Sam Rivers – Crystals

Sam Rivers-Crystals (1974)_ed

A particularly extraordinary contribution this one. even by Rivers standards which really have an altitude of their very own, this is a momentously distinctive hall-mark who’s permanent crater will forever be a feature of the Freejazz/Jazz landscape. More than 30 other musicians donate their abilities over six tracks…so it’s an orchestra scenario. I normally really abhor these experiences in Jazz & am generally of the dogma that if you need a huge passel of musicians to convey power or dynamic your obviously at an extreme deficiency.

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Oliver Lake Trio – Zaki CD

Lake-Zaki_ed

Well, yet again another seminal branch of Avant-Garde/Free Jazz history dashes up for definition. This is no normal moment/operation & the idiosyncratic ordinance & inordinate outpourings that these men bring really are entitled to their own throne room. Lake (sax), M G Jackson (guitar) & Pheeroan akLaff (drums) had been playing together for some years now & have adnated perfectly, cultivating a natural commune & affinity that can so deftly commingle & co-act. The instrumentation itself is pretty avant-garde as it is… sax, drums & electric guitar? In a Free-Jazz idiom? Not an every album occurrence (certainly back then), but the forces behind these instruments in no way devise in the typical territories.

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Oliver Lake – Shine!

Oliver Lake-Shine!_ed

Here’s a one of Lake’s more obscure/overlooked projections. I can’t see why as it’s another scintillating discharge of baroque densely detailed mellifluent odd & erratic Avant-Garde mastery that strolls it’s own disparate track with stark individuality. Core associates Pheeroan akLaff & Michael Gregory Jackson are once again entwined, performing two of the four trax as a trio with Lake on side two, & joined by the rather aberrant compository of three violins, a cello (bowed by the excellent Abdul Wadud) & a piano (Anthony Davis) for the A-side’s two tunes. Lake composes all tracks & they veer & contrast considerably between massively chaotic free-formations, highly melodious & abject atonal, soft & frenzied, coherent & agitated all with Lakes signature of super graceful amazingly controlled sapiential complexity & gigantic virtuosity.

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Industrial Holocaust – The Holocaust Cintinues 7”EP

Industrial Holocaust_ed

Here’s a real nice shred of wax dislodged from th turgescent aperture of Rage For All. This B&W shabby-arsed generically packaged EP encompassing th crudest cut & paste effort that could be attributed/claimed by/to thousands of Grind/Crust archetypes & epigones th world over, with sections of th collage actually blown up so much that they begin to pixelate had me apprehensive of some standardized plebeian tenuous toss turning my tanning sesh into a mud-bath!

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Government Alpha – Seventh Continent CD

Government Alpha-seventh continent_ed

Seven shocks on which I believe is his best album so far. To confirm a canard, Government Alpha, the one man wrecking-ball psychedelic-Stridor ultra-harsh demolition specialist from Tokyo is frequently liturgized as the harshest Stentorian of them all. His high-frequency stuff probably is unrivalled? The bassier blunt cacophonic churnings that is the formula for most Harsh Noise has preposterous potency, but I’m not convinced it surpasses early M150 recordings which I think take the blunt-force trauma Stridor prepotency ubiety. Irrespective, this is undoubtedly some of the harshest most unremitting Stridor conflagration. GA is one of the very best, for quality, adversity & a rare quality in Stridor/Noise-diversity. Many different devices are utilized with an above average largesse for variation. The equipment & methodology vary from track to track where as most Noise albums I hear seem to use one gradient/gamut for the entire album, rearranging the same ingredients. This generally saves GA from the weary Stridor monotony.

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Final Exit/Deche Charge Split 7”

Final Exit-surf 74_ed

Sublime! you should all fucking know about Final Exit by now? They are a Tokyo based NoSkoolNoyzcore duo, one of the best & most distinctive Noisegrind bands of all time with a long lineage beginning in the early 90’s. they are also committed to perhaps the smallest musical movement in history, No-Skool-Noyzcore/Gunk, i.e. sedulous Noisecore with effort & input practiced by literally something like x15 bands (presuming you exclude FreeJazz) over the last 20 years or so. They are fabulous musicians commanding an immensely assiduous tightness playing on most of there recordings with profound syncopation & coordinated-kinetics …. This is controlled chaos. They have personalized an utterly unique brand of Gunk, where they phase between professionally played Rock, Surf, Jazz, Blues, Grind, Metal & a medley of other niche & standard genres with absolute out-&-out BlurNoise, just one massive sodden saturation of total Bleeeurk, either encompassing extremely low-end-bassy indiscernible distortion or/& ultra fast strangled speed-picking high-fret percolation whilst drums blast-blur & tumble with signature pogo cymbal smashes & stumbling fills.

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Delien – Aon 12”LP

Delien-aon (Low Res)_ed

Yet another delectable dosage from Low Res. Getting started Delien resist an ascribed genre. I’ll observe as “glitchy down-tempo experimental digital distortion funk” for the hell of it. Half of the phonetics assumed seem to be sourced from the old Snes, Game Boy & 80’s Coin-Up modules which are then expertly activated as percussion &/or harmonic components. So the kick sound might be a ray-gun burst or the death rattle of the last boss. Pretty much everything has a substantial tunica of distortion yet all is high-fidelity (which makes the distortion all the more cool really).

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Cecil Taylor – Nuits De La Fondation Maeght Vol.2

Cecil Taylor-nuits Vol.2_ed

PREFACE INFO FLASH! : dammit! i wrote this over a year ago & have just resurrected it with new additions. these notes were jotted whilst listening/spinning th record with maximum attention (obviously after many listening’s). going back to it again now (and re-listening as I write) i realize that i have mixed up descriptives rather than having a progressing cogent assessment of each side from start to finish. ta’ hell with it! it’s totally jumbled but so is th music, & yu can see it as random speculation on these immense energies/scenes/sections encapsulated on th recording.

B-syd: this syd emerges from where the last digressed. things finally relent, Cyrille is prodding & skittering on th rims of his drums, Rivers is howling distended maledictions, Taylor is spuming gibberish infantile lallation. messing around with vowels, i don’t know what the guy is doing, probably he doesn’t either? unsettling, awesome. a strange five minute phase of pacified but louring Avant-Garde ensues, with th musicians all contributing then detracting around Taylor, casting off sonic motifs to a totem-pole or sumthin’.

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Cecil Taylor – Nuits De La Fondation Maeght x3 LP SET

Cecil Taylor-nuits de la fondation maeght_edProlific debauchery & plenty of it! an edgy, intemperate leviathan casting a pall of threat as well as riotous wonder & technical brilliance Cecil Taylor’s splendour trails for fuckin’ decades & frequently clambers to unimaginable alcoves. so’ so much could be drafted, but this review will concentrate on the Nuits De La Fondation Maeght trilogy recordings (captured during live group performances in France in 1969), which for me has so far been his best work from a particularly enigmatic period. Taylor was playing sprawling immeasurably intense reckless refulgence & asymmetrical avant wizardry with the insane Andrew Cyrille, for me indubitably one of the most fantastic & original drummers ever. out of the many things that could be said, I would emphasise that Taylor & his unit redefined the elongated-outburst & prolonged-peaking coming with ceaseless surging’s of unparalleled clamour & volatility. frequently without intervals, extenuation or cessation they would dance an immensely detailed & dynamic squall within the singularity of remorseless & unforgiving outermost, fully-cyclic, hell-for-leather frenzy. a heteronomous hurricane & blitzing blizzard of ebullient fulmination Cyrille was able to maintain physically these momentous requirements but also inflect with a cycle of extensive improvisational embellishment & continually capricious contrasting.

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