David Sylvian (Ambient / Installation) LP: When Loud Weather Buffeted Naoshima Soundscapes composed for Naoshima Island, Inland Sea, Japan. (Samadhisound, 2007)
Through their traditional temples and gardens, Japanese designers have long explored the interplay between art and nature, and in a modern context there are few places where they integrate as seamlessly as on Naoshima Island.
Known for its many contemporary art museums - including the celebrated Benessse House and Chichu Art Museum - Naoshima offers a unique aesthetic experience.
Indeed, with its remarkable juxtaposition of fauna and human creativity, the island is the exhibit.
Its romantic - if somewhat recherché - ambience derives from the dialog between its lush landscape and rarefied modernist artworks: buildings, installations, paintings and sculptures by TadaoAndo, Claude Monet, Walter De Maria, James Turrell, YayoiKusama and others.
A companion piece to the Naoshima experience, David Sylvian’s When Loud Weather Buffeted Naoshima CD couldn’t strictly be called music. Rather it’s a collection of acoustic patterns and voices, a detailed soundscape which reflects Naoshima’s island environment.
Sylvian'ssuperimposition of aural landscapes seems directly inspired by the multi layered dimensionality of the island. For instance, the way the Chichu Art Museum is situated underground, its collection illuminated by ghostly natural light which projects downward from skylights far above.
When Loud Weather Buffeted Naoshimamay be alien and avant-garde, but neither is it forbidding or unapproachable. If it’s ‘formless’ or disorientating, it's no moreso than our daily experience, and Sylvian succeeds in inspiring an awareness of other levels of reality whilst enhancing, contrasting, and amplifying the present moment.
Like Naoshima itself, elements on the recording haphazardly (?) interact, and the contrast of natural sounds with found recordings mirrors our relationship with nature as we contemplate and interact with our environment.
Sylvian's cool aesthetic - observationally detached yet emotionally engaged - is an appropriate aural corollary to Naoshima's serene eco-modernism.
LINK: Benesse Art Site, Naoshima
The death of EsbjornSvensson this summer was a huge tragedy for his family and also for jazz fans who recognized the importance of the innovative EsbjornSvensson Trio (E.S.T.)
Inspiration behind what was perhaps the definitive postmodern jazz group, Svensson constantly expanded the possibilities of the traditional trio, conjuring a daring mix of jazz, classical, rock, electronica and ambient noise.
In some regards E.S.T. were jazz’s counterpart to Radiohead, sharing the British rock band’s edgy ambivalence toward technology as well as the ability to express moments of sublime emotion and quietude.
This was demonstrated to stunning effect on 2007’s Live In Berlin LP - the only E.S.T. record I was previously familiar with - and again here on the staggeringLeucocyte.
This superb collection of free improvisation is dominated by two extended suites: Premonition: Earth and Leucocyte: Ad Mortem.
The first begins with a muted funky bass riff which pulses and weaves, gradually being joined by a sparse piano exploration which gradually takes over, building and building until its boldness and intensity is almost too much to bear. It’s an amazing and superb improvisation, a modern jazz milestone which will shake up the purists.
Premonition: Contortedrecontextualizes that masterstroke with jarring electronic effects which somehow complement Svensson’s gorgeous piano study. Jazz begins in the otherwordly domain of Supersilent before it slides into a jazzy parallel universe with more than a passing nod to Keith Jarrett.
There are moments where the going gets a tad heavy and abstracted. Still, a sparse piano piece overladen with effects - didn’t hold my attention. Likewise, Leucocyte: Ad Mortem will defeat many listeners, though together with Leucocyte: Ad Infinitum it features a stunningly elegiac chiming piano figure.
Those who dismiss this kind of jazz as contrary, self-indulgent or irrelevant are dead wrong. Constantly reinventing itself, the driving lyricism of E.S.T. was always about jazz’s present, not its past.
While it may not always make for comfortable listening, E.S.T.'s art alwayscomes straight from the heart. Anear-classic, Leucocyte’s challenging, beautiful, even disturbing emotionalism stands as a marvelous tribute to a great talent whose genius has been sadly curtailed while at its creative peak.
Gong (Space-Rock) LP: Camembert Electrique (Virgin, 1971)
1973 was a strange year.
Flailing at school, I spent my time learning guitar licks from Bowie records, reading existentialist novels and getting spaced out listening to Gong, the stoned freak collective formed by Aussie Daevid Allen after he quit Soft Machine in 1967.
I picked up their psych-out masterpiece Camembert Electrique for 49 pence as a "loss-leader" during the newly established Virgin Records’ introductory promo campaign.
Itwas the first prog-psychedelic album that grabbed me. Its heavy space rock, free form jazz, electronic experimentation and wig-out hippy humor was like nothing I’d heard.
Another reason this LP captivated my adolescent brain was that my parents despised it in exactly inverse proportion to my newfound devotion.
As I cranked Camembert on my Fidelity “music center”, the cacophonous closing jam Fohat Digs Holes in Space - suggesting an orgasmic cosmic orgy - was greeted with howls of execration by my father. He especially hated Gilli Smyth's wordless "space whispering" - actually a piercing screech that could crack a lava lamp at ten paces.
As you can imagine, his pleas for me to remove the offending platter from the turntable merely increased my desire to spin it with increasing volume and regularity.
If you could get past the caterwauling, Fohat Digs Holes in Space had an ambient, trancelike feel which was way ahead of its time. History shows that Gong were precursors of the fire-twirlers and dayglo armband brigade who typified the proto-ravers of the 1990s. Members of the band later went on to form System 7, Eat Static and other key techno outfits.
Another Camembert classique, And You Tried So Hard, features a splendid lyric which proclaims:
A hand flutters in my brain Silken cords trembling into the waterfall Where the wise brown frog Gives princely advice.
If you’re the skeptical type, maybe you got a problem with wise brown frogs dispensing princely advice, or titles like Squeezing Sponges Over Policemen’s Heads. Or how about Wet Cheese Delirium, the track which closes Side One and features backwards tapes and a stoned French hippy droning the priceless incantation, “Tu Veux Camembert? Tu Veux Camembert?”
Andt if you think that's weird, Camembert Electrique marks the birth of Daevid Allen's tongue-in-cheek Planet Gong mythology - the subject of the band's subsequent three albums. It describes a utopian interplanetary psychic communication between we Earthlings and - ahem - the "pothead pixies" from the distant planet Gong.
Unsurprisingly, the Gong mythology makes a lot more sense if you happen to be stoned senseless. Their songs are about a kind of cosmic freedom, I guess, even if it is the freedom to marmalize your brain with “tea” and “mushrooms”, eat cheese and discover your inner pixie.
Gong were never remotely fashionable, and by the time the New Wave had struck, irrepairable cracks had fractured the prog-rock façade. The days of hallucinating freedom were over, to be replaced by life-changing, punky revelations.
To be sure, no one loved getting high more than my bondage-clad friends, but it had become demonstrably old hat, and - more importantly - fatally uncool, to admit a predilection for such hippy-dippy nonsense.
Moving on to edgier frontiers, I never bought another Gong LP, and when their Floating Anarchy Tour visited my town during 1977's summer of punk fury, I wisely kept my own cheesy counsel.
Oh yes, I had been a fan. But when my friends barked “Fuck off, hippies!” at the patchouli pixies proudly prancing on stage, I - sheeplike in my treachery - unashamedly joined in with their chorus of derision.
Randy Newman (Pop) LP: Harps and Angels (Nonesuch, 2008)
All hail Randy Newman. This American institution long ago staked a claim to the title of "greatest living songwriter" with his early masterpieces 12 Songs, Sail Away and Little Criminals. His Trouble in Paradise LP (featuring the not-altogether-ironic classic I Love LA) was a key touchstone for anyone living in SoCal in the mid-1980s – me included.
As memory of his early ironic/iconic masterworks has faded, Newman has perhaps become better known for a long line of superlative movie soundtracks, including The Natural,Toy Storyand Monsters, Inc (for which he finally nabbed an Oscar).
He's also adapted Goethe's Faust as a musical and his old chestnut Louisiana 1927 became the unofficial anthem of the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe after a rousing rendition by Aaron Neville at the Hurricane Relief concert.
But here we are in 2008 and the satirical genius finally drops another big one with Harps and Angels, the title referring to a near-death experience he recently had.
Intelligent, sensitive and capricious, the album is filled with incisive, moving songs which tackle familiar Newman themes: bigotry, political outrage, aging and the perils of American culture. Needless to say, it contains heavy doses of the ironic ambivalence and bare bones emotionalism he's known for.
APiece of the Pie is a lament for the lost American Dream and a call for his countryfolk to live out the true meaning of their creed ("Living in the richest country in the world/Wouldn't you think you'd have a better life?") As he sympathizing with the plight of illegal immigrants, Newman even takes aim at himself, squirming as one of the “have-mores.”
With characteristic drollness, Korean Parents pokes fun at Asian stereotypes, race in public schools and parental responsibility (“So sick of hearing about the greatest generation / That generation could be you / So let’s see what you can do.”)
Following that, Potholes is an amusingly tart paean to failing memory which anyone aged 40 or over can probably relate to ("God bless the potholes/Down on memory lane/Everything that happens to me now/Is consigned to oblivion by my brain.")
Then comes a bonafide Newman classic. Hearkening back to 1972's Political Science, A Few Words in Defence ofour Country is a barbed attack on the most lamentable government in recent American history and its policy of color-coded fear. Its amusing thesis is that the Bush administration really isn’t so bad - compared with Hitler, Stalin, the Spanish Inquisition and the excesses of the Roman Empire!
But for all the mordant, satirical genius on this record, the heartfelt Feels Like Home is the clincher for me. It's tender message of love and gratitude is expressed through deceptively simple poetry which never comes across as trite or shallow.
Musically and lyrically miles ahead of most of his contemporaries, Newman once again demonstrates how nothing beats good, old-fashioned songwriting, and also how depressingly few competitors he has in his field.
So what if takes him the best part of a decade to lay another masterpiece on his fans? When he does, the "bard of barbs" is so awesome he leaves his contemporaries waaay behind. Harps and Angels is a leading contender for album of the year.
VIDEO:Randy Newman "A Few Words in Defence of our Country"
Live: Radiohead / Modeselektor Osaka Municipal Gymnasium
They arrive in their thousands, crammed into air-conditioned train carriages, conveyed by escalator and elevator to the arena concourse.
Approaching the auditorium they form lines to purchase souvenir products embossed with slogans and logos which celebrate their heroes. Vendors stand to attention, expressionless and mute.
Buyers watch with self-conscious anticipation as barcodes are scanned and purchases placed into souvenir bags. Later the shrink-wrap will be torn away as t-shirts and compact discs are removed for inspection. They give off a reassuringly familiar aroma which proclaims a synthetic modernity.
At the entrance to the arena NPO stalls promote environmental causes. Keen-eyed young women seize the opportunity to press reading materials into the hands of concert-goers who have strayed in their direction. But mostly they stand gazing in resigned envy at the busy souvenir stands.
As they enter the arena, audience members are swallowed by the vastness of a space which drowns them in sublime anonymity. The dim lights on the ceiling far above resemble a spaceship from a Hollywood film. It threatens to touch down at any moment, engulfing and consuming the tiny individuals below.
The respectful silence of the crowd is broken by polite scattered applause as the opening act - a duo of German electronic musicians - approach their finale. A perceptible wave of excitement takes hold as the crowd anticipates the main attraction.
Sequestered backstage, the headliners complete their preparation ritual, mentally compartmentalizing familiar sensations of nervous excitement and ennui. When they finally appear they are dwarfed by their hyper-modern stage set.
Fluorescent tubes of white light reach down from the sky. Paneled video screens erected far above display multi-angle monochrome images of the performers' faces and instruments. Artful and precisely composed, they affirm the group’s sense of artistic experimentation, simultaneously proclaiming and - in their obtuseness - distorting the musicians’ celebrity status.
Digitized, assimilated, stored and adored on a million disk drives, the music begins. Yearning anthems contrast with the band's gorgeously combative avante-gardeisms. As the momentum builds, observers slowly enter a state of contented stupefaction.
The singer - a stubborn, uneasy star - remains tightlipped between songs. When he finally murmurs a brief “Arigato”, his cursory utterance is welcomed by a thunderous roar of approval from a sea of faces whose eyes are fixed on his every gesture.
He has accepted long ago the contradictions inherent in his position. He has embraced the freedom and limitations which adulation has conferred upon him.
The artistic explorings which have led him here tonight are beyond the wildest imaginings of those present. But none doubt the sincerity, the reaching for of their idol. He reflects the hopes, fears and insecurities they have projected upon him.
The pristine, numbing perfection leaves no room for surprises. None, in any case, are expected. Everything is in its right place. All that remains is a hushed, orderly migration toward the EXIT signs.
Summer Reading: John Peel: Margrave of the Marshes (Chicago Review Press, 2007) By John Peel & Sheila Ravenscroft Clapton: The Autobiography (Century, 2007) By Eric Clapton
A laconic, hard-working obsessive, John Peel was one of the most important DJs in rock history. He brought untold thousands of left field recordings to the attention of legions of appreciative listeners.
As a teen I spent many a night with my ear firmly glued to his late night show on the BBC. It was through Peel that I received my greatest musical education, discovering Euro-rock, high-life, punk, dub reggae and much more.
Peel’s autobiography - a dryly humorous love letter to rock ‘n’ roll - describes his soul-destroying years at an oppressive public school, relatively calm military service, his metamorphosis into a Dallas disc jockey and later canonization as the UK’s most influential - and beloved by his fans - arbiter of musical taste.
There are some intriguing nuggets of information, such as the fact that during his Texas period Peel schmoozed his way into a Lee Harvey Oswald press conference shortly after the JFK assassination. He is to be seen quite clearly in photos of the event.
Peel fans may be surprised at revelations that during his early rise to fame he had few qualms about exploiting his status as ‘top dj’ to indulge a rapacious sexual appetite. Sounds fair enough to me. I was also unaware that Peel was on pretty friendly terms with fellow Scouser John Lennon.
Since Peel had only completed 50% of his memoir before his untimely death, his wife Sheila relates the second half of his story. There is thus an abrupt shift in style, and I rather missed the great man’s lugubrious, self-deprecating tone. But Sheila provides insights only a wife could offer and does a great job under what must have been trying circumstances. This is a hugely informative and entertaining biography of a major figure in British music.
During Peel's rise to fame Eric Clapton was creating his own legend as the central figure in the British blues boom, originator of the power trio, ‘super group’ and blues rock, and a hugely successful songwriter who later created yet another niche as an MOR concert draw.
Clapton's excellent autobiography is disarmingly forthright, providing many insights into his multifaceted career. Moody and distant from an early age, he’s honest about the musical snobbery which caused him to abandon The Yardbirds in 1965 and wrongfully disdain many pop innovations of the early 60s.
Britain's guitar god is compellingly upfront about his feelings of sexual inadequacy and the head spinning variety of addictions which have plagued him throughout his life. The book is filled with tales of dissolution and tragedy but they're related from a touchingly philosophical perspective and never seem gratuitous or self-aggrandizing.
As a confirmed Beatles freak, I was delighted to finally get Clapton’s take on the legendary Plastic Ono Band performance at 1969’s Toronto Rock ‘n’ Roll Festival.
His account of being summoned by John Lennon to do the gig - joining him ‘on spec’ at Heathrow Airport - is priceless, and ends up with Clapton snorting prodigious amounts of cocaine backstage with Lennon before staggering on stage to unleash one of the great sets in rock ‘n’ roll history. It's all there on the classic Live Peace in Toronto album, one of Eric’s finest moments.
Despite all the madness, Clapton is most comfortable with his family, and my favorite passage - among all the rock 'n' roll hedonism - describes an eccentric uncle’s curious predilection for vinegar! I’m not a huge Clapton fan, have only ever bought one of his records, but I came away from this book with a new appreciation and respect for him as a musician and survivor.
What do you get when you mix your own songs with hints of Paul Weller, and Van Morrison, then throw in some Tindersticks and Bob Dylan for good measure?
A Morphic Jukebox, that’s what.
This Kyoto band has been drawing enthusiastic crowds on the local pub scene for some time, as well as snagging some cool festival and TV appearances.
Their self-produced debut release, Kaleidescapes - cool cover art by Kyoto artist Oliver Kinghorn - would in my day have been called an EP (extended play) since it features a very manageable six songs.
I wish more bands would do this. Say it loud: "Bring back the EP!"
Are Rob Cross and Russ Hubert Kyoto’s Lennon and McCartney? This transplanted Brit and New Yawker democratically divvy up the tracks three-apiece and offer an eclectic mix of self-penned material. Between them they tackle an impressive variety of instruments including banjo, harmonica, keyboards, trumpet, guitar and dobro.
The modest NaoHattori provides excellent support on stand up and electric bass. Live, the band are augmented by new percussionist Ted Taylor.
Kaleidescapes is an apt title, because the record morphs into a variety of styles while maintaining its own identity. Highlights include Shine a Light, a wistful ode to destiny from Hubert, whose heartfelt tenor reminds me of Stuart Staples of the UK’s Tindersticks.
Hubert’s topical CNN Blues actually starts with the words, “I woke up this morning” but then tackles the decidedly modern theme of media saturation. Bandleader Cross contributes some effective Hendrix wah-wah, and I really dig the way Russ sings, “Hell no!”
Cross’ Get Away is a song of escape whose chorus has firmly planted itself in my brain for two days with no let up. If you’ve ever had the hankering to run off and forget your troubles - and who hasn’t? - I think you'll be able to relate.
Morphic has gotta be the perfect word for a band which switches effortlessly between folk, blues, country, trad-jazz and rock, and Kaleidescapes features solid musicianship.
Make it Last and ChoCho-chan Boogie both contain excellent finger picking guitar which - amateur studio buffs take note - has been recorded quite impressively. On the aforementioned ChoCho-chan Boogie, talented engineer Russ Hubert crafts a great trad-jazz pastiche. Respect.
Fast becoming a fixture on the Kyoto scene, Morphic Jukebox tell me they have come a long way since recording Kaleidescapes and are raring to get back into the studio. I must say I’m looking forward to hearing what they conjure on their follow-up, but for now Kaleidescapes - an exceedingly nifty debut - will do nicely.
