Playlist 7

There has been a prevailing Folk strand running though my monthly playlists to date.  This time, after an initial sample-fest, things became increasingly Jazz-centric, and a bit funky too.

‘The Five EPs’, Disco Inferno

Disco Inferno was an ironically named Indie outfit that made a few ripples in the early to mid 90s.  They might have been remembered as mere New Order wannabes had they not hit on the unusual idea of using ‘real’ instruments to trigger an expanding library of samples.  It was a technically unwieldy approach but one that allowed them to construct fascinatingly nuanced soundscapes and employ their found sound sources as raw material rather than mere decoration.

Arranged chronologically on this compilation, these tracks range between relatively conventional, if sonically unusual, song forms to real avant-garde aural sculptures.  The best cuts stand comparison with the multi-layered texturalism of contemporaries The Cocteau Twins or My Bloody Valentine, and the later tracks show increasing complexity and some humour.  It takes a certain genius to combine a drum loop from Iggy Pop’s ‘Lust For Life’ with fragments of the ‘Playschool’ theme, (‘It’s A Kid’s World’).

‘Foley Room’, Amon Tobin

Of course, what Disco Inferno once attempted with a stack of mal-functioning equipment is now achieved over coffee with a laptop computer.  Amon Tobin has enjoyed a reputation as a highly skilled aural bricolagiste and beat technician for some years now but 2007’s ‘Foley Room.’ album saw him abandon his trusty record crates in favour of tailor-made original field recordings.  The album still showcases his customary obsessive detail and disquieting atmospherics but acquires an extra dimension through the new cinematic approach to sound design.  It proves genuinely arresting to listen to tracks constructed from a pitch-shifted motorbike engine or terrifyingly close-up tiger growls.

‘Until The Quiet Comes’, Flying Lotus

This may prove to be my favourite new record of 2012.  Steven Ellison has established himself as an impressive practitioner of the style of electronica sometimes called Wonky.  He’s a master of the stumbling, unquantised rhythms and dazzling assemblages of diverse sounds typical of the genre, - achieving massive degrees of disjuncture but always retaining nagging vestiges of a groove or melody. This is his lushest material to date, incorporating swathes of atmospheric keyboards and sweet, processed vocals into an implied dreamscape.  Even a contribution from whinging Radiohead vocalist Thom Yorke can’t spoil the excellent ‘Electric Candyman’.

Whilst coming from a nominally Hip-Hop background, Ellison covers numerous stylistic bases and possesses a distinct jazz sensibility and laid-back West Coast funkiness.  He’s much aided in the latter by long-time collaborator and virtuoso bassist Thundercat.  For all the formal abstraction, nothing overstays it’s welcome and there are moments of sheer transcendent beauty here.   Rather than proving a problem, his grasshopper approach to track construction can make each repeat listen seem like a new experience.  To my ears, ‘UTQC’ is the most seductive Flying Lotus release so far.

‘The Golden Age Of Apocalypse’, Thundercat

Thundercat Channels The Warmth Of The Sun

Having marvelled at Stephen Brunner’s bass guitar work for Flying Lotus, it was only natural I’d turn to his own 2011 album, - itself produced by Steven Ellison.  This is imbued with West Coast ambience and, with eyes closed, it seems to evoke an artificial L.A sunset, - polychromatic with smog and airbrushed for reproduction.  Actually, it reminds me of Ed Ruscha’s paintings of the Hollywood sign.

The album is full of jazz and funk flavours and Brunner seems to be channelling Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and, particularly, George Duke, whose ‘For Love I Come’ is covered beautifully.  Like much of the best synthetic music these days Brunner plays freely with a palette of retro tropes whilst producing something that sounds very contemporary.  As the title suggests, these are sun-drenched grooves for a changing climate.

‘Headhunters’, Herbie Hancock

Hancock was a major name in 60s jazz, making numerous albums under his own name, and as a member of Miles Davis’ seminal fusion bands too.  With a new band, also named Headhunters, he embraced a new funk-orientated approach with this album in 1973.  If it was partly a search for greater commerciality, it also contained great music and proved to be a milestone in jazz-fusion.  The main influence is Sly Stone and this shares his ability to find compelling laid-back grooves within relatively spare arrangements.

Hancock and his band played in Leicester’s De Montfort Hall Gardens one wet midweek evening some years ago.  Dancing for warmth in a pathetically small crowd I wondered, “where is everyone – it’s Herbie Hancock?”  They’d have been forgiven for getting out of there as soon as possible but, instead, turned in a memorably dynamic and fully committed performance.

‘Birdland’, Weather Report

Not The Album Version But Too Good To Leave Out.  Weather Report 
Play The Stadthalle Offenbach, 1978

Weather Report is another of those Jazz-fusion acts whose music, (from the 70s at least), I really enjoy.  Purists always scoff at this kind of thing, forgetting that mutation and evolution are actually necessary for the sustained health of any art form.  That Miles Davis and his circle sought to push Jazz into new areas of expression by no means betrays what went before and merely signifies that the idiom was adapting to survive.  Weather Report was a major component of his legacy.  Of all the period's fusion acts, they probably retained the greatest element of Jazz within their music overall.

‘Birdland’ came from 1977’s ‘Heavy Weather’ album and marked a conscious move away from their previous reliance on improvisation towards a more accessible, composed approach. The single was certainly their most successful release commercially but I love it nonetheless.  It has an infectious, uplifting hook and is pretty much the sound of optimism.  It always works well in the car at the start of any journey undertaken for pleasure.

‘Handsworth Revolution’, Steel Pulse

A Bird In The Handsworth... Oh, Never Mind.

In Birmingham not long ago, I caught Vanley Burke’s exhibition of documentary photos of the city’s black community, taken over several decades.  Many of Birmingham’s immigrants came from Jamaica and it made me realise I haven’t played much Reggae lately.  Steel Pulse hailed from the Handsworth area of Brum and was amongst the most credible of the British Reggae acts.  This was the band’s debut album and it’s a great example of the roots style that bares comparison with anything from the island.

‘Marcus Garvey/Garvey’s Ghost’, Burning Spear

Winston Rodney, Aka. Burning Spear

Another slice of conscious Roots Reggae but this time, very much from Jamaica.  Whilst originally a three piece, Burning Spear was essentially Winston Rodney – a musician whose Rastafarianism and adherence to Marcus Garvey’s teachings were profound.  This release gathers the original album with the subsequent ‘Ghost’ dubs.  It does appear that Spear’s deep and heavy sound was somewhat lightened for mass consumption but I love the steady, serious tone and sincere, heartfelt vocals.

‘Solution’, Solution

One Sunday evening, Stuart Maconie played a track from this on his ‘Freak Zone’ pigeonhole, (sorry – radio programme), and really whetted my appetite.  Solution’s debut is a wonderful piece of early 70s Dutch Jazz Prog. that ticks loads of boxes through its numerous changes of mood and tempo, proper, heavy-duty organ, flutes, and impressive passages of European Jazz-Rock.  It also includes some spooky, atmospheric bits and a passage that sounds like a circus orchestra on speed.

Connections between Solution and Focus - the godfathers of Dutch Prog., led me back to…

‘Focus III’, Focus

Focus Embrace Their Dutch Heritage

Focus covered most of the Prog. bases in their first few albums.  Dynamic guitar and organ Rock; Classical influences; Jazz; Renaissance Lute Music; mock operatic vocals; Latin lyrics; yodelling; whistling, - they all appear at some stage, (sometimes within the same song).  They had real instrumental ability but avoided terminal pomposity by tempering grandeur with humour.  Even their tendency to assemble over-ambitious, extended pieces from separate fragments, rather than through-composing them, seems less of a problem in our cut & paste age.

‘Focus III’ aims all round the target and scores several bullseyes in the process.  Highlights for me are the slow-burning title track segueing into ‘Answers? Questions! Questions? Answers!’ and ‘Sylvia’, (that rarest of beasts, - the perfect short Prog. Rock single).