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calexico
hot rail |
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If you happen to be in Chicago, try and board the Tortoise train for the Mexican border catching snatches on the way of what is now called “post rock” — instrumental miniatures with the occasional dust devil of a wild-west tune. Get off where the line terminates a couple of miles short of the border, and find yourself in the middle of nowhere, with nothing around but cactuses, dozing vultures, and rusty rail tracks hot enough to fry eggs on. |
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Swinging in the wind, you’ll find a sign, bleached by the merciless Californian sun, that reads “Welcome to Calexico.” “What the hell am I doing in this movie?" you ask as the steel guitar and accordion vibes of John Covertino and Joey Burns, both ex-Giant Sand, suddenly dig their way through the simmering air and the sand in your ear. Once used to your new surrounding, the soundscapes of Mexican mariachi bands and monotonously rocking chairs on the porch don’t seem that strange anymore. Stranger is the fact that this movie-for-the-ears is released in Japan by Brazilophile Seigen Ono’s “Saidera” label, but if you’re into the whole-body-experience, this might not be your first inside a Saidera studios movie. The recent Calexico releases (also available is their previous work “The Black Light") add a very special Spaghetti-Western flavor to the exquisite Saidera sound kitchen. |
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tigris and euphrates
the moon is in eclipse |
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How often does it happen that past pioneers of jazz, fusion, or progressive rock return to the business again in some kind of contemporary disguise in an attempt to regain the cutting edge of their glory days? Lured by the temptations of today’s technology and trends, these hippies usually end up earning pitiful laughter rather than serious respect. |
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Listening to T&E’s second work you’ll find elements of the omnipresent dancefloor jazz , but also amazing parallels to the likes of Gong-reincarnation System 7 — amazing if you consider that in this case we have two Japanese in their twenties, approaching the whole thing from the very opposite end. Alata Suzuki and Dan Fujimitsu are both multi-instrumentalists, and currently members of “Flavour” label’s Latin-flavored electro-pop flagship Fantastic Explosion. Take any given duo in modern music mixing jazz with synthetic stuff and samples and you may think there is nothing unique about the sound. But you’ll know better after hearing T&E’s techno-fusion jazz — unique, fresh, but yet very grown-up compositions of a quality that comes closer to ‘70s progressive rock and jazz masterpieces than most of the above mentioned desperadoes. |
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terry riley
music for the gift & others |
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There is no real connection between Brazil-born Tobin and Californian composer Terry Riley except on the deepest level, that of inspiration and influence. The fact that Tobin’s new album was released about a month after Riley’s Archive Series of rare, early works gives the enthusiast the chance to compare two great artists’ different approaches and methods of “supermodifying” music. |
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Terry Riley saw his best years in the late fifties and sixties, surrounded by the vivid jazz, swing and blues scene on one side, and John Cage’s revolutionary “mix” compositions on the other, all against the backdrop of a psychedelic hippie culture.Employing tape recorders and time lag accumulators, Riley started pushing contemporary music in new directions. His minimal compositions left traces in the music of Steve Reich and Philip Glass, and bands such as Soft Machine, and others. Music For The Gift is a recommended representative introduction to the composer’s work, including jazzy recordings made in 1963 with Chet Baker for Ken Dewey’s play “The Gift,” 1965’s Bird Of Paradise, 1960’s masterpiece Mescaline Mix, and a live recording from the same year, titled Concert For Two Pianos and Five Tape Recorders. Not cutting up pieces, but carefully putting stone onto stone to create the same multi-layered blend of music — nowadays referred to as ambient jazz, trip hop, drum & bass, etc. — is Amon Tobin, who released his first album under the alias “Cujo” in 1996. Following DJ Food’s stunning “Kaleidoscope” album earlier this year, Ninja Tune has just put out their third Tobin album. While the artist used at least one track on each of his previous albums to refer to his Latin roots, Supermodified comes across as dark, psychedelic, and jazzy, with a lot of the same flavor that Terry Riley achieved trying out tape loop effects 40 years ago. It sounds amazingly organic, the sampled grooves span from ‘60s big band, swing, and movie music to drum & bass and big beat sounds. Try the experiment of buying the two CDs as a coincidental package, and you’ll know more about the development of music in the last half of a century. |
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More CD Reviews:
les rita mitsouko - cool frenesie
heaven - sound of sequence
joseph arthur - come to where i'm from
shéna ringo - shoso strip
alboth! - ecco la fiera
rovo - pyramid
frank zappa -everything is healing nicely |
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