TEENBEAT !

Five years after releasing both Snuffbox Immanence and Tune In, Turn On, Free Tibet, Ghost returned with Hypnotic Underworld, and there were some changes in the band. Cellist Hiromichi Sakamoto and percussionist Setsuko Furuya (whose marimba gave those albums such a distinct sound) are gone, replaced by a great young rhythm section of Takuyuki Moriya (bass, conta bass, cello) and Junzo Tateiwa (drums, tabla, percussion). Also, Ghost co-founder Taishi Takizawa continues as producer but rejoins the group as a musician as well (he has served only as producer since the mid-’90s). Of course, Masaki Batoh is still here, along with longtime keyboard player Kazuo Ogino and guitar hero Michio Kurihara. With a brief U.S. tour (October 2002) under its belt, the band really jelled, and with Hypnotic Underworld, Ghost have released their most expansive set yet. The four-part title track starts somewhere near the Heliocentric Worlds, with Takizawa’s sax playing over the sparest of bass figures and percussion as wisps of electronic ether float in and out. This morphs into a fuzzbass-led groove with great soprano sax that leads into a hard rock movement with a choir adding to Batoh’s vocals and an ending so surprising I’ll leave it for the listener. This epic track is followed by a glorious cover of Earth & Fire’s “Hazy Paradise.” The production here is amazing, with harpsichords, Mellotron, and sitar melting into each other and a majestic Kurihara guitar solo at the end. “Kiseichukan Nite” features a very pretty Celtic harp and recorder over a simple bass ostinato and Batoh speaking in Japanese with little washes of electronic treatment creeping in. This album is all over the place stylistically, yet it all sounds like Ghost, even with the electronic treatments and almost prog rock keyboards that hadn’t been present on their prior albums. They turn in a version of Syd Barrett’s “Dominoes” that is so completely personalized as to be virtually unrecognizable. “Piper” is a rocker featuring some blistering guitar work, and “Ganagmanag” is a classic Ghost-style instrumental trance jam, highlighted by Takizawa’s flute and amazing production work. Batoh’s vocals have never been stronger, and Ogino’s various keyboards add a new dimension to the Ghost sound. Kurihara, as mentioned, is brilliant on electric guitar. The sound achieved by Takizawa and the band is a stunning mixture of ancient acoustic, hard electric, and electronic that Jimmy Page should be envious of. Hypnotic Underworld is a new high-water mark from one of rock’s most interesting bands. Highly recommended.

Magma’s debut could be considered the birth of a subgenre, called Zeuhl, but in fact their debut is simply a good fusion album. Their music is clearly rooted in jazz, with some avant-garde and psychedelic leanings, which was not rare at those times. There are some classical influence too. Their music is diverse and they were courageous enough to release a double album in their debut, filled with long songs and apparently no song fit to be released as a single, but this becomes obvious soon, because Magma was not a band interested in doing accessible music. One of the problems of Magma music is that it is too much repetitive, but luckily this album has few repetitive moments. Highlights of the album are the opener, which is a superb jazzy song, with a good jazzy main riff, mainly piano and bass. There is a beautiful classically-inspired piano passage in it also. Aina, that has many different changes in the song and very good inspired parts, showing different moods in the song (calmness, tension, etc.). Aurae has some good acoustic moments with a very beautiful flute melody and acoustic guitar riff. The same happens in the song Nau Ektila, but this second has more avant-gardish parts that are not so inspired and then jazzy parts that are excellent in the end of the song, featuring insane bass and drums. Last song has many crazy parts. Some are interesting and some others are not so good, but overall the song is very nice too. Magma’s debut ends to be a very strong album, mainly for fans of jazz rock/fusion, with good hints of avant-garde (somewhat RIO) and classical music. Their music is varied, although rooted on jazz and just the bass and the drums are showcases, so if you want to buy one Magma album, choose this one, because it is superb and will please most of the prog fans, unlike MDK, for example, that is highly praised by some and highly hated by others.

Disco Club by Black Devil is a sinister electro-disco artifact that was issued on vinyl in at least two countries — Italy (Out), France (RCA) — during the late ’70s. Since then, it has become such a prized truffle that people have been willing to part with over 150 dollars in exchange for an original copy. Metro Area’s Morgan Geist wanted to make the release available again on his Environ label, which has been reissuing long-forgotten singles through its Unclassics series. Rephlex beat Geist to the punch. Making matters curious: around the same time, Rephlex released Kerrier District, a project from Luke Vibert that’s heavily indebted to labels like Environ and Balihu, not to mention this particular 12”. Each of this 12“‘s like-themed tracks are credited to Joachim Sherylee and Junior Claristidge, two unknown producers who were at least a couple years ahead of the disco-morphing-into-house game. None of the six tracks — with plump rhythmic elements, dense construction, and shadowy vocals as common traits — would be out of place on the Strut label’s Disco Not Disco compilations, though we are most definitely talking about disco here. As indicated by the namesake, a dark spirit is present at all times. Even if it weren’t conveyed in the ominous chords and pitch-black fallout-shelter atmosphere created by the production values, the vocals contribute plenty of unease on their own. Most of the time, they make a wordless scat (“Deedit, doodee dee deedit”), or they’re unintelligible, sounding as if the vocalists were cloaked by a thick blanket while in the recording booth. The tracks aren’t terribly different from one another; they’re more like variations of one original mix, but the entire thing remains very susceptible to full play-throughs. Anyone with a remote interest in electro-disco, whether it’s through elders Klein + M.B.O. or younger goofs like Legowelt, should find some time for this.

Classic space disco album from 1977, produced by Sauveur Malla & Pierre Alain.

Stereolab was poised for a breakthrough release with Emperor Tomato Ketchup, their fourth full-length album. Not only was their influence becoming apparent throughout alternative rock, but Mars Audiac Quintet and Music for the Amorphous Body Center indicated they were moving closer to distinct pop melodies. The group certainly hasn’t backed away from pop melodies on Emperor Tomato Ketchup, but just as their hooks are becoming catchier, they bring in more avant-garde and experimental influences, as well. Consequently, the album is Stereolab’s most complex, multi-layered record. It lacks the raw, amateurish textures of their early singles, but the music is far more ambitious, melding electronic drones and singsong melodies with string sections, slight hip-hop and dub influences, and scores of interweaving counter melodies. Even when Stereolab appears to be creating a one-chord trance, there is a lot going on beneath the surface. Furthermore, the group’s love for easy listening and pop melodies means that the music never feels cold or inaccessible. In fact, pop singles like “Cybele’s Reverie” and “The Noise of Carpet” help ease listeners into the group’s more experimental tendencies. Because of all its textures, Emperor Tomato Ketchup isn’t as immediately accessible as Mars Audiac Quintet, but it is a rich, rewarding listen.

The Residents are true avant-garde crazies. Their earliest albums (of which this is the first) have precedents in Captain Beefheart’s experimental albums, Frank Zappa’s conceptual numbers from Freak Out!, the work of Steve Reich, and the compositions of chance music tonemeister John Cage — yet the Residents’ work of this time really sounds like nothing else that exists. All of the music on this release consists of deconstructions of countless rock and non-rock styles, which are then grafted together to create chaotic, formless, seemingly haphazard numbers; the first six “songs” (including a fragment from the Nancy Sinatra hit “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’”) are strung together to form a larger entity similar in concept to the following lengthier selections. The result is a series of unique, odd, challenging numbers that are nevertheless not entirely successful. The album cover is a fierce burlesque of the Beatles’ first U.S. Capitol label release, sporting puerilely doctored photographs of the Fab Four on the front and pictures of collarless-suited sea denizens on the back (identified as Paul McCrawfish, Ringo Starfish, and the like). This is an utterly bizarre platter that may appeal to very adventurous listeners.

One of the most ambitious debuts in rock history, Freak Out! was a seminal concept album that somehow foreshadowed both art rock and punk at the same time. Its four LP sides deconstruct rock conventions right and left, eventually pushing into territory inspired by avant-garde classical composers. Yet the album is sequenced in an accessibly logical progression; the first half is dedicated to catchy, satirical pop/rock songs that question assumptions about pop music, setting the tone for the radical new directions of the second half. Opening with the nonconformist call to arms “Hungry Freaks, Daddy,” Freak Out! quickly posits the Mothers of Invention as the antithesis of teen-idol bands, often with sneering mockeries of the teen-romance songs that had long been rock’s commercial stock-in-trade. Despite his genuine emotional alienation and dissatisfaction with pop conventions, though, Frank Zappa was actually a skilled pop composer; even with the raw performances and his stinging guitar work, there’s a subtle sophistication apparent in his unorthodox arrangements and tight, unpredictable melodicism. After returning to social criticism on the first song of the second half, the perceptive Watts riot protest “Trouble Every Day,” Zappa exchanges pop song structure for experiments with musique concrète, amelodic dissonance, shifting time signatures, and studio effects. It’s the first salvo in his career-long project of synthesizing popular and art music, high and low culture; while these pieces can meander, they virtually explode the limits of what can appear on a rock album, and effectively illustrate Freak Out!’s underlying principles: acceptance of differences and free individual expression. Zappa would spend much of his career developing and exploring ideas — both musical and conceptual — first put forth here; while his myriad directions often produced more sophisticated work, Freak Out! contains at least the rudiments of almost everything that followed, and few of Zappa’s records can match its excitement over its own sense of possibility.

After a brief lull of “Feller filler,” Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 come roaring out of the gate with “A Lamb’s Lullaby,” a simultaneously frenetic yet eerie classic on a par with any of the prolific outfit’s best work, with demented falsetto vocals, free-spazz guitar, and multiple time changes. Then, to further exhibit their chameleon-like ability to shape-shift from song to song, they follow it with “Empty Cup,” the closest these endearingly eccentric nerdrockers have ever come to a pop song, with lead vocals by the band’s lone female, bassist Anne Eikelberg. And so it goes with yet more filler (cheaply recorded instrumentals that bridge the gaps between songs more than stand on their own), followed by another quintessentially quirky anthem, “Lizard’s Dream,” mathematical enough to assuage the kook contingent yet accessible enough for radio (college or community radio, that is) airplay. Other highlights include the suicide mystery “Elgin Miller,” the laser beam guitar freakout of “Brains,” and the gentle banjo-driven paean to déjà vu “Triple X.” The title of this album, if taken literally, might be an ironic reference to their previous release, The Funeral Pudding, the disappointingly lean and underwhelming follow-up to their “breakthrough” album, Strangers from the Universe. Although uneven in spots, I Hope It Lands ranks among the Thinking Fellers’ finest. And if it didn’t exactly make the band a household name, it surely pleased the band’s core constituency of Bay Area and college-circuit geekrockers. And for those it didn’t please, the band titled an agitated off-key instrumental just for them: “The Rampaging Fuckers of Anything on the Crazy Shitting Planet of the Vomit Atmosphere.”

Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 - A Lamb’s Lullaby

Head Hunters was a pivotal point in Herbie Hancock’s career, bringing him into the vanguard of jazz fusion. Hancock had pushed avant-garde boundaries on his own albums and with Miles Davis, but he had never devoted himself to the groove as he did on Head Hunters. Drawing heavily from Sly Stone, Curtis Mayfield, and James Brown, Hancock developed deeply funky, even gritty, rhythms over which he soloed on electric synthesizers, bringing the instrument to the forefront in jazz. It had all of the sensibilities of jazz, particularly in the way it wound off into long improvisations, but its rhythms were firmly planted in funk, soul, and R&B, giving it a mass appeal that made it the biggest-selling jazz album of all time (a record which was later broken). Jazz purists, of course, decried the experiments at the time, but Head Hunters still sounds fresh and vital decades after its initial release, and its genre-bending proved vastly influential on not only jazz, but funk, soul, and hip-hop.

Herbie Hancock - Watermelon Man

The Units have their debut album “Digital Stimulation” released by 415 Records. It features new versions of their previously released single sides “Warm Moving Bodies”, “Cannibals”, and “cowboy,” plus the new tracks: “High Pressure Days,” “Go,” “Mission,” “Bugboy,” “Tight Fit,” “Passion Or Patterns,” “Town By The River,” and the title track, “Digital Stimulation.” They’re unusual in San Francisco underground in that they are one of the few synthesizer bands around. While the band plays, an array of found film, slides and projections whirr away to provide a distractingly psychedelic light show. The new album is possibly one of the most cheaply recorded albums in West coast history. The band had a limited budget to work on when they signed with 415 Records. They seemed to think they’d need about a hundred hours of studio time to record the LP and at $75-$200 an hour that adds up fast. By chance that happened to have a friend who was working with a studio that had just installed a 16 track deck they needed to learn to work. The band could use the facility for only $19 an hour! The total recording session took about two months and now the results are in the stores. The germ of the band is Scott Ryser who began playing synth on stage in 1973 when he was part of a glitter band called Ace Jet. Also in the Units you’ll find bass synthesizer player Rachel Webber and drummer Brad Saunders. Saunders actually traveled to Africa to study percussive interests and tries to work in unusual beats and patterns where he can. He told a BAM reporter that, “…when you listen to recordings of African music, you can tell that the people are happy. I think that’s important. The Units have more of a party, folksy attitude. It’s music for the whole person, not just for the brain.” Since this album was recorded, they’ve also been joined by a fourth member, classically trained percussionist Jim Reynolds.

Units - High Pressure Days

After hearing late-’60s rock & roll from his friend Chris Kachulis, Bruce Haack added acid rock to his already diverse sonic palette. The result was 1970s Electric Lucifer, a psychedelic, anti-war song cycle about the battle between heaven and hell. The underlying concept of this concept album is “Powerlove,” a divine force that not only unites humanity but forgives Lucifer his transgressions as well. But though this album extols the healing powers of peace and love, Electric Lucifer uses often menacing music and lyrics to get its point across. “War” depicts the battle royale between good and evil with a martial beat and salvos from dueling synthesizers; a child’s voice murmurs “I don’t want to play anymore, ” and a funereal synth melody replaces the electronic battle march. Haack’s marriage of rock rhythms and his unique electronics creates a sound unlike either his previous work or the era’s psychedelic rock, but songs like “Incantation” and “Word Game,” with their percolating beats, buzzing synths and vocoders, are much trippier than most acid rock. The strangely forlorn “Song of the Death Machine” sounds a bit like a short-circuiting HAL singing “My Darling Clementine,” while “Word Game” features cool, dark electro-rock and brain-teasing lyrics like “Ray of sun/Reason/Knowledge/No legends.” Kachulis sings on both of these tracks, and his deadpan vocals complement the weirdness going on around him nicely. His involvement with Electric Lucifer also includes aiding the album’s release on Columbia Records; though it was Haack’s only major-label release.

Bruce Haack - Program Me

The impact of Faust cannot be overstated; their debut album was truly a revolutionary step forward in the progress of “rock music”. It was pressed on clear vinyl, packaged in a clear sleeve, with a clear plastic lyric insert. The black X-ray of a fist on the cover graphically illustrates the hard core music contained in the grooves, an amalgamation of electronics, rock, tape edits, acoustic guitars, musique concrete, and industrial angst. The level of imagination is staggering, the concept is totally unique and it’s fun to listen to as well.

Faust - Miss Fortune (Excerpt)

The first of Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser’s exploitive cosmic space rock albums is also the best, and certainly kicks the seat out of the many jam bands that arose in the ’90s. Unlike most “super groups” who collapse under the weight of their own hubris, the Cosmic Jokers, who were never really a proper group anyway, almost improve upon the sound of their precursors, namely Manuel Göttsching and Klaus Schulze from acid-jam-supreme Ash Ra Tempel, and Jurgen Dollase and Harald Grosskopf from blitzkrieg psychedelic Wallenstein. Structurally, the record is similar to those vintage Ash Ra Tempel albums, with two sidelong suites, the first side representing the peak of the acid freakout and the second side more relaxed, acting as the chill out later in the trip. Thus, the first side, “Galactic Joke,” has more emphasis on Gottsching’s freaked-out guitar, as the music slowly builds to full phased-out fury and then subsides and builds again. The flip side, “Cosmic Joke,” is mellower, though no less improvised as it travels with Schulze’s keyboard washes at the forefront into deepest space on a similarly slow ebb and flow. The effects are laid on much thicker than on a normal Ash Ra effort, especially on this second track, enhancing the sci-fi aspects as the mixing board of Dieter Dierks adds another dimension to the sound. Unlike later Cosmic Jokers records, where vocals were added in, this album is completely instrumental, letting the music stand by itself.

Cosmic Jokers - Galactic Joke (Excerpt)

After several graph compositions and early pattern pieces with jazz ensembles in the late ’50s and early ’60s (see “Concert for Two Pianists and Tape Recorders” and “Ear Piece” in La Monte Young’s book An Anthology), Riley invented a whole new music which has since gone under many names (minimal music — a category often applied to sustained pieces as well — pattern music, phase music, etc.) which is set forth in its purest form in the famous “In C” (1964) (for saxophone and ensemble, CBS MK 7178). “Rainbow in Curved Air” demonstrates the straightforward pattern technique but also has Riley improvising with the patterns, making gorgeous timbre changes on the synthesizers and organs, and presenting contrasting sections that has become the basic structuring of his works (“Candenza on the Night Plain” and other pieces). Scored for large orchestra with extra percussion and electronics, some of this work’s seven movements are: “Star Night,” “Blue Lotus,” “The Earth Below,” and “Island of the Rhumba King.”

Terry Riley - A Rainbow In Curved Air