Swans

I didn't write much over the last two years, but revisiting these articles, I'm kind of amazed how many musicians I've admired for so long that I got a chance to speak with in that time. I had interviewed Michael Gira via email for the 2009 Big Ears festival, but speaking with him via Skype was both exciting and nerve wracking for me. (Plus I had to so it at 5 in the morning to do it, as he was in Europe at the time, and I had been out late at some Pilot Light show.) He's such an intense guy, and so many of these interviews are just formulaic pieces where the interviewee answers the same questions he or she has answered over and over. I know I didn't throw too much new at him, so I was pretty excited that when talking about Knoxville he brought up Cormac McCarthy. Sure, McCarthy and Agee get mentioned to the point of irritation around Knoxville, and in Metro Pulse, but they are not a bad legacy to have. Anyway, I had to mention that in the article, because OF COURSE Gira likes Blood Meridian. What I didn't mention, and is no way pertinent to anything but was kind of sweet, is that when my miniature dachshund started barking he asked what kind of dog it was. I told him, and he said he had a dachshund when he was a kid and what a great dog it was. Awwww.

Google tells me some of his quotes from this article are in here somewhere:
http://younggodrecords.com/press/98-swans/1383-more-collected-swans-press-quotes

and I think this whole story might be in here, but Young God's layout was giving me a headache so I stopped looking: http://younggodrecords.com/press/98-swans/1375-more-assorted-swans-press


From Metro Pulse

Michael Gira Raises Swans From the Dead to Play Their Most Challenging Music Yet

October 17, 2012

It wasn’t the biggest news in the entertainment world, but to a certain segment of the population it was a big deal when, in 2010, Michael Gira announced Swans would reform. The band had gradually built a sizable cult following as it evolved from its brutal, industrial-leaning origins in New York’s early-’80s No Wave scene—where Gira would often go out of his way to make audiences uncomfortable—to a more somber, atmospheric unit concerned with songcraft. Following a somewhat acrimonious ending in the late 1990s, the bandleader had made it clear in interviews (and with the title of the band’s final album, Swans Are Dead) that fans should not be optimistic about hearing any new music from the group. 

But after 10 years of fronting a new project, Angels of Light, Gira decided to assemble some of his favorite sidemen and resurrect the Swans name. Since former members of Swans appeared on Angels recordings, and some Angels affiliates are now in Swans, one might wonder what distinguishes the two groups in Gira’s mind.

“Well, for one thing, with Swans, words aren’t as crucial,” he explains via Skype while on a tour stop in Katowice, Poland. “Which is good, because words don’t come as easy as they once did. Swans’ lyrics are more like a directive along the way.”

Fitting, then, that the band opened its 2010 album, My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky, as well as shows on its ensuing tour, with a song titled “No Words/No Thoughts.” This taciturn tendency is even more apparent on Swans’ new record, The Seer. Much of its two-hour running time is taken up by lengthy instrumentals, and when lyrics do appear they often take the form of repetitious phrases that have a mantra-like quality. The sustained intensity of the instrumental passages is primarily a result of performing new songs live, Gira explains, where they would get longer and longer as touring stretched on.

No one would ever accuse Gira of having a lax work ethic (his discography adds up to nearly 40 albums, and he has run the Young God record label for many years), but he seems especially energized by the new incarnation of Swans, and they have toured relentlessly. He credits this enthusiasm in large part with the group of men playing alongside him.

“These guys are absolutely committed to the sound. This is the best band in terms of morale I ever had with Swans,” he explains.

Gira was keen to capture the sound of this band in the studio while they still had momentum from the road; in the press release for The Seer, Gira pronounces the album “the culmination of every previous Swans album as well as any other music I’ve ever made, been involved in or imagined.”
Guest musicians on the album include one-time Gira protégés Akron/Family, Grasshopper from Mercury Rev, Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker of Low, and Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Karen O. (Former Swans/Angel stalwart and ex-Knoxvillian Larry Mullins is notably absent. Asking Gira about the percussionist leads to him mentioning Mullins’ East Tennessee roots, and eventually into a discussion of Cormac McCarthy and Suttree. Not surprisingly, Gira is a fan.)

The most surprising guest, however, is Jarboe, Gira’s former band/domestic mate, who adds backing vocals to two songs.

“It was great to have Jarboe along, albeit in a limited way,” Gira says, though he admits there are no immediate plans for her to rejoin the group. “It was sort of baby steps, to see what happens.”
The long list of guests doesn’t distract from the well-defined sound of the group, however. You’re unlikely to even place some of the contributors on the first few listens, and no artist really rises above the collective din of the music, with the exception of Karen O’s disarmingly gentle vocal on “Song for a Warrior.”

As powerful as their latest albums are, Swans’ natural habitat seems to be the stage, and their live shows can be epic affairs, with sets running to two hours and reaching an impressively punishing volume. His face turning red while veins pop out, or his whole body swaying violently back and forth while the band hammers away behind him, Gira comes across as more committed to music than most performers half his age. (He’s 57.) You might worry about him if he didn’t appear so ecstatic up there, if he didn’t seem to absolutely need to be doing this.

With more press and positive reviews than they’ve ever received, Swans are often playing to larger audiences than they did during their initial run, which is somewhat odd considering they’re creating some of the most challenging music of their career. This band is still obviously not for everyone, though, and when asked what he makes of all this attention, and if multiple half-hour album cuts and endurance-test live shows might not be something of a turn-off to a potential broader audience, Gira has a frank answer.

“F--k that shit,” he says. “I don’t care. I’m conscious of my mortality and don’t want to waste my limited time on Earth. I want to try my best to make something magical. If people care and want to come along, that’s great. This is for them.”

Sunn O)))

I can't even tell you how excited I was to interview Greg Anderson. At the time of this interview, Sunn O))) was one of my favorite band of the last ten or so years, and they had just released their best album, Monoliths & Dimensions. Conceptually, sonically, aesthetically - I loved everything about this band and though they were one of if not the most exciting thing I'd heard in a long while. I had seen them previously at the Primavera festival in Barcelona, but that was an outdoor show for a huge crowd, and it suffered a bit for that. In September of 2009, I saw them two days in a row, at the Bijou Theatre in Knoxville and at the Orange Peel in Asheville, the latter time with Faust.  They were great in both venues, the Bijou's stage better for atmospherics and Orange Peel's bottom end better representing the sound.


From Metro Pulse

Maximum Volume Yields Maximum Results

September 23, 2009

There may have been stranger successes in popular music, but you have to admit there’s something exceptionally peculiar about the ascendency of drone/doom/ambient metal band Sunn O))). In the last few years, Greg Anderson and Stephen O’Malley’s project has been the subject of countless articles in major international newspapers, magazines, and websites, including two lengthy pieces in The New York Times. Not bad for a couple of guys who dress up in robes to play slow-motion riffs that hit an ear-damaging 130 decibels in a live setting.

“I’m constantly surprised that people are into our music,” Anderson says from the Los Angeles offices of Southern Lord, the avant-metal label through which he releases Sunn O)))’s albums, including this year’s critically acclaimed seventh official full-length, Monoliths and Dimensions. “It’s challenging, and it requires an attention span and patience to get absorbed in it for it to work like it’s supposed to.”

Starting out as a sort of tribute band to drone-metal pioneers Earth, Sunn O))) began as a simple exercise in volume and duration, playing molasses-slow riffs and feedback through massive Marshall stacks and the vintage Sunn amplifiers from which the band takes its name. (The O))), a recreation of the company’s logo, isn’t pronounced.) Their first two albums were released in 1998 and 2000 to little notice, but when the group began performing in the early ’00s—cloaked in hooded robes, shrouded in fog, and backed by walls of speakers—a cult following began to build.

“When we first started we thought of it as a studio project,” Anderson says. “We had no intention of playing live. But we discovered [that] to really capture what Sunn O))) was about, that physicality of sound we were getting off on, it can’t be produced on CD or vinyl. We had to do it live. There’s no substitute for volume.”

The presentation and loudness made the band a sort of curiosity, attracting crowds of various tastes to their shows. Though Sunn O))) is rooted in metal—both members played in more traditional metal bands—Anderson says he doesn’t really feel they’ve been accepted by many metalheads. Behind the ceremonial theatricality and volume fetish is a fusion of the iconography and symbolism of black and doom metal, with the sound distilled to a primal, powerful roar. It often seems like a lesson in the reduction of the genre rather than a celebration of it.

“The music was unorthodox, so we thought it would be interesting for us and the audience to have something ominous and mysterious going on,” Anderson says. “The robes and fog machine made it easier to get into the kind of music we were doing.”

If all of this sounds a bit high-minded or maybe has a whiff of Spinal Tap about it, know that the Anderson and O’Malley appreciate the somewhat ridiculous nature of the endeavor.

“Stephen and I laugh a lot, and we know there is something absurd and ridiculous abut the amount of equipment and volume,” Anderson admits. “But they’re the tools that help create this mood that can be ominous and dark. I mean, the music isn’t funny, it could never be, but it can get absurdly heavy”
Sunn O))) has grown more adventurous with each release. They’ve collaborated with the elite of the noise and experimental-metal underground, and they’ve worked with several American and European black-metal vocalists—most frequently the cryptic intonations of Hungarian Attila Csihar of Mayhem, who will be joining the band on their current tour, along with keyboardist Steve Moore.

On Monoliths and Dimensions, Sunn O))) expanded their sonic palette to include a Viennese women’s choir, avant-garde trombonist Stewart Dempster, and arrangements by composer Eyvind Kang. Perhaps the most unusual contribution comes from Sun Ra and John Coltrane sideman Julian Priester, who can be heard to most striking effect on the 16-minute album closer “Alice,” a song dedicated to Alice Coltrane. That track alone seems to have elicited more purple prose from critics and bloggers than any single Sunn O))) album, and if you hear it you’ll understand why. Resembling modern composition more than metal, the track winds down with a duet between Priestley’s trombone and a harpist in a finale so improbably lovely it must have surprised even Anderson and O’Malley. Though the doom duo’s drones are present throughout the album, grounding it in their by now familiar sound, it could be they’ve reached some sort of pinnacle with the Sunn O))) brand, and one can only wonder where they’ll go from here.

For all that’s been said and written about the band, you can really find out all you need to know by attending one of their shows. If nothing else, you may marvel and envy the almost primitive boneheadedness of this simple idea they struck upon, and be amazed at how far they’ve advanced it. Give yourself over to the volume and spectacle, and try to connect with a fading quality Anderson keeps coming back to in our interview: mystery.

“That’s kind of a personal crusade we’re on,” he says. “With everything being available on the Internet, there’s no mystery with music and bands anymore. There are thousands of bands playing 10 songs of verse-chorus-verse stuff in jeans and T-shirts every night. And I’m not saying we’re better, or that stuff doesn’t need to keep happening. I still go to these shows and love them and I will till the day I die. The bottom line is we want to create something unique and memorable.”

Faust

Continuing in the Krautrock-not-Kraurock vein, as, the goofy title of this article and Jean-Herve Peron's more serious quotes make clear, here is an article on the inimitable Faust.They played with Sunn O))) at the Orange Peel in Asheville September 25, 2009.

From Mountain Xpress

Krautrock? Nein!

 09/22/2009 

Ever since a British music journalist cheekily coined the term "Krautrock" in the early '70s to reference a burgeoning cluster of exciting German rock bands, groups such as Can, Neu and Kraftwerk have had an ambivalent relationship with the word. While they benefitted from the attention that comes with any new pop-music phenomenon, they also chafed at being lumped in with bands with which they had little in common, save their nationality.
Few bands have been as outspoken about the problematic nature of the term as Faust, who over the years have become sort of Krautrock statesmen. In fact, original and current member Jean-Herve Péron thinks (with apologies to Waylon Jennings) this whole Krautorck bit's done got out of hand.

"I understand and respect the fact that some people of the younger generation are truly interested by this phenomenon called Krautrock," he says in an e-mail sent from a hotel after a recent performance in Norway. "Krautrock was something very special in that all the groups who played at that time had nothing in common except their urge of finding their own identity, way outside the beaten tracks of Anglo-American rock 'n' roll. The media have forgotten this and use the term 'Kraut' for just about anything."

Creating a new genre: Faust describes itself as "art-Errorist" — involved in "what is commonly called 'art,' but unlike an 'artist' who is usually quite convinced about his creations, an 'errorist' is quite happy to find out that art is nothing but a mistake, an error, a malfunction." Photo by Elena Golovnia

During Faust's original run in the '70s, listeners never knew what they would get from album to album, or indeed, track to track, as the band explored psychedelia, folk, reggae, minimalism, proto-industrial, musique concrète and genres yet unnamed. The best overview of the band's various styles is probably Faust Tapes, a 45-minute barrage of song fragments that jarringly collide into one another with abrupt tape edits.

The erratic, exploratory nature of the group continues today. Their latest album, C'est Com...Com...Complique, is a remix of an album (Disconnected) recorded with industrial maverick Steven Stapleton of Nurse With Wound back in 2006, an aggressive hour-long rhythmic-oriented affair heavy on distorted guitars and noise that bears little relation to the original work.

The group is also unpredictable live, with a penchant for Dada-ist destruction and pyrotechnics. That being said, venue owners and audience members showing up for Faust's North American tour need not fear for their safety (save a little hearing loss, maybe). The group isn't just about mischief and provocation, and fans attending one of the band's upcoming shows will likely be treated to some of their favorite songs.

"We respect and love our audience," Péron says. "Therefore, we know we have to play some 'Faust hits,' and we love to play them too, always in different forms than just a 'cover version.'"

If there's no single Faust style, working method or sound, how to describe what the band is all about? Perhaps due to Péron's weariness with the Krautrock label, he invented a term of his own to perhaps intimate the band's guiding aesthetic principles, which he attached to his record label, Web site and e-mail address: "art-Errorist." But what, exactly, is an art-Erroroist?

"An art-Errorist is a person who is involved in what is commonly called 'art,' but unlike an 'artist' who is usually quite convinced about his creations, an 'errorist' is quite happy to find out that art is nothing but a mistake, an error, a malfunction," he explains. "I would not call Da Vinci or Goethe errorists, no sir, but call me a dilettante or tell me I don't make sense and I feel understood, if not flattered."

The Orange Peel date is from the band's third U.S. tour — the first was in 1994, on the forefront of a sort of "Krautrock revival" that was building in the States and Great Britain at the time. It continues today, with scores of bands influenced by or outright ripping off Faust and their peers, and journalists often misrepresenting the German groups when using the Krautrock label as shorthand to describe a particular sound.

Faust began life as a group of musicians living in abandoned schoolhouse in the village of Wümme, outside of Hamburg, forming a sort of utopian-minded collective not altogether uncommon at the time. There the group played music around the clock, experimenting with all manner of instruments and recording techniques, culminating in their truly bizarre and still unclassifiable self-titled debut album for Polydor in 1971. They released four more albums before disbanding in 1975, building a dedicated cult audience but never achieving much commercial success.

The group remained dormant until original members Werner "Zappi" Diermaier, Hans Irmiler and Péron regrouped in 1990, beginning a new chapter in the life of Faust, one that would see members come and go over the next two decades. Péron left in 1997, but rejoined Diermaier in 2004 without Irimler. The duo has since performed regularly and released several albums with a rotating cast of musicians. Husband and wife James Johnston and Geraldine Swayne currently play alongside the pair in an incarnation of Faust with which Péron is very pleased.

"I must say that this lineup is for me the final Faust lineup," he says. "If James and Geraldine are to leave us someday, I would not look for further companions — I would rather end the Faust saga at what I consider the zenith of the story."

Hans-Joachim Roedelius

Another person I never imagined I would ever interview or hear live, and in fact I saw him perform twice, when he appeared at Moogfest the next year.


From Metro Pulse

 

Hans-Joachim Roedelius Continues to Blaze Analog Trails

October 5, 2011

Although the first synthesizer was invented in 1876, it wasn’t until the 1950s that they began to be developed in earnest, scientists and composers working with the large, unwieldy things in labs. With the advent of consumer-grade miniature synths in the 1960s and ’70s, though, more and more musicians began experimenting with electronic sounds. Interest in synthesizers took a particularly strong hold in Germany, where at the Electronic Music School Karlheinz Stockhausen had been creating an entirely new kind of music, and from Berlin to Cologne to Dusseldorf younger musicians began fashioning “kosmische” (“cosmic”) music, a synth-dominated offshoot of the so-called krautrock scene. Acts like Popul Vuh, Tangerine Dream, Ash Ra Tempel, and Klaus Schultze made seminal recordings with the machines, but aside from quasi-pop stars Kraftwerk, no artist seems to have been as influential on future generations as Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius and their groups Cluster and Harmonia.

“I’m not sure whether or not it was because many of us were nonmusicians when we started to work at the field of arts/music in the late ’60s,” Roedelius writes in an e-mail from Austria, attempting to explain the electronic music boom in Germany. “It was a challenge to get into it, but it was also a must for everybody who wanted to do relevant new art. There was a Stockhausen influence, of course, but not in Cluster and especially not for me as soloist.”

In fact, some of Roedelius’ influences aren’t immediately apparent when listening to his music, and though he never considered himself belonging to either the pop or academic worlds, he drew freely from both.

“I was influenced at the time by Yannis Xenakis and Pierre Henry, the Third Ear Band, later Hendrix, Dylan, Grateful Dead, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Captain Beefheart, and such,” he says. “I’m glad to belong to the nonacademic part of music tradition, happy still being a maverick and a nonconformist.”

Roedelius co-founded the Berlin experimental music venue Zodiak Free Arts Lab with Conrad Schnitzler in 1968, teaming with Schnitzler and Moebius to form Kluster in 1970. Schnitzler (who died in August) left the group the following year, and the duo changed their name to Cluster. They began winnowing down their previous side-long freeform explorations into tracks of shorter duration, adding melodic qualities and steady rhythms, and would come to resemble something almost like a rock band when teamed with Neu! guitarist Michael Rother in Harmonia. They expanded their audience even further after recording a pair of ambient-leaning albums with Brian Eno in 1977 and 1978. This body of work would be highly influential on electronic music in the coming decades, particularly in the development of synth pop, techno, and IDM, as well as treacly New Age imitators who didn’t quite get it.

Roedelius will likely always be best known for his ’70s work with Cluster, Harmonia, and Eno, which is fair enough, considering the diversity and quality of those albums. It seems unfair, though, when you look at his discography and consider he’s recorded over 80 albums since that decade, including 41 solo works. Such prolific output will result in varying quality, but when he claims he didn’t really find his own musical language until 1994, a deeper exploration into that vast catalog from the casual fan is warranted. Perhaps more remarkable, Roedelius’ process has changed little over the years—usually improvising, whenever possible on analog equipment.

This preference for analog sound has resulted in a surprisingly similar sound for a body of work that stretches across five decades. Cluster’s 2009 album Qua features pieces that might be mistaken for outtakes from their classic ’70s albums, but also include a number of tracks demonstrating an appreciation for the contemporary electronic music they influenced. It turned out to be the duo’s final album, as Moebius left the group the next year.

When asked if he’d ever record with Moebius again, Roedelius replies, “Why should I? Cluster worked for almost 40 years, it was a very good idea to finish it with Qua because this is a record that will still be listenable in the next and further future and people will keep us positively in mind.”
Still, he wasted no time in forming Qluster with Onnen Bock, releasing a trio of albums in 2011 that pick up right were Cluster left off.

Roedelius’ current North American tour seems especially timely, as so many pop and avant-garde musicians have lately been enthralled with analog synthesizers or digital equipment that replicates their sound. The 76-year-old Roedelius couldn’t be more pleased with the resurgence.

“I’m happy about the fact that the youngsters, but even elder colleagues or such of my age, nowadays use analog tones and sounds and create new music with it,” he says. “I just had a chat with [French electronic composer] Jean Michel Jarre in Paris, who is also using a lot of analog instruments in his live shows now, because he’s bored by digitally designed music material. It’s more or less the lack of warmth in sound that people don’t like. Of course, there’s beautiful music also that’s digitally designed, but the difference in sound quality is unmistakable.”

Ulan Bator

It was certainly unexpected opportunity to see Ulan Bator live and interview Amaury Cambuzat. Honestly hadn't thought about then in years, and they come out with a good album and a stop in Knoxville.  (Martin Bisi opened, and he was just.. wow. I can honestly say I've never seen anything quite like it, and I can't even do it justice by describing it.)

From Metro Pulse

French Band Ulan Bator Finally Makes It to America

May 1, 2013

Kickstarter gets most of the attention—and with it some flack (Zach Braff, WTF?)—but it’s not the only crowd-funding platform around. For all the guff about everyday people giving their hard-earned money to the well-connected and wealthy through these websites, most of the campaigns benefit lesser-known entities. Ever hear of Mr. Milk, Galapaghost, or Ulan Bator? All three music acts solicited funds through the European site Musicraiser, and the latter band raised enough to release its new album and even prep for a U.S. tour.

“I think it was a good experience,” Ulan Bator head Amaury Cambuzat writes in an e-mail from Paris, where the band is based. “At the end, it’s something real that allowed you to see who is ready to follow you on this kind of adventure. These days, with social networks, it’s so easy to say I ‘like’ or I support something, but then what? What’s next? With Musicraiser, I was right to think that a minimum of 100 fans would support us. Not that much, maybe, but okay, I would say. Also, we wanted to release CD, LP, DVD, T-shirts, etc., and without this funding, it’s too expensive to manufacture all those things since the record business collapsed.”

Cambuzat formed Ulan Bator in 1993 with bassist Olivier Manchion, adding drummer Franck Lantignac before they recorded their self-titled debut. That album was a largely instrumental affair, made up of heavy, repetitive riffs and plodding percussion, with industrial-style noises scattered throughout. Recorded in an abandoned salt mine outside of Paris, it caught the ear of Zappi Diermaier and Jean-Hervé Péron of Faust, who invited the band to collaborate with them, beginning an association that has lasted to this day. (Cambuzat says he learned an important lesson from the krautrock legends: “If you have something to say, just say it. If not, just shout your mouth.”)
On its next two albums, Ulan Bator toned things down a bit, adapting a fairly mellow post-rock sound. But 2000’s Ego:Echo signaled a bigger change for the band. Produced by Swans’ Michael Gira and released on his Young God label, it showcased a more dynamic band, and finally brought Ulan Bator some attention in the United States. As a specimen of the more guitar-centric side of post-rock, Ego:Echo fits comfortably within its era alongside releases from Mogwai, Mono, and Tarentel, but the album’s combination of aggressive noise rock, slower piano-based tracks, and studio experimentation has aged better than many of its contemporaries.

A planned U.S. tour to capitalize on the attention brought by Ego:Echo never happened. By 2001, Lantignac and Manchion had exited, and various other members came and went over the years, leaving Ulan Bator as essentially Cambuzat’s band. Recently, he recorded an album with an entirely new lineup, and is ready to launch Ulan Bator’s first American tour. A few tracks from En France/En Transe, scheduled for release later this month, are available on the band’s website; they point to a rawer sound reminiscent of Ulan Bator’s debut album, which Cambuzat says is a result of the band members getting to know each other during the recording sessions.

“It was very intense in the recording room, something ‘magic’ happened,” he explains. “We just improvised, our friend Julien filmed everything and the feeling was like being at home. This new lineup is six months old, but already there are such good vibes between us.”

You can see footage of the sessions on Vimeo, including conservatory-trained Nathalie Forget playing an Ondes Martenot, an early electronic keyboard that has added a whole new dimension to Ulan Bator’s sound—which is fortuitous, considering Forget’s contribution was a last-minute addition to the sessions. If Cambuzat’s story of how Forget joined the band is any indication of how the album was made, or how other members were recruited, he is definitely feeling improvisational these days.
“I met Nathalie while playing with Faust,” he writes. “She was a guest for a show we had in Paris, and asked me, ‘What are you doing tomorrow?’ My answer was, ‘Starting to record a new album with Ulan Bator.’ ‘Can I join you?’ she said. ‘Of course!’ I answered.”

Other European countries have exported rock bands that have garnered some clout, but, depending on your feelings about Magma and black metal, France isn’t as well known for its contributions to the rock canon. Unlike, say, Scandinavian psychedelia and metal or German krautrock, when most Americans think of French bands, they’re likely to think of pop groups like Phoenix and Air, or the EDM of Daft Punk and Justice. Where does Ulan Bator fit in with all of this?

“We have (of course) nothing to do with the electro-pop French scene,” Cambuzat insists. “I think that we are a European band more than a French band, but also there’s nothing in Europe like Ulan Bator. I always wanted to make something original and universal. My first idea was to mix the Stooges with Serge Gainsbourg. We try to reach a kind of trance that can be associated with the work of bands like Can, Popol Vuh—primitive and repetitive music. We never really made money with our music, so there’s no fashion to follow. We only want to make something particular that I named Ulan Bator 20 years ago.”

Matana Roberts COIN COIN Chapter One: Gens de couleur libres

Though I am not the most qualified person to write about jazz, especially contemporary jazz, I really love this album and wanted to review it. From Tiny Mix Tapes.

Matana Roberts
COIN COIN Chapter One: Gens de couleur libres

Independent rock labels have made great headway in turning on listeners to challenging, cutting-edge jazz. Homestead and Henry Rollins’ defunct 213 and Infinite Zero labels helped expose David S. Ware, Matthew Shipp, and William Parker to more casual jazz fans in the early 90s, and these and other avant jazz artists have been doing great work for Thirsty Ear’s Blue Series over the last decade. The fact that alto saxophonist and composer Matana Roberts’ extraordinary new album COIN COIN is released on Constellation, a label better known for serious, somber rock, tells us Roberts knows this music deserves and can net a wider audience than more traditional jazz records would reach. In fact, the Chicago-born Roberts was already something of a post-rock fellow traveler, playing on Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s Yanqui U.X.O. and inviting members of Tortoise to guest on one of her albums. She was also in jazz trio Sticks and Stones alongside Josh Abrams and Chad Taylor, two other players active in Chicago’s cozy jazz/rock/whatever milieu. But in the end, making these connections primarily serves to pique curiosity and draw in listeners, as COIN COIN is a pure celebration of jazz.

COIN COIN was recorded live in the studio of Montreal’s Hotel2Tango last July with Roberts leading a group of 15 musicians playing multiple saxophones, two trumpets, two basses, two violins, a cello, piano, prepared guitar, drums, musical saw, and doudouk. That’s a large group, and the inclusion of the last two instruments especially might lead one to think the arrangements are needlessly crowded or exotic, but it certainly never feels like that. Edited down from a 90-minute performance to an hour, the music can be busy, even noisy, but these passages fit smartly within a larger compositional whole.
The album begins with a scorching solo burst of saxophone that recalls the fire music cries of Albert Ayler, Archie Shepp, and late-period John Coltrane. What follows over the next six minutes of opening track “rise” is a composition that references multiple styles of jazz, then detours into wholly original territory, most notably during Roberts’ theatrical spoken word/half-sung portions. These vocals, featuring Gitanjali Jain alongside Roberts, appear throughout the album, with a narrative that concerns the history of slavery in America and how it continued to affect and inform the lives of African Americans throughout the 20th century. Some sections offer stronger images and impressions than others, while Roberts and Jain’s intertwining vocals often favor ambiguity and emotional resonance over clarity and pedagogy. While I personally tend to shy away from spoken word or vocalese in jazz, these vocals are essential to its success.

COIN COIN’s middle section serves as a self-contained example of what Roberts and her band have accomplished on a larger scale. “kerasia” begins with a repetitious modal vamp before the music softens to allow Roberts’ and Jain’s vocals to dominate the track. The instruments soon come back on full blast, with Roberts leading the pack, picking the opening theme back up before sliding into a Dixieland romp that eventually mutates into a free jazz spree. This then segues into the centerpiece of the album, “libation for Mr. Brown: Bid em in…,”a soulful a cappella gospel blues chant that recalls a slave auction. In just 15 minutes, these tracks cover an astonishing amount of musical ground, highlighting Roberts’ skill as both composer and performer.

By the time the album nears its end, you may feel like you’ve already been on an exhausting, emotionally charged trip, but the most intense music is saved for last two tracks. “i am” features stunning wordless vocals over rambunctious musicianship, while “how much would you cost?” closes out the album with a moving dedication to Roberts’ mother. The exuberant cheers and applause from the small studio audience at performance’s end remind you that what you’ve just heard has happened in real time, making it all the more impressive.

COIN COIN, the first half of a larger politically-charged and personal work, is one of those records you didn’t know you were waiting for, couldn’t expect you wanted or needed to hear. It’s already grabbed the attention of both jazz aficionados and its more casual fans, impressing both in equal fashion. This is complex, life-affirming music that’s both serious and playful, steeped in tradition yet as highly original and forward-thinking as anything you’re likely to hear this year.

Two years later...

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. (jk - I'm hoping to show up on Cory Arcangel's site, if it's still being updated. And if not, will he apologize for not posting in a while?)

But really I'm not kidding when I say I'm sorry. I wanted to keep this reasonably updated, but I've been in graduate school for the past two years! That's a pretty lousy excuse, since it was only for Information "Science" and not a hard science like engineering or physics or whatnot, and I could have at least posted links to articles I've had published. Though I also cut back on those since I'd been in school, again for not terribly justifiable reasons because I was only ever really bust a few months each semester. Also, I'm not sure who I'm apologizing to, since I think, optimistically, only about five pairs of eyes will ever see this post, especially since it will be buried underneath a string of catch-up posts.

So while in school I dabbled in Drupal, but am not sure when and if I'll use it again unless a job requires it, though it could be in a few years when we've all fled Facebook to escape parents and babies, and Twitter and Tumblr are no longer satisfying, we'll all be using Drupal or other content management systems. And that will not be a bad thing at all. But for now, I'm sticking with this platform, which I still find charming in large part due to its ease of use and minimal design. Though I'll probably start posting stuff on Tumblr too.

This is all so undignified.