On Our Hi-Fi
Rufus Wainwright — Release The Stars
I’m terrified to think what he’ll do if he isn’t.
On this crisp autumn night, the eve of All Hallows’ Eve, i recognize within myself an ever-alive belief in fire worship. By the hearth, just now as always, i find heat and dancing color rising out of what is to me a mysterious force—this exchange of energy, this thing human beings know deep within themselves is a need, a guiding light, a comforting presence, an outstretched hand to the imagination.
And so it is too with the music that moves us. It nourishes, it comforts, it entertains, it inspires—in it we lose ourselves and find ourselves again. Through listening, our eyes are opened.
Juana Molina — Son
Somehow what is essentially an acoustic guitar and voice record provides the perfect answers to the questions posed by Bjork’s Medulla. Argentina catches a toss from Iceland.
The warmth and surreal elegance Molina delivers with her latest record bewitches the Soundroom crew into endless repeated listens. Her voice is the primary instrument, and Molina pushes it to be the most versatile, the most playful. Vocal performance, innovative live tracking techniques, and subsequent vocal treatments blend together seamlessly. Son is one of those records that feels familiar, and yet you’ve never before dreamt anything could sound like this.
Michael Brook — RockPaperScissors
A decade and a half since his latest solo effort, this arrival from the legendary Hamiltonian is a treat. He’s given us so much between then and now, it’s true: production for Jane Siberry, Djivan Gasparyan, Youssou N’Dour, U. Srinivas, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Claude Chalhoub, Cheb Khaled, et al.; original scores for Albino Alligator, Affliction, countless IMAX films, and lately the very successful An Inconvenient Truth.
RockPaperScissors, though sadly not a feast for those of us who love his unique guitar work, is precisely that for all who recognize his compositional style and production aesthetic as being truly visionary. The inimitable Richard Evans lends a big helping hand with this one, dialing in the heavy bottom on those API mic preamps, no doubt.
If you don’t buy the record, do yourself a favor and spend the 99 cents on “DarkerRoom” at the very least: Sir Richard Burton reading Dylan Thomas as Michael Brook crafts the space around Burton’s voice. This is no ordinary fireside chat.
David Byrne — The Catherine Wheel
We’re now recognizing how much The Catherine Wheel is influencing the direction of the second Pseudophone record—currently in production—from a distance. Textured rhythms with a pop sensibility, music that demands great physical effort.
But, question: Who ever told David Byrne he could get away with singing like that? He sees the line and steps confidently right over the thing—or never sees the line to begin with. Idiot glee courage. What i admire first and foremost is that confidence.
And then the beats, the sonics, the heat-meets-cold irony of it all, it dances before you, and there is steam.
Goldfrapp — Supernature
On the stage Alison and Will look like workaholics, or playaholics, or whatever term best describes a team with the sheer exertion they put into their need to do this.
Goldfrapp is fun, is sexy, is terrifying, is comforting, is all about craft, all about superfluity masquerading as need, or the other way around.
Goldfrapp is playing with fire, and they make it look like neon.
Tim Nelson — Mesh
Some think of Tim Nelson as a guitarist, others might say a player of all things with strings.
But i hold a different picture of Nelson’s main axe: it is a cauldron.
Whether in live performance or on the studio floor, he stirs home-grown sound sources into boiling concoctions not entirely of this earth. Dare i say “wizard-like”, he wields heat, he moves cold with electronic spells, secret spells, which, in turn, enhance and give lift to every other sound or vision over which these secrets are cast.
Such potions would appear not at all out of place as ingredients to the film scores of Mark Isham, Philip Glass, Cliff Martinez, Lisa Gerrard, and Peter Gabriel. To the admiration of the Red Sun Soundroom crew, Tim Nelson is a texturalist first: the music he makes is tactile, felt in the fingertips.
Mesh, his recent solo release, brings together on one disc at last several pieces created solely at the hand of the mad-botanist-become-organic-chemist-of-the-sonic-laboratory. He plays beautifully. An assortment of instruments are on the palette: acoustic guitars, cello, various flutes from around the globe, percussion instruments of equally diverse origin.
He also plays his playing beautifully—treatments bring these instruments to a new place within the compositions on Mesh, to a place hardly imaginable until heard, disbelieved, then heard again.
I enjoy Tim Nelson’s recorded efforts as a music-lover second. As a composer, creative recordist, and thief, i afford myself a separate, primary motive for listening: inspiration.
When (not if!) you buy this disc, buy a second copy for a friend. I’m telling you they will likely procure two more copies to pass along, and they’ll thank you for it.
Eno, Byrne, Hassell — My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts
“Au Sein De La Famille”
There are few things we find “at the heart of the family”—a familiar prayer, a piano, a cherished piece of furniture, a story told over and over so that anyone can mouth along with the highlights, a favorite holiday, a piece of music.
Growing up in the Vermont Koniuto home, that anchoring piece of music may have been Ravel’s Bolero, which my father would bring out now and again—ceremoniously, to my memory—on his old reel-to-reel. Or Art Blakey’s Drum Suite: this one frightened us as children, then got us dancing. There are others, but few.
There is a record at the heart of the Red Sun Soundroom family that gets this clan dancing and dreaming of other possible worlds. We’ve been living with My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts for some time, and just this month it’s been re-released with a new (and much improved) mastering job, as well as previously omitted tracks now included. Brian Eno, David Byrne, and Jon Hassell stacked found-object percussion into driving, pounding, hypnotic rhythms. Arranged over these beats are some of the earliest examples of sampled voices—from radio and archived field recordings—edited and treated to explore an entirely new world of story-telling through sonic manipulation. Before the ubiquitous use of digital samplers these artists worked with razor blades and countless splices of magnetic tape. The results, to this day, are spellbinding.
This seminal recording clearly has had its impact in the Soundroom, both aesthetically and in terms of performer attitude. From the production chair there is sometimes heard the imperative, “More Africa! Less office cubicle!”—though, admittedly, there may be more Africa to cubicle community life than what first meets the eye. “More barn, less high rise. More wood, less linoleum.”
These are by no means calls for anything like less sophistication in favor of something more “primitive”. Quite the opposite. They are appeals that stipulate—in the creative world—the mind must connect with muscle, the atmosphere need converse with earth, the spirit will know the beating heart when most awake.
On My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts technology looks archetypal rhythm in the eye and nods. There is an intrinsic agreement in these pieces, an understanding that the parts do not make the whole without innovation and soul searching alike. This is a precedent that holds a sacred place within the walls of the Soundroom. Music-making here requires the awareness of both the pulse of pumping blood and the flow of active electrons.
“The body is the big brain,” indeed. It’s about creating with your everything.
Hazel Scott – Relaxed Piano Moods
Delicate, by-the-fire music. Your heart just wants to wrap itself around these sounds, keep them close, promise to take care of them because they are so precious.
Put Ms Scott—Trinidad-born, Julliard-trained prodigy of the piano—in Rudy Van Gelder’s recording studio on a cold winter night in 1955 with Charles Mingus and his bass, Max Roach and his drums, and the freedom afforded her by the record label founded and owned by these two eminent members of her rhythm section, and what you get is magnificence.
The trio converses so effortlessly with one another. Hazel Scott—also a classical pianist who has soloed with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, and others—leads the exchange with musical intimations so breathtaking and inviting that Mingus and Roach can’t help but dive right in and support what she has to say with their own musical expressions of strength, humor, and subtlety.
Years later, Mingus would play quite a bit with a fellow named Pullen. I’m no musicologist, but as a big fan of Don Pullen i have to think he must have spent some important wee hours in his formative years with this Hazel Scott record.
So thank you to Hazel Scott, a shout out of thanks to one with the capability and courage to lead leaders.
Have a listen. A good deep one.