Boards of Canada - 'Music Has the Right to Children' (Matador/Warp/Skam)

I could go on and on about this CD but everyone else already has, so I'll give you my personal take. It's always something special when there is some newly mined "genre" that is popular and along comes somebody who just totally melts everything else around it. This record did that, and I can compared it maybe to what This Heat did to the post-punk field with Deceit or maybe even Dylan in some way. In this case, the genre was the whole 'IDM' thing, which never clicked with me (despite all of the clicks in it). But Music Has the Right to Children sure resonated with me back in '98 or whenever this came out. Perhaps that's because it came, for me, at a time when I was looking to expand my horizons a bit, and I was no longer afraid of the world of electronica. It sure helps that it sounds like all of the music I listened to anyway back then, except recorded better and with electronic beats. I still find some of the more overtly dancey beats, particularly the ones at the beginning of the album like on 'Telephasic Workshop', a bit harder to digest. What I really love is what I call that 'classic' Boards of Canada sound - the way a steady, midtempo rhythm will just come in like the sun rising over a mountaintop ('Aquarius', perhaps). But their perfectionism is totally welcome - it touched on the guitar-futurism I admired about My Bloody Valentine, embraced the same warm aesthetics that I found to be missing from just about everything else in their genre, and most importantly (in retrospect) a real style of mythmaking that magnifies the artistry of the music. I mean, let's look at the cover - a beautifully monochromatic image, simultaneously warm and cool, and weathered just as the music is. Faces blurred out; creepy yes, but moreso I'd say 'enigmatic'. And there's so many little details in the way the songs will change direction - one channel will get more distant, an electric piano note will be able to ring out longer - it's obsessive sound creation for sure. There's actually quite a lot of melodic noodling here ('Turquoise Hexagon Sun') though maybe 'noodling' is the wrong word for these guys. When voices are sampled, which they are quite a lot here, it's so tasteful you barely even notice. Geogaddi didn't do it for me but I used to work with a dude who swore by it, and to be fair there was no way it could have slayed me as much as this record did. It simultaneously opened up a door to a whole soundworld, and then closed said door by being so satisfying I had little interest in the other giants of their peer group. Though I loved Campfire Headphase more than most, so I can see myself falling in love with Geogaddi one belated day. I think Boards of Canada are best experienced on vinyl, and probably with headphones; therefore it's somewhat paradoxical that I'm listening to them on CD through bookshelf speakers. I can draw a straight line between Terry Riley, AR Kane, most of the early Kranky records roster, and this. But that's confining; they wiggle around and draw many retro-cultural images that I didn't even fully understand until I lived in Scotland myself.

Big Star - 'Third/Sister Lovers' (Rykodisc)

I just finished writing a post on our sister blog about how Radio City is Big Star's finest hour, but I'm about to babble so much about my love for Third that you'll think I was lying then. I mean, some would go as far as to call this "the best album of all-time", but those people probably talk to ghosts. I knew this guy in college who felt that way. He considered this his all-time favorite record and to be honest, he's the one who turned me onto it after an initial listen (a few years earlier) failed to move me. "So many artists try to make these really depressing records," he told me, talking about Joy Division I think, "but Alex Chilton was so genuinely miserable you can really hear it in every song." You know how sometimes you hear a record again but it sounds different because of how it's framed? Well, his saying those words definitely made me hear things differently -- for example, the guitar whizzles in "Kizza Me" sound to me now, like, I dunno, pain. But is this actually a Big Star record, or the weird transitional period between Big Star and solo Alex Chilton? (Much like Instinct by the Moles is really a Richard Davies solo album). Or has Big Star just shed another member, replacing Andy Hummel with a bunch of session dudes, Steve Cropper, and some strings but retaining their essential "band"-ness? This CD issue claims to restore the 'proper' sequencing but that's never been agreed on anyway. It opens with 'Kizza Me' which is one of the filler tunes - a perfectly adequate power rocker that would be fine on #1 Record, but apart from the above mentioned guitarwhizzles feels a bit limp. I think it's just because I want 'Thank You Friends' to be the opening cut. Has anyone in rock music before ever realised that sarcasm can be suffering? The liner notes would indicate that Chilton's major problem in the mid-70s was his own failure to become a rockstar, though methinks things are probably a bit more complicated. Either way, 'Thank you Friends' is a wonderful kiss-off, masquerading it's bile behind a spry chord progression. It goes right into 'Big Black Car' which just sounds like a man exhausted, on the verge of giving up. I think the big celebrated cuts (at least by This Mortal Coil), 'Holocaust' and 'Kangaroo', have always confused me a bit. Are they the masterpieces, or the exceptions to true misery? Is 'Holocaust' just a tad on the wrong side of overwrought? 'Kangaroo's dramatics don't bother me quite as much, maybe because the 12-string guitar is so beautiful, but 'Holocaust's piano just feels a bit too overboard. The real holocaust is between the doors of the Big Black Car. Except, sometimes 'Holocaust' sounds amazing to me, and moves me almost to tears -- music is subjective and weird like that, dontchaknow! But back to the first half - I'm not fussed about the 'Femme Fatale' cover, and 'O, Dana' doesn't do a lot either. But Jesus Christ, 'Jesus Christ'! Religion can be suffering too. So yeah, past the 'Kangaroo' hump we get 'Stroke it Noel' which is a song that I love almost beyond description. I love the jaunty strings but only because they are so undercut by the way Alex sings 'Do you want to dance....' with about as little enthusiasm as possible. And then Jody Stephens 'For You' which is utterly beautiful and the perfect balance needed at this point. I don't know what needs to be said about the closing trilogy that hasn't been already said or covered by others. 'Nighttime' makes me think of other songs; the one by (fellow purveyor of some genuine depression) Smog, where he sings 'I walk the city streets at night / and I'm scared shitless' and also J-Church's completely different song of the same time that is everybit as sentimental and bittersweet. We'll hear at least two covers of 'Blue Moon' and one of 'Take Care' before we finish the Cinderblock tour, so I'll just quote this brilliant line - "This sounds a bit like good-bye / And in a way it is, I guess" -- and then we'll start to wrap this up. But wait, there's bonus tracks! If you get past 'Nature Boy' and a rather rote Kinks cover, w get to 'Dream Lover' and 'Downs', which are real gems. I've started to think of Radio City - Third - Like Flies on Sherbert as a trilogy of sorts, and you can certainly here the progression: joyous, slightly loose rock and roll --> bent-out-of-shape Tonight's the Night Style bashing about --> utter ramshackle insanity. 'Dream Lover' is halfway into Sherbert, and 'Downs' pretty much all the way there. But because that's in the C's, we're gonna have to wait awhile to get there.

Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band - 'Grow Fins: Rarities 1965-82' (Revenant)

I guess this is the first of a few 5CD boxsets in the Glass Mastered Cinderblock project. We've been spared the 11 CD Albert Ayler set because it doesn't fit on the regular spined CD shelf, but this one just squeaks in under the size limit of my cheapass Ikea CD rack, so here we go!! Listening to Grow Fins is a mammoth undertaking but it's a treasure for sure. When it first came out I really gravitated towards the fifth disc, which is pretty much everything from post-Trout Mask til the end. But these days I get a lot of grooves out of the 60s material and this set is weighted a bit in that direction, so now I'm just kicking myself for not having played this much in the past six years. Disc one, Just Got Back From the City (1965-67) is, as you would guess, the earliest recorded Magic Band demos, none of which were ever released before and only a few tunes ('I'm Glad', 'Yellow Brick Road', 'Sure Nuff n Yes I Do') ever really turning up in other versions. 'Obeah Man', which is the first track, is almost shocking in how frantic the band is going at it for 1966. Everything on this disc dates from '66 and '67, except for a pretty spooky and awesome acetate demo of 'Call On Me'. You'd expect a lot more conventional balladry like 'I'm Glad' but you don't get too much - there's a lot closer connection to traditional blues (like shoutouts to Tupelo, MS in the track of the same name) and uptempo rockers. Doug Moon is the guitarist of note here, I think - some of his ragged squiggles are pretty bent given that Van Vliet hadn't really busted anyone out of their shells yet. But it's not necessary to seek the 'out' in this early stuff - it's perfectly fine to enjoy it as a really great, cranking blues-rock band with ragged psychedelic flourishes. The familiar songs, well, they sound pretty much like demo versions of the Safe as Milk songs - more raw, a bit less fidelity, and without Ry Cooder. Though I don't know that it really makes a difference whether it's Cooder or someone else. As you listen to Grow Fins straight through (which is not something I've ever done before), you really see the narrative that it constructs. Disc two, Electricity 1967-68, is aptly named - mostly live recordings, you can hear things are starting to click. This version of 'Sure Nuff' has a bit more oscillating and a bit more crunch. 'Rollin n Tumblin' is a reprise with different lyrics, somewhat murky (probably an audience recording) but you can hear the band achieve a new level of smokin' - it's a bit rougher and more passionate, as opposed to 'Obeah Man's more controlled energy. This band is Jeff Cotton and Alex Snouffer/St.Clair, and they straddle the line between jam band and visionaries. The extended solos are a bit more directed towards conventional concepts such as melody and harmony, but they still know how to buck and jaw and fight each other. Vliet's there on the shenhai or something - it's distant but it's perfect. If you listen close enough, I daresay you can hear some Trout Mask melodies poking through. 'Yer Gonna Need Somebody On Your Bond' is clearly the root of 'Tarotplane' and the one non-live cut here is the languid 'Korn Ring Finger', somehow strained in it's casual gestures.

And then, it's on to disc three, the Trout Mask House Sessions - 73 minutes of practices and aborted runthroughs, a document of one of the most legendary recording sessions in the history of music. Right, but what does it sound like? It's perplexing, presented in a pretty raw format with background ambience, dog barks, lots of conversation and strange gaps between performances. If you believe in the cult-like legend of Trout Mask (meaning that DVV ran the recording like a cult preparing for some sort of elaborate suicide ritual - the discipline of the North Korean Arirang crossed with the Manson-like intensity and dedication to purpose) - then it's the house itself that radiates the aura. This is a record made inside a house, even if the final product was laid down in a studio, and the way it's presented here is like a true House of Fiction, straight out of Henry James. As a document of collaged anti-music it would fit right in as a Siltbreeze release or some sort of post-Homosexuals side project; but it's also a stunning revelation into how these classics were constructed. I found this disc pretty hard to listen to when I first got this box set (which was about ten years ago I think -- back when 'enhanced CDs' were the rage) but these days I think it stands up well on its own, even if you've [somehow] never heard Trout Mask Replica. Clearly Revenant felt that this should be the centerpiece of the box set, even though it occurs relatively early in the career of the Magic Band; I agree, now. Though Van Vliet was allegedly dictatorial and take-no-prisoners in his rehearsal schedule this disc is fair to the band. You get a lot of Van Vliet soprano skronk but otherwise you really hear the musicians working things out. When the familiar riffs break through after all the faffing about, it's like hearing a song you've been waiting through the whole concert to hear, so it's that much more rewarding. The fidelity is surprisingly great too -- thank god the recorder was running.

The recorder kept running enough to put 12 minutes onto a fourth disc, called the Trout House Sessions [storytime portion]. And that's a continuation of the conversation and babbling we hear in glimpses on disc 3, though I can't admit that I've ever paid enough attention to follow any narratives. It does explode into 'China Pig' at the end but that's about all it's got going on the musical tip. This listen was no better for me - too easy to get distracted. If you dig the nonsense that led to the infamous 'Fast and Bulbous' conversations this is the disc for you. But really, the bulk of this disc is the Enhanced CD portion, cause this was released at the tail end of the whole Enhanced CD craze.

And then finally disc 5, Grown Fins [1969-82] which pulls everything else after Trout Mask onto one messy disc. Admittedly this was the disc that won me over the most when I first got this box, but that's cause I wasn't too familiar with the later era of Beefheart's work. Listening now I'm slightly annoyed by the poor fidelity of the (mostly) live tracks. It works well on some tunes, like the opening version of 'My Human Gets Me Blues' from '69 - it's so blown out and uneven, with certain instruments far more audible than others, that it actually sounds like something that would come out of LAFMS -- far more weird than it probably sounded in person. There's some cuts of the Decals band doing Trout Mask songs - the marimba bursting through on 'Big Joan' is particularly hot - and then a slow progression through the 70's via live and radio tracks. The Bluejeans/Unconditionally material is totally bypassed and we skip ahead to a 1975 radio version of 'Orange Claw Hammer' with Zappa strumming chords underneath. I used to love this version but now I'd prefer to hear the original pause-button edited version; Zappa instills an actual cadence into the song that ruins it a bit. But I shouldn't be too critical of this disc cause it's still the most diverse and fascinating of the set; the two versions of 'Odd Jobs' (a piano demo and a full band blowout) are pretty different though sadly marred CD skips on my copy; the Mellotron improv tracks are brilliant bits of sound-Dada; the title track sounds a bit better here than on the record. I do question why Revenant didn't include the original version of Bat Chain Puller - I suspect rights/legal reasons are the answer, but it's still disappointing because it would have balanced this set a lot more. It's a lot to take in, and if this post feels a bit disjointed that's because I listened to this in pieces (as to be expected for a 5 disc box set). I should say something obligatory about the box and book which are lovingly designed, managing to convey psychedelic design without seeming overly retro; it's Weird enough, though a bit difficult to read and the glue is starting to separate on my hardcover book. Drumbo's story is pretty essential and it makes up for John Corbett's overly enthusiastic descriptions of the disc's contents.