From: gtaylor@vme.heurikon.com (Gregory Taylor)
Newsgroups: rec.music.misc
Subject: Three More from the Tope Ten (2 of 5)
Date: 14 Dec 92 18:29:36 GMT
Reply-To: gtaylor@vme.heurikon.com (Gregory Taylor)
Organization: Heurikon Corporation, Madison, WI

Three of the "Top Ten" of 1992 (part 2 of 5)

In the last post, I disavowed any belief in anything approaching a top ten. I
This is rather one of a series of five postings of what I'd personally
consider some of the high points of the 1992 release year. They are not
ranked, and they are not sorted by genre; I don't do it as a radio guy,
so I don't do it here. The first and third albums might need some intro,
so I've written short stories instead of capsule reviews. I apologize if
this offends any of you. One import, two domestics, and I even admit in
print to being young and callow! 

Derek Bailey "Guitar Solos Volume II" [Incus]
I had a roomate once who kept a record around simply for the purpose
of ending parties. He'd haul it out when he wanted everyone to take off
and put it on at high volume. The minute the mass of scratching, scraping
and generally tuneless noodling on the guitar began (particularly at high
volume), the place emptied. But he'd always wait until everyone else left
and then turn it down and let it play at while he tidied up. Having never
really heard much free improvisation in those days (this is, 1973 or
'75. Some of you weren't even alive then. Yikes), I thought it was
pretty damned annoying and wondered aloud and reasonably often how it was
that the music world could bear having such clueless and talentless
poseurs competing for valuable record contracts. But the more I listened
to it in the quiet hours when we hunted stashed half-empty beer bottles,
I began to "hear" stuff. Have you ever just sat down at a piano and thrown
your hands at the keys and taped it? When you listen to the playback,
there'll be something that seems to sense about one out of every 200 
notes. It somehow seemed as if this guy could do that more often than I
could. "Naah," I thought. "Couldn't be. If he was really any good, he'd
do *songs.*"

The disc which ended my roomate's parties in those days was Derek Bailey's
1971 Incus release "Guitar Solos, Vol. 1". Then I ran across this fantastic
book on Improvisation in the early 80s. Some guy had actually done a 
whole series of interviews with musicians from all over the world whose
work had in common only the fact of improvisation - a French church 
organist, Indian musicians, and some jazz guys. The book really opened my
eyes and ears to what the business of improvisation really was about as
an existential practice. The guy who did the book turned out to be
Derek Bailey - that idiot who did all the guitar scratching. "So how come
this poseur is so smart?" I wondered. Over some span of time, it finally
occurred to me that *I* was the one who wasn't paying attention; I was
the one without the context to hear his work in. Derek Bailey's work
redefines the act of working with a single acoustic guitar in somewhat
the same radical way that Hendrix did with the electric guitar; he
made a simple observation about the instrument and then just started 
working from that point until he was better at it than anyone eise.
WARNING - AT THIS POINT, YOU SHOULD BE VERY CAREFUL ABOUT ACTUALLY BUYING
THIS THING. IT MAY SOUND TO YOU TODAY JUST AS DB SOUNDED TO ME IN '75.
The difference is that there's no recognizeable musical form to guide
you into what Bailey does in the way that the Blues did for Hendrix. This
really *is* "no rules" stuff - masses of choppy little flurries and runs,
artificial harmonics thrown off with abandon, and no chord changes to
get you through. This disc is the *second* disc, after 20 years. And yes,
Bailey *has* honed his chops in that time. Not for the weak, but its 
the kind of object you just have to listen to and live with. Henry Kaiser
thinks that Derek is a messenger from the gods, and Fred Frith stole some
of his better "prepared guitar" ideas from Bailey. Here's your chance to
hear the real thing - the source at its gnarliest. The runner up in this
category for me this year was another Derek Bailey gig with a couple of
Africans also on Incus, called "Village Life." The percussion makes it
a bit more accessible, so perhaps you might wish to try *it* first.

The Orb "UFOrb" [Mercury/Big Life]
Everyone said, "But Greg - you love this boring and drony Eno nonsense.
Ambient House is just like that, but with drum machines. Besides, this
is just a case of using all the ideas about recording and mixing that you
avant-garde composer weenies love so much to do something completely 
different. You're just whingeing because you don't like the form it
takes." They were right, and being suitably chastened, I followed up
on the advice of Lazlo several years ago and picked up the KLF "Chill
Out" CD. Hmmmm. Not bad. Maybe a little heavy on the hokey "found" 
broadcasts and samples from Minny Ripperton, but the electronics here 
are pretty nice and it *did* manufacture this kind of virtual space
you could just enter and hang out in. So on the strength of that, I started
venturing a little more seriously into listening to house stuff that was
*not* quite so ambient. Well, the Orb's "Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld"
was, as Goldilocks would say, "just right." About as much beat as I was
comfortable with, some nice textures, and a decent groove." Their new
release, "UFOrb" is, to my fossilized brain, loads better: it's consider
ably more in the ambient vein, crosses into some of my favorite territories
(occasionally summoning the ghosts of  that Neue Deutsche Welle stuff
that I used to like before punk came along - kind of a Tangerine Dream
with a dollop of self-deprecating humour. Even some pretty tasty dub!)
for long term "low volume" listening, and it's divinely well sequenced.
If there are ways of taking the "Music as the soundtrack of your life"
twaddle that FM stations sell as a way to homogenize stuff to flow into
the commercials and to subvert the notion by using the stuff *as*
environment, then this disc has been humming away in the office at least
as much as Eno's "Shutov Assembly" - or maybe more (and you *know* how
I feel about the domed one). On the radio in its unnanounced form, it
actually fades out of Lamonte Young and into heaven knows what, snagging
the Deadhead and the academic electronic music weenies alike. Finally,
the domestic American release of this disc (the early editions, anyhow)
is a terrific bargain, in that it includes a whole bonus disc with the
full 40-minute "Blue Room" UK single *and* a couple of remake/remodel
versions *and* their latest single "Assassin" in the bargain.

Carl Stone "Mom's" [New Albion]
What do you call Carl Stone? He is a composer in that he really puts
a lot of work into structuring his compositions - in this sense, he kind
of fits into the Minimalist category's ability to draw worlds of difference
out of the tiniest perturbations. As a composer, he has a keen ear for
source material as the beginning point for his own compositions; one 
hears the polyphony of the Ituri Rain Forst, African pop, and the ghosts
of Balinese music. I suppose that those of you who enjoy Rap's ability to
create music by sampling from diverse sources and styles would also think
of what Carl does as the "ultimate" sampling. There is nothing in most
of his piece *but* samples - but the work isn't in your face, and insinuates
itself very quietly and calmly. His new disc on New Albion seem to me
to be his most focused and compelling collection of the odd kind of
"process" music that only he does. Unfortunately, it's a little difficult
to explain to folks who've never heard the stuff. Imagine this: you've 
got a recording of a Japanese woman singing Franz Schubert's "The
Linden Tree" in English, accompanied by only a piano. Rather than your
average classical voice, the singer's performing style has much more 
in common with the breathy, mannered delivery of someone like Kate
Bush. So you choose the most interesting sounding fragments of the song
and you put them in a loop, where each pass through the loop advances
a little further along in the performance, cutting just a tiny bit off
the beginning as you go. The piano becomes a box full of vibrating 
strings, and the little idiosyncracies of the singing become the 
"subject" of the song. All the while, the source stuff is still completely
recognizeable. *That's* the kind of stuff Carl does, and he does it
better than any other human on the planet. This disc also features a
marriage of some Pygmy singing and a single somber organ that lit the
phone lights like Christmas the first time I played it on my show (more
than one call like "I've never heard anything like that before. It's 
beautiful. Where do I buy it?" is usually a dead giveaway that this might
be cool stuff, insofar as I rely on my audience to provide a corrective
to my programming excesses), and some clattery stuff that probably
started its life as Afropop and no seems like Irish fiddle music played
by a salsa band. Really different, and *highly* recommended.
--
The law moves quickly in the rain/and chokes the world with memorials./The
courts accept the lowest superstition/into evidence. And we embrace quickly in
the rain,/conceiving a hale infant with hands to wrinkle/the bedsheets toward
it, wave by trough by wave./Gregory Taylor/Heurikon /Madison, WI/608-828-3385
Newsgroups: rec.music.misc