps done a little better. Instead of relying on fusion jazz, as Squarepusher does, often to detriment, Animals on Wheels has a broader sample. This is the most effective on "Loath" and "Eggshell," where the more erratic and frenetic beats of the genre are paired with the atonal jazz phrasings, hinting at the fact that, ahem, maybe free jazz would've made the most sensible (and rewarding) sample with this stuff.

That, then, surely makes Designs and Mistakes one of the first albums to prove one of the underlying assumptions of the Clutterer: music can not only be salvagable from its overlying context, but can also be improved. Now if only it weren't so generally boring as well....

Cannonball Adderley's Phenix

I bought Phenix while in Texas (TCM having been exhausted), having liked some of the funk jazz stuff that I had heard by Adderley and curious for more. I'd always found Cannonball Adderley's solo material hard to come by in local record stores, so I picked Phenix up when I saw it, estimating that 1975 would've been around the right period to check Adderley out.

Adderley's a hard guy to place. He's generally a bit too traditional jazz-ish to be amongst the more funky of the soul jazz guys, but he's quite obviously more concerned with composition over improvisation than the more straightahead jazz guys. That's not to say the man is a slouch in either way, but merely to say that Adderley rides the fence quite comfortably.

That said, Phenix isn't remotely heavy with the funk, and at times seems alot like lite jazz. Save for George Duke's organ playing and Airto Moreira, well, being Airto Moreira (ie. one of the best latin jazz percussionists in history)(check out Airto's "Samba de Flora"), there's not a lot of umph here, which is understandable as Phenix was supposed to serve as a career 're-visit,' a re-recording of older Adderley material recorded a little before his death. There's still a lot to appreciate here, but until they start making some of the other Adderley releases more readily available, this one will probably sit on the shelves for a few more years.

Afghan Whigs' 1965

People either really, really hate the Afghan Whigs, or they really, really love the Whigs - there's few people in between. I'm of this exclusive group - I have neither passion nor disdain for them - but this is a group that incited an entire 'zine devoted to their hatred of them (entitled "Fat Greg Dulli," excerpts of which you can find here), while prompting one music columnist tell me Dulli was the "best voice in rock and roll today" (I'm not even paraphrasing).

It's not hard to see why: Greg Dulli, frontman, struts around with more swagger than anyone since Mick Jagger (well, maybe Prince...). The man is cocksure, and even the generally neutral Allmusic describes him as "pretentious," but it's used, assumedly deliberately, to good effect. If the Whigs' schtick is to fuse soul music back with rock and roll, it's certainly James Brown, Ike Turner, et al they're channelling, chauvinism, soul, and all.

"It's a man's, man's, man's world, but it would be nothing without a woman...": Dulli knows this in certain spades and it's most evident on 1965. The album hits on Dulli's usual themes of angst and love, the contradictory mix of self-loathing and egoism, but is amongst the band's most successful attempts at their bar band soul. Instead of showing their chops on old soul/rnb covers (as on their great cover of Barry White's "Can't Get Enough of Your Love" on the Beautiful Girls soundtrack), the Afghan Whigs finally have enough of their own material to achieve same, making 1965 one of their most cohesive albums since Gentleman. If fans loved them before, they'll love them that much more afterwards.

That said, the album also perfects the exact reasons why people hate the Afghan Whigs. Even if Dulli hasn't been a self-absorbed asshole before, he's certainly one now. Whatever character Dulli is playing - and one hopes that he is - it's a frustrating one, worthy just as much of contempt as he is of salvation. On 1965, Dulli propounds all the reasons why one can't love him, and while it might be easy to empathasize, it's just as easy to agree.