Monthly Archives: September 2007

Ether column, May 2007

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Loads of great gigs this month, so straight down to business. First up is Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek, who will no doubt transform the magnificent Großer Saal of the Konzerthaus with his vivid, airy playing. Garbarek is a man who sits comfortably between the worlds of jazz, ambient, classical and world musics. After a stint in Keith Jarrett’s band in the 70s, he made his name with a string of albums that came to exemplify the limpid, crystalline sound of the ECM label. Forswearing the improvisational theatrics of Ayler and Coltrane, Garbarek’s style draws on Scandinavian mythology and exudes a tender, sunny playfulness. At the time of writing this concert was almost sold out, so check before travelling.

Japanese psych-rock heads Ghost land in Vienna as part of an extensive European tour. Active since 1988, this free-form collective has a shifting line-up centred around singer and guitarist Masaki Batoh. Their music spans a range of influences including the transcendent pastoralism of Pink Floyd, the pyramidal drones of the Velvet Underground and the nagging rhythms of krautrock bands such as Can and Amon Düül II. New album In Stormy Nights is the first Ghost record to have been recorded using the same line-up as its predecessor, yet this new-found stability does not imply any kind of creative stagnation. On the contrary, with this record Batoh and his comrades have reached new heights of invention and inspiration.

More down-to-earth pleasures are provided by Richmond Fontaine, an American alt-country band with a wistful, literate approach to songcraft. Singer and songwriter Willy Vlautin has been much acclaimed for his lyrics, which present echoes of the great American short story writer Raymond Carver in their downbeat realism and unflinching attention to the warp and weft of everyday lives. Vlautin has recently published a novel, The Motel Life, extending his sympathetic observational writing to the printed page. Musically Richmond Fontaine are a deceptively humble proposition, with Vlautin’s understated vocals and Paul Brainard’s washes of pedal steel guitar illuminating these quietly resonant songs of love, hope and loss.

Finally, this month sees a rare home town concert by Viennese electronica legend Fennesz, appearing in an unlikely duo show with American singer Mike Patton. Along with artists like Peter Rehberg and Farmers Manual, Fennesz was in the late 90s and early 00s one of the key figures of the influential Mego label, a Vienna-based imprint that was dedicated to innovative electronic music. Less defiantly atonal than some of his former labelmates, Fennesz’s fusion of guitar and synthesiser is suffused with a bright and warm elegance. His 2001 album Endless Summer was a loving homage to the Beach Boys’ ecstatic summery textures, flawlessly reimagined for the modern age. What he’s doing collaborating with a journeyman like Patton is anyone’s guess, but the results should be interesting in any event. And that’s your lot – something for everyone this month, I hope.

Ether column, February 2007

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Porgy & Bess continues its phenomenal run of recent concerts into February with two shows by the great American composer and improviser Anthony Braxton. Braxton is a towering figure in contemporary American music, incorporating elements of free jazz, improvisation and composition into his rich and complex musical structures. Principally a saxophonist onstage – his 1968 album For Alto was the first ever album for solo saxophone – he is also skilled on the flute and clarinet. His great innovation has been to take the essential rhythmic and textural elements of jazz and to combine them with experimental compositional techniques such as graphic and non-specific notation, serialism and multimedia.

Braxton’s work is theoretical and often mystical in nature. His scores and record covers are littered with cryptic numbers and diagrams, betraying the influence of Cage and Stockhausen. And yet he takes pains to stand apart from these masters of modern composition, often claiming not to know himself what the numbers and diagrams mean. One senses that Braxton is grappling with a search for a higher truth that will remain forever out of reach. It is the search itself, rather than the truth, that drives him. He will be appearing in Vienna with his Sextet, a group of young Braxton acolytes dedicated to realising their mentor’s dense yet rewarding music.

And now, as a special favour to those who would like a change from all the challenging experimental sounds I’ve been recommending in this column lately, some great pop music. From Portland, Oregon, The Decemberists have released four albums of indie rock with a folky, literate edge and a strong narrative element. Taking their cue directly from British singer-songwriter Al Stewart, the Decemberists produce finely crafted ballads that combine lyrical musings on soldiers, sea captains and chimney sweeps with a chiming, propulsive musical energy. Singer and lyricist Colin Meloy is a charming and charismatic live performer, as happy encouraging the audience in a dance contest or singalong as he is wandering to the edge of the stage and playing to the front rows. After three albums on the confrontational Kill Rock Stars label, the band released their latest, The Crane Wife, on a major label (Capitol); happily, however, this shift has not signalled any watering down of the Decemberists’ craft. On the contrary, the record contains some of Meloy’s strongest writing to date, particularly the 13-minute epic “The Island,” which sees the band move towards a highly attractive fusion of folk and progressive musics. Confident without being overbearing, the Decemberists are just the ticket if you need to banish those winter blues.

Ether column, January 2007

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Many creative artists thrive on collaboration – the refusal, through seeking out a shifting cast of associates, to allow musical habits and attitudes to ossify. Porgy & Bess showcases no fewer than three such aggregations this month. British composer and musician Fred Frith sets the ball rolling, appearing with the Arte Quartet in a performance of his composition Still/Urban. Best known as a startlingly innovative improvising guitarist, Frith first came to prominence as a founder member of the experimental rock group Henry Cow. The Cow were active between 1968 and 1978, in that time producing several albums of complex, politically engaged music. Later, Frith moved to New York and became associated with a loose network of musicians centred around the saxophonist and composer John Zorn. In more recent years he has turned his hand to music for dance, film and theatre, in between holding down a day job as a professor of music in California. Still/Urban is an intriguing prospect, a piece for four saxophones and electric guitar.

Later in the month, Porgy’s has the privilege of playing host to Sunny Murray, a true original of free jazz. Now in his 70th year, Murray was one of the first percussionists to use the drums as a lead instrument rather than merely as a timekeeping device. After playing with Cecil Taylor’s group in 1962, Murray became part of the Albert Ayler trio, adding his barrage of irregular stickwork to seminal recordings like Spiritual Unity and New York Eye & Ear Control. For this Vienna appearance, Murray is joined by a large Austrian group consisting of reeds, trumpet, violin, piano, bass and saxophone – a lineup, propelled by Murray’s incendiary drumming, that should be loud enough to shake any remaining post-Christmas cobwebs away.

Bringing the spirit of the ad hoc musical grouping decisively into the 21st century, Japanese avantists Otomo Yoshihide and Sachiko M land in Vienna as part of the annual Jeunesse festival – an admirable initiative that focuses on attracting young people to live concerts, although all ages are welcome. The two collaborated initially in Ground Zero, a fearsomely heavy noise-rock aggregation, before playing formative roles in the development of onkyo – a movement that began in Japan in the late 1990s, privileging small and often quiet musical gestures and making liberal use of electronics and silence. Playing here with drummer Martin Brandlmayer (of Vienna post-rock trio Radian) and trumpeter Axel Dörner, Otomo coaxes all manner of sounds from his guitar and from a turntable with no records on it, while Sachiko M uses laptops and other devices to create music from sine waves. Of such strange gestures are radical and necessary unorthodoxies forged.

Ether column, December 2006

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Undoubtedly the highlight of this month’s concerts is a rare visit to Vienna by the British saxophonist Evan Parker, playing at Porgy & Bess as part of the Alexander von Schlippenbach Trio. Parker is a saxophonist like no other. Along with figures like Peter Brötzmann and the late Derek Bailey, he is one of the leading lights of European free improvisation – a movement that began in the mid-60s, taking the language of free jazz (as heard in the work of musicians such as Albert Ayler and Ornette Coleman), divesting it of its rhythmic origins and extending it into the realm of pure abstraction. No two concerts of free improv are ever alike – the performers are guided by the dynamics between them on the night, rarely lapsing into the easy formularity of melody, rhythm and harmony. The results can be challenging to the untrained ear, but can also be truly spectacular. Nowhere is this more so than in the playing of Parker, whose soloing on tenor and soprano sax is possessed of a unique, serpentine beauty. Parker is a virtuoso exponent of circular breathing, a fiendishly difficult technique that enables him to play long, continuous solos without ever pausing for breath. He issues torrents of dense, fluttering notes that hang in the air like a challenge. Happy in many different contexts, from stripped-down solo to large-scale electro-acoustic ensemble, Parker’s trio with Alex von Schlippenbach (piano) and Paul Lovens (drums) is one of his most enduring musical associations.

Later this month, Slovenian industrialists Laibach invade the inhospitable surroundings of Planet Music for your average evening of eastern European totalitarianism. As founding members of the Neue Slowenische Kunst art collective, Laibach have been making a nuisance of themselves since the early 80s with their stirring blend of neoclassical and martial music. Like other groups associated with the NSK, Laibach like to privilege the collective over the individual, issuing statements and manifestos and framing their concerts as quasi-political rallies.

Laibach’s use of uniforms and totalitarian aesthetics, allied to the Wagnerian overtones of the music, have led to frequent accusations of political extremism – charges that the band dismiss, pointing to the humorous impulse at work in their militaristic interpretations of cheesy pop songs such as “One Vision” and “The Final Countdown”. Laibach adopt the trappings and symbols of state power, exaggerating them to the point of parody and thereby offering satirical comment on them. While certainly open to misinterpretation, the ambivalence of their methods can be read as an invitation for listeners to examine their own beliefs and prejudices. Their new album, Volk, is a collection of songs inspired by national anthems, further embedding Laibach’s bold interrogation of the iconography of nationalism. And you can dance to it as well. Political music was never this much fun.

Ether column, November 2006

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November is a good month in Vienna for fans of literate male singer-songwriters, with two of the finest in the world playing here within the space of three days. First up is Peter Hammill, best known as the leader of 70s avant-prog rockers Van der Graaf Generator. VdGG reformed last year for a new album and a series of triumphant concerts, but they are now on hold again while Hammill continues his remarkable solo career, during which he has released upwards of 30 albums of spiky, uncompromising art rock.

This thin, greying man of 58 is one of the unheralded legends of music – a man whose singing voice modulates from an achingly sad caress to a blood-curdling shriek, often within the same song. His songs are dense, knotty propositions, reflecting with rare lyrical eloquence on the nature of love, the passing of time, free will and predestination. Accompanying himself on guitar and electric piano, he will be joined by his regular collaborator, violinist Stuart Gordon.

Hammill plays in Vienna on 11 November, the date in 1968 on which one of VdGG’s most celebrated songs, “Darkness (11/11)”, was written. He may or may not play that song on the night, but his dark subject matter and anguished, expressionist delivery will in any event be offset by a genuine onstage warmth and a wholehearted commitment to the physicality of live performance.

From the intimacy of the Szene to the grand space of the Konzerthaus, where Nick Cave gives what is billed as a solo performance on 13 November. ‘Solo’ in this context means without Cave’s long-term backing band, the Bad Seeds, although in fact three of them – violinist Warren Ellis, bassist Martyn Casey and drummer Jim Sclavunos – will also be onstage, adding colour and depth to Cave’s finely wrought meditations on love, redemption and the power of myth.

Cave has left his formative 80s years with the Birthday Party, Australia’s foremost goth-punk ranters, far behind, and is now settled into a life of domestic bliss with his wife and children in England. He is also something of a renaissance man, having written an acclaimed novel (And The Ass Saw The Angel) and film script (The Proposition). But his remarkable gift for self-expression, in language that ranges from the potent to the delirious, is undoubtedly heard to best effect in his songs.

Cave’s most recent album, Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus, shows him at the height of his powers. He writes and sings about love with exceptional tenderness and beauty, yet he also delivers rousing anthems that achieve an extraordinary blend of rumbustiousness and articulacy. The splendid acoustic of the Konzerthaus will be an ideal setting for Cave’s elegant croon and gorgeous piano playing, and with ticket prices ranging from €45 to a wallet-sapping €125, the audience will no doubt be hanging on every note.

Ether column, October 2006

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Two very different purveyors of modern American rock come to Vienna this month. First, Pere Ubu, who have been creating a unique, uncategorisable noise for over thirty years. Formed in 1975 and sporadically active ever since, they have undergone numerous line-up changes but have always centred on the larger-than-life figure of frontman David Thomas. The band is named after the main character in Alfred Jarry’s play Ubu Roi, a forerunner of the Theatre of the Absurd – and there is indeed something absurd, yet strangely compelling, about Ubu’s music. It’s a blend of raw, punkish textures, scything electric guitar and jagged, angular discordance, with liberal bursts of feedback hovering around Thomas’s high-pitched, desperate-sounding voice.

The band’s first album, The Modern Dance, was immediately hailed as a classic upon its release in 1978, but its follow-up, Dub Housing, is often cited as their best. Later albums were poppier and sometimes uneven, but never lost the essential element of Thomas’s agitated creativity. Often seen onstage wearing a large red apron and playing an accordion, Thomas comes across in live performance as a mixture of circus clown, street ranter and fairground barker.

Thomas has a bewildering array of projects under his belt at a time. He recently reformed his pre-Ubu proto-punk outfit, Rocket From The Tombs, and has a long-standing solo project, the Two Pale Boys. His “improvisational opera”, Mirror Man, was premiered in London in 1998 and has since been performed around the world. He has acted on London stages and lectured at American universities. But the group context of Pere Ubu has always been the main platform for his wayward, unpredictable talent.

Rock critic Greil Marcus wrote: “Thomas’s voice is that of a man muttering in a crowd. You think he’s talking to himself, until you realise he’s talking to you.” Vienna has the chance to hear what Thomas is talking about when Pere Ubu play the Szene on the opening night of their European tour.

Later this month, Midlake plug into the Flex’s awesome sound system for an evening of leisurely indie pop. As fresh and relaxed as Ubu are weathered and craggy, Midlake débuted in 2004 with Bamnan and Slivercork. That album’s appealing synthesised textures immediately marked the band out as producers of whimsical, lo-fi electronica, recalling the more psychedelic elements of outfits like the Flaming Lips but adding their own distinctive layer of unhurried pastoralism.

Their recently released second album, The Trials of Van Occupanther, is a seductive amalgam of 1970s mellow moods (Fleetwood Mac, Neil Young) and contemporary mope-rock from the likes of Radiohead and Coldplay. As such, it represents something of a backward step from the quirky originality of its predecessor. Still, with their delicate, affecting and hopeful songs, it would certainly be unwise to write Midlake off just yet.

La Société des Timides à la Parade des Oiseaux: Le Combat Occulté

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Here’s a French ensemble with a decidedly unwieldy name who have amassed enough material over their career to present this 22-track collection of previously unreleased tracks, alternative versions and live recordings. Spanning the years 1984 to 1993 (it’s unclear from the information provided whether the band is still in existence or not), the set depicts La STPO as a fairly driven avant-prog outfit, situated somewhere between Henry Cow, their descendants the Art Bears and the more discordant elements of King Crimson.

The danger with presenting an after-the-fact compilation such as this is that its contents might fail to cohere as a single piece of work. And there is indeed a patchwork and rather fragmentary feel to the album, with eleven of the tracks clocking in at under two minutes. These sound like sketches of or extracts from longer songs rather than self-contained compositions. Singer Pascal Godjkian’s vocal stylings (in French), meanwhile, come across as rather too arch and declamatory for my tastes.

When La STPO hit their stride musically, however, the album becomes hugely enjoyable. “L’Explosionniste” kicks off with a deeply satisfying eruption of Ayleresque skronk from the sax of Franck Fagon, before turning to more conventional but still rich episodes for guitar and woodwind. Elsewhere, Fripp-quality splintery guitar lines are pitted against lurching avant songcraft reminiscent of the Art Bears at their most visceral. It’s in this mode, on lengthy tracks like “Avant” and “Un,” that La STPO are at their most daring and striking. Guitarist Jim B provides a marvellously detailed piece of cover art, depicting a flock of large, gleeful birds ransacking an archive. Reels of master tape dangle triumphantly from the birds’ beaks as the library’s human curators look on aghast.

(Originally published in The Sound Projector 15, 2007)

Jodie Jean Marston: Redtail

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Jodie Jean Marston’s Redtail is a near-perfect collection of contemporary American folk songs. Its ten tracks effortlessly evoke a mood of quiet, parched landscape with great precision and economy, combining the hypnotic stillness of Will Oldham (whose brother Ned plays guitar and bass here) with the cosmic stylings of Gram Parsons and The Band. Reserved and unhurried in execution, it nonetheless leaves a lasting impression of measured, strong-willed intentness.

Marston’s singing voice has more than a touch of the honeyed drawl of Lucinda Williams, but her songs inhabit a different universe entirely. Trading Williams’ expansive raunch for sweetness and modesty, Marston’s songs have an artless simplicity that is reinforced by the gentle, restrained instrumentation on display. Throughout the album, Marston’s delicately plucked or strummed acoustic guitar blends beautifully with spiralling traces of electric guitar, percussion and flute.

Several of the song titles – “Hands on the Prairie”, “Mountain Rise”, “Porchlights”, “Seedbearer” – hint at a stilled, sparsely peopled America, an evocation underpinned by the deep reserves of rural imagery on which Marston’s lyrics draw. “If the sky is a roof above me/I ask this house, will you love me”, she sings on “My Dog Will Choose”, in a voice of pure intimacy and affectlessness. Redtail’s gorgeous campfire vibe lends it a warmth and closeness that are utterly beguiling.

(Originally published in The Sound Projector 15, 2007)

Ignatz: Ignatz

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Ignatz is Bram Devens, a Brussels-based musician and certainly one of the least distinguished of the many artists in recent years who have dropped folkish acoustic guitar moves into a stew of electronic effects. Lacking the luminosity and sense of space characteristic of Four Tet, Boards of Canada and other leading lights of what has cringingly been termed folktronica, Ignatz depends on scratchy lo-fi methods in a game but ultimately doomed bid for grit and authenticity.

On this, his first album, Ignatz reaches back to Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music in an attempt to tap into that vital wellspring of unmediated expression. His artless vocals approximate to the nasal twang of many of the singers on the Smith box set, but trade their raw immediacy for a postmodern synthesis of acoustic and electronic forms. The results, almost without exception, are lame and unremarkable. The lengthy opener, “Rebound From The Cliff,” meanders on a path of fuzzed out guitar and peak level distortion without gathering much in the way of drama or conviction. Here and throughout, Devens approaches his vocals as interjections rather than as organic elements of the song, and they end up sounding sketchy and tacked-on as a result.

The title of “The Radiant Sheen” can only be ironic, since there is precious little radiance coming from the song in question. Instead, Devens lays down a bloopy rhythm track and overlays it with bloodless vocals and primitive, Velvets-y guitar. Elsewhere, “No Greater Gravity” begins pleasantly enough in its merging of acoustic simplicity and angular feedback, before losing its way with egregious processed humming sounds. The curiously titled “I Look At Her With The Euh” (sic) reveals Devens’ improvisational methods to be somewhat slack. Listening to his guitar work, one never gets the impression that he is driven to create this music; channelled, inspirational playing is not much in evidence here.

The closing and longest track, “The Sinister Snow Squaws”, is the one occasion on which Ignatz’s unstructured approach pays off. Combining just guitar and processing, the piece eschews vocals and beats and has something of the flavour of late period Swans in its slowly turning expansiveness. Devens adopts Jandek’s atonal, clanky style while bathing his guitar in a warm fog of effects. One wishes that Ignatz had adopted a similarly impressionistic approach elsewhere on the record.

(Originally published in The Sound Projector 15, 2007)

Fariña: Allotments

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As the long winter nights draw in, music lovers need something happy and generous to ward off the onset of the cold and the dark. Look no further than Fariña’s Allotments, a record filled to the brim with smart, vivacious songwriting, and one that issues a timely reminder of the virtues of literate, well crafted pop music.

Remarkably, the core members of Fariña, Mark Brend and Matt Gale, have been making music together for 25 years. They are joined on Allotments by Cliff Glanfield and Tim Conway, forming a group whose collective intuition and co-operative spirit are in ample evidence throughout this record’s twelve tracks. Free of grandstanding displays of egotism, the four band members each write some of the songs, share lead vocals and create a tone of charming togetherness.

Fariña have drawn comparisons with folk troubadours such as David Ackles and Tim Hardin, but for my money their most obvious antecedent is the refined pop of bands like the Lilac Time and the Go-Betweens. The opening “Island of Hotels” is simply a perfect song, its wistful pastoralism defined by Brend’s airy vocals and Conway’s blissed out acoustic guitar work. A gentle trumpet solo wanders in and out of the languid rhythm section, sealing the song’s timeless, summery beauty.

As the record progresses, it is Brend (the author of three books on music) who comes across as the most gifted of the group’s writers. “Island of Hotels” is one of his, and so too are most of the album’s highlights, from the witty, Lloyd Cole-esque “Never Any Good” to the moving elegy for lost love and opportunity, “B-Side”: “I may be tough, but sometimes rock’n’roll is not enough/Is this what you get/You get a black belt in regret.” The song is beautifully framed by shimmering electric guitar and an extended instrumental outro.

Things do get a little arch at times. Gale’s “Brief Encounter” is a slight, sub-Divine Comedy sketch of a woman’s illicit encounter with her lover, and the Neil Hannon similarities continue into Brend’s wordy paean to corporate salesmen, “Sales Force”, and Conway’s similarly prolix “Sleep”. Musically, Fariña have a weakness for cheap Casio synthesisers that lessens the emotional impact of a song like “She Radiates”. Despite these reservations, Allotments is still a tender, quietly impressive collection.

(Originally published in The Sound Projector 15, 2007)