Brave New World – Impressions on Reading Aldous Huxley 8.4

Four Germans (Reinhart Firchow, Dicky Tarrach, Herb Geller and Lucas Lindholm) and two Irishmen (Esther Daniels and John O’Brian-Docker) came together to make an album based off of their experience reading Huxley’s famous book “Brave New World”. I believe that Brave New World is the best book ever recommended (read: required) by a school, so I entered this album with an open mind.

                This may be a concept album, but the songs are instrumental, allowing you to ponder what parts exactly inspired them to create the sounds. With “Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon…Ford” I wonder which parts exactly. Sure, I can picture little humans being decanted with that organ swell. More progressive rock should be this good, each part of the song, the flexible bass and the wonderful flutes make it an early highlight. It is so tasteful, I rarely adore certain segments but about 1:40 into the song you’re treated to something so smooth. Echoes of bands created long after these guys come into my mind.

                Flutes are all over the album. Most of the musicians seemed to be experts with them. Woodwinds aren’t a thing used as often on albums, but judging from this recording, I doubt many could do them the same level of justice. Just alone, the flutes create a dialogue far richer than someone simply reading lines out of the book. It is wonderful. 

                Pieces of folk pop up here and there, particularly on the tracks “Soma” and “Malpais Corn Dance”. Of course, you can find everything that ever happened on the album in the massive finale “The End”.

                Even with the level of quality seen in the previous tracks, “The End” ups the ante. Parts of this song reach such great heights. Flutes introduce the songs, easing you into the chaotic journey. Organs and flutes mesh together to form a sort of complimentary theme, a grandiose send-off. A tragic guitar appears out of nowhere. Tempos increase and decrease, jazzy elements are brought in, and a dark drone comes in. When I first heard this drone, I stopped everything. It just overwhelmed whatever it was I was doing. Yes, it is that powerful. Flutes are played as quickly as I think is physically possible.

                Dig it if you have it. Sadly they only made one album. Nevertheless, this is a wonderful experience through progressive rock way ahead of its time.                

Second Hand – Death May Be Your Santa Claus 9.0

There are more than enough of awe-inspiring moments to make searching this out ultimately worth it. Named after an obscure controversial film about nihilism it has nothing to do with the film’s subject material. Apparently the studio owner (Vic Keary) saw the film, told the young band about it, and they named themselves after it.

As soon as you put it on, you notice the two best parts of the album: the drums and the organ. Ken Elliot is on organ with Kieran O’Connor on drums. The organ melodies are beautiful and the drumming is extremely energetic, somewhat jazzy.  Joining them is a surprisingly strong singer for an Englishman. Rob Elliot goes from sounding normal to sounding like Mrs. Bighead (Baby R U Anudda Monster). 

Pop and progressive rock has never been intertwined so perfectly. “Hangin’ on an Eyelid’ oozes confidence. Right from the get-go, you’re treated to the sweetest sounds. It only gets better from there, as the lyrics are sweet as honey. The xylophone, before acknowledged as a stupid instrument, proves its mettle here. “Death May Be Your Santa Claus” and “Death May Be Your Santa Claus (Reprise)” show off both of their talents with the first one showing off their knack for pop hits. Meanwhile, the second almost closes off the disc with some elegant organ and bass work. “Funeral” officially closes it out with so much delicious riffs and bombast.

Sadly, this is near impossible to find. That really is a shame, since this neatly embodies a lot of excellent musicianship and talent that arose from the late sixties. Worth getting!

Rocky’s Filj –Storie Di Uomini E Non 6.9

             The opening track “L’Ultima Spiaggia” says it all. In fact, it says far more than the rest of the album. While the first track is sincerely massive, with beautiful sounding bass, horns, active vocals, and interlocking grooves, the rest of the album seems timid in comparison. Despite suffering from being very front-loaded, the other songs aren’t dreadful. 

                “Il Soldato” works as a counterbalance to the opening track’s energy. Horns are subdued, and there’s some wonderful violin work as well. Quiet is emphasized instead, to equally great affect. Each pluck, each guitar can be heard clearly. 

                Rocky Rissi is a fairly decent singer. While not possessing an extraordinary voice, his delivery is somewhat unique. Plus, his instance of singing in Italian sits well with me, since so many progressive rock bands tried to sing in English in order to gain a larger following (bands like Faust, etc). I like their honesty.

                Overall, the rest of the album takes some sinking in work. The first track is an instant winner, the others require more elbow work on behalf of the listener, but they can often be worth it.

100 Records That Set the World on Fire….While No One was listening

               Lists are helpful. The Wire put out this list before the turn of the millennium, so there was bound to be some stuff too recent to get an accurate appraisal on. Some of the stuff they recommended on here ends up being pretty good, with maybe a bias or lean towards jazzier stuff. Thankfully they avoided the fate of Nurse with Wound list; their selection includes a fairly diverse group of artists and genres.

                Browsing quickly through the list, there are some great picks. Charles Ives would be one of them, even a century later he’s yet to receive the attention he deserves for his groundbreaking work, in the early 20^th century no less! Part of my adoration for Ives has to do with how he balanced a professional career with his more artistic inclinations. Maybe that’s a bit of an inspiration of how I could do the same thing.

                Unfortunately, like many of these “Look at our Great Taste” lists, there are a few expected mentions and some dullards. Faust gets mentioned on virtually any music snob’s taste, as does Captain Beefheart and a few others. Though these lists ostensibly are a reaction against the monotony of having the Beatles and the Beach Boys plastered everywhere, they fall into similar habits. Jazz gets a huge amount of attention. Some of the selections of the artists seems accurate, but their precise recordings a bit questionable. For the Residents, they pick an EP of theirs rather than one of their full-length weird-outs, like “Fingerprince” or “Not Available” which are more easily available.  A few other artists suffer from this, the “we listened to their whole discography and picked the most obscure release” syndrome. Sometimes this is a good idea, since it attracts attention to something which normally gets overlooked, but in some of these cases that’s just not the case. 

                The dullards are quite dull. Esquivel isn’t a great innovator by any means; even his most experimental stuff probably gets played in your local elevator. Choosing a William S. Burroughs audio tape from the 60s seems a bit silly too, especially considering how he did more interesting stuff later in life with bands. Oh, he’s dryly reading. How exciting. I’m a fan of his work too, but I can’t see myself being wowed by his voice alone. This might be more of a personal preference of mine. 

                A great deal of these I haven’t heard. What I will be doing for these will be tagging whichever ones relate to the list with the phrase: “100 Records that set the world on Fire” for easier navigation. I hope by going through these I’ll stumble upon some excellent material and edit out the dross for you, the listener. Despite some of my reservations about this list, I feel this is probably one of the more diverse ones I’ve seen. Their emphasis on a wide range geographically and time wise gives it a broader, better perspective, and they at least try to avoid the obscure of the sake of being obscure, though they fall into that pit a few times. 

                Finally, I do enjoy these lists and if you have any others I should pay attention to, let me know. Wire has the added bonus of including other sites’ reviews of the albums. Of particular note was Q Magazine calling “Metal Machine Music” one of the 50 worst albums of all time, thus confirming their status as old fogies who don’t “get it”.

Mama Dada 1919 – Slits, Quick 3.5

               For all those people who state bad music began proliferating after the advent of CDs and MP3s, I present to them, Mama Dada 1919. Released in 1979, it dedicated itself to Comrade Lol. I don’t have any idea what the point of this sort of release is, to show that you had enough gumption to bother having it released.

                Most of the songs on here are extremely brief and possess a tossed-off feeling. The theme in the first song reappears at the end, and there do appear to be some unifying factors despite the mostly improvised nature of the recordings. It feels so random that is near-impossible to enjoy. Sure, I enjoy improvisers like AMM, but they have training and knowledge of what they’re doing. 

                None of the sounds they explore are things that should be mind-blowing to anyone with an even passing knowledge of music. Faust did this, some 60s band did that. It goes on that way for roughly 14 minutes. Even their name, which instantly drew me to them, implied a goofy nature or at least an energetic record. Sadly, neither one of those things is the case. Instead, this comes across very heavily as indulgent music or an inside joke whose answer I’m not privy to. Music like this gives the avant-garde a bad name.

Red Noise – Sarcelles Locheres 6.6

Some history on these guys: they appeared on the Nurse With Wound list. That’s probably how one even got to hear about them. Otherwise, I don’t know what would attract you attention towards some ultra-obscure krautrockers from France in the early 70s.

                Musically, you have some adventurous rock mixed with jazz influence. They don’t do it badly, but there’s nothing here that would really blow your mind. Honestly, the humor here (exclusively potty-based humor) grates on one’s nerves. I’ve heard that a lot of French humor doesn’t travel well, so here’s an example of that.

                Parts of this go on for far too long. Exploring how to pluck one’s guitar should not go on for 2 minutes. The hallmark for this album (Sarcelles C’est l’Av) probably is the true winner here. All that hoped for-madness is somewhat met on here. 

                Red Noise had all the hallmarks of being a nice, wild, weird French band. Sadly, most of the stuff on here tends to be too focused or unfocused. They were poor editors of their material judging by this release. If you’re familiar with Frank Zappa and his ilk, there’s nothing on here that will really excite you or be new to you.

Nurse With Wound List: The Project

I’m a tremendous music snob. Some see this as a never-ending problem of mine, my need to endlessly criticize popular music. But that’s not all I do. Another one of my goals is to help others understand that simply because something is obscure or abstract does not necessarily mean it is good or a high-quality product.

                Thus I come to the holy grail of music snobbery/avid drooling record collectors: The Nurse With Wound List. Packaged with Nurse with Wound’s first album “Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine and Umbrella” and expanded on their second album, it served as a tribute to the artists who helped influence the Nurse with Wound project. Some of these artists are certainly worth hearing; I doubt you’ll hear much that sounds like AMM or Cromagnon. On the other hand, there’s also some serious filler or showing off at hand. Some of these artists’ inclusion seems like a precursor to James Murphy’s ode to the pissing contest “I’m losing my edge” with pointless name-dropping.

                Both opinions are equally valid. Steve Stapleton suffers from ideas in both camps. On one hand, he does produce an excellent product on occasion. However, as is the case with so many industrial/avant-garde artists, he suffers from being a poor editor of his work. Instead of being obsessed with creating a great product, a great deal of his releases take advantage of the rabid fan base that he’s accumulated over the years with his releases. In other words, he shouldn’t release limited edition runs of pure garbage for the sake of raising money to live in Ireland.

                What I hope to do as I go through this list is to point out the good, the bad, the indulgent, the repetitive, the unnecessary, and the sublime. Already I’ve done about two artists off this list (Red Krayola and Cromagnon). Hopefully this project of mine will produce some great fruits. I have no promise that this will be finished in a year or two. Rather, think of this as something going on in the background, as I try to sort through what’s worth searching out. Besides, I do try to give each recording I review multiple listens, to see if there’s something I might have missed the first time around. Any recording or artist from the list will be specifically tagged as “Nurse with Wound list” to allow you to better sort through the countless artists (well, 294 artists isn’t countless, but it is a lot). 

                People ought to enjoy music for its quality, not some perceived indie or street cred. One should be able to appreciate it on something besides its exclusivity or rarity. And some of the artists on this list are near impossible to find in print or even on the internet. Most are from an era of pure weird, when hippies roamed the Earth as actual hippies rather than whatever it is you’d call them now (sorry, the world isn’t as kind to idealism as it once was). So that means a great deal of creativity was unleashed, along with excessive amounts of indulgence.

                Hopefully you’ll be able to better sort through this so-called “shopping list” with a better idea of what to purchase/get rather than simply standing with jaw agape.

Cromagnon – Orgasm 8.9

Whenever anyone writes about this, they usually use an end-of-the-world kind of description. Or they struggle, saying how this sort of marked the high point of ultra-weirdness. Either one of those descriptions should help prepare you. Or, to use Hunter S. Thompson’s phrase, this was the high-water mark in the field of hippie freak outs.

You begin by hearing a struggling radio transmission introducing the beginning of the song, followed by a few seconds of static and night noise. A bagpipe starts off in the distance, before pounding tribal drums and fuzzed out guitars introduce themselves. The singer sounds like a black metal singer, which is odd because black metal hadn’t been invented yet.

That’s the most normal song, it that there’s an actual riff and percussion. “Toth, Scribe I” is the same song slowed down into an Earth-like drone. Much of this sounds like some sort of hideous Kurt-Schwitters inspired nightmare, with random screams, shrieks, and grunts from the “Lost Connecticut Tribe”. Don’t let the name fool you, they weren’t some group of commuters with a keen sense of humor. They were heavily fucked-up individuals who made this very free music.

Perhaps “music” isn’t the right word for this. Free Jazz has more coherence than this. Things start and stop on a dime, with little coming together to make any sense. Bands who engaged in this sort of behavior later (like Faust, etc) never went to the lengths of indulgence that these guys pursued.

Humanity is better off with this freely available. It is utterly bizarre and even four decades later, unbelievably “out there”. “Far out” can’t even describe it, since far would indicate that it is anywhere within our current musical universe.