This box set commemorates Dischord's first 20 years as a label and is an amazing and lovingly put together artefact. Three cds, with one track from each band on the label (including one track from each band on the seminal "Flex Your Head" compilation). The third disc is all unreleased material and contains some very early video footage of The Untouchables, The Teen Idles, SOA, Faith, Void and Deadline. 73 songs in all (21 unreleased) and a 134 page book with full page bio for each band written by Ian MacKaye, Jeff Nelson and Henry Rollins. This label has been such an inspiration to so many labels, bands, stores, activists, individuals, whatever. Hard working and obviously still in love with music even after all these years. The box set is sequenced in chronological order which is kind of cool because you get a feel for the way the bands and the label progressed, and because it's such a family affair, being that all the bands were from D.C., there are people showing up in a several different bands, so it illustrates the individual changes and transformations as well. So nice.
The 50 bands are as follows:
Teen Idles, The Untouchables, State of Alert, Minor Threat , Void, Youth Brigade, Government Issue, Scream, Iron Cross, Red C, Deadline, Artificial Peace, Faith, Skewbald, Marginal Man, Gray Matter, Rites of Spring, Beefeater, The Snakes, Dag Nasty, Embrace, Soulside, Egg Hunt, One Last Wish, Fire Party, Ignition, Three, Shudder to Think, Happy Go Licky, Fugazi, Lungfish, Fidelity Jones, The Nation of Ulysses, Holy Rollers, Jawbox, Severin, The High-Back Chairs, Autoclave, Circus Lupus, Branch Manager, Slant 6, Hoover, Trusty, Smart Went Crazy, The Crownhate Ruin, The Warmers, The Make-Up, Bluetip, Faraquet, Q and Not U.
Following the meticulous realizations of absurd propositions such as the ongoing "Kingdom of Elgaland-Vargaland" project and the attempts to communicate with the dead on "Operations of Spirit Communications," Swedish interdisciplinary artist C.M. Von Hausswolff presents "A Lecture On Disturbances In Architecture" as an open letter to architects and engineers, imploring that they consider how sound functions within urban space. This album which won an honorable mention at the 2002 Ars Electronica opens with a few remarks from the late maverick / crackpot architect Buckminster Fuller. His eccentric visions for a utopian society of geodesic domes and floating blimps parallel the subtext in Von Hausswolff's work that glorifies the saboteur as king. Aside from the introductory remarks from Fuller, Von Hausswolff's lecture is a non-verbal one, arguing its case through a series of modern-day mantras of urban life. Electric field discharges and rushing air from radiators have been filtered / amplified to achieve a din similar to Francisco Lopez' 'absolute concrete music.' Von Hausswolff contextualizes these sounds within a transition from the claustrophobic to the expansive / potentially transcendent spaces. In the end, "A Lecture On Disturbances In Architecture" is an incredible conceptual rebus, which insists upon leaving all of the loose ends untied.
You may be accustomed to hearing this gritty growl of a voice on Neurosis records, or maybe seen Steve Von Till onstage with them -- he's the scary looking Viking guy (although his pals here at AQ prefer to think of him as a teddy bar slash garden gnome) playing guitar. This second solo album treats us to a glimpse of Von Till's folksy side. With only the sparest of accompaniment -- a single fiddle, or acoustic guitar, or Hammond organ -- he whisper-growls tales of barren fields, blood red moons, howling beasts, broken anvils. The pace is very slow, the chord changes warm and emotional, and the mood is despondent. Reminds me at times of former Swans leader Michael Gira's recent solo work. Fans of Black Heart Procession might even take a risk on the metaller side of sensitive. Includes a Neil Young cover and a few minutes of Von Till's grandfather reciting verse.
Of the aesthetic subset of guitarists-who-plug-into-their-laptops-to-drone, Keith Fullerton Whitman has certainly established himself at the top of the mountain above Rafael Toral and Oren Ambarchi, with only a handful of recordings including last year's "21:30 For Acoustic Guitar" cd-ep and this "Playthroughs" album. Like many of his fellow six-string code slingers, Whitman cites '60s Minimalism as the formal precedent and influence upon his guitarscapes (in particular Steve Reich's "Piano Phases" and Terry Riley's Time Lag Accumulator found on "You're No Good" and "Poppy Nogood"); yet Whitman elevates the references to Riley and Reich beyond the flourishes of intellectual ornamentation, through a superior compositional prowess with a restricted monochromatic palette and a sparing but effective use of digital glitch effects. Instead of dissolving the guitar into a mass of digitally corroded noise, Whitman carefully extracts specific tones and timbres from the guitar and stretches them out into Charlemagne Palestine like organ chords (how Keith turns a guitar into a church organ is beyond me, but it's spectacular!) or into beautifully aerosolized mists of suspended particles. Weightless, hypnotic, and ultimately majestic, "Playthroughs" is such a strong album that it is a little hard to believe that such droning ambience could come from the same individual who's responsible for the fractured drill 'n' bass of Hrvatski.
After his two "NOA" albums of studio and live guitar noise improv for the Alchemy label, Seiichi Yamamoto (you know him as a key member of such bands as the Boredoms, Omoide Hatoba, and Rovo, of course!) now offers up a "proper" solo album of instrumental, electronic groove-based songs. Or shall we say "songs". Knowing Mr. Yamamoto, things aren't in any way normal. Already heading this direction with Rovo, Yamamoto has unleashed his inner Bill Laswell to craft an ambient, trancey album that's not noisy, but full of noises. Flanging effects and skittering percussion lead us into happy, mellow electro hippy jams, not unlike recent Boredoms (aka Voordoms) on E, all moonlight and flowers and smiling cartoon fish splashing translucent in the air. Maybe this melodic, organic, techno-ish music won't be to the liking of old Boredoms fans into their harder, spazzier stuff, but that's not Yamamoto's concern here. He's just getting his fuzzy groove on.
For over a dozen years, the immensely prolific Susumu Yokota has adeptly moved in and around many different genres -- drawing much critical acclaim and praise from fellow artists such as Radiohead, Super Furry Animals and Philip Glass (actually many moments on this particular release are quite reminiscent of Glass). His albums, each very distinct from the next, are often categorized as 'ambient' or 'house' or the all-encompassing 'electronica', but his music is much more far-reaching. This album is certainly no exception. It's a haunting, fluid, organic work which Yokota has called his "dream story" with the boy in the title being himself. Definitely not for the dancefloor, The Boy And The Tree seems more suited for a pair of good headphones. As each track unfurls an array of traditional Japanese instruments, a new beautiful atmosphere emerges.
What serious jazz ensemble will you find playing versions of compositions by Wayne Shorter and Eric Dolphy, AND Otomo Yoshihide and Jim O'Rourke? Well, Otomo Yoshihide's own New Jazz Quintet of course. Far from the turntables-and-noise shock tactics of his seminal Ground Zero group, Otomo's New Jazz Quintet is much more on the "inside" of jazz tradition, and although you can expect some surprises, this disc, recorded live in Tokyo March 2002, is fairly straightforward compared to the Quintet's two previous releases on John Zorn's Tzadik label. No guest vocals from Phew, no electronics from Merzbow or Sachiko M. No, instrumentally this is indeed nothing but a jazz quintet: Otomo's on guitar, with four of the best and brightest from the Japanese underground jazz scene on saxophones, bass, and drums. The experimentation (with noise, with pop) of those two Tzadik albums gives way here to Otomo and co.'s abiding love for serious jazz, full of color, beauty, feeling, and powerful playing. Amid the two jazz standards assayed here, Otomo's compositions, and the O'Rourke piece, fare quite well. Otomo's twenty minute "Flutter" (from the Quintet's first Tzadik disc) is one of the disc's highlights, in fact, jumping off from its melodic, noirish motif into an electric build-up and blow-out of massive proportions. The Shorter and Dolphy pieces are handled with energy and respect, and then Otomo's NJQ winds up the disc with their 18 minute take on O'Rourke's "Eureka" -- achingly sad and pretty, reaching densely layered heights of group improv, then subsiding into a lonely finale. Very nice, actually!
