Reviews – Page 34 – Rock Salted

Nilsson – Nilsson Schmilsson

Nilsson – Nilsson Schmilsson RCA Victor LSP-4515 (1971)

Something I’ve observed through the years is the utter vacuousness of so much pop music from Los Angeles. Yes, that is a commonplace observation. L.A. is/was a cesspool. But what that observation hides is the way that L.A. provided some unique opportunities for refugees from the East Coast. Harry Nilsson was one of those. Rightly or wrongly, he was in a state of crisis in New York, and relocated to L.A. What this meant was that he had the opportunity there to work though his New York problems by way of his music, for whatever reason free from the hangups that would have dogged him in New York. In a few years, he acclimated to L.A., and, after brief period of sanguinary transition, his music eventually became rather tediously blithe. He lost touch with a New York frame of reference, and the L.A. frame just came across as complacent, slight and insular. But, getting to the point, Nilsson Schmilsson came from the brief Goldilocks moment when Nilsson was this affable New York joke-ster out of his element, ready to appear on the cover of his album in a bathrobe, stoned and holding a bowl of marijuana, the photo out of focus.

Often in the conversation of “best albums recorded with a studio band,” this covers a range of song styles from ballad, to novelty, to rock and roll rave-up. Reviewer Patrick Brown sums this up admirably:

“To me, this is an utterly charming album from beginning to end. I can’t understand how anyone who’s ever had a regular job could fail to be attracted to the first three songs, how anyone who’s been in a relationship that didn’t go as well as planned could fail to enjoy ‘Down’ or ‘I’ll Never Leave You’ or ‘Without You,’ how anyone with a rock and roll heart could fail to enjoy ‘Jump Into the Fire,’ or how anyone at all could fail to enjoy ‘The Moonbeam Song’ or ‘Let the Good Times Roll.’ Maybe this just shows my lack of imagination though. Regardless, I do find it nearly irresistible. Nilsson sings about real stuff but never takes himself too seriously, always seems to have his tongue hovering somewhere near his cheek when it’s not firmly planted there. But it’s not just novelty, I swear it. I mean really, most people do have to wake up, drink coffee and head to work. Why aren’t there more songs about that?”

It is tempting to expect Nilsson to kind of give up the charade, get to his real, unironic core message/personality. But what endures about this album is how that moment never arrives. He holds up the various commonplaces of commercial music and, rather than ridicule them, just sort of oddly embraces them as slight pleasures. As it turns out, there is no deeper meaning. What has the impression of being a joke ends up being ridiculously sincere — almost a precursor to comedian Andy Kaufman. You just sort of have to recognize the banality and ironic irony (a kind of double negation) of this spectacle of commercial rock. It is a beautiful anti-climax. This is a record that accomplishes “nothing” so very, very well.

Bridget St John – Songs for the Gentle Man

Bridget St John – Songs for the Gentle Man Dandelion DAN 8007 (1971)

Bridget St. John’s Songs for the Gentle Man is frequently compared to a number of other folk/rock artists of the late 1960s and early 70s. The most common is that she sounds like a combination of Nico and Nick Drake. Others cite Judy Collins‘ work with Joshua Rifkin on albums like In My Life. One could even throw in Vashti Bunyan. The Nico comparison is mostly right with respect to tone and timbre of their voices, especially when comparing Nico’s debut album Chelsea Girl. Both had a husky, deep voice; hardly identical, but Nico is still the closest comparison among reasonably well-known folk/rock singers of the era. Nick Drake combined folk and orchestral arrangements, but he had a surprisingly different approach, with melancholy that is scarcely present with St. John — it’s a somewhat strained comparison. Judy Collins is the most important reference point. She pioneered a type of folk that was kind of the obverse of Joan Baez. Baez made music that combined bel canto singing (with shrill, heavy vibrato) with homespun folk guitar playing. Collins instead used elements of showtunes to shape a singing voice that was still based in homespun folk music, then added refined Euro-classical orchestration (by Rifkin). The problem was that Rifkin was inconsistent, and, sorry to say, operating somewhat at or beyond the limit of his abilities. St. John took a similar baroque sensibility, through orchestration by Ron Geesin and John Henry, and applied it over homespun (yet adept) vocals and guitar. Unlike Baez, who often seemed to compromise the folk elements to the dictates of established operatic pop forms, St. John (like Collins) tries to keep each sphere intact. The strings add sophistication without diminishing the expressiveness of the vocals. And the arrangements and orchestration on Songs for the Gentle Man are uniformly excellent. This style of orchestrated folk would slip away in a few years, as the rock music came to dominate folk music. Then the approaches of Paul Buckmaster (with Shawn Phillips, etc.) and Tony Visconti (with T.REX, etc.) would make similar strides in combining orchestration with rock, albeit in a very different way.

Speaking about the song “City-Crazy,” St. John said that she “sometimes felt not ‘stop the world I want to get off’ but ‘slow the world down, I want to stay on!'” It reflects the entire album as much as that one song. This interest in a slower pace of life is a bit like Vashti Bunyan’s musical portrayal of radical rural simplicity. But St. John has a more urban sensibility, just slower than the bustle of actually existing urban life.

Songs for the Gentle Man was not a revolutionary album, but it took ideas that were percolating in the folk/rock scene and perfected them. This is not a particularly immediate album. It may take a few listens to appreciate fully. But there are few better listening choices for a bright summer morning or afternoon (this is definitely not nighttime listening material).

Barry Adamson – The King of Nothing Hill

Barry Adamson – The King of Nothing Hill Mute CDSTUMM176 (2002)

Barry Adamson, the maestro of fake soundtrack music, has a firm conviction to the devilishly absurd. His ridiculousness is part of his appeal. He is a collector, suggestor, director and actor. The illusory story lines hinted at on his albums can pull emotions and moods out of practically nothing. He takes the listener places. Plenty of new experiences are waiting. The King of Nothing Hill fits a sleek action thriller, the sorts with spies, international intrigue — that sort of thing. While it sounds like an exotic, action-packed journey, it is still pop music. It is just on the fringes. That seems like a comfortable home for Adamson.

“The Second Stain” and “Twisted Smile” pulse with monotonous vamps until the mood envelops everything. The songs point, prod, and push. Bass and keys alone can rush listeners back and forth between the highs and lows. Adamson can pick you up and place you carefully in new surroundings, ready to experience the moments as they arrive. You have to be open to the possibilities, true. If you’re not willing to budge then Adamson’s efforts might be an annoyance. He does have a talent for always being inviting though. You have to be quite closed-minded not to be swayed a little.

A funky workout session takes place on “Cinematic Soul” (cribbing a bass line from “Sing a Simple Song”). Adamson can be as brash and glitzy as anyone and still pull it off. His material may be described as rather composed, but it can boogie too. Then more surprises come when “That Fool Was Me” has the sultry soul comedy of him singing, “only a fool would leave you / and that fool was me.”

The King of Nothing Hill makes considerable use of electronics and sound effect samples. There is sometimes an erratic pursuit of a number of different styles, but Adamson uses those shifts to convey a sense of changing scenes in a movie. The effect can be a bit demanding over the course of the rather lengthy runtime of the album though.

As Above So Below, the predecessor album, had more lounge jazz/acid jazz and bleak, blaring trip-hop pushing it ahead even if it subdued the pseudo-soundtrack impressionism. Both efforts toy with kitsch. All things said, the albums are about equally good, just in different ways — if anything this album has more cohesive and focused individual songs even as it lacks some of the elusive intrigue overall.

The King of Nothing Hill is refreshing. Almost a decade and a half after its release, it has to be given credit for capturing the feel of the sorts of action thriller films it evokes. Granted, the lyrics go beyond what pure soundtrack music would normally do, by suggesting visuals to accompany the music (like the line, “I don’t even know how the gun got in my hand” on “Whispering Streets”). But that’s part of the fun of this approach to music. And Barry Adamson is still basically the only one doing what he does.

Patty Loveless – The Definitive Collection

Patty Loveless – The Definitive Collection MCA Nashville (2005)

The gestures are broad. The lyrics dwell on commonplaces and banalities, especially slightly melodramatic interpersonal relationship issues. Much of this has the high-contrast, slick production style of typical 1980s country and pop (even the stuff from the 1990s). It would even be fair to say the music is mostly formulaic. This is precisely the point though. This is what might be called rural proletarian music. It emphasizes shared experience. The lyrics might focus on an individual protagonist, but often with a certain level of acceptance of social roles (especially gender roles), and any given song as a whole tends to reaffirm familiar musical forms as a way of emphasizing tradition (never challenging it). So, like a lot of country, this has a slightly reactionary/conservative perspective to it. And more, it also kind of validates a more rural or at least small town perspective (against that of an urban one). The effect is much like a feeling of “town pride” in a small town (just a few hundred people), in ways rejected by city folk, with a lot of simple repeated pleasures. Yet the music largely manages to avoid negative aspersions too. This might be a bit rural focused (there are references to tractors), but it doesn’t try to put down that which is outside its sphere of influence. It is what it is. There is no imposition in this music. And Loveless has a really good voice. While this mines old country forms, with a light oompa-oompa beat or honky tonk groove, it does so adeptly There are some surprises too, like “Don’t Toss Us Away” (written by Bryan MacLean, formerly of the band Love) and “A Little Bit In Love” (written by Steve Earle). Loveless really shines drawing something out of the simplest tune though. No doubt, Loveless was one of the better things Nashville had going during the time span of this collection — even if that is only a small complement, relatively speaking.

Van Dyke Parks – Song Cycle

Van Dyke Parks – Song Cycle Warner Bros. WS 1727 (1967)

Van Dyke Parks is a notable fringe figure to fans of oddball pop music. He was associated with a number of popular and notable artists, like The Beach Boys, Harry Nilsson, Frank Sinatra, Ringo Starr, John Cale, Joanna Newsom, etc. He works out of Los Angeles, and in that barren wasteland of serious culture, he was always an eccentric standout. He never really had any widespread popularity as a solo artist, but his contributions to popular works by others (The Beach Boys and Joanna Newsom loom large here) are probably why most who have heard of him know about him at all.

Song Cycle is less a work of popular music than it is composed “classical” music in the spirit of Charles Ives, who blended Euro-classical, hymns, folk, pop and more into idiosyncratic and innovative compositions. Parks simply updates the pop culture reference points — somewhat. He also draws from Tim Pan Alley, ragtime, vaudeville, bluegrass, marches, and an assortment of old-timey musical forms long since passed from popular favor. There is particular emphasis on the music of the Great Depression era, and all things uniquely American, especially Californian. This was an anti-Anglophile stance in the midst of the so-called “British Invasion” period. It also took high-brow forms of composition and places them into service of more low-brow forms. It was a serious approach to un-serious music. Parks adopts cliché/kitsch but re-contextualizes it, in an approach highly similar (in form, though not in substance) to that of the tropicalistas in Brazil around the same time. It is something of a natural — if impertinent — way to try to break out of imposed restrictions.

The characteristic Parks song jumps from one style to the next, emphasizing the cuts, contrasts and juxtapositions as much as any of the disparate styles he adopts. Any one approach hardly lasts more than a few seconds, before there is some kind of transition to something else. But as to those styles, there are many, and he’s obviously a good student of all of them. He’s even better at deftly making the transitions between the varied passages into something that doesn’t seem completely unnerving — a little perhaps, but that is entirely intentional and necessary, even, to giving this an impact. Yet for all the formal objectives and technical aptitude, Parks saves plenty of room for humor. Usually that gets lost in a work this complex and difficult to execute.

This was a lavishly produced album — the budget was more than three times what was typically allotted to a pop album at the time. Though it sat for about a year before the record label released it, and then commercially it was a flop. Many listeners fault Parks’ vocals, which aren’t much of an attraction but also aren’t entirely bad. The other frequent complaints would be coyness, lack of prettiness, willful over-complexity, ostentatious-ness, impenetrability, messiness, … this list goes on. Song Cycle may well be all those things. But it also is a very bold in its experimentation and earnest in its admiration for its sources of influence, trying to accomplish a lot without becoming arrogant. As Parks later said in an interview, “You can exalt what is humble.”

For sheer daring ambition, there aren’t all that many albums of the era (or any others) quite like this. In fact, probably the most inspiring thing about the album is how absolutely unlikely and improbable it was and is. It would be wrong to call this a perfect album. But, looking back, it is one that was headed in a good direction, even if few followed along.

Silver Apples – Silver Apples

Silver Apples – Silver Apples Kapp KS-3562 (1968)

Few electronic music groups were as innovative and ahead of their time as Silver Apples. The German Studio für elektronische Musik (WDR) was a a state-of-the-art facility that made music with electronic equipment starting in the 1950s. But such a facility wasn’t exactly accessible for most ordinary working musicians. So Silver Apples built their own “Simeon,” described as “a homemade synthesizer consisting of 12 oscillators and an assortment of sound filters, telegraph keys, radio parts, lab gear and a variety of second hand electronic junk.” There was a U-shaped wooden box structure with a plywood top in which most of the equipment was mounted, with the performer (Simeon) positioned inside the U-shaped part as if in a cockpit.

The basic format of the music features repetitive drumming on a conventional rock drum kit (by Dan Taylor), electronic sounds, plus some vocals. The vocals are quite of a piece with late 1960s psychedelia. But what was really unique about this band and its recordings was the juxtaposition of the syncopated yet mechanical and repetitious drumming (“Dancing Gods” is even a take on drum-laden Navajo ceremonial music). WDR recordings tended to come from an entirely different (and rather elitist) tradition, associated with important composers. Silver Apples made music a bit closer to popular music — yet at the same time, unlike conventional pop music of the day.

“Oscillations” is the most iconic song on the album. The drums set out the foundation of the song. The electronics add commentary, seemingly reacting to the percussion figures but also slashing across it and adding other rhythms. The falsetto vocals, which are very psychedelic but also offer an odd mix of medieval folk austerity and techno-futurist poetry, provide a semblance of melody. Mostly the song suggest repeating, cyclic vamps. This would end up becoming a dominant form of electronic pop music decades later — take away the vocals and “Oscillations” or “Lovefingers” could pass for a new release in the 1990s or 2000s. Yet Silver Apples were mostly an underground phenomenon.

As innovative and groundbreaking as this music was, the album Silver Apples is a little rough around the edges at times. Some of the songs are weak (“Velvet Cave”). That is understandable given the lack of precedent for music like this. WDR artists would spend up to months continuously revising their works, but Silver Apples obviously had no such luxury when it came to studio time. They still manage to find a good balance between the electronics, drums and vocals (that aspect could have gone wrong easily). The songwriting, in general, is not much of an attraction. The lyrics are often downright silly (“the flame is its own reflection”), merely adding a kind of mood of a psychedelic Sixties “happening”. But what is unique about the album is the way the music sidesteps the need for great songwriting. The static rhythms and slowly modulating electronic noises hold seemingly opposite forces together in a kind of suspended state. Actually, it works much the way a magician does: the drumming focuses attention, almost in a hypnotic trance, and then the electronics play around the edges of perception. This music is intriguing and surprisingly listenable even without strong melody and no harmony to speak of. Silver Apples remains one of the more unique pop albums of its time.

Neu! – Neu! 2

Neu! – Neu! 2 Brain 1028 (1973)

Neu!-beat is as distinctive as anything to emerge from the 1970s. It also became essentially the standard for pop music decades later. Unfortunately for Neu!, their record label and most of the record-buying public didn’t care much at the time.

Neu! was a splinter faction of Kraftwerk. Their music stands entirely on its own though. Neu! is at least as important as their parent group. Their second album volleys back and forth between the influence of Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother. The tension on Neu! 2 has anarchistic rebellion matched against catchy electro-dance rhythms.

The often-told story of how the record company gave up the album and left Neu! to re-edit and remix three tracks to fill out the disc is fitting but unsurprising — even the album cover is a “remix” of sorts from their debut. It certainly didn’t help their popularity that Neu! was an instrumental band — one that maybe fell between the cracks of rock and roll and avant-garde modern classical.

“Für Immer (Forever)” begins the first of two suites. The chaos creeps in slowly. “Spitzenqualität” has swirling drums and electronic sounds to rival Karlheinz Stockhausen (most assuredly an influence). With “Lila Engel (Lilac Angel),” the processed vocals and aggressive beats channel Neu!’s angst into creative salvation. Neu! has pulled you from a passing experience to something more total. The duo intrigues the listener as they wear away expectations.

“Neuschnee 78” (one of the remixed songs) begins the second suite with an almost inappropriate calm. When “Neuschnee” arrives a few songs later, the second side opener suddenly seems paranoid in retrospect. “Super” also provides the remixes “Super 16” and “Super 78.” Each progression of remixes actually starts with the remixes and works backwards.

Neu! 2 adds layers then strips them away. Adding just a tiny piece to existing material puts the entire thing in a new perspective. The duo then zooms towards what debatably is the essence of the songs. The album’s most unique feature is the way it makes these athletic transformations wholly within itself. While precision is what makes this album what it is, at the same time the music does away with that which is formal and regulated.

Neu! was just ahead of their time. Neu! 2 is as likable as it is cool, and it’s pretty cool.

Lucio Battisti – Anima latina

Lucio Battisti – Anima latina Numero Uno DZSLN 55675 (1974)

Here’s an album that seems to be an unlikely Rosetta Stone for much of European rock and pop of the 1970s. Anima latina (“Latin Soul”) is perhaps Lucio Battisti’s most acclaimed album. He was a big pop star in his native Italy, though internationally (especially outside Europe) he was and is less well known. The music ranges from (symphonic) prog rock to Canterbury Sound psychedelic jazz-rock, with ambitious, arty meanderings, laced through with understated brass horn charts and diffuse synthesizer figures. Most of the songs are over five minutes in length. None are structured like catchy pop hits.

The opening “Abbracciala abbracciali abbracciati” sets the album off well. This is high drama. The effect is a bit like a darkened theater, a huge one, with an assemblage of musicians in an orchestra pit somewhere out of sight, but a lone singer in a dim spotlight delivers a searching, allusive and almost existential song in halting yet eloquently delivered statements. There is sparse percussion. Yet the drums are played with such pauses as to mean there is no real syncopated beat as such — duh(ch), duh, ____du-chashhh___. Behind the drums, the song opens with a sustained but subdued synthesizer chord and a solitary trumpet (electronically processed most likely) playing long, faint notes that seem to move toward an unfinished statement, without ever realizing a melody. There isn’t a whole lot of singing. Battisti begins just by singing wordless sounds. The singer isn’t so much a protagonist as someone who has stumbled into the song. At least, every effort is made to make this the appearance. There is never any doubt that this is a staged performance. As the song continues, the drums and a bass provide more of a steady rhythm. If there is a comparison for “Abbracciala abbracciali abbracciati,” it is perhaps Neil Young‘s opening to Tonight’s the Night (recorded before or at the same time but released after Anima latina), or the more frequent comparison of Robert Wyatt‘s Rock Bottom (released the same year).

The rest of the album ranges from spacey, swirling meditations to funkier tunes that get a decent groove going. The album title alludes to a South American influence. This is a subtle but important presence throughout the album. The influence of samba, perhaps even tropicália, in the rhythms (“Due mondi,” “Gli uomini celesti (Ripresa),” “Macchina del tempo”) and some of the horns (“Anonimo,” which flirts with tropicália’s reverent/irreverent use of kitsch), and the burning intensity of Argentinian folk-rock (“Anima latina”), all make themselves felt. Rather than the clinically calculated shifts in unusual time signatures and other technical feats that make a lot of prog- and jazz-rock kind of distant, even tedious, Anima latina leans on warm and organic rhythms to tie all the experiments and shifting concepts together. That is crucial. It lends a suppleness that gives the otherwise very arty aspirations of the album a beating heart.

If prog rock remains the core referent for the style of the album as a whole (and especially toward the end), it is worth noting that most of the guitars are acoustic. There are no electric guitar heroes here, or flashiness of any kind really. More than any one dazzling performance — even by Battisti — this is an album that succeeds based on its structure. The ebb and flow of the songs, the deliberate pacing and wide open spaces emerging from the sonic fabric, anything that is the implication rather than the direct content — these are the things that make Anima latina captivating. There isn’t one right way to hear this music. In Criticism and Truth, Roland Barthes wrote that “a work is ‘eternal’ not because it imposes a single meaning on different men, but because it suggests different meanings to one man…” That provides an apt reason to listen here.

Beyoncé – Beyoncé

Beyoncé – Beyoncé Columbia 88843032522 (2013)

This album is an excellent encapsulation of contemporary pop music. The first thing that stands out is how capital-intensive this music is. In other words, it takes a tremendous amount of resources (capital) to make an album this finely layered, refined and varied. Rather than one producer crafting many of the backing tracks across the whole album, there is an army of producers, songwriters and musicians. Most singers could never summon the resources to make an album that way (Public Enemy‘s Most of My Heroes Still Don’t Appear on No Stamp is an exception that proves the rule, fueled by artistic credibility — and associated crowdfunding — rather than the largest bank account). The eclecticism is stunning. Some songs are in the style of electronic dance music, others like vintage Prince, or more recent D’Angelo.

What this album stands for is the “mogul” mentality, that the world needs big-shot moguls who are better than everyone else. In a way, this is the ultimate (and most seductive) way of promoting collaboration with or resignation to the demands of the powerful cabal that controls the major institutions of society. No, that is not meant as some sort of conspiracy theory. Instead it means that the society in which Beyoncé was released is very polarized and unequal, and the repeated message across the album is that if you accept the dictates of the moguls then maybe you too can become one someday — like winning the lottery, this requires that many, many others lose, and discussions about the hardships of the winners say nothing of the hardships of the losers. In an interesting way, the repeated interludes (like Beyoncé as a kid on the “Star Search” TV show) and the “it’s hard to live up to expectations to be pretty as a woman” theme make a cynical capitulation. Rather than reject the social demands to be “pretty”, or reject the system that creates moguls by creating dire poverty and widespread insecurity, this kind of just shrugs that off and declares there is no alternative; just develop a coping strategy to accept it and deal with it. This expresses the “survivor” mentality of a psychotic culture.

As reviewer Andrew Johnson wrote:

“Of course, the thing about this album is that it’s the ultimate undisputed-queen-of-pop power move, released as it was with no advance press, in the middle of the night on iTunes with no one driving it but Beyonce herself (and well, obviously her husband, but we won’t begrudge her that). Beyonce is in a position now that she doesn’t need anything but herself, and the musical result is an album that feels completely liberated: ‘Yonce indulging every filthy impulse she has, adorning beats that are dark and not explicitly radio-seeking, dictating that things are going to go her way, at least for the next 67 minutes. She’s got the best producers and songwriters alive working with her here and the guest list for features is the very top tier in the hip-hop world, but no one can take the spotlight away from Bey here. She’s a big enough figure now that she can carry a top-selling album on nothing but reputation alone and if her musical accomplishments never seemed to meet that stature before, well now she’s fixing that.”

But the real trick here is that she may be “liberated” and in charge, but only because she is following the dictates of big-business entertainment and endorsing the “mogul” view of the world. She still reiterates the precepts of reactionary “social darwinist” theory

In spite of any misgivings about the premise of the album, it is a marvel. There is practically a flawless delivery. The pure craftsmanship is stunning. And the beats are absorbing. Beyoncé is not an especially captivating singer on her own, but she more than lives up to everything these songs demand. Certainly this is a collaborative effort, but she also emerges as someone nominally in charge of the proceedings.

I was pleasantly surprised at how good this album was. I do retain the same general misgivings as I had for Taylor Swift‘s 1989. Beyoncé is a more evolved album though. It concedes something to cynicism, even as it reaffirms something very similar to what Swift promotes (with denial in place of cynicism). But this does carry more baggage and internal contradictions than it lets on. Still, when the beats get going this is hard to argue with. In an effort to be open-minded, I listened to a Britney Spears best-of collection, and there the simplistic, even crude brushstrokes seemed to lack the detail and extreme talent brought to bear on Beyoncé. Frankly, the Spears stuff was terrible. So this is really one of the finest examples of mainstream pop music of its era.

John Coltrane – Interstellar Space

John Coltrane – Interstellar Space ABC Impulse ASD-9277 (1974)

Coltrane’s Interstellar Space is like a soundtrack to Arthur Rimbaud’s Une Saison En Enfer [A Season in Hell], as Stellar Regions is for Rimbaud’s Les Illuminations [The Illuminations]. This is one of the more challenging Coltrane albums. It demands constant attention. But it is rewarding. Coltrane had added some of the layered approach of his wife Alice into his sound. His fiery forays here are as dazzling as they are ingenious. His passion perfectly matches his virtuosity.

Rashied Ali plays some remarkable non-linear rhythms on drums. Though he keeps time in a sense, it is a subjective time with no predetermined time signature. The music is of the moment, in the sense of having no need of time to progress. It is confusing, but the instantaneous possibility of the moment is supreme and Ali’s rhythms are presented as they are naturally. Instead of conforming to any external formula, Interstellar Space is spontaneously (and thereby simultaneously) composed, lived, and performed.

This is a remarkable effort in musical abstract expressionism. While totally true to the impulsiveness of free improvisation, this is also a strong statement of Coltrane’s (and Ali’s) struggle to resolve the inner self and the outer one in the most idealistic sense of reconciling a personal place in a harmonious social context. Whew, it is that and more. This is one of the great efforts to be a completely free individual in a world as great as imaginable.

Interstellar Space rebels against order and structure, in a sense, but only against falsehood. One of the basic contradictions of so-called “free jazz” was stated quite succinctly by pianist Paul Bley, talking to The Wire magazine in 2007 about the saxophonist Ornette Coleman:

“There was an article in Down Beat in something like 1954, in which I mentioned that jazz had reached a crisis and that AABA form had too many As, and not enough CDEFG. So I began working with groups where we would play totally free, and that led to a kind of dead end, because ‘totally free’ didn’t necessarily allow you to continue. A totally free piece is a totally free piece, end of concert. *** [But Ornette] suggested ABCDEFGHIJK, in which repetition was anathema *** It wasn’t totally free because totally free was A forever, metamorphosing. It was a form that took hold, because you could finally return to the written music, and the audience had something to hold on to.”

What might be added is the sort of complaint that the feminist Jo Freeman made about (so-called) structureless groups, which tend to have a de facto structure (tyranny) if there is no formal structure. These things are basically what Coltrane was working through on his own with recordings like those on Interstellar Space. The music wasn’t just a formless morass, metamorphosing, but neither was it music that was composed in advance according to a detailed score. It fell somewhere in the middle, loosely organized without that loose organization seeming like a constraint, able to go wherever and equally the product of the efforts of both Coltrane and Ali. The performers aren’t operating completely independent of one another, in some kind of purely horizontal relationship. But they are constantly negotiating the terms of how the music evolves. One might quote a political economist here:

“But is this anything other than picking up Rousseau’s classic idea that being free, in politics, does not mean living outside of all constraint, but living according to rules we have set for ourselves? That is, living according to verticality [that is, hierarchy,] such as we have chosen to institute it, in the form that we have chosen to give it.”

This is a particularly useful analogy, given that Rousseau favored small states, much as a sax/drums duo is the smallest possible “group”, meaning that the problem of negotiations between participants doesn’t face the problem of exponentially-increasing complexity that shackles larger groups. This isn’t to say that the horizontal vs. vertical question is entirely side-stepped, but rather the question of verticality is addressed in a sort of controlled laboratory setting, if you will. Rashied Ali just makes it deliciously apparent how much space a “sideman” has within the context of a Coltrane group, and by extension, how the role of a “star” soloist can be rethought within the free jazz movement.

Coltrane recorded Interstellar Space on February 22, 1967; he died on July 17, 1967. For a considerable time these were believed to be the last known studio recordings he made, though additional studio recordings were later discovered. “Venus: Second From the Sun; Love” (AKA “Dream Chant”) is, melodically, extremely similar to “Stellar Regions” from Stellar Regions, which was recorded a week before Interstellar Space but not released until 1995. Many of these recordings were unnamed and only later named by Alice Coltrane for release. Though posthumously released in album form, these songs do make up a coherent set of music. They all cohere around a common musical perspective.

While made up of archival recordings, Interstellar Space remains one of the most essential John Coltrane albums. Listeners should seek out a reissue that includes the excellent bonus track “Leo,” which was recorded at the same session as the other songs but left off the original LP due to space constraints (but previously released on The Mastery of John Coltrane, Vol. 3: Jupiter Variation), plus a “Jupiter Variation” false start track.