Dead C - 'Eusa Kills' (Flying Nun/Xpressway)

I didn't toss any of my Dead C CDs when I got the vinyl upgrades so we're gonna have a lot of overlap. Eusa is the one I could definitely let go of since there's nothing unique about the CD, except that it's smaller and sounds worse. I guess it's easier to loan to people, always trying to make a convert. This is actually the perfect hungover Sunday afternoon thing to listen to right now, as 'Now I Fall' is simultaneously drilling into my headache and also teaching me a lesson - the pain that feels so good, so good. Tom Lax's liner notes are pretty fun, as they compare this era of Dead C to early Pere Ubu (I'll buy that comparison) and then says that Eusa, while the 'pop' album, doesn't compare to the live one. By which I guess he means Clyma est mort which we'll get to, also twice, but both times on vinyl! Yeah, I should probably filter out all of this clutter - can you imagine the Underbite lair, a dark, cavernous pile of multiple copies of Dead C albums? But the music, redux. How many times can one band milk the same riff? (Referring to the appearance of 'Max Harris' in the background of 'I was Here'). It's those middle tracks that really draw out the best in me - 'Phantom Power' can lead to decades of investigation, while 'Children' and 'Scarey Nest' are just songs I play when I'm DJing. But awesome songs. The songs really are the key here, the core, the root, and the ether. I wanted to be a child of some revolution, which I never found, but this was close enough.

Bablicon - 'In a Different City' (Misra)

At the same time that the Azusa Plane were stretching tones across a cloudy sky in Philly, these guys were bashing away in Chicago, attempting to resurrect some 70's artrock/prog spectres but kicking it in the face with the mishmash of musical ideas the 90s taught us. Pretty much instrumental, In a Different City is fairly auspicious, bouncing from free rock to musique concrete interludes, sticking to conventional acoustics for the most part but not afraid to throw in some gurgling synths/electronics or some blasted, distorted electric bass. One of these dudes was a composery type, and I think he's the one squiggling about on the reeds - but probably also he's the one playing Charles Ives on 'Pictor's Metamorphoses'. Tracks like 'Francis Locrius' dance back and forth between aggro-jazz and Krautlike monotony, and if I have a criticism it's that the pieces don't feel like they are cut from the same cloth. Some really delicately arranged strings crop up a few times, though in 'At the Birthday Party' they're cut with electric piano and a Soft Machine-esque chord progression. I think it's the electric piano that makes this feel so prog, because the compositions aren't particualrly rooted in classical music or dungeons and dragons stuff. Being their first (of three), Bablicon have a 'kitchen sink' tendency here, but that's part of the charm -- we have two future albums during which we can hear them refine their approach. The liner notes, difficult to read as they are, are packed with all of the various instruments that each member plays. Did I mention they all use pseudonyms and only one of them has the balls to look at the camera in the inner photo? Maybe that's the one moaning on 'Rhinocerous', which shimmers like a wobbly elephant in ballet slippers until it runs onto a bobsled track (or is it the luge? Never sure what mixed metaphor is best for a theramin solo). Psychedelia can come from the old and the new; kudos to this band for trying to meet each hafway.

Robert Ashley - 'Automatic Writing' (Lovely Music)

I went on holiday in 2001 to Scotland, and visited a friend there. Among other conversational items, he mentioned that he had just purchased a secondhand LP of Automatic Writing but he wasn't "into" it and was going to sell it. Neither my traveling companion nor myself had ever heard it, so he put it on the turntable and we opened some beers. After ten minutes or so my traveling companion and I both expressed our amazement at what we were hearing and we both offered to buy the unwanted record from my friend. When faced with our enthusiasm, said friend re-evaluated his feelings and refused to sell it to us. So I went back to America emptyhanded, though as soon as I could get my ass to Twisted Village (or maybe it was Other Music in NYC?) I bought the CD reissue, which tacked on bonus tracks 'Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon' (1968) and 'She Was a Visitor' (1967). Some years later I found the LP for cheap but I never unloaded this CD, which means it's going to get reviewed immediately after this on Dislocated Underbite et al. But that's okay - I don't mind listening to this twice in a row, because there's something really amazing about this recording that still affects me as much as it did eight years previously. The CD liner notes, by Ashley, explain his mild form of Tourette's syndrome and his interest in involuntary speech, though he admits that attempting to do performances with involuntary speech results in 'fake' involuntary speech, since it's a performance after all, etc. you know. Anyway, he spent five years "composing" this, which consists of voice by himself and Mimi Johnson, Ashley's voice being electronically manipulated mumbling and gurgling and Johnson's being whispered French text. On that surface you have a brilliant, surreal low-listening mindfuck that wins points in sound poetry circles as well as the avant-text circuit; but what really blows my mind about this record is the "music" in the background. For at least part of the record, a distant booming rhythm loop is present, but it's recorded in a way that makes it sound exactly like your next-door neighbor is listening to some shitty groove/dance record. Now read those italicised words again and let them sink in. And if you haven't heard Automatic Writing you're no doubt asking yourself "So?" Which goes to illustrate how futile it is to convey the sound experience through language. Because this distant rhythm is what moves this music into the arena of something special and indescribable - I cannot explain just how good it is, or why, or what the big deal is. Certainly the whole package with the mumbling and the weird electronics ticks all the boxes of conceptual art, surrealism, outsider art, and electronic fuckery that is interesting. But there's also something extremely anti-musical about it, and maybe this rhythm is what makes me feel this way (because it's music being used to oppose music, or something). And another thing is that I think this succeeds enormously as the conceptual/brainy/avant-garde theatre piece it was composed as, but it also succeeds without all of that attached to it - as a pure piece of sound to lose oneself in and draw inspiration from. Now I should probably save my raving for the LP version and focus on these bonus tracks, but the truth is, they've never done much for me. In fact, nothing of Ashley's apart from this and In Sara Mencken, Christ and Beethoveen there were men and women (which slays!) has ever interested me. The benefit of having this on CD is that you don't have to flip the record, this making it the perfect record to fall asleep to and inspire your own involuntary speech - except you have to program your CD player not to play tracks 2 or 3 which is a bit of a drag. I've listened to this many times, usually at low volume so the French whispering is just static, but now I've noticed it seems to keep repeating 'Qu'est-ce c'est tu caché?' or something like that, which even my high school French can tell is 'What have you hidden?' (or something like that). And maybe that's just made this even better.