#dennis callaci

[dustedmagazine]

Dust, Volume 10, Number 7

Obsessed with Congo Funk in this month's dust

Without getting too deep into American electoral politics, let’s just say that we’ve been distracted lately.  We’ve been mired in the slough of despair, frantic in our bargaining with god and lately, a feeling fresh breeze of optimism—it’s been so long, we hardly recognized it.  But despite all that, the records keep coming, and we do our best to deal with them, not always with a fulsome 300-400 word review, but sometimes briefly, as here, in another edition of Dust.  This month, we cover the run of it, from fictional characters that somehow participate in bands, to guitarists on synth holiday to vintage Swedish death metal reissued and more.  Participants this time out include Jennifer Kelly, Byron Hayes, Bill Meyer, Jonathan Shaw, Christian Carey, Andrew Forell, Roz Milner and Ian Mathers. 

Apifera — Keep the Outside Open (Stones Throw)

Four Israeli jazzmen take a jaunt through psychedelic rock and prog, incorporating trippy vocals and squalling synth runs into a space-age fusion.  The musicians— Nitai Hershkovits on keyboards, the beatmaker (and evident link to Stones Throw) Yuvi Havkin, drummer Amir Bresler and guitarist Yonatan Albalak—have spent their careers crossing jazz with funk, hip hop and rock.   Here they push it even further with vocal tracks that hardly sound like jazz at all.  Trippy “Iris Is Neil,” for instance, delivers the title phrase in a keening vocal chant, as explosions of percussion go off like firecrackers on a string.  Squiggles of synth, arcs of electric guitar reach for the epic, but in a manner more like Yes or ELP than Return to Forever.  “Lucky Zoe” delves further into psychedelic pop, its wavery keyboards framing fanciful whimsies a la “Lucy in the Sky.”  “Theodor Marmalade” thumps a funky beat behind flourishes of keys and vocal narratives about desert fauna.  “Don’t you want to see the floating lights?” the cut inquires, and yes, I can just about make out strange, glowing objects in the sky. The instrumental pieces have a more conventionally jazzy feel; “I Love ECM” makes it case with light-fingered syncopations on rims and cymbals, liquid loops of bass and ice-chilled runs of electric keyboard.  “Sera Sam,” at the end, brings on the trumpeter Avishai Cohen for a lyrical turn.   

Jennifer Kelly

Majesty Crush — Butterflies Don’t Go Away

(Numero Group)

Butterflies Don't Go Away by Majesty Crush

A double LP or digital download from Detroit’s own Majesty Crush, the motor city’s answer to the sounds coming out on 4AD. With dreamy vocals by David Stroughter about being an obsessive fan or about bad relationships and a rhythm section kicking up a swirl of noise around him, Majesty Crush brings to mind about a dozen English bands without feeling particularly in debt to any specific group. Occasionally the guitar makes a really cool, almost crunchy sound, but mostly the music moves in the fog, blanketing the vocals in layers of distortion. They lack the fey lyricism of the Cocteau Twins or the dreamy harmonies of Lush but guitarist Michel Segal holds his own against Kevin Shields’s sheets of sound. Meanwhile, they invoke David Hinckley on “No. 1 Fan,” wake up with a bottle and a cigar in hand on “Brand” and dip into ambient spaces on three small interludes. The first half is made of their lone album Love 15, while sides three and four contain an early EP and singles, putting pretty much their entire catalog into one handy set. These Detroit guys seem unjustly forgotten, but thankfully Numero’s made their music easy to find.

Roz Milner

Dennis Callaci & Heimito Künst — First Light (Pass Without Trace)

Heimito Künst is one of many characters in Chilean novelist Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives, a tangled multi-narrative epic. The enigmatic Italian musician who produced the sounds underpinning First Light has adopted Heimito Künst as his pseudonym, likely in reference to the knotty soundscapes he builds from organs, synths and field recordings. On paper, Dennis Callaci’s lyrics and vocals seem like an odd pairing for Künst’s oblique audio collages. Callaci is half of the long-running lo-fi pop project Refrigerator and has helmed the Shrimper label for over three decades. His signature mid-range nasal utterances, more spoken than sung, populate the extraterrestrial ecosystems of Künst like strange seedlings peeping up from beneath loamy soil. First Light serves as a bridge between the mysterious and the familiar, another worthy entry in Callaci’s discography and a port of entry into an unknown artist’s body of work. 

Bryon Hayes

Buck Curran — The Long Distance (Eiderdown/Obsolete)

Buck Curran is a guitar devotee. He’s a fluent player, a custodian of historic instruments, a chronicler of esteemed players and a compiler of albums that pay tribute to others. But sometimes a guy just needs a change of pace; enter The Long Distance. Mostly competed in a single night, it’s Curran’s holiday from the guitar. Instead, he plays analog synthesizer, layering sweeping tones and helicopter-rotor cadences into something rather like a lost Tangerine Dream album. Curran explains in the album notes that each piece is connected to a memory of a person or place, which may explain the melodies’ intimations of yearning and melancholy. But if you’re not Curran, they might evoke other associations; this music could easily be repurposed for film soundtracks.

Bill Meyer

Rhodri Davies — Telyn Wrachïod (Amgen)

Back in the mid-20th century, kids motorized their bikes with clothes pins and playing cards. The customization might not have yielded much additional propulsion, but the sound was cool. It turns out that they were simply following in the footsteps of 16th century Welsh harpists, who attached brays (slips of wood) to their strings to get a loud, buzzing sound. Rhodri Davies has explored the harp’s options in all manner of settings — Fluxus happenings, minimalist compositions, rock bands, free improv ensembles, the list goes on. Recently he’s commissioned speculative recreations of instruments from centuries ago, which he then uses to play the sort of short, wheels-within-wheels pieces that he formerly played with instruments amplified to a Konono No. 1-level of distortion.  On Telyn Wrachïod he turns to the bray harp, which sounds rather like a cross between a banjo and a sitar. Each of its 12 tracks is spiky but so engrossing that you might find yourself hitting repeat a few times before you move on to the next one.

Bill Meyer

Desultory — Darkness Falls (The Early Years) (Darkness Shall Rise)

The repackaging and re-release of underground metal’s extensive archive of hyper-obscure demos and records continues apace. Darkness Falls (The Early Years) collects three demos from Swedish death metal outfit Desultory, originally independently issued on cassettes between 1990 and 1992. The record’s principal interest is its documentation of the sonic flexibility that informed the term “death metal” in the early 1990s; there’s just as much lightning thrash in these songs as there is moldering morbidity, especially the four engaging tracks on the band’s first demo, From Beyond (1990). The title track is especially pleasurable, in its sprinting, bludgeoning fashion — and this reviewer notes the added benefit of the title’s reference to an excellent H. P. Lovecraft story (is that you, Cthulhu?). Swedeath completists take heed. For the rest of us, it’s a fun release, and of some historical interest. Its relative necessity is open to debate — but hey, we didn’t really need that reissue version of Pig Destroyer’s Painter of Dead Girls on “black ice with metallic silver glitter” vinyl, either. Maybe Darkness Shall Rise should get some points for only releasing four different product versions of Darkness Falls….

Jonathan Shaw

Devouring the Guilt — Not To Want To Say (Kettle Hole)

Devouring The Guilt is a Chicago-associated (meaning two members live there and one moved away but remains connected) improvising trio. The line-up is pretty classic — Gerrit Hatcher on tenor sax, Eli Namay on bass, Bill Harris on drums. And so are the trio’s roots. Hatcher summons a burly tone, steers mostly clear of extended techniques, and gives occasional nods to free jazz heroes like Archie Shepp, Frank Wright and Frank Lowe. These familiar parameters establish a framework to display their collective originality, which lies in the personal vernacular they’ve fashioned. Namay is an alternately pithy and seething presence, plucking spare, structure-defining figures or bowing a maelstrom of woody sound. Harris pushes back against expectations that the drums should push the music forward by punctuating his clearly articulated attack with lots of negative space. Hatcher situates lyricism in long, understated tones and vigorously masticated phases, but also navigates unpredictably through the tight corners and sudden gaps that the other two set up.

Bill Meyer

Carol Genetti / Peter Maunu — Gleaners (Amalgam)

No matter how you approach it, Gleaners will stretch your mind. Just what are Carol Genetti (voice, electronics) and Peter Maunu (guitar, violin, mandolin) gleaning? Not other people’s music, that’s for sure. Maybe the languages of long-extinct species, confidences exchanged between dusty appliances that come to life after the staff leaves the thrift shop, ideas about what instruments might sound like if you see them in pictures. Even when Maunu resorts to rock-ish fuzztones or Genetti exhales an unspooling coo, their co-creations are resolutely sui generis.  Their partnership has been honed through years of regular performance, often with other Chicago-based musicians, which likely explains the brisk confidence that this resolutely abstract music exudes. Genetti is a ceramic artist as well as a musician, and the physical manifestation of this album comes in two forms. She made ten one-of-a-kind clay cases that you can mount on a wall; the regular CDs come in a folio adorned with close-ups of the art edition.

Bill Meyer

Dave Douglas — GIFTS (Greenleaf Music)

GIFTS by Dave Douglas

With sizzling guitar lines and a frontline horn duo of Douglas and James Brandon Lewis, you’d think it would be easy for this to be a mere blowing session. But it’s not. The music is frequently introspective and has a very ECM kind of ambience: it has this wide-angle sonic clarity where each instrument has room to breathe and let their notes slowly linger. The suite of Strayhorn songs in the middle doesn’t feel tired, either. Rafiq Bhatia’s chugging guitar keeps “Take the A Train” moving while Douglas and Lewis move in sync for the theme. When they stretch out, they’re sometimes playing against each other but always seem like they’re on the same page. Meanwhile Bhatia’s playing draws on Bill Frisell, making up for the lack of a low end with well-placed chords and sonic textures. These four make the music their own and it’s one of the year's most rewarding jazz records. 

Roz Milner

Samara Lubelski & Marcia Bassett — Indexical/Rhizome (Relative Pitch)

Samara Lubelski and Marcia Bassett are both well-established members of the U.S. scene that engendered the moniker “new weird America” back in the early aughts. Both have CVs that stretch on for miles. Lubelski is best known as a star in the MV&EE solar system, while Bassett churns out murkier sound pools in a variety of projects, such as Double Leopards and Hototogisu. The pair have a long-standing partnership unfurling phosphorescent drone webs through guitar and violin. This is their eighth recording, and it presents two extended string seances that coax electric spirit whisps from unseen worlds. “Indexical” is the lengthier of the pair and features zoned out but controlled guitar howl from Bassett alongside Lubelski’s rapid bowing. The undulations intertwine to become a radiant lattice of sound. Alien timbres infect “Rhizome,” which sways between a noise-drone wall of sound and hushed electronic whispers. Both are live recordings, showing off the raw magic that this pair of string sirens can conjure.

Bryon Hayes

Joe McPhee With Ken Vandermark — Musings Of A Bahamian Son (Corbett Vs. Dempsey)

Joe McPhee’s been toting folders full of poems and brief musings to gigs for years, but in recent years they’ve assumed an increasingly prominent place in his performances. Now, he’s finally put 28 of them on record, punctuated with nine short soprano sax/clarinet interludes that he improvised with Ken Vandermark. Oppression gets defied, history acknowledged, but most of all, love gets its due. McPhee muses about folks from the neighborhood, jazz heroes that inspired him, old friends now gone, and the balm and galvanization imparted by music itself. Abstract but tender, the interludes amplify this sentiment, showing by example how much appreciation for life and fellowship can be invested in a few tones.

Bill Meyer

Kate Nash — 9 Sad Symphonies (Kill Rock Stars)

On 9 Sad Symphonies, Kate Nash leans into her musical theater background, with skillfully crafted arrangements that incorporate classical orchestrations reminiscent of the film musicals from the 1930s-1950s.  As on most of her albums, she tweaks her sound and musical partners, here working with producer Frederik Thaae. There is a sauciness to her lyrics, which even go so far as describing lunch breaks in toilets. All is not a lark. Nash seeks to exorcize personal demons on “Vampyre” and “My Bile '' is a bracing assessment of a broken relationship. 9 Sad Symphonies may have a bucolic surface, but the singer-songwriter ventures down dark pathways where stars of the Silver Screen would have likely feared to go.

Christian Carey

Occulta Veritas — Irreducible Fear of the Sublime (I, Voidhanger)

Occulta Veritas plays an avant-garde variety of black metal, long on complexity and idiosyncratic compositional sensibilities. It’s abrasive and disorienting, and not especially fun to listen to — which yes, that’s the point, but there’s a huge amount of this sort of thing circulating through the metal underground at any given point, and deliberately distancing music from listeners’ parameters for pleasure can be a tough prospect in that oversaturated context. For this reviewer, the record’s engagement with the theoretical concepts of Jacques Lacan (big-deal psychoanalyst, post-structural Daddy and important player in France’s academic politics of the mid-20th century) helps Irreducible Fear of the Sublime stand out. It’s pretty great that one of the songs is called “Metonimia,” since Lacan’s projection of metonymy along a diachronic axis of spatio-temporal relations fits the music’s tortured snarls and chaotic, off-kilter arrangements. The utterances want to go somewhere, but the structures those utterances are trapped in make meaningful progress a near impossibility. It would be even better to have a lyric sheet, to get more than just the tantalizing engagements with Lacan provided in song titles (“The Mirror Stage,” “Bound to Incompleteness” and so on). There’s an overheated quality to the record that’s additionally compelling: This is your brain; this is your brain on Lacan. But it would be useful to know what specific ideas accompany specific sounds and turns in the music’s syntax. Or is it all just sound and fury, signifying nothing?

Jonathan Shaw

J. Pavone String Ensemble

Reverse Bloom by Jessica Pavone

The current edition of Jessia Pavone’s String Ensemble is reduced to essentials. There are just three players including Pavone, who plays viola, Aimée Niemann on violin, and Abby Swidler switching between those two instruments. The language is likewise paired down on Reverse Bloom. The first two pieces (of four) emphasize long tones that hiss and sigh at a deliberate pace, evoking an uneasy state. “Obstructed Current” pushes against the prevailing vibe with jolting, energetic phrases that move joltingly out of synch. The closing piece, “Embers Slumber,” likewise explores contrasting elements, which resolve by settling into a deliberate, belly-breathing rhythm. The album charts a course towards a grounded state that’s not so much a happy ending as a sonic enactment of the honest word that gets you through.

Bill Meyer

Keith Rowe / Gerard Lebik — Dry Mountain (Inexhaustible Editions)

Dry Mountain by Keith Rowe / Gerard Lebik

Despite having his name on the spine, Keith Rowe did not play on this record. However, he did originate the process of sound (re)imagining that it presents, and his cover image of a wiggling digit raises the question — how deep does a fingerprint go? The score of Dry Mountain originated from the imprint Rowe’s gear left on a sheet of paper. Rowe and Gerard Lebik interpreted that score and then handed a recording of their performance to three visual artists, who created their own scores based on what they heard. These scores were then played by the group of electronics, string, and percussion players heard on this album while listeners drew responses to the music, which they then handed to the musicians, who played them on the spot. The further you get from the first piece heard, the further the music gets from Rowe’s sound world; in a reversal of Alvin Lucier’s I Am Sitting In A Room, the music gets segmented and defined.

Bill Meyer

D. Sablu — No True Silence  (Yes We Cannibal)

No True Silence by D.SABLU

D. Sablu is a New Orleans punk lifer, late of Casual Burns and Feverish, but forced (or inspired or motivated) by COVID to strike out on his own.  No True Silence is Sablu’s first full-length, and it’s a killer, a slaughterhouse frenzy of punk /garage/ hardcore and a little metal, all chopped up with chainsaws and spraying all over the walls.  Indeed, you’ll have to stand well back from the player when you first put the record on, because it leads with “Bomber Stomp,” a two-minute assault of lumbering, heavy punk that sways noticeably as it comes down on the ones and twos.  Sablu lets off a howl near the end that raises the hairs on my neck, because it’s so sulfurous and tortured.  “69 Forever” lights a new wave hook on fire with a blowtorch; it’s catchy as hell but blows you back with sheer volume and aggression.  The brief “World Peace” is pure, adrenalized chaos, drums galloping wildly, guitars flaring, bass buzzing and Sablu screaming “World pee-eeea-eace!” like a banshee.  Fun stuff.  Turn it up.

Jennifer Kelly

Mark Sims — Take Me Faster (Carousel Horse Records, Old 3-C Label Group, Anyway)

Take Me Faster by Mark Sims

Deindustrialization has hollowed out the Midwest’s economy, leaving shuttered factories and empty main streets all across the central American states.  Mark Sims, a bricklayer when he’s not performing, sings with the soft, wry melancholy of a man left behind by tectonic shifts, finding solace in well-turned melodies and plain-spoken turns of phrase.  It was fashionable half a decade ago to interview Ohioans in diners about their economic circumstances; Take Me Faster provides the same sort of snapshot of dislocation and disappearing opportunity.

For instance, in “Hold On To Me,” the narrator is driving long-distance to a job somewhere, trying to find a song on the radio and thinking about home.   “Money comes and goes so quickly/I could work a million hours/and still be broke when I die,” Sims confides, against a radiant lattice of picking. The song is unassuming, and kind of perfect, a distillation of the struggle to stay connected and human in a low-wage high-uncertainty economy.

The songs are simply arranged, a mesh of Sims’ dusky, resonant voice and acoustic guitar, mostly, with a little synth in the background for texture.  And yet, this is more than enough, as on the haunting “I’m Always by Your Side,” where Sims’  voice lifts up through the sadness, fluttering soulfully in the upper registers before drifting back to earth.  These songs don’t pull any tricks or do any somersaults, but they’re satisfying all the same. 

Jennifer Kelly

Jason Stein / Marilyn Crispell / Damon Smith / Adam Shead — Spi-raling Horn (Balance Point Acoustics/Irritable Mystic)

spi-raling horn by Jason Stein, Marilyn Crispell, Damon Smith, Adam Shead

The trio of Shead, Stein, and Smith first convened with the former two’s duo shared a bill with Smith. They recognized in each other a common aesthetic intent, a shared wish to improvise within a particular set of parameters; there’s no predetermined material, but a collective intention not to be confined to jazz. They’ve all listened closely to the great 20th century European free improvisers, and part of what they’ve taken from them is an intent to fashion their own language. There’s no soloing here, although occasionally someone will drop out if that’s what the music requires. And when they invite a fourth musician into the action, they participate as an equal contributor, not a featured guest. Marilyn Crispell’s associations with musicians as disparate as Barry Guy, Anthony Braxton and Joe Lovano reveal her to be an artist similarly concerned with fluent exchange, not ego-boosting display. But she’s also a stern bringer of velocity and complexity on this recording, which is the studio half of a single brief encounter which took place in Chicago in the middle of 2023. Dense assertion, abrasive texture, and bursting co-existence cohere into a seven-part sequence of collaborative invention.

Bill Meyer

SUSS — Birds & Beasts (Northern Spy)

Birds & Beasts by SUSS

Gorgeous hovering tones of pedal steel, guitar (with e bow), keyboards and synths coalesce in these cuts, each a glowing, vibrating meditation on the beauty and fragility of the natural world.  SUSS, from New York City, explores many of the same haunted textures as Chuck Johnson and Pan*American, letting sustained notes linger in shimmering layers of slow-moving sound.  “Overstory” encases picked acoustic notes in a translucent amber of pedal steel arcs and violin, letting the sound grow as slowly—and as enormously—as old growth forest.  “Flight” follows a more pronounced rhythm than other cuts, its steady pulse of strumming beating like wings on a long trip south.  The disc is not all sunshine, however.  “Prey” lurks in ominous buzzes and hums of feedback, building threat into dark-toned dissonance and animal screeches into wails of guitar.  The long closer, “Migration,” pulls taut with anticipation, its beat like a metronome, its melody unfurling in the wheeze of harmonica and the shifting twang of pedal steel.  SUSS often gets tagged as cosmic country, but which country?  Unearthly, luminous and beautiful. 

Jennifer Kelly

Their Divine Nerve — Return of the Lamb (Staalplaat)

The Return of the Lamb by Their Divine Nerve

Dmytro Fedorenko and Jeff Surak have been collaborating for about 20 years now, but this first album as Their Divine Nerve appears to be the first time the self-described “Ukrainian-American noise duo” have collaborated on record at length. But right from the churning, thumping 14+ minute opener “The Infinity Book” here it’s clear that their long association has led to a certain sympatico comfort with each other. Whether on the more overtly aggressive shredding (not guitar riffs, actual shredding) of “Glowing Skulls” or the more pensive, droning likes of “Dignityphobia,” here the pair have arranged a rich, expansive (71 minutes on CD, plus about another half hour in bonus material on digital) feast for anyone looking to add some variety to their noise diet. By the time the CD thunders and shudders to a half with “Civilization Was Never Civilized” the listener may not know anything more about the titular lamb, but it’s clear its return is momentous indeed.

Ian Mathers

Various Artists — Congo Funk: Sound Madness From The Shores Of The Mighty Congo River (Kinshasa/Brazzaville 1969-1982) (Analog Africa)

Congo Funk! - Sound Madness From The Shores Of The Mighty Congo River (Kinshasa/Brazzaville 1969-1982) (Analog Africa No. 38) by Analog Africa

Mobutu Sese Seko was a murderous tyrant, but he changed African music forever when he invited James Brown to play Zaire 74,  the three-day musical festival put on alongside George Forman and Muhammed Ali’s epic Rumble in the Jungle.  American funk transformed an already vibrant musical scene like a chemical catalyst setting off an explosion of electrified, psychedelic soul in Kinshasa and Brazzaville.  Congo Funk! collects 14 incendiary cuts from the 1970s and 1980s — culling from an original haul of over 2000 sounds — not a dud in the bunch and more than a couple of revelations.  M.B.T’s eponymous “M.B.T.’s Sound” is one of the best on this two-disc set, all brassy swagger and intricate polyrhythmic percussion, as is Orchestre National du Congo’s full-throated celebration “Ah Congo!” with its wild call and response, feral sax play and unhinged drumming.  Lolo et L'Orchestre O.K. Jazz’s “Lolo Soulfire,” sets up a Stax-like groove and lives in it, slouching and swaggering like Booker T in a fever.  Fire.

Jennifer Kelly

Ricki Weidenhof — Church (We Be Friends)

Church by Ricki Weidenhof

A member of Pittsburgh avant-collagists Sneeze Awfull, Ricki Weidenhof examines a life of religious ambivalence and search for identity on their solo album Church. Working through a range of styles that illustrate and amplify those themes, Weidenhof produces an emotionally rich and sometimes challenging fractal mosaic. The wonderfully titled suite “Raptured in Formal Violence” contrasts liturgical solemnity and a babel of religious voices with jittering house to capture that mixture of dread and ecstasy the Church so often induces. At the other of the scale “Dreary Field” is an Arthur Russell inspired idyll of acoustic guitar and cello as Weidenhof singsof the past “I finished that game of hide and seek long ago/Only it was still at play/I remember the last place I had hidden.” “Extinction Meditation” begins in a similar vein, the religious and personal entwined with vivid imagery, before a chaos of multi-tracked vocals, distorted beats, and razor strings. A powerful, heartfelt record that deserves a wide audience.

Andrew Forell

Wormed — Omegon (Season of Mist)

OMEGON by Wormed

It’s hard to say anything meaningful about Wormed — pretty much everything about the band is absurd, or at least verging on it. To identify some key elements of the absurdity: the “vocals” of Jose Luis Rey Sanchez (appearing on Omegon, as always, under the appropriately throaty appellation Phlegeton — Sanchez is likely referring to the mythic river, but all I can think of is phlegm…), for whom the unappetizing term “throat fart” might have been coined; the sheer nuttiness of the band’s tech death wankery, which the band has actually moderated a wee bit for Omegon; the fact that Wormed have been at it since 1999, mostly developing a continuous narrative of a fictional cosmos, full of conflict among evil extraterrestrial forces, multiple timelines and a protagonist named Krigshu (some song titles from this record are indicative: “Aetheric Transdimensionalization,” “Gravitational Servo Matrix,” “Virtual Teratogensis”). You figure it out. Beyond the music — more tech than slam, but still seeking some sort of apotheosis of that quality death metal freaks name “brutality” — what’s most engaging about Wormed is the band’s ability to sustain the absurdity and to seem absolute serious about it. Maybe that makes the Spanish band especially well-suited to our times. Or maybe we just haven’t gotten the joke yet.

Jonathan Shaw

[stephaniebarbeh]

Dennis Callaci made this great trailer for my new book, JOURNEY TO MERVEILLEUX CITY coming out in November with Picture Show Press.

[avaliveradio]

Nima Kazerouni’s new single ‘Never Enough’ is Pop music for our time

Nima Kazerouni’s new single ‘Never Enough’ has a lush feel with soft warm vocal layered over beautiful flowing synths and a mix of analogue instruments.

The first thing that caught my attention was the art work on the single. I love the dreamy style with really beautiful yet interesting details that are important to the feel of this project. The art incorporates heart, nature, bounty and abundance with life themes that are effectively expressed.

The singer adds variety to the single with a more empathetic tone in areas that build the song to add interest to the flow. There is a classic nostalgic quality to the sound that seems to bring comfort and calm as you listen.

Pop music is a reflection of the times and how we feel about it, which is why it continues to be relevant. This is especially applicable with regards to technology. By incorporating the use of technology, the songwriter has created a single that’s well fitted to where Pop music is today. I really enjoyed the flow of this single and hope to enjoy more.

Music Review by Jacqueline Jax 

Nima Kazerouni -Never Enough

Genre: - Indie Rock / Dream Pop Vibe: Sad and epic Located in:  Los Angeles Sounds like: Morrissey, Billy Bragg Release Date: Feb 10th 2023

Listen on Spotify

This single is featured on our Pop Chart and Playlist.

Pop music is a reflection of the world around us so things happening right now will always show up in the themes and direction of pop music ahead. Our Pop music chart is a heavily curated feed of new pop artists who produce music that mirrors our times. (here)

Nima Kazerouni is a Los Angeles based multi-instrumental artist

Nima Kazerouni established the dream punk band ‘So Many Wizards.’

From the start of the pandemic, Kazerouni concentrated much of his time working on a collection of songs and doing what he knew best; recording layers of melodies and counter-melodies with the arsenal of synths and analogue instruments he’s collected over the years. The result is a lush debut solo EP that touches on his life as a dad of three little ones amidst the precarious modern world that we all find ourselves navigating through.

The eponymous set was recorded at his home studio and mastered by Timothy Stollenwerk (Stereophonic Mastering).  He teamed up with several seasoned artists to bring the EP to life.

Kazerouni recently explained to Week In Pop that “The transition back into the bedroom recordings and writing was caused equally by two strong forces. The first was the pandemic but this occurred in conjunction with the new found duties of having a one year old as well as at the time, my seven year old daughter.

Amidst family life and work at home protocols, I carved out segments to continue my passion of writing/recording but finding time and energy was a struggle. Sixteen months later and in the center of the pandemic in 2021, my baby boy Roman was born. Truly children are the ultimate gifts/creations of the universe but I knew then more than ever I had to be so much more dedicated and self-disciplined and to ultimately make the writing and recording process as streamlined as possible.”

“What is striking to me about Kazerouni and the projects he is involved in is his unique style of singing, his twist of a phrase and his lack in this day and age of adding digital whip cream all over everything.” – Dennis Callaci (Shrimper/KSPC)

“Nima rises from the chaos and worldwide wreckages of recent years with something that is composed with the deepest degrees of sincerities.” – Week In Pop Video link: https://youtu.be/f3HveAWJP1U

Social Links & Website: www.Instagram.com/somanywizards

https://nimakazerouni.bandcamp.com

[notanotherbookreview]

I found these books entertaining in the lit sense. I was moved, challenged and really amused. Also a surprise how complete they were in 45 pages.

[beginningspod]

It's time for Beginnings, the podcast where writer and performer Andy Beckerman talks to the comedians, writers, filmmakers and musicians he admires about their earliest creative experiences and the numerous ways in which a creative life can unfold.

On today's episode I talk to musician Dennis Callaci. Raised in Upland, California, Dennis has bounced around Southern California his entire life. He runs the legendary indie record label Shrimper, noted for bringing forth the earliest recordings from Amps For Christ, Woods, Franklin Bruno, Lou Barlow's Sentridoh, The Mountain Goats, Dump, and a few hundred other releases over the course of the last thirty years. He is also in the band Refrigerator who have released twelve records over those thirty years, as well as solo records by Callaci & collaborations with John Davis, The Debts, and Simon Joyner. Dennis' latest project, 100 Cassettes, which is a quasi-memoir based on his installation at the dA Center for The Arts, was just published in February by Pelekinesis.

I'm on Twitter here and you can get the show with:

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[buttererer]

PASTE - Hurry Home (1995)

[the-daily-goat]

Daily Goat #019: Within You Without You Wild Palm City - Back to the Egg, Asshole

"I had moved to Norwalk [California], where I was living on the grounds of a hospital. My friends were all back in Claremont, and they had met this guy named Dennis Callaci, who was trying to start this label. He was putting together a Beatles tribute tape, and I told him I couldn't play a Beatles song, but he said, "Just give me one of your songs and we'll give it a Beatles title." So I gave him one he called "Within You Without You" and he put it on there." - John Darnielle

I see five fingers on each hand I see only as far as my arms can stretch After that it all gets kinda blurry

I see the air compressor vent where it rises Up from the hot ground, but I'm not afraid I see what's coming through It's you, only it's bigger and better and brighter

I got the sofa set up right here I got a room, a room full of sand Open up your mouth and buddy, you'll wish that you hadn't

I feel the new day coming on strong I see Cindy and she's talking up a storm I remember her, and I see who she's bringing It's you, only it's bigger and thinner and wider

I touch the leaves of the plant next to me They're thicker than they were the last time I touched them but it Curls quickly around my hand There are stars up there even when you can't see them I'll tell you something that really bothers me How are we supposed to get anything done With those stars casting shadows that look just like spiders Yeah it's you, but this time you're coiled up much tighter

[bestreasonstowriterecordreviews]

“Franklin Bruno…the kind of very disciplined and productive guy who writes three songs before breakfast…classic pop…”


“Lou Barlow…the music is cathartic in quite the opposite of the usual way…Sebadoh/Sentridoh’s music is so introverted that it’s more like they’re having the catharsis and you’re listening in sympathy.” 


BRUNO/BARLOW cassette reviews by BOB BANNISTER


ON SITE #10 May 1991 (pages 31-32) BOB BANNISTER, Editor

Previously on Fuckin’ Record Reviews…

Bob Bannister continues to be an encyclopedic source of approachable and discerning criticism at Goodreads (and other places), where he reviews more books in a single year than the rest of us will ever hold in our hands again. 
Bob was also the guitar and songwriting kingpin in FIRE IN THE KITCHEN, conjured outré psych as TONO-BUNGAY, plays guitar in P.G. SIX and ESCAPE BY OSTRICH with former members of The SCENE IS NOW and is currently working with the indomitable ROSE THOMAS BANNISTER.

Seems there are a lot bands named Fire In The Kitchen in the world. Bob’s FITK was a NYC fixture in the late 80’s and early 90’s, a great one at that, fronted by Bob and drummer Robert Dennis, who, as partially noted above, continue to play together in the 20teens in Escape By Ostrich and The Scene Is Now, as well as others.

FIRE IN THE KITCHEN review by Gerard Cosloy from page 22 of Conflict 51 (Fall 1990): “If Fire In The Kitchen came in at the tail end of new wave, they’d be as popular as, oh, say the Rumour. If they held their breath for five years, they’d be twice as big…Oh, almost forgot, Television, MX-80 Sound, Slovenly, Hate Dogs (I hope this looks nice in a press kit).” 

FRANKLIN BRUNO! The man lives in Queens, NY and is still working his excellent craft in 2020 with The HUMAN HEARTS. 

The band’s most recent long player seems to be Another (2012), although Bruno has certainly performed more recent compositions since then. He details his daily process here (updated as of 4/2/20!)

Bruno also operates a detailed website chronicling his work since the mid-1980s.

Clearly Franklin Bruno has committed himself to many worthy endeavors during the past 35+ years, including writing one of those 33 1/3 books for Elvis Costello’s Armed Forces!

LOU BARLOW! Well, we all know Lou’s been pretty active with the resurrected Dinosaur, jr since the mid 00s, as well as a reconstituted Sebadoh. 

His stand alone website loobiecore still exists, although it’s hard to know if it’s been updated since 2004. 

But who needs stand alone sites when you got a Sebadoh Instagram?

Lou also records solo records for Joyful Noise Recordings, with lotsa swell swag there too.

Lou at bandcamp.

Some more recent and excellent Shrimper Records releases (Refrigerator, Shrimper proprietor Dennis Callaci, Simon Joyner, et al) continue to be  distributed by Grapefruit.   

It’s great to know these three men - Bannister, Bruno, and Barlow - are still around and making great contributions to our weird and freaked out world in 2020.

[onemountaingoatssongaday]

Wild Palm City

I feel the new day coming on strong I see Cindy and she's talking up a storm I remember her, and I see who she's bringing It's you, only it's bigger and thinner and wider

I touch the leaves of the plant next to me They're thicker than they were the last time I touched them but it Curls quickly around my hand There are stars up there even when you can't see them I'll tell you something that really bothers me How are we supposed to get anything done With those stars casting shadows that look just like spiders Yeah it's you, but this time you're coiled up much tighter

from Back to the Egg, Asshole (1991)

"I had moved to Norwalk [California], where I was living on the grounds of a hospital. My friends were all back in Claremont, and they had met this guy named Dennis Callaci, who was trying to start this label. He was putting together a Beatles tribute tape, and I told him I couldn't play a Beatles song, but he said, "Just give me one of your songs and we'll give it a Beatles title." So I gave him one he called "Within You Without You" and he put it on there." 

- 2011 SPIN interview

[wendellbartonn]

Dennis Callaci (Shrimper/Refrigerator) preps new LP & book – listen to "Scoreless"

Dennis Callaci, of band Refrigerator and Shrimper Records, will release his third solo album, The Dead of the Day, on February 14...

Continue reading…

Dennis Callaci (Shrimper/Refrigerator) preps new LP & book – listen to "Scoreless" published first on https://soundwiz.weebly.com/

[dustedmagazine]

Dust Volume 6, Number 5

Courtney Marie Andrews

The lockdown continues, and live music has disappeared, replaced by a somewhat antiseptic and unsatisfying spate of live streamed shows mostly one person with a guitar on the couch in their living room.  We salute the courage and the effort but miss bands and audiences and even the chatter drifting in from the bar area.  In the meantime, at least for now, there are still lots of new records vying for our attention.  We present this Dust to catch up with some of them.  It’s an ecletic survey of contemporary classical, vengeful hip hop, psyche, jazz, folk and metal artists, all continuing to try to navigate a very difficult period.  Our writers this time include many of the usual suspects, Bill Meyer, Ray Garraty, Jonathan Shaw, Andrew Forell, Tim Clarke, Jennifer Kelly, Tobias Carroll and Patrick Masterson.  

a•pe•ri•od•ic—For (New Focus Recordings)

for a•pe•ri•od•ic by a•pe•ri•od•ic

Silence is a rhythm, too, and a•pe•ri•od•ic dances to it repeatedly throughout their second recording. The Chicago-based ensemble has traversed the new music continuum, performing music by composers from Peter Ablinger to Christian Wolff. Sometimes that silence isn’t quite what you want to hear — the COVID-19 pandemic cut short its tenth anniversary spring season one concert too soon — but it proves to be rich loam from which to grow music on this CD. All four of its pieces were composed specifically for the group by individuals who recognize the merit of non-imposing sounds. That knowledge derives in part from the fact that three of the composers also perform with the group, but also from their long-standing engagement with post-Cage-ian and Wandelweiser material. Director and pianist Nomi Epstein’s descriptively entitled “Combine, Juxtapose, Delayed Overlap” feels like a ceremony intermittently perceived through an opening and closing door. Billie Howard’s “Roll” tucks the composer’s whispering violin behind muted French horn and voice, wringing intensity from the effort one must apply to following its retreating sonorities. Vocalist Kenn Klumpf’s “Triadic Expansions (2)” moves in the other direction, sprouting ivy-like from the slenderest branches of sound. By comparison, Michael Pisaro’s stately “festhalten/loslassen” is a veritable riot of unwinding tonal colors. As the decade ticks towards year eleven, rest assured that a•pe•ri•od•ic is searching for the next promising idea.

Bill Meyer

 Agallah — Fuck You The Album (Propain Campain)

Fuck You The Album by Agallah

This is a personal vendetta album. After more than 25 years in the game, Agallah has got to settle the score against the whole world. To say he just has a chip on his shoulder would an understatement. Thirteen songs of pure hate with the title quite properly reflecting its content. In his fight, the rapper strips down all the artistry, including the production. Known for making beats for other hip hop acts, Agallah here not only uses barely serviceable beats, he doesn’t even makes pretense he needs beats. Almost all the tracks work as a capellas. His gruffy voice and arrogant flow don’t need sonic support. And what support can you expect from the world full of phonies, liars, actors, pretenders, cowards and fair weather friends? “Stop pretending, my career is not ending,” he almost screams on “Telling Lies To Me.” If this CD feels like a dinosaur in 2020, then it says that it is not something wrong with this album but with the world.

Ray Garraty

 Courtney Marie Andrews — “Burlap String” single (Fat Possum)

Old Flowers by Courtney Marie Andrews

As the eponymous song of 2018’s May Your Kindness Remain amply demonstrated, Courtney Marie Andrews’ pipes are not to be fucked with. But while that was perhaps the most vivid depiction yet of her abilities, the Phoenix native’s delivery can be just as powerful on a muzzle. Such has been her approach thus far with what we’ve heard from Old Flowers, originally slated for an early June release but since pushed back to July (or beyond, who knows). The post-breakup lyrical territory was initially revealed with first single “If I Told,” but it’s the gently loping “Burlap String” I’ve had on repeat for much of the past month. Ever ended a relationship with someone and regretted it? Lush piano and a sighing slide guitar tell you Courtney has without her ever having to utter a word, and much of the song is an illustration of the internal conflict that lingers long after you’ve made the call. I’m inclined to write out the whole second verse here, but it’s the end of the third that lingers as Andrews evokes barely holding back tears: There’s no replacing someone like you. That ensuing pause runs bone-deep, its implication clear — no amount of Mary Oliver can save you from yourself.

Patrick Masterson

 Dennis Callaci — The Dead of the Day (Shrimper Records)

Some albums could be said to hum. In the case of the latest from Dennis Callaci, that’s meant literally: many of the songs on his new album The Dead of the Day feature warm clouds of feedback or droning organ notes. It’s a companion piece to his recent book 100 Cassettes, which features thoughts on musical icons throughout the year. This album’s focus is more insular: some of the songs have a drifting, improvised feel to them. But Callaci also taps into some terrifically subdued songwriting veins here — “Broadway Blues Pt. II” recalls the haunted dub-folk of Souled American, and Franklin Bruno’s piano lends a propulsive dimension to the ruminative title track. And on “Scoreless,” Callaci teams with his Refrigerator bandmate (and brother) Allen Callaci for a song that slowly builds from acoustic foundations to something modestly grandiose. Contrary to what its title might suggest, this album feels very much like a document of one man’s life.  

Tobias Carroll

 Cameron / Carter / Håker Flaten — Tau Ceti (Astral Spirits)

Tau Ceti by Cameron / Carter / Håker Flaten

Tau Ceti is a planet that is hypothesized to be similar enough to Earth that it could potentially support similar life forms. The three musicians that recorded this tape may come not come from the same system, but they fall into a harmonious orbit around a common circumstance — they were all in the same swanky studio, Halversonics, on a particular winter day in early 2019. One supposes that whatever they were rotating, they move towards the source of heat, since Tau Ceti builds slowly from chill acoustic exploration to a fuzzed-out solar flare. As they progress, abstraction burns away and velocity increases. It’s a gas to hear Ingebrigt Håker Flaten and Lisa Cameron lock in behind Tom Carter’s increasingly gritty sound-bursts.

Bill Meyer  

 Tim Daisy — Sereno (Relay)

Tim Daisy - Sereno :: music for marimba, turntables and percussion (relay 028) by Tim Daisy

Sometimes the timing of even the most tuned-in drummer is foiled by external circumstances. Sereno was supposed to signal the end of an intense phase of solo practice by Tim Daisy. His intentions for 2020 included making an album of duets and writing music for two ensembles. But at press time he, like everyone else, is hunkered down with his family, and everything he had planned is on hold.  

Daisy’s stint as a primarily solo artist coincided with a reconsideration of identity; he wasn’t just a drummer, but a multi-instrumentalist and an orchestrator of electro-acoustic sound. Sereno is split between three elegiac marimba solos that showcase Daisy’s instinct for deliberate melodic development and five much denser constructions for imprecisely tuned radios, playing and skipping records, and Daisy’s strategically reflective drumming. If this record is the only new music that Daisy puts out this year, it leaves us with plenty to think about.

Bill Meyer

  Kaja Draksler & Terrie Ex — The Swim (Terp)

On the surface, this looks like quite the odd couple. Terrie Ex Is a Dutch electric guitarist in his mid-60s who still goes by his punk rock name. He’s a ferocious improviser whose scrabbling instrumental attack incurs intensity from any ensemble that doesn’t want to get bowled over, and he knows more Ethiopian tunes by heart than anyone on your block. Kaja Draksler is a Slovenian pianist exactly half his age whose recent projects include a fast-paced, idiosyncratically balanced trio with Petter Eldh and Christian Lillinger, and an octet for which she sets Robert Frost poems to a combination of chanson, Baroque chamber music, and thorny free improvisation. But neither got where they are by letting fear deter them from a musical challenge, and both of them have a fine awareness that one way of understanding their respective instruments is that they are pieces of wood with wires attached. Given that common understanding of music as a combination of coexisting textures and assertive actions, they work together quite well on this CD, which documents a performance that took place at London’s Café Oto in 2018. Scrape meets sigh, jagged fish-hook pluck meets sparse wire-damped drizzle, instinct meets intuition, and when the disc is done, it’ll seem quite sensible to dive back in and swim the whole length in reverse.

Bill Meyer  

 Errant — S/T EP (Manatee Rampage Recordings)

errant by errant

Errant is the one-woman project of Rae Amitay. Some listeners of metal music may be familiar with Amitay’s work, as vocalist for death-grind-hybridists Immortal Bird and as drummer for the folk-metal act Thrawsunblat. For Errant, Amitay has created songs and sounds that have little in common with those other bands’ aesthetic extremities. “The Amorphic Burden” may prompt you to recall the melodic black metal that Ludicra was making toward the end of that band’s storied run, or the sludgy drama of Agrimonia’s most recent record. In any case, Errant’s sound skews toward more luminescent atmospheres. Production values are largely pristine; Amitay wants you to hear clearly every string and cymbal strike. It makes sense. She plays a bunch of instruments well, and that’s part of the point: that one woman is producing all the sounds, and all the affect. She ends the EP with a cover of Failure’s “Saturday Savior,” and it’s the least interesting thing on the record. But even there, she presents the listener with something worth hearing. Her clean vocals are lovely, disarmingly so. What may be most impressive about this early iteration of Errant is the extent of Amitay’s talents, and how those talents allow her to encroach on the hyper-masculine territory of the “one-man” act.

Jonathan Shaw  

 Field Works — Ultrasonic (Temporary Residence)

Ultrasonic by Field Works

Stuart Hyatt’s latest compilation in the Field Works series is an absolute beauty — and timely given it’s being released during a pandemic whose origins may be linked to bats. The field recordings that the contributors used to create the music on Ultrasonic come from the echolocation of bats, and the approaches tend towards rhythmic or atmospheric. At the rhythmic end of the spectrum we have Eluvium’s majestic opener “Dusk Tempi,” akin to his work on Talk Amongst the Trees. Mary Lattimore’s glimmering harp patterns are fitting accompaniment to the chittering bat sounds on “Silver Secrets.” And Kelly Moran’s prepared piano on “Sodalis” sends the listener down a hall of mirrors, chased by gorgeous bass tones. At the more abstract, atmospheric end of the spectrum we have Jefre Cantu-Ledesma’s radiant “Night Swimming.” Christina Vantzou blurs the line between the sounds of modular synthesis and bat sonar on “Music for a Room with Vaulted Ceiling.” And on Sarah Davachi’s “Marion,” the listener is immersed in a luminous halo of nocturnal overtones. Wherever the artists venture, this is a varied yet consistently evocative collection.

Tim Clarke  

 FMB DZ — The Gift 3 (Fast Money Boyz / EMPIRE)

The Gift 3 was initially set to be released in December 2019 but was postponed until now. DZ’s “Merry Christmas, pussies!” on one of the tracks doesn’t sound so odd, though, because the whole world has plunged into a constant holiday. The new album continues two trends. It carries on the “ape” theme from the previous album Ape Season. “Ape Activities,” “Keep It on Me” and “No Features” are the grittiest tracks from a disc where the prevalent mood is a sick worry. DZ made it out of the hood but had to be on the lookout as the enemies are out to get him. The other trend is that The Gift 3 continues the ideas of The Gift series. The songs have a usual verse-hook structure, are poppier and more relaxed than on Ape Season. DZ, thankfully, doesn’t try to sing anymore but hires some singers on choruses. The hardest track here is “High Speed” with Rio Da Yung Og where Detroit/Flint duo spit vicious lines.

Ray Garraty

  Hala — Red Herring (Cinematic)

Detroit multi-instrumentalist Ian Ruhala wears his heart dripping from his sleeve on “Red Herring” his latest record as Hala. Skipping from the yacht rock of “Making Me Nervous” to the country blues of “True Colors” via power pop, The Kinks and Tom Petty, Ruhala manages to create a thread with deceptively simple melodies and the sincerity of his delivery.  There’s more than a touch of Kevin Barnes in the voice and the delight in throwing genres at the wall to see what sticks and, like Barnes, some of it fails to adhere. The pleasure here is in the sense of eavesdropping on the process and reveling in unexpected flourishes that refuse to be ignored.  

Ruhala writes a smooth love song and isn’t afraid to turn up the guitar or address politics on standout “Lies” - “I’m eating breakfast with the fascists/Oh man they stand about ten feet tall/My mouth is bleeding at their proceedings/They get their courage through a plastic straw” It may not be Guthrie but he makes it work through a leavening wit and a mid-tempo vamp straight from the solar plexus. “Red Herring” suffers somewhat from its stylistic roaming but a fundamental big heartedness and willingness to reach makes it an enjoyable trip.  

Andrew Forell  

 Las Kellies — Suck This Tangerine (Fire)

Suck This Tangerine opens with a loose groove and a grime smeared highlife guitar line, the voice enters with ironic invitations over choppy Gang of Four chords. In the new one from Las Kellies, Argentinian duo Cecilia Kelly and Silvina Costa sling taut bass lines and slash guitars over mutant disco rhythms for 12 tracks of slinky indie dance. Drawing on elements from Leeds, London and the Bronx, Kelly and Costa add dubby space and South American humidity to their sound, to elevate the album beyond the sum of its influences.  

Kelly handles guitar and bass, wielding the former like a cross between Andy Gill and Viv Albertine and unfurling loose funky serpents with the latter. Costa swings between ESG and The Bush Tetras and incorporates an array of hand drums that deepen and enliven the rhythmic pulse. There is a palpable and joyful chemistry between the two evidenced by their easy interplay and enhanced by the production that gives clarity and elbowroom to each instrument. If the lyrics can tend toward the perfunctory, they are delivered with a winking insouciance on put downs like “Close Talker” and “Rid Of You”.  Suck This Tangerine is a worthy addition to the growing collection of feminist post-punk inspired albums we’ve been dancing to of late.  

Andrew Forell  

 Mint Mile — Ambertron (Comedy Minus One)

Ambertron by Mint Mile

Silkworm, the band, may have ended in 2005 with the death of drummer Michael Dahlquist, but its legacy of slow, gut-socking heaviness, mordant wit and muscular guitar lives on, first in Bottomless Pit and now in Tim Midyett’s new band Ambertron. Midyett’s voice and clangorous baritone guitar is instantly recognizable, of course, to anyone who loved Silkworm, but the band diverges somewhat with the pedal steel played by Justin Brown of Palliard, weaving eerily though the slow buzz and moan of “Likelihood.” Jeff Panall, from Songs:Ohio, plays the hard, heavy drums that undergird these songs, giving them structure and forward motion. Other players include Matthew Barnhart from Tre Orsi and Horward Draper from Shearwater. Greg Normal of Bitter Tears contributes a mournful bit of trumpet to “Fallen Rock,” and Chicago alt-country mainstay Kelly Hogan takes the lead in “Sang.” The music is raw and morose; even dense strings can’t quite lift the gloom in “Christmas Comes and Goes,” a song as raw as late November in Chicago. And yet there’s a sort of resilience in it, a strength that comes through persistence. “If we could only find a way to bank the time we had together,” sings Midyett in “Giving Love,” his hoarse voice full of ragged loss, his guitar raging against it all and not quite beaten down even now.

Jennifer Kelly

 Gard Nilssen’s Supersonic Orchestra — If You Listen Carefully the Music Is Yours (Odin)

If You Listen Carefully The Music Is Yours by Gard Nilssen´s Supersonic Orchestra

Perched atop his drum stool, Gard Nilssen sits where styles converge. He’s supplied the controlled boil that drives the free-bop combo Cortex, laid down some heavier beats with Bushman’s Revenge and exemplified long-form lucidity with his own trio, Acoustic Unity. In 2019, the Molde Jazz Festival recognized his versatility and forward perspective by anointing him the artist in residence. Besides showcasing his ongoing projects and accompanying heavy guests from abroad, most notably Bill Frisell, he got to put together a dream project. This 16-piece big band, which includes members of Cortex, Acoustic Unity, and the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, is it. With the assistance of co-arranger André Roligheten, Nilssen has taken some of his trio’s sturdy melodies and turned them into frameworks for boisterous but subtly colored performances. With three basses and three drummers, this could have been either a mess or an uptight game of “you first,” “no sir after you.” But the rhythm crew shifts easily between swinging unisons and refractory elaborations. Roligheten often plays two saxophones at once in smaller settings, and one suspects that he has a lot to do with the rich colors that the horns paint around the featured soloists.

Bill Meyer  

 Matthew J. Rolin — Ohio (Garden Portal)

Ohio by Matthew J. Rolin

The ghoulish image on the j-card belies the sounds encoded upon this tape. Matthew J. Rolin is a relative newcomer to the practice of acoustic guitar performance; the earliest release on his Bandcamp page was recorded in late 2017. But he’s catching on fast. Switching between six and twelve-string guitars, he serves up equal measures of ingratiating lyricism and immersive surrender to pure sound. Opener “Red Brick” slots into the former category, with a heart-tugging melody that keeps doling out turns that’ll keep you wondering where it’s going and backtracks that’ll ensure that you never feel lost. “Brooklyn Centre,” on the other hand, grows filaments of string sound out of a pool of prayer bowl resonance centering enough to make you cancel your mindfulness app subscription due to perceived lack of need. Rolin develops ideas situated between these poles over the rest of this brief set, which runs just shy of 28 minutes and definitely leaves one wanting a bit more.

Bill Meyer

 Nick Storring — My Magic Dreams Have Lost Their Spell (Orange Milk)

My Magic Dreams Have Lost Their Spell by Nick Storring

What Jim O’Rourke did for the music of Van Dyke Parks and John Fahey on Bad Timing, Nick Storring does for Roberta Flack’s on My Magic Dreams Have Lost Their Spell. The Canadian composer may not have O’Rourke’s name recognition or past membership in a very famous rock band going for him, but consider these parallels. He’s a handy with quite a few instruments, he’s an inveterate assistant to other artists across disciplinary lines, and he functions with equal commitment and fluency in a variety of genres. For this record, his first to be pressed on vinyl (albeit in miniscule numbers), Storring uses the lush string sound of Flack’s 1970s hits as a launching point for deep sonic immersions that are considerably more emotionally oblique than their inspirations’ articulations of loneliness and surrender. When he goes melodic, the cello-led tunes seem to reach for something that they never touch, and when he goes for slow-motion density, the music imparts an experience akin to watching the sort of cinematic experience where you can’t tell if you’re seeing a really slow take or the film has frozen at a single frame.

Bill Meyer

 Sunn Trio — Electric Esoterica (Twenty One Eight Two Recording Company)

Electric Esoterica by Sunn Trio

Sunn Trio, from Arizona, makes sprawling, multi-ethnic psychedelia that juxtaposes the scree and groan of heavy improvisational rock with the otherly chords and rhythms of the Middle East.  Opener “Alhiruiyn” slicks a trebly sheen over its surging, rampaging improvisations, more in the vein of Black Sun Ensemble than Cem Karaca.  But “Majoun” layers antic percussion and tone-shifting bent notes in a limber evocation of the souk.  “Roktabija The Promulgator” blasts a strident, swaggering surf riff, about as Arabic as “Miserlou” (which is, in fact, Arabic).  “Khons at Karnak” buzzes with hard rock aggression, but shimmies with belly dancing syncopation.  Because of the name, the preoccupation with non-Western cultures and the Phoenix mailing address, you might think that Sunn Trio is aligned somehow with Sun City Girls, but no.  All kinds of weirdness lurks in the desert out there, lucky for us.  

Jennifer Kelly  

 Turbo, Gunna & Young Thug — “Quarantine Clean” single (Playmakers)

Despite the subject matter’s potential (ahem) virality, “Quarantine Clean” slipped out almost unnoticed in early April and is the kind of muted performance Young Thug doesn’t get enough credit for (while, curiously, his followers often get too much derision for). For all of Thugger’s hyperfluorescent hijinx over the years that have produced earworms like, say, “That’s All” and “Wyclef Jean,” there’s another side that shows up in stuff like “The Blanguage” and “Freaky” where he lets the words do the work; that’s the subterranean sonic world we’re living in here as he opines on God’s role in the pandemic and why he’s lost so much money but still has to pay for his parents’ penthouse (which: welcome to the revolution, pal). Thug’s acolyte in slime Gunna, meanwhile, does most of the song’s heavy lifting with duties on the first verse and chorus, but it’s pretty hard to tell the two apart, such is the slippery restraint both opt to exercise here. The real star, then, is beatmaker Turbo, whose buoyant anchor melody is complemented by what sounds like a lilting flute. It’s a light touch from all parties, a mellow mood well suited to our time of collective party-eschewing shelter. Run that back in prudence.

Patrick Masterson

 Various Artists—Ten Years Gone (A Tribute to Jack Rose) (Tompkins Square)

Ten Years Gone : A Tribute to Jack Rose by Various Artists

A decade on from the too early passing of the great American Primitive/blues/raga player Jack Rose, Arborea’s Buck Curran gathers friends, collaborators and younger artists inspired by Rose for a gorgeous tribute to the master. Mike Gangloff, who played with Rose in Pelt and Black Twig Pickers, leads off with a plaintive, sepia-toned fiddle lament (“The Other Side of Catawbwa”), while next generation experimental droner Prana Crafter closes with an expansive, space folk reverie (“High Country Dynamo”). In between, old friends like Sir Richard Bishop evoke Rose’s full-blown orchestral guitar playing (“By Any Other Name”) while young pickers like Matt Sowell take up the trail forged by Dr. Ragtime. Isasa from Spain and Paulo Laboule Novellino from Italy attest to Rose’s global appeal. It’s mostly guitar, but not entirely; Helena Espvall from Espers contributes a brooding, reverberant “Alcantara” on cello. Curran’s own “Greenfields of America (Spiritual for Jack Rose)” is slow and thoughtful, letting long bent notes ring out with liquid clarity; it’s a hymn and a prayer and a testimony to the wide influence of an artist gone too soon.  

Jennifer Kelly

 Emily Jane White — Immanent Fire (Talitres)

Immanent Fire by Emily Jane White

Emily Jane White gets tagged as a folk singer, but on this, her sixth full-length, the Oakland songwriter brings a fair amount of goth-tinged drama. Taut string arrangements and big booming drums lift “Infernal” well out of the woman-with-guitar category, and White sounds more like PJ Harvey or even Chelsea Wolfe than a sweet voiced strummer. Immanent Fire sticks, topically, to environmental concerns with track titles like “Washed Away,” “Drowned” and “Metamorphosis.” A foreboding creeps through the songs, pretty as they are, even piano lit “Dew” asks “Does poison drop like the dew?” Arrangements, by Anton Patzner, the composer, arranger and violinist of Foxtails Brigade and Judgment Day, give these cuts weight and heft, punctuating eerie melodies with thick swathes of strings, rumbling percussion and keyboards. The disc culminates in “Light” which begins in a whisper and climaxes in drum-shocked, orchestral swoon. Soothing background music it is not.

Jennifer Kelly

 Z-Ro — Quarantine: Social Distancing (1 Deep Entertainment / EMPIRE)

An unexpected seven-track EP bears an expected title from a Dirty South legend. Z-Ro’s usual topics — trust and loneliness — gain a new meaning in the time of social distancing. To keep away women who only want his money is a necessary precaution now. To be at the corner at the party is a rule for survival. Z-Ro is on his ground counting his dough alone in the house. Earlier he did it so no ‘shife’ (the title of one of the tracks) friends could rob him, now it’s just to obey quarantine rules. The first half of this EP is a bit muddled by unnecessary intros and reggae tunes but the second one hits hard. As always with Z-Ro, the hardest content takes the gentlest form (“Niggas is Hoes” especially is almost a pop song). On the final track “Life of the Party” Boosie Badazz drops by, giving his verdict on the pandemic: “Fuck Corona!”

Ray Garraty

[stephaniebarbeh]

Dennis Callaci is a musician, record producer, visual artist and writer. I talk with him about his new book.

[allbrooklynveganposts]

Dennis Callaci has run Shrimper Records since 1990, releasing records over the last 27 years by the likes of The Folk Implosion, The Mountain Goats, Herman Dune, Simon Joyner, God is My Co-Pilot, Nothing Painted Blue and more. He has also fronted the band Refrigerator for most of that time who are set to release their 11th album, High Desert Lows...

Continue reading…

[buttererer]

here’s a mellow singer-songwriter mix for the quiet fall evenings......

Tracklist__SHERRY DIAZ AND HER DEVOTED LOVERS _ SALA-ARHIMO _ ALEXANDER TUCKER _ PISCES _ DENNIS CALLACI and SIMON JOYNER _ STATIC FILMS _ LAST HARBOUR _ TINDERSTICKS _ BODUF SONGS _ CATPOWER _ BRIDGET STORM _ YO LA TENGO _ THE ASTRONAUTS _ THE VASELINES _ ALGEBRA SUICIDE _ VELVET UNDERGROUND _ KEVIN AYERS _ JOHN HOLT _ THE PLUTO WALKERS _ IKE TURNER _ LT AND THE SOULFUL DYNAMICS _ THE MOVING SIDEWALKS _ ELMORE JAMES _ CLARENCE HENRY _ BOB DYLAN _ JOHN PRINE _ THE HANDSOME FAMILY _ ELEPHANT MICAH _ 13TH FLOOR ELEVATORS

[dustedmagazine]

Jim Shepard — Heavy Action (Ever/Never)

Heavy Action by Jim Shepard

Jim Shepard was a lo-fi renaissance man—poet, musician, early home-taper, sound collagist—who inhabited the fringes of a Columbus, Ohio art rock scene, fronting bands including Vertical Slit, Phantom Limb, V-3 and Ego Summit. He lived hard and died early in October 1998, at the age of 44, leaving behind an imprint in zine articles and home recordings and memories of unhinged performances, as well as a small but influential fan base, whose members included Thurston Moore, David Bowie and Tom Lax (who wrote the liner notes for this reissue).

This three-disc box set collects songs, snippets of recordings, spoken word, answering machine messages, taped interviews and material from a couple of his bands (V-3 and a pre-official version of Ego Summit), as well as a collection of pieces about and inspired by Shepard from sometime collaborators Robert Pollard, Charles Cicirella, Nudge Squidfish, Dennis Callaci and Don Howland.

It is rather a lot of Jim Shephard at 22 tracks and also not nearly enough to make sense of the artist, who comes across as complicated, possibly misogynist (he spits the word “whore” with too much glee for my taste and remembers the girl who coaxed a band member north from Florida only as “a blonde”), enraged and powerfully creative, whether in spare, vulnerable little melodies or in full-on blasts of dissonant noise.

In his poem, “The Death of Jim Shepard,” Charles Cicirella observed, “Jim’s venom-soaked guitar requiems are as charred as his vocals are singed…His live shows were more like indoctrinations into something damp, dark and musty while also electrified throughout from this man’s integrity and sweat. Hell yes, his performances were more like an introduction to an underbelly of light and magic than a music show dealing in the politics of sex.” It is hard to improve upon this as a description of the live cuts.

You also get a sense of Jim Shepard, the artist, who is enough of a hustler to leave a couple of answering machine messages (For a label? A critic? A friend? It’s not clear) when his songs get covered by another band. But he is also enough of an anti-commercial outsider to write songs like “Tabernacle Moneygun,” which starts with the line, “Don’t call me a corporate whore and don’t point that poison pen at me.” You see him in a variety of guises – live and exposed and reading his poetry; accompanying himself with acoustic guitar; covering favorites like Van Morrison, Dylan and Gun Club, and in bands including V-3 and Ego Summit.  

Shephard had two art forms, the spoken word and the music, but they were never mutually exclusive. In cuts like “Fuck the Clock,” he riffs verbally against a Nuggets-esque r’n r backing (Mike Rep and Don Howland in an early version of Ego Summit), narrating a noire-ish drugs and drinking scenario. “He feels the burning in his belly feeds the soul parking meter that marks the passing of the time he spends in any one space, he has a lot of unpaid tickets framed on his wall,” Shepard reads, and it’s a rock song, a short story and a poem all at once. When he tells an interviewer how he got to Ohio in “The Blonde and the Body,” a noise of guitar cuts in and out of the tape recording, as if it was always there, playing in the back of his head, whatever he might be doing.

The set includes “Prom Is Coming” a song Shepard wrote with Bob Pollard, the one out of his band of collaborators who had anything like mainstream success. You hear the Pollard in it at once, the minor-key tunefulness, the absurdist poetry, the gentleness of its offhanded lyricism, but it’s a twist or two darker than most Guided by Voices tunes. Shepard could get close, but he couldn’t cross over into the kind of ingratiating rock pop that gets consumed in bulk; there was an invisible fence between him and commercial viability. You can hear it rattling around in his head in “Star Power,” where he mutters, “Star power, cancels itself out, sanded blank, it exists no more, star power is a battery that drains itself out.”  

The box set comes with in introduction by Ever/Never label head Josh Gordon, a poem by Jason Baldinger and Charles Cicirella and a long rambling essay by Tom Lax; a third disc collects works by friends and collaborators and one more disturbing cut from Shepard himself in “Loaded Gun.” Amid blistering feedback, the artist unspools a violent poetry. “You don’t hold a loaded fucking gun to your mother’s head/take it all back now, take it all back bitch,” he mouths with lacerating disdain and it is strong, bitter stuff that burns all the way down.

Jennifer Kelly

[stephaniebarbeh]

A glimpse into Dennis Callaci’s latest set of fascinating stories. Always provocative and vulnerable. Take a look.