The Franciscan Hobbies - 'Walls Are Stuck' (Music Fellowship)

Sometime around 2005 I blinked and when my eyelids came back up, there was a ton of music being made that sounded not unlike the Franciscan Hobbies, a large ensemble connected to that small collective of bands in the Bay Area vicinity known as Jewelled Antler. Glenn Donaldson and Loren Chasse are both credited here and I'm not sure exactly how involved they were - full leaders, perhaps, or just bit players - but the sound of the Hobbies comes from the same open, melodic air that other Jewelled Antler bands (such as the Child Readers, Thuja, and the Blithe Sons) occupied. In fact, if you played any of those bands to me I'd struggle to tell them apart, but I suspect the musicians in these groups, which largely overlapped, wouldn't feel differently. The band names just become another form of organising the sound-image, just like the album name and titles of the songs, maybe? Anyway, Walls Are Stuck is an all-instrumental play-around in this soundworld, driven by largely acoustic instrumentation and lo-fi recording technologies. There are electroacoustic elements but only in the sense of a dictaphone tape warp (on 'Empty Hands', which is a lovely bit of concrete, using a decayed violin riff, which dissipates before wearing out its welcome) or delicate keyboard tinkles, dancing over the pulse (the sublime 'The Happy Burial'). There's usually some tape hiss or room vibe in the background, the sound of people walking around, instruments being picked up and put down, and an outdoor feel for very much of it. It's what I think of as the Jewelled Antler sound, one that has largely faded as the more pop-orientated projects of theirs (Skygreen Leopards, the Lovebirds) have become more serious, but one that I have a soft spot for because these are incredibly beautiful records to lose oneself in. The jams are obviously jamming, but when you listen to a track like 'Asmodeus', where different stringed instruments are plucked and bowed, the interplay is tentative and egoless, building up a common sculpture that is calming but not simple. Over in the UK at the same time, the Vibracathedral Orchestra was making a real clatter, similar in many ways (harmonic overtones, no central riff or show of musicianship, a sense of wonder) but still somewhat more attenuated towards a common pulse. The Franciscan Hobbies reject the easy groove and elevate the texture to the forefront. The result is lovely, and welcoming.

Arnold Dreyblatt & The Orchestra of Excited Strings - 'Propellers in Love' (hatART)

Arnold Dreyblatt's music really speaks to me; he might be the minimalist I feel the strongest emotional connection to. This work from the 1980s is given a disclaimer in the liner notes, from the get-go, that it's 'extremely difficult to capture on tape' and we can imagine even moreso on CD. This takes the formula of Nodal Excitation but with a slightly different compositional feel. It's easy to dismiss Dreyblatt's compositions from this decade as basically being 'dung-dung-dung-dung-dung-dung' but that's far beside the point, and not particularly true -- this disc is a very obvious midpoint, compositionally, between Nodal Excitation and Animal Magnetism. Even on CD with my lousy stereo I'm able to feel slowly emerging, thick blanketing overtones building up on every track, and the louder I turn it up, the more there is. A propeller is a good metaphor because this music is propelled along by the incessant beat, though it's often more linear than circular.  One thing I love is how infinitely relistenable Dreyblatt's music is. Yeah, it's all overtones, but they sound different every time, and there's no chance of a segment of this music getting stuck in your head like a pop song. This might be true 'eternal music' to borrow a term from LaMonte. The most subtle variations in rhythm make a movement incredibly distinct from the last one. The longest segments of 'Propellers in Love' are  'Odd & Even' and the title track, both almost ten minutes, and the duration benefits the feel; it's really easy to get lost, making the code ('Lucky Strike') all the more amazing, with it's sparse, ringing chords. This is a beautiful composition. As a bonus track, hatART gives us the 15 minute 'High Life', played by just Dreyblatt and Paul Panhuysen. This is a total drone piece, and a lovely one, surely constructed from many of the same frequencies that his other work utilises. It's meditative and anything but throwaway, but definitely of a different state of mind entirely.

Can - 'Ege Bamyasi' (Spoon)

I don't remember where I first heard of Can - probably mentioned in some article or interview. I do remember the first time I decided to listen to them, when I was chatting with a coworker. I was sixteen and I had a job working in a library. There was an older music nerd who worked there and I remember asking him what his favourite bands were. He told me that it was probably Pere Ubu (who I had heard of surely, but not listened to) and Can. To which I replied 'The German band?'. Latter that night I went to a Silkworm gig. Anyway I'm digressing again, trying to babble on about my personal history with this music instead of talking about the actual sounds here. Ege Bamyasi is somewhat of a watershed; things weren't quite the same afterwards though I can't quite put my finger on why. This is a much more smooth, fluid record than Tago Mago. 'Pinch', the opener, is languid and bright, though frantic; it's Jaki Liebezeit stretching out and letting everyone else paint broad watercolour strokes over him. 'Sing Swan Song' is simultaneously ballad and minimalist heartpulse. Czukay's bass is brutal and pummeling despite the soft edges, and Suzuki takes us to a new a place with his emoting. 'One More Night' I can't disassociate these days from the loop that appears as the backing track to a few Joe Frank radio shows, during which you can really focus/obsess on it's disjointed rhythm. I'd like to say that this is a dub approach again, built upon a long jammy riff with most of the changes coming from elements coming in and out - 70's cop guitar, cymbals, Damo's voice, etc. It's three tracks in before you realise that this is a new poppy side of Can, no doubt motivated by the hit of 'Spoon', which is tacked on here as the final track. 'Vitamin C' takes us back to the kinetic repetitive funk of 'Hallelujah', though condensed into three minutes and even more open of a songform. There's enough room here for Damo to get quite lyrical, and while his experimentation on Tago Mago is unparalleled here, by this point it really feels like the man is finding a new voice. It's a Can jam for a mixtape, though it ends prematurely. I always swore it was a lot longer. Irmin brings in a somewhat liturgical organ solo near the end, but this is the church of psychological warfare. And there's a segue into 'Soup', the most 'out' track of Ege Bamyasi. This is a tick-tock Jeopardy game, with harshly squealing white noise and electric piano bumps, all somehow kept contained while constantly threatening to rip itself apart. It's a rocker until it breaks into a more freeform section, sounding almost EXACTLY like an Area record. Damo is even affecting some Italianness (Dago Suzumi? I couldn't resist, sorry), all gutturals, sputterings, and rolled consonants. Irmin is going far more synthy than the soft organs we heard on the earlier tracks, and once again (like the end of 'Aumgn') we have Jaki pushed to the forefront. But it doesn't outstay its welcome (not to imply that 'Aumgn' does!) and quickly takes us to the two pop tunes, 'I'm So Green' and 'Spoon'. The former is an edgy jazz-rocker built around a nice Liebezeit/Czukay shuffle and some arpeggiated jangle. It sets a mood quite similar to what the band did with Mooney, though again with a syncopation they could have only dreamed about in 1968. By the end of it's economical three minutes, we've reached something chaotically psychedelic that I'm still not sure how to read. And 'Spoon' was the tune for a cop show, or something like that. Fair enough, cause it's properly suspenseful, built around an ethereal pop hook, laden in reverb and with haunting background vocals. Hit songs are nothing to be ashamed of, and this maybe manages to capture Can at their peak in just three minutes. I know it lacks the long-form workouts, synth/vocal diversions or instrumental freakouts but there's still something to be said for it. The sense of spacyness - not like Hawkwind, but like Alvin Lucier - is there, despite being a fairly busy arrangement, and while no musician really gets to go for it, there's the sense of collective brainmeld that could only happen when a brilliant band reachers their peak.

Han Bennink - 'Nerve Beats' (Atavistic)

Bennink, a force, a gust of wind, a brutal gale. This isn't a solo drums album, but a solo Han Bennink piece. The man can make sound from anything -- who can't? -- but it's really about what's behind it. There's a momentum that pulses through the three tracks, beginning with a snare drum rattle and soon moving to concrète-addled collages, clarinet and trombone honking, and deep cavernous roars. The title is perfect cause it's all nerves; the music of 'too much coffee', not a drug we usually associate with the Dutch. Bennink's twitchy nervousness has a great, fierce energy behind it all and there's nothing annoying about his palpitations. This was recorded for Radio Bremen in 1973, the same radio station the produced that incredibly Henry Cow session ;; it musta been some station! I'm imagining a squat, Teutonic version of myself, tuning in to Nerve Beats live over the airwaves in '73 while drinking a Haake Beck (just after watching the Werder match, y'know). Records like Nerve Beats (which, by inclusion on Atavistic's Unheard Music Series was in fact unheard until this CD issue) make such a case for improvised music as a whole. There is no genre that can even remotely describe this music - part jazz part industrial part surrealist - and it's all made by one man, showing off his vast technical talent and his flamboyant sense of humour, which was quite evident when I saw him bashing away with the Willem Breuker Kollektief (or was it ICP?) 30 years after this was recorded. There are certainly plenty of drums here - beats galore, sturm und drang or whatever its called, but in the slightly different Nederlands tongue. This is a disc of many tongues; competing languages all propelled through one person; it's as uniquely personal a "solo" album as many of the more traditional entries in the genre (Dylan, Lennon, y'know). That this man still has a beating heart in 2009 is a testament to the eternal ur-pulse you can feel in this recording.

Bark Psychosis - 'Game Over' (3rd Stone)

The dance music rumblings I expressed uneasyness with when they were hinted at on Hex are much more full-on here, but Game Over is the Pisces Iscariot/Incesticide of Bark Psychosis so it's easy to forgive the odd excursion into producing a club hit. It's most glaring on the opening track, 'Blue', and 1992's 'Manman', and while I like a good dance now and then, the beats and rhythms aren't particularly invigorating. 'Manman' has some great screaming guitar ambience which recalls A.R. Kane's best experiments but the drum programming is a bit, eh, weak. But consistency is impossible on a collection like this, so with that criterion tossed aside, Game Over can reveal some moments of true beauty. I think I like the longer tracks -- 'All Different Things' is 8 minutes of mid-90's ambient pop infused with a slow, elegiac drama that never gets to where it's going (a good thing!) and the 21-minute 'Scum' is a masterpiece that feels slighted by it's placement on this disc. 'Murder City' I find a bit less endearing - is this BP's 'Moby Dick'? (as in the Led Zep staple, yeah). As good as BP were, they really used the album form to stretch out so compromise is inevitable here. The palette is most inviting when the tempo slows. 'Bloodrush' opens with digital-delay jangle, and BP feels more "post-shoegaze" to me because every one of these notes is important. The Wire cover, 'Three Girl Rhumba', is a tossed-off gag that probably wasn't worth paying the publishing royalties for but I'm glad it's here for the potential of future mixtapes (or playlists or whatever people do now). There's some overlap with Hex ('A Street Scene' is exactly the same as the album version, I think) and no attempt at this being consistent, so its best to just revel in the highs. 'Scum' as I said above is the masterpiece, probably of Bark Psychosis's whole career, capturing a perfect moment of emotional psychedelia through an early 90s English gaze. (I mean, grunge was big in 1992 when 'Scum' was is a weird thing to think about, though I can't articulate why). There's a live version of 'Pendulum Man' to close this out, which is recorded well enough, but I'm left feeling like something is missing. And a nagging sense that I should dig out the ///Codename:Dustsucker mp3s and get to know that record better.