From: gtaylor@vme.heurikon.com (Gregory Taylor)
Newsgroups: rec.music.misc
Subject: Greg's non-top-ten rides off into the sunset (5 0f 5)
Date: 16 Dec 92 20:45:16 GMT
Reply-To: gtaylor@vme.heurikon.com (Gregory Taylor)
Organization: Heurikon Corporation, Madison, WI

Well, here I am at number 5. I'll omit most of the blather about
how I feel about ranking, okay? The final three (which aren't necessarily
in order or rank anyhow)....

Bill Nelson "Blue Moons and Laughing Guitars" [Caroline]
Ex BeBop Deluxe guitarist Bill Nelson has, it seems to me, been
wandering in the wilderness for years; His output is maddening to me
in that he seems always poised on the edge of commercial ruin (read:
between contracts or distribution deals), stubbornly releasing albums
of "sketches of work in progress" which we as a a consuming public are
expected, in true PoMo fashion, to edit for ourselves. Not that I've
not got a soft spot in my heart for his work when it seems to cohere -
it just seems that said material seems to occur on maybe 30% of every
album that he puts out. Of late, I've even begun to tire somewhat of
his "synthesizer and found vocals"" work. Imagine my surprise and 
delight at this album! Bill actually playing guitars! Bill actually
giving a shot at the full throated croon! The recognizeable Bill Nelson
Roland keyboard parts and martial tempos crossbred with these little
flourishes from Japanese folk music! My enthusiasm is tempered somewhat
by this interesting note on the disc that these works, too, are (ack!)
sketches for a project that never materialized, to feature two REAL
drummers and perhaps even another guitarist. Beyond having this album
fuller of what I always think of as the *real* Bill Nelson (whoah. not
a little presumption, what?) than anything he's done in years, there's 
not much to say, save for musing about what this work *might* have 
sounded like with a real pack of drummers and another musician or two
to play off of and hone the edge. Welcome back Bill; start the band
interviews soon, okay?

SPK - "Zamia Lehmanni (Songs of Byzantine Flowers)" [Mute/Grey Area]
Another disc from the Mute/Grey Area series of releases that gave us
the Dome albums, but one of quite a different sort. 
One of the generally interesting features of our tendency to group
work in terms of "genre" for me involves the choices that artists
make as they simultaneously push against the boundaries at the same
time as their work moves from the territory of the edge to the center.
Perhaps the problem is one of emotional limitation, or maybe we're 
thinking of a personal rejection. Nonetheless, I tend to find a similar
urge on the part of artists on a regular basis - "I'm comfortable with
the form, *now* what?" The question of how one decides to proceed 
goes from *that* point is, for all intents and purposes, the same kind
of question that faces someone who plays the blues or jazz players like
Anthony Davis: "Do I redefine my work by including something else, by
actually changing what I do, or is it possible that I can identify 
similar patterns in other kind of work and marry them to my own?"
For Graham Revell of SPK, the answer to that question led him away from
more orthodox industrial work of the early SPK albums into a brief flirtation
with more electronic dance work with a female singer, and finally to his
current work as a soundtrack composer ("Dead Calm" and some of the music
for "Till the End of the World"). 

The earlier work of SPK's that seen release is much more solidly in the
"pounding and screaming" genre of industrial labor honed to a fine
and taxonomically easy to identify polish by bands like Test Dept.,
Esplendor Geometrico, and Crash Worship. This rerelease really marks the 
beginning of his plunge into his later work as a "composer"; it borrows his 
singer Sinan (sounding *very* different) and the usual metallic 
suspects and runs the whole thing into a Fairlight for some judicious
sampling in the bargain. The finished work combines the spare and somber 
sound of ambient industrial work with a set of similar urges found in 
ritual or liturgical acoustic musics in a way that, though a little 
emotionally chilly, is coherent and fully realized. Even though it's a
reissue, I don't think that there's any work quite in its genre or this
quality (and I think that the more industrial SPK works may have been
bettered by some of the newer industrial bands. This is only opinion,
mind you).

Arrested Development - "3 ..in the life of" [Chrysalis or Charisma]
(I can never remember the precise sequence of numbers for the title. Sorry.)
I suppose that even *this* album won't convince the legions of young
white undergraduate males who inhabit the net and remind us from time
to time that "(c)Rap isn't music". I also suppose that from among the
hardcore rap community, there may be some reservations about "sell out"
now that lots of the press has gotten around to saying nice things 
about them (and if white boy *me* thinks they cook, well....). This work
isn't nearly in one's face as hard as my current faves in the ideology
department The Disposable Heroes of Hiphopracy (who might be being 
passed over somewhat unjustly in the stampede to adore AD), but the
balance of men and women, the amazing use of sampling as a way to construct
a "sampled history of black music" behind the talk, and (for me, anyway)
the complete lack of misogyny and the emphasis on building pride instead
of the gangsta thing has made this an extraordinarily lovel album with
which to live. Heck, they can even put together a "relaxed" groove. In
terms of "social phenomena", I'd put this fine album right up there with
any of the Riot Grrrls in terms of "what the music had to do with the
world." Their newer thing for Spike Lee's film "X" cops some *great*
African sample, too. Mmmm Mmmm. 

--
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