Reviews – Page 36 – Rock Salted

Albert Ayler – New Grass

Albert Ayler – New Grass Impulse! A-9175 (1968)

A divisive album from a figure who seemed divisive in other ways from the start. Ayler rose to some level of renown among jazz heads as a pioneer of free jazz. But he got his start in R&B bands, and New Grass is an early attempt, of sorts, at jazz/R&B fusion. The album opens with typical Ayler free jazz wailing, then a brief spoken introduction, in which he states with radical earnestness that he hopes listeners like the album, and then it is on to the real surprise: R&B tunes laced through with solos far more skronky than any sort of King Curtis or The 5th Dimension mainstream R&B/soul track. The real problem with the album is how it gets going. “Message From Albert/New Grass” implies the album is something other that what it turns out to be — some kind of misguided attempt to ease listeners expecting “conventional” free jazz into the album. But “New Generation” and “Sun Watcher” really do get the album going, with great grooves, shimmering keyboards (on the latter), and what are actually smoking performances on sax by Ayler. Everything finishes strong with the sublime rave-up “Free at Last” too. But it is hard not to think that the album would have been much improved by dropping the first track and squeezing in the outtake “Thank God for Women” (posthumously released on the Holy Ghost box set). Anyway, while the album sequencing is too awkward to be entirely successful, this album deserves much credit for its radical concept alone. Jazz, and free jazz especially, was generally a pretty elitist musical form by the late 1960s, while lite R&B/soul was on the complete opposite side of the spectrum, with more plebeian appeal. Ayler throws them together without any regard for the social distinctions erected between those highbrow/lowbrow genres. While Miles Davis gets more credit for his approach to jazz/rock fusion, it is worth keeping in mind the way Miles leaned on esoteric and elitist forms of rock (not to mention the work of avant garde European composers). So, while some people saw this album as Ayler selling out to commercial tastes, a different, perhaps better, way to look at it is as an attempt to transcend the social confinement represented by narrow genre categories. And Ayler approaches that challenge with his usual open-hearted, emotive, and guileless version of what everybody typically expects to be purely cerebral, technically and conceptually challenging virtuoso performance. Contrary to its reputation, New Grass is slowly gaining more currency as a pretty decent album. It isn’t Ayler’s best. Yet it works. Anyone who does dig this should also check out Archie Shepp‘s similar effort For Losers.

Prince – Come

Prince – Come Warner Bros. 9 45700-2 (1994)

A misfire according to critics, but still a moderate commercial success, Come was disregarded by Prince himself in favor of the contemporaneously recorded The Gold Experience. Come was created at the beginning of Prince’s notorious feud with his record label Warner Bros., when he changed his name to the unpronounceable “love symbol” which looked something like “O(+->” and he was referenced as “the Artist Formerly Known as Prince.” Stripping away all the hoopla and critical perspectives of the day, in hindsight this isn’t a bad album at all. It is not particularly ambitious, and there aren’t any obvious hits here, the album nonetheless is consistent from beginning to end. There is a “Poem” cut up into interludes between songs throughout the album that should have been dropped (especially the closing “Orgasm”). But the title track, “Papa,” “Dark” (check those horn charts! and guitar solo!), and “Letitgo” are all solid performances in the smooth soul style that Prince has toyed with going back to songs like “Slow Love” and “Adore” on Sign “O” the Times. Venturing a guess, critics probably disliked Come because of its refusal to cater to the fads of the day (like the hip-hop/R&B melange of “new jack swing,” etc.), thereby suggesting that the music industry (which included the critics) was promoting inferior music. Hindsight suggests Prince was right. While this won’t be anyone’s favorite Prince album, it is a decent one that has surely held up better than, say, Batman, and even Diamonds and Pearls.

Matana Roberts – Coin Coin Chapter One: Gens de couleur libres

Matana Roberts – Coin Coin Chapter One: Gens de couleur libres Constellation CST079-2 (2011)

Well, this might well be the epitome of how identity politics represents a dead end. Coin Coin Chapter One is a concept album that develops a stigmatizing identity of the oppressed that (here’s the rub) polarizes others into either racist oppressors or friendly consumers of exotic otherness made possible by an enriching sense of difference (though primarily directed to the latter as an audience). It shuts the door to universality. It also pines for a false authenticity. Rather than working to create a kind of genuine, material emancipation in the present, this music dwells on the loss of the past and the wounds of history. Set aside slavery, and weren’t white women routinely oppressed in the antebellum era too? Aside from the obviously horrible brutality of human bondage, the problem of slavery was not the denial of the rights on the basis of skin color but the vacuousness of the “free” people who accepted (or even tolerated) oppression and considered themselves society’s “betters” under such circumstances. And does this all overlook how the cultures destroyed by chattel slavery (as much as any others) were meaningless, arbitrary human constructs? And isn’t condemning slavery kind of an easy thing in modern times? Even if it does still exist today in the dark corners, who really openly argues for it? Today the more appropriate question is to ask why more resources are not devoted to completely eradicating such an acknowledged evil — or why consensual activity is conflated with “human trafficking” to artificially inflate the numbers. More broadly, the task is to struggle to make concrete the freedoms everyone acknowledges as essential but are hypocritically denied in fact in so many ways. Short of those specifics, even looking to the “free your mind and your ass will follow” approach, what is needed, as Alejandro Jodorowsky once wrote, is “to undergo a mental cataclysm that causes our worldview, our psychic stance, and any sort of self-concept to crumble, precipitating us into the void — a void that engenders us, enabling us to be reborn freer than before and, for the first time, to be in the world as it is instead of as we have learned it is.” This is not accomplished by Coin Coin Chapter One. In fact, it pursues something quite the opposite — isn’t at some level this commercially released album a way of profiting off (the history of) slavery and oppression? Is the past not being called up to reinforce a feeling of victimhood status as the essential element of a lasting identity? Give that some thought.

Anyway, the album itself is part free jazz part hard bop jazz, part singing and part spoken word, all rendered in a dramatic way. In fact, a useful reference point would be the “audiodramas” of Julius Hemphill (Roi Boyé & the Gotham Minstrels, etc.) — to a lesser extent also the jazz operas of Fred Ho. The thing is, those things have been done, and, even including her specific performance styles that look to other influences, Roberts is merely approximating styles of her forebears. So in spite of the generally excellent execution, this album is a giant, smug pat on the back to the friendly consumers of exotic otherness who pride themselves on endorsing freedom and such feel-good principles — the same approach taken by groups like Sweet Honey in the Rock, The Carolina Chocolate Drops, etc. Coin Coin Chapter One isn’t a failure, entirely or exactly, but it is appropriately a compromised, self-contradictory mess, and in many ways presents a seductive trap of suggesting that all that is possible is to feel sorry about the wrongs of the past (from a rather insular and singular perspective) to eliminate only the very worst atrocities, quietly shutting the door to opportunities to provide and expand more general emancipation today (in the sense of Fanon). This has a Foucault-ian, historicist, fundamentalist, neoliberal, “there is no alternative” kind of vibe lurking just outside its own frame. So, strangely, this is an album that feels like it wins every battle, song by song and note by note, yet loses the war — because it fights the wrong war, one that is totally inadequate.

Prince – The Rainbow Children

Prince – The Rainbow Children NPG 70004-2 (2001)

Kind of a forgotten Prince disc, unfairly, because The Rainbow Children is really one of the best from his later years. With the exception of some weird concluding outtro tracks sequenced strangely on the CD and perhaps the novelty song “Wedding Feast,” this is an album that is solid all the way through. The musicianship is top shelf, without succumbing to pandering or self-indulgent showiness. To the extent this was the launch of a more mature sound for Prince, it succeeds completely. Although it is fair to call this contemporary R&B/soul, much of this follows a kind of light soul jazz/jazz-funk approach (reference, for example, Dave Douglas‘ Live at the Jazz Standard from a few years later). It also leans toward gospel-style vocals, which is a big bonus. Of course, there is more than just that here. “1+1+1 Is 3” is very much a throwback to Prince’s iconic style of the mid-1980s, done quite convincingly. It highlights just how versatile his guitar playing is across the album. When people speak, generally, about what a talented performer Prince was, the evidence is right here. This album is kind of like being at the best possible intimate, private concert you cold imagine from Prince around the turn of the Millennium. It was around this time too that Prince appeared on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” on May 3, 2001 and played a couple songs, including “The Work, Part 1” from this album and a great version of his classic “The Ballad of Dorothy Parker” (originally on Sign “O” the Times) with many jazzy keyboard flourishes. The album as a whole is close to the sound of that televised performance. He came back in December of 2002 to perform “The Everlasting Now” on the show too. Now, some people don’t seem to like the album, often because of the religious content. But, really, that is only on a few songs (“The Everlasting Now” etc.) and unless you focus on lyrics to the exclusion of almost everything else, the few religious messages are general enough that they don’t hold this back much. Songs like “Family Name” — one of the funkiest on the album — are political/social commentary anyway. The real reason this isn’t better known is that it wasn’t heavily marketed and was independently distributed. It did set up material for the tour that produced One Nite Alone…Live! Nonetheless, this might be the single most overlooked Prince album.

Prince – The Black Album

Prince – The Black Album Warner Bros. 2-45793 (1994)

When Whitney Houston died, there was much talk about how she was long ridiculed by some for appealing too much to white audiences. That unfortunate sentiment — that only insular identities based on differences were valid — looked down on what has long been called “crossover” appeal. It is the idea that different musical styles that appeal to different groups can be synthesized into a hybrid that appeals to audiences for all its sources. Prince in his prime years of 1981-87 was every bit a crossover success. But some unfortunate pandering reared its head toward the end of the 80s. So he made “The Black Album,” with some overt attempts to appeal to black audiences. For whatever reasons, though, the album was aborted in late 1987 after a few promo copies were given to industry insiders — replaced by the adequate but by comparison inferior Lovesexy album, which had a more mainstream pop sound. Due to its dubious status, this was a much bootlegged album until a belated official release in 1994.

In the mid-/late-80s Prince was working on an album project tentatively titled Crystal Ball, which was never released (another collection later adopted the same name) but evolved into Sign “O” the Times. One of the tracks (“Rockhard in a Funky Place”) intended for Crystal Ball that was dropped from Sign “O” the Times ended up here. Other songs still have a bit of the sonic flavor of Sign too. That is a positive, in that Sign was Prince at his best. But the opening few cuts (“Le Grind,” “Cindy C.”) are made for dance clubs. There are other songs that suggest how “Slow Love” from Sign would be more representative of things Prince would do in the 1990s.

The weakness of the album is the middle section. The P-funk workout “Superfunkycalifragisexy” gets monotonous quickly. “Bob George” is a skit-like song with Prince playing the role of a macho critic of himself. It’s a strange, unsettling performance, much talked about by critics and fans, but also a bit disturbingly violent and the backing track drags on like an afterthought. It is a fascinating song in concept, but actually listening to it is kind of secondary.

The album picks up mightily at the end. The jazzy instrumental “2 Nigs United 4 West Compton” is a highlight, complete with chaotic group segments, stinging synthesizer, and a lengthy bass solo that actually propels the songs forward. The closer “Rockhard in a Funky Place” is also unstoppable. It’s a funny song too. The lyric “I just hate to see an erection go to waste” seems like the same sentiment from Leonard Cohen‘s “Don’t Go Home with Your Hard-on” (Death of a Ladies’ Man).

In the end, The Black Album is weighted down by some filler, and it lacks an obvious candidate for a hit single. Still, it is mostly really good stuff from the tail end of Prince’s finest years. Anyone who has exhausted Prince’s greatest material of the 80s (and that should include, well, everyone) but still wants more should consider checking this out. In spite of the inconsistency of The Black Album, the Purple One scarcely mustered this intensity again at album length.

Jackie-O Motherfucker – The Magick Fire Music

Jackie-O Motherfucker – The Magick Fire Music Ecstatic Peace! E# 70c (2000)

Much like Earth gained notoriety on Earth 2: Special Low Frequency Version (1993) playing heavy metal rock at a glacial pace, to the point that the same chords take on a different character, Jackie-O Motherfucker played long jams that vaguely resembled so-called post-rock acts of the preceding decade (Dirty Three, Gastr del Sol, Godspeed You! Black Emperor) but slowed down and with jazzier improvisational choices. The opening song “Extension” is like “Blind Willie” from Sonny Sharrock‘s Guitar (1986), played at a snail’s pace, with an amiable, meandering progression like Sharrock’s “Portrait of Linda in Three Colors, All Black” from Black Woman (1969). The slow tempos also give this album an atmospheric quality, not quite to the point of being ambient, “furniture” music, but to the point that the percussive and rhythmic qualities of the playing subside. The band’s later recordings leaned further toward both folk music and juxtapositions of disparate genres. The way this music takes its time to unfold is refreshing. It is also cautiously optimistic. Worth seeking out.

Prince – The Very Best of Prince

Prince – The Very Best of Prince Warner Bros. R2 74272 (2001)

More appropriately titled “Greatest Hits” than “The Very Best of,” you could stand to get a much better overview of The Purple One than this compilation — The Hits/The B-Sides would be a slightly better choice. Still, for the mildly Prince-curious this gives you most of the biggest hits to use as a starting point.

What Prince stood for in the 1980s — his prime — was a contemporary R&B (as Little Richard has it, that means “real black”) counterpart to David Bowie of the 70s. Prince was this slightly androgynous, racy character who had these incredibly catchy, popular and just plain great songs. Now, the fact that Prince was coming along in the wake of Bowie breaking into the charts might be explained by the somewhat socially conservative streak found in afro-american culture — especially when it comes to sexuality, the core of Prince’s musical subject matter. Strange that Prince died just a few months after Bowie then.

Antipop Consortium – Arrhythmia

Antipop Consortium – Arrhythmia Warp WARPCD94 (2002)

Hip-hop often is very boring, because so much of it is so conservative. There are plenty of acts following the party line, so-to-speak. Everything is wrapped in the protective blanket of genre “rules”, and expectations and ambitions are contained within carefully delineated formulas that can seem like an inescapable supermassive black hole. Then, on the other end of the spectrum, there are acts like APC. With cerebral, abstract lyrics jammed full of non sequiturs and poetic wordplay, plus production that bears more resemblance to European electronica than traditional breakbeats, these guys definitely offered a unique sound. And they were willing to depart completely from convention to do that. It seems APC are loathed by many solely because their records don’t resemble so much other hip-hop music. But that kind of criticism (if I’m generous enough to even call it that) is so thick-headed and laden with narrow-minded assumptions that it hardly is worth the effort to debunk such obviously flawed logic.

One of my favorite aspects of Arrhythmia, clearly the group’s best album, is the way in which it sidesteps all the nonsense that I earlier dubbed “the party line”. This album isn’t about grown men trying to live out adolescent fantasies. It isn’t about macho boasting of vicious and violent tendencies, not to mention empty self-promotion and grandstanding about non-existent talent. It isn’t really about demeaning women or homosexuals. It isn’t an apologist’s monologue on life as a dimwitted fool. Of course, the album isn’t explicitly about avoiding those things, in some kind of preachy, paternalistic fashion either (except maybe parts of “We Kill Soap Scum,” if I read the symbolism right). Like I said, it sidesteps all that, and ultimately derives its power from allowing us listeners to ignore the party line out of existence. Instead the listener is treated to esoteric wisdom, abstract personal narratives and funny musical tricksterism.

The group: M. Sayyid was perhaps the best rapper around at the time, in terms of his technical ability to vocalize, and yet was still willing to joke around with his lyrics. Then there’s Beans, who is an incredibly well-rounded rapper, capable of writing some impressively complex lyrics. High Priest may have the least imposing talents, but he’s a master of rhythm and timing, and he can build tension by applying those skills like few others. Producer Earl Blaize finely crafts minimalist, glitchy beats in a way that smoothly pulls together the contributions of three rappers who are really quite different in their individual styles.

This disc is definitely not the kind of thing you would throw on at a party or a dance club. It’s more inwardly drawn and inflected. There is hardly a single sample on the whole disc, stripping the affair of clear reference points. This isn’t to say more dance-oriented stuff is automatically whack, but why must everything be that way? APC go in another direction. They certainly aren’t the only ones who do that. Although I do feel like they were among the few acts around the turn of the millennium identified with the hip-hop genre that made music that was interesting for what new ideas it presented rather than merely how well it satisfied genre formulas. Hell, there ain’t many act period that can do that, hip-hop or otherwise.

But of course, if there is no other reason to love this album, I must add that here High Priest delivers one of my favorite lines in hip-hop on “Dead In Motion”:

“Shasta after I slash rap with a protractor”

Airborn Audio – Good Fortune

Airborn Audio – Good Fortune Ninja Tune ZENCD95 (2005)

Years ago, the groundbreaking hip-hop trio Antipop Consortium broke up (they later reunited for a tepid “comeback”). Beans went solo, releasing two albums and an EP in the following two years. The other members, M. Sayyid and High Priest, formed Airborn Audio. A full two years after the breakup, Airborn Audio’s debut Good Fortune arrived. It would seem that an appropriate response would be, “Why the wait?” Good Fortune is pretty disappointing. It certainly is a solid album, one as good or better than any mainstream hip-hop album of the day you could name. Still, Sayyid and Priest have to be held to a higher standard. On Antipop’s landmark Arrhythmia, Sayyid could tear up lyrics with speed, clarity and rhythm that most rappers only dream of attaining (well, contemporaries like DMX and 50 Cent probably gave up on that dream a long time ago). Now, his rhymes are mostly lethargic, and always heartbreakingly mundane. Both Sayyid and Priest waste most of Good Fortune on pointless jabs at and nods to other rappers, boring pop culture references and lame self-promotion. Their raw talent bubbles up from time to time, but mostly it is hidden behind hokey effects.

The major disappointment with Good Fortune is that these former innovators have now thrown their hats into the same ring as countless others. Despite the claim on “Monday Through Sunday” that Airborn Audio has the “same agenda” as Antipop, it comes out sounding like a lie. If even if this album is slightly ahead of the pack that counts for little. That would give too much credit to direction in which the pack was headed! The best songs, like “Bright Lights,” lean on beats that probably would have been cutting edge eight or ten years ago on a DJ Spooky album. Today it’s hard to get excited about them.

Good Fortune proved far less interesting and nowhere near as the best releases from former bandmate Beans. This album seems like a step backward for two of hip-hop’s brightest young talents.

Eric B. & Rakim – Let the Rhythm Hit ‘Em

Eric B. & Rakim – Let the Rhythm Hit ‘Em MCA MCAD-6416 (1990)

Let the Rhythm Hit ‘Em was an ambitious hip-hop album in its day. The duo pulled rank. Their earlier albums were more popular and acclaimed then, but it’s those other ones that today sound like relics.

There are at least three stages to hearing this album. First, you just dig it because it’s a solid album with a snap to the beats. Next, you start to decipher Rakim’s intricate lyrics. Finally, you realize how intricate Eric B.’s mixes are and how they intensify everything on the disc. You don’t even have to get past phase one. Really that’s the beauty of it. Bobbing to it or dissecting it, either works.

That “Keep ‘Em Eager to Listen” comes right before “Set ‘Em Straight” says it all. Nothing on the album is accidental. This feels like the album Eric B. & Rakim always wanted to make if they could. Well they did it. The record receives all the talent like uninvited guests who arrive with inexplicable expectancy.

There seem to be more than enough James Brown samples to go around. It takes quite a Godfather fan to pick out precisely where they come from though. Eric B. breaks everything down a rebuilds something of an entirely different form. He was a bridge between old school and new school. As a DJ he could scratch with anybody, but he could build cohesive songs through improvisation. Eric B. seems to have a greater awareness of why he’s improvising and where this is all headed.

Rakim was simply one of the most talented rappers and lyricists of his day — a status that isn’t exclusive to hip-hop. “In the Ghetto” is the unsentimental tale of his grim existence. Rakim flexes his lyrical muscle to get some needed breathing room.

This is known as a lyricist’s album, but that sells Let the Rhythm Hit ‘Em short. Rakim lays out some fine lyrics but it’s the delivery and the assembly of the choice whole that make this a classic. Bleak in a dense mass. The lyrics fit into an orchestrated statement said in more than words.

Hip-hop albums too often end up disposable vehicles for nonsense fads. Eric B. & Rakim set out to make an album for the ages. Let the Rhythm Hit ‘Em quickened hip-hop’s ascension. A few have continued the challenge. The others perhaps ignore this as it might reveal their own weaknesses.