Om Buschman – Total, 1988

Ok, so: in full disclosure, over the past few years I’ve been feeling increasingly disenchanted with a lot of music that is described as “fourth world”: effectively, music that loosely traffics in the traditions and aesthetics of the global south, but reimagined through the lens of “advanced” or “futuristic” electronics. It’s a fraught category for several glaring reasons, but even without the self-imposed description, the music itself can, at worst, feel like white people playing under-researched dress-up with bits and pieces of other cultures, often because the musicians are too lazy to come up with something of their own. (And yes, I participate in and celebrate this kind of work on a regular basis! I’m obviously not a passive bystander here.)

I’m not resolving to draw clean lines in the sand about engaging in this kind of thing going forward, because: any attempt to do so would be arbitrary and ridiculous, given that music always involves cross-pollination and borrowing, and much of it is done in good faith and with deep artistic reverence. And because this stuff is messy, and there isn’t always a clearly discernible hierarchy of ethical creativity! And because I love too much of it to ever try to impose one, and because I’m obviously not the right gatekeeper to decide what is and isn’t colonialist.

I’d love to be just a passive set of ears, and to be able to say that I love Total purely for its aesthetic value, regardless of its cultural position. But nothing exists in a vacuum. Total was made by four Germans, and it borrows heavily from across continents: steel drums, didgeridoo, sub-Saharan polyrhythms, maybe a guzheng, a kalimba, Calypso, “from Cuba to Mocambique” [sic]. I’m not going to argue that this is good or bad, but I am going to argue that what Om Buschman brings to the conversation–which may be a sloppy conversation, or possibly even more of a weird monologue–has musical value. These musicians employ a post-Krautrock scronkiness, a Western spiritual jazz ethos, and an extremely stoned sense of humor (I’m pretty sure there’s the sound of a toilet flushing hiding in “Prima Kalimba”) to a largely percussive record. The effect is, to me, a synchronicity that exceeds copy and pasting. It’s perfectly stuporific, sprawling, foggy. Luckily we don’t have to choose between listening to Nigerian apala, Cuban jazz, or something like this, because they’re not the same and there’s no comparison. But perhaps for a new listener, one can be an entry point to another.

If I sound defensive, it’s because I’m still not sure how I feel about the whole thing, and because I have a knee-jerk reaction when music that isn’t made by a literal tribe of people is described as “tribal.” But I like the music! It’s deeply purple, playful, and very trippy. It borrows from, but it becomes something wholly different along the way. So here you go; maybe you’ll love it too.

buy / download

Piero Milesi & Daniel Bacalov – La Camera Astratta, 1989

You may remember Piero Milesi from his excellent The Nuclear Observatory of Mr. Nanof (hi Adam, thanks again)–here he’s in collaboration with Daniel Bacalov, another linchpin of Italian minimalism from whom we’ll definitely be hearing more in the future.

The two made La Camera Astratta as a score for a large-scale dance and performance piece, also referred to as a “video opera” by Studio Azzurro and Giorgio Barberio Corsetti (you can see some excerpts here). Though the record was released in 1989, it looks as if the score and the piece itself were both made in 1987.

The score is most memorable for its use of samples, which are often treated as percussion: water splashing, a camera snap, gasps, exhales, shushes, shouts, and sighs. At times it becomes difficult to distinguish between sample and instrument: “Camera 1 Parte” is perforated by what sounds like crickets but (I’m pretty sure) is some kind of percussion; regardless, it blankets the song in a hushed evening pastorality. Elsewhere, the dry, blunt avant-gardism of “Sequenza Ragazze 1 Parte” might appeal to Meredith Monk fans; and personal favorite “Acqua” is deeply playful (despite being used to accompany some pretty anxious moments in the performance piece)–a calypso-esque percussive backbone punctuated by bathtub splashes, camera snaps, a cash register bell, worked up into nine frothy minutes. Though La Camera Astratta might seem deceptively academic upon first listen, it opens up with increasing generosity, revealing something deeply thoughtful, meditative, and even joyful.

buy / download

Fernando Falcão – Memória Das Águas, 1981

The first of three records by Paraíba-born poet, percussionist, and composer Fernando Falcão, recorded in Paris in 1979 and released independently two years later. I realize that I’m a broken record, but this one is truly uncategorizable–and while that word can frequently connote records that are too challenging to be fully enjoyable, too ambitious for their own good, or just plain incoherent, Memória Das Águas is an utter pleasure from beginning to end.

“What?” you will think to yourself when you listen to it, which you should. “Who is this guy? Had he been quietly making music for decades under a pseudonym before releasing this? How else does something this orchestral in scope spring out fully formed on the first try? Why does he share a name with a Northeastern municipality?” you will ask after you’ve Googled him. “How’s his poetry? Is this a hoax? When is this getting reissued?” These are all questions I also have, which is to say, I’m sorry, I have no answers. All I have for context is that Fernando Falcão makes an appearance on the very good Outro Tempo compilation, which I suspect is how I landed here in the first place, but I’m not sure, as this record has been sitting in my “things to listen to” folder for months.

Memória Das Águas is a trip, moving seamlessly between swathes of avant murk, African polyrhythms, cinematic ambient flecked with field recordings, exuberant Brazilian jazz, maybe some Balinese Kecak influence, and a stripped down percussive number that, even in 2018, still sounds like the future. (I’ll say it again: 1979.) Instrumentally, that means cabasa, tumba, pandeiro, ganzá, contrabass, horn, flute, piccolo, piano, sax, timpani, violin, jug, and several different vocal ensembles. Functionally, it means this isn’t background music. Sometimes it feels like Geinoh Yamashirogumi; at others, it brings to mind the outside-of-time alien quality of Nuno Canavarro–and it is very much unlike either of those things. Try it–if you’re here, you’ll probably love it.

download

Per Tjernberg – They Call Me, 1990

An ambitious and highly effective combustion of ambient jazz and a slew of musical traditions, whirlwinded together with dizzying, almost violent enthusiasm by Swedish jazz percussionist Per Tjernberg. Gamelan textures, Indian tabla, Aboriginal didgeridoo, Gabonese and Cameroonian sanza and mbira humming, Japanese strings, African flute, oud, and drums from too many countries to name.

While writing this post I realized that Tjernberg is also responsible for this reggae-pop treat (released under the wink-wink pseudonym Per Cussion) that I’ve had in my “tracks to do things with” pile for years. That he succeeds at such wildly different efforts (which are equally unabashed in their proclivity towards cultural borrowing, or, you know, appropriation; call it what you will) is a testament not just to his musicianship (though They Call Me is his first release under his own name, he was already well-seasoned in other projects) but to the grace with which he applies textures outside of their traditional contexts and shapes them into landscapes that sound simultaneously very terrestrial and slightly alien. (Relatedly, he’s also touted as the first Swede to make a rap record, which he did with the aid of American rappers, and about which I have nothing to say other than that I like the kalimba.)

There is, as you might expect, a lot going on here, but They Call Me shifts comfortably between wild freeform jazz and more subdued textural motifs, and I (predictably) think its strongest moments are when it leans into the latter mode. The title track, as well as “Didn’t You Know…Didn’t You Know” (previewed below) are very high highs. The closing track, “This Earth: Prayer,” is stunning in scope, managing to do so much with what is, for much of the song, just a didgeridoo, a lone brass instrument, and some light percussion. It evokes whales and also something even more cosmic, and I’m reminded strongly of Deep Listening every time I hear it. I don’t know that this record is for everyone, but if it’s for you, it’s definitely for you.

buy / download

Peter Garland, Aki Takahashi & Essential Music – Another Sunrise, 2002



Guest post by Peter Harkawik

For the past few years, I’ve been fascinated by a certain thread of post-minimalist music that has taken the form away from its challenging, austere roots and more toward the melodic, etherial, and uplifting. Daniel Lentz, Mary Jane Leach, Paul Dresher, Elodie Lauten, and Andrew Poppy (whose Lost Jockey LP remains criminally out of circulation) have all made contributions in this direction. Wim Mertens is as responsible as anyone, publishing American Minimal Music, a text that helped introduce Europe to minimalism, in 1983. Perhaps my favorite though is Another Sunrise, a piece composed by Peter Garland for Aki Takahashi and Essential Music in 1995.

Another Sunrise continues a long intersection between Native American and minimalist music. Harry Partch and Moondog both constructed instruments inspired largely by those of indigenous peoples; the latter spent a summer in 1948 camped outside a Navajo reservation in New Mexico in a failed attempt to interest them in his music. Garland studied composition and ethnomusicology under Harold Budd and James Tenney at CalArts in the early 1970s, making extended stays in Mexico and eventually settling in Santa Fe in 1980, where he directed a performance ensemble. Sunrise benefits greatly from his long friendship with Aki Takahashi, a gifted and prolific avant-garde pianist who has collaborated with Tōru Takemitsu, Morton Feldman, Alvin Lucier, and Carl Stone. She is joined by Judith Gordon on piano, and four percussionists, apparently the product of an arrangement previously set up for a Paul Bowles piece.

 Another Sunrise is, from its first note, a showcase for the marimbula, an instrument of the Caribbean that shares a heritage with the African thumb piano. Its opening five bars form a simple theme that is the piece’s primary generative element. The titles of its short segments offer formal clues: mariachi, ballad, rumba, bolero, coda and finally, gospel. Vibraphone and marimba declare themselves halfway through “Ballad,” joined by dueling pianos. If it were not for the supreme beauty of the melody, Takahashi’s playing here would be almost violent, an urgent reminder that the piano is, after all, a percussive instrument. “Rumba” borrows only rattles and tempo from its namesake, followed by a quiet interlude in “Bolero.” Another Sunrise makes powerful use of its silent passages, and its circular, modal nature make for many moments when the piece feels it has concluded, only to continue in a thrilling steel drum crash. This is most true in the coda and final “Gospel Medley,” a deeply moving summation that calls to mind a congregation of enthralled worshippers. Part of my love of minimalist music is its ability to reveal itself upon repeated listenings, making it the ideal soundtrack for work that requires long stretches of sustained concentration, and this is certainly true here.

Sunrise is accompanied by two other Garland works, “Dreaming of Immortality in a Thatched Cottage” (1977, recorded in 1997) and “I Have Had to Learn the Simplest Things Last” (1993, recorded in 1995). “Dreaming” is a somber polyphonic work, beginning with a naked vocal harmony and slowly introducing an Indonesian angklung, marimba, and harpsichord. This marks Garland’s return to working with orchestral instruments after a period of abstinence apparently inspired by a brief friendship with Partch. “Simplest” was composed shortly after the death of John Cage in 1993, and is the collection’s most pared-down, most direct piece. It is broken into four segments that feel like a single supposition with divergent conclusions. Its final component, titled “I Found Them Like Seashells On The Beach (J. Cage)” is a passage of startling and profound quietude, and a fitting end, both for its subject, and this collection.

Haruomi Hosono – 源氏物語 (The Tale of Genji), 1987

Another favorite from the Hosono canon. This was the score for the first animated adaptation of The Tale of Genji, a sprawling piece of 11th century literature written by noblewoman Shikibu Murasaki, considered by many to be the first modern novel in recorded history. (Isao Tomita later write his own symphonic adaptation of the story.) The anime was directed by Gisaburō Sugii, and while it only covers a small part of the epic storyline, the score is highly ambitious.

Scan courtesy of Kaleidophonics

Unlike much of Hosono’s catalogue, here synthesizer mostly acts as an atmospheric texture and instead puts traditional Japanese instruments, particularly koto, flute, and drums, front and center. What’s really astounding about this soundtrack is the layering of instruments, piling them up until they become unfamiliar: droves of fingerpicked strings sound like a hive of insects, waves of gentle hand percussion feel like the swells of inhales and exhales, processed flute suggests the shrieking wind. Despite a pervasive mysteriousness, and even ominousness, this is unmistakably gorgeous music, and structured in such a way that it will appeal to fans of more conventional synthetic ambient music–but retains a feverish futurist-classical elegance all its own.

download

[RIP] Kelan Phil Cohran & Legacy – African Skies, 1993

I was deeply saddened to hear of the passing of legendary jazz trumpeter (and occasional zither player) Kelan Phil Cohran at the age of 90 on Wednesday. While his accomplishments are too significant to fully do them justice, he played trumpet with Sun Ra and His Arkestra, co-founded the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), was a respected educator (one of his students was a young Maurice White), opened the Afro-Arts Theater in Chicago, and invented the Frankiphone (aka space harp), an electric mbira. He also recorded extensively with The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, a group composed of eight of his sons. Cohran was still regularly performing live until quite recently.

Though African Skies was recorded a later stage in his career (by which point he had already been given the honorific Kelan, meaning holy scripture, by Muslim scholars during a trip to China), it’s considered by many to be a cosmic jazz masterpiece and one of his finest works. His first record since his 1969 Malcolm X memorial, this was recorded live at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago as a glowing tribute to Sun Ra, Cohran’s mentor and friend who had recently passed away. African Skies is mostly acoustic and fairly minimal, but for all its sparsity, it’s hypnotic, deftly expressive, and all the more powerful for doing less. Trumpet, harp, frankiphone, congas, violin uke, guitar, flute, bowed string bass, clarinet, trombone, and vocal riffings by Aquilla Sadalla that, whenever I’ve put this on in social settings, have invariably prompted at least one person to ask what we’re listening to. If the back cover is any indication, this performance looked just as incredible as it sounded.

Though I’ve always considered myself a jazz idiot, this record has been an ideal gateway drug into the worlds of cosmic and spiritual jazz, and I can’t think of a better tribute to Cohran’s legacy than giving this some airtime this weekend. Out of respect for his family I’ll be taking down the download link in the next few days, so if you want it, get it now. Thank you for everything, Kelan Phil Cohran!

buy / (download removed)

Vangelis Katsoulis – The Slipping Beauty, 1988

Vangelis Katsoulis was born in Athens in 1949 and since then has been prolific, dabbling in minimalism, jazz, choral, and symphonic work. As his second full-length, The Slipping Beauty is a startlingly polished collection of 16 short pieces, many of which feel more like impressions than songs. I would guess that Katsoulis was influenced by the pulsing, layered structures of gamelan (“Overcast”), as well as by traditional Japanese drumming (“The Sound Of The Stone”). Despite some of these more historical reference points, this music is highly futuristic, with tracks like “The Slipping Beauty” feeling like a synthetic cyborgian homage to Steve Reich. From the liner notes: “The title of this record is a paraphrase of Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty. It points at the idea of beauty which comes to the artist as an inspiration and suddenly vanishes. In addition it’s a reference to the fleeting nature of physical beauty.”

As an aside, three of these tracks have been remixed and released together as The Sleeping Beauties, including this very good Telephone rework of the title track, though confusingly the record itself has yet to be reissued.

buy / download

Francesco Messina – Medio Occidente, 1983

Francesco Messina’s name has come up quite a few times around here. I’ve been very vocal about my admiration for his stark and gorgeous split with Raul Lovisoni, and have included tracks from it, and from this, in a handful of mixes. And while Messina’s name is frequently lumped in with iconic Italian minimalists like Roberto Cacciapaglia, Franco Battiato, and Giusto Pio (all of whom appear on this record), there’s not much information floating around about Messina himself–though this record seems to have acquired a cult following. Messina was born in Sicily in 1951 and studied design in Milan, where he met Battiato and his art entourage, with whom he collaborated musically and visually for many years. He’s currently a graphic design professor. That’s about all I’ve got.

I’ve avoided sharing this record for years because, aside from not knowing how to talk about it, I don’t even know how to classify it. Discogs has it catalogued as “Jazz, Pop, Folk, World, Country, Italo-Disco, Abstract, Ambient.” I would argue most of these, especially Italo, are inaccurate, but I don’t have any better suggestions. Slinky, smart instrumental pop with pristine drum programming that hints at balearic as much as Berlin school. Thick with candy-toned new age synth pads, nods to Latin percussion, and rotary melodic motifs suggesting (duh) Italian minimalism, though this is definitely not minimalist. If this hadn’t come out a year before Echoes, I might guess Messina had been listening to Badarou. Tinged with mysticism in ways that are much harder to define than the album cover would suggest, and with a few tracks that remind me of Lena Platonos or even Vangelis in that they manage to simultaneously be operatic, melancholic, synthetic, and evocative of patriotism. (The first track is the real wildcard–if it’s not for you, don’t be put off!) If you can better explain what exactly this is, please enlighten us in the comments. In the mean time, enjoy!

Cristina – Cristina, 1980

So good. Cristina was a Harvard drop-out who was working as a writer for The Village Voice when she met (and eventually married) Michael Zilkha, who was in the process of getting the now-legendary ZE Records off the ground. He encouraged her to record a song called “Disco Clone,” written by a former Harvard classmate of hers, which became ZE’s first release in 1978 and featured John Cale production (and, moreover, is really good).

Cristina (later reissued as Doll in the Box) was the first of her two full-lengths. Short and sweet, it was produced by August Darnell of Kid Creole & The Coconuts, and you can hear his signature brassy tropical camp all over it. The heavily textured Latin-jazz percussion brings to mind some of New York no wave’s more polished, dancefloor-ready groups, except it’s fronted by a snarky, jaded Betty Boop. Cristina’s vocals are simultaneously flippant and flirty, often splintering off into multiple personas in dialogue with each other. She leans into that heavy-handed sardonicism even more on her follow-up, Sleep It Off, a grittier piece of electro boasting a proto-Slave to the Rhythm Jean-Paul Goude cover. While Cristina was met with moderate acclaim, Sleep It Off was a commercial flop (so dumb! it’s really good!), leading to Cristina’s musical retirement (though she’s still a writer). Thank you Caroline for putting me onto this!