A wonderful piece of Avant-Garde class from 1974. Carla Bley was the Norse arch-bohemian Blanca lookin’ nut-case & composer bad-ass running with a crew of super cool NY envelope-pushers. This is also the first outing on her long-running record label Watt that she co-produced (& I assume founded?) with trumpeter Michael Mantler. Mantler is on this recording as well along with the great Dave Holland on bass, Howard Johnson on tuba & a whole gaggle of loons (seven in total) all enabling a herculean scope of detail & depth. Continue reading Carla Bley – Tropic Appetites 12” LP
So two words to kick the door in with – VITAL & MANDATORY!!! Capitalism & calamity, profit & crisis – are becoming like conjoined twins. War-pollution-incarceration… inflict, sustain, clean-up/eradicate, reaping revenues at every stage. You notice how many of today’s greatest problems/threats/fiascos crawled out of yesterday’s solutions or technological advancements (ISIS/Terrorism, Climate Extermination, Food Insecurity etc’ etc’ etc). 
Somehow, despite my huge interest in the topic, I only discovered Joanna Blythman recently. Not unlike fellow peer Felicity Lawrence (who works more on the abuse of workers & modern slavery in large-scale commercial food production), Blythman shares the front-line of food journalism/activism. This is her fifth book on food & deals predominantly with the hidden ingredients & deceptive stealth-feeding from an increasingly abnormal industry. 
