On Our Hi-Fi
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.
Heather Duby – Post To Wire
There are some things that move us far more than we can remember until the next time we meet up with them. Certain paintings, a poem, that look on one particular person’s face that makes us blush or want to stare. These put us in a place where we are at once thinking outward and feeling inward; or, thinking inward and feeling outward.
There is that axis that passes right through us from above our head to below our feet, from high to deep. A pillar. We feel ourselves traveling this axis, swimming about and looking in awe at the rest of what is in us. We see the things of which we are capable: they terrify and seduce.
All of the songs on Heather Duby’s debut, Post To Wire, have this affect on me.
Tom Waits – Real Gone
I remember bumping into my former college roommate on that campus green in Syracuse. It was the early 90s. He was from Erie, Pennsylvania. We shared a room for two consecutive years, switching sides halfway through to give the illusion we’d moved, and finally we bonded over 40s of Haffenreffer, five-card draw (we played with pennies), the music of Tom Waits of course, and the last days of our teens we so desperately wanted to escape.
So when i ran into him after a long time, there on that green, first thing i told him was i’d heard the brand new Tom Waits, Bone Machine. His eyes widened, thinking glorified sweeping-up sadness, narrators in urban shadows.
To his surprise i said, “I think he’s dying.” I remember this clearly.
That was my take on hearing that record. It was the only understanding i could make of it, the aesthetics of harsh conflict–some kind of electrochem-mechanical asphyxiation–and lyrics about failed attempts to surrender to the ocean depths. It was not good news i felt i was delivering to my old companion. (”Old” seemed justified: we’d hit twenty.)
There had been deformity before, see. In the characters, in the lyrics, in the twisted knuckle guitar lines of Marc Ribot. But never so much in the sound, like the whole record was gasping for its last breath, wrenching the final bit of air out of the stench left over from everything that came before it. I couldn’t handle the sonic deformity then, beautiful sound waves turned into barbed wire. I always wanted to snicker with Tom; i never wanted to bleed.
More than a decade later, Tom Waits is still very much with us, and i’m not in my twenties anymore. If i were i might have a very similar take on first listen to this new record, Real Gone. Though it isn’t an easy listen right off, it is compelling, in part because it is so truthful. I realize now how hard Waits works at expressing a meticulous honesty, even if, at first, the picture presented seems too mangled to be true. He harnesses the acoustic space he’s working in (an abandoned schoolhouse)–as he did with Bone Machine–this time with the help of Mark Howard, who recorded and mixed Real Gone.
Waits notes in a recent interview in Magnet that most of the songs were written a cappella (sound familiar?)–barking rhythms and incantations in the bathroom into a Fostex four-track via a Shure SM58. He likens the process to automatic writing.
“Recording for me is like photographing ghosts.”
I’m not clever enough with words to describe these pictures. You have to look–listen–for yourself. I, myself, will be doing so for a long, long time.
The Dining Rooms - Numero Deux
Brand new in these parts, and yet if feels oh so familiar.
I like to avoid descriptions such as Ex meets Why they had a bastard child named Zed. It’s tempting here, though. Names like Lakuna, Portishead, The Beta Band, and especially the greatest of the Australian pace-setters to my mind (The Necks, and Paul Kelly’s score to the film Lantana) muscled their way right up to the fore, on first listen.
And that’s just it: It’s the pacing, stupid.
The ideal pacing for those moments in our everyday lives: preparing a meal, making love, shaving, sifting through the mail, grinding away at a keyboard or with a shovel or on the back of that big John Deere or setting down the briefcase at the top of the stairs. I know this music has been or will be co-opted by the forces that call themselves automobile commercials for the upwardly mobile, wipers all alive and swinging. The music on this record bleedin’ resonates.
At the same time, from the music-making point of view, it’s so simple and so clear. I don’t hear a single track on Numero Deux that couldn’t be completed, start to finish, inside of an afternoon.
For us in the Soundroom, the combination there is its draw.
And hey, it prompted Ms M. to encourage me to–impromptu-like, as if on the dance floor–”pretend to be a woman pretending to be a man.”
Much fun was to be had.
Bjork – Medulla
Bjork’s new record, Medulla, is nothing if not brave. It is singular, it is vast, it is muscular. It is probably the most beautiful record we’ve heard this year.
The kind of bold statement Bjork is making here is an abrupt and welcome reminder of what confident risk-taking can bring to any artistic expression. It sounds confident, anyway–but it doesn’t sound like Bjork was much conscious of her own risk-taking. She’s just doing it. She’s following what’s special and magical and what’s turning her on at the moment. I love that.
The record is almost entirely voices, but make no mistake, it’s unlikely these tracks will be heard much on your neighborly Sunday afternoon a cappella radio program. Blistering funk, operatic choirs, industrial edge, primal pulses–all coming from the mouths of the main artist herself and the diverse group of musicians she has invited to join her.
Inspired by this recent release, we are now following a new philosophy in the Soundroom. From this point forward we shall always have a vocal mic up and ready to record at a moment’s notice. I’m not talking about the need for a Neumann U47 or something; i went to Radio Shack over the weekend and bought a windsock for three dollars and slapped it onto a Shure SM57.
One can now be listening back to, say, the rhythm section of a song, and instantly grab the vocal mic in hand, stand over the hot console, and growl or hum or hiss and huff new ideas or accents or even a lead vocal, inspired by the energy of the moment.
Many thanks to Ms B. for the nudge.
Daniel Lanois – Rockets
A lovely companion to last year’s Shine, but by no means a replacement. (At first listen to Shine in May of 2003 we thought, A tasty plate of hors d’ouvres, where is this main course? And we’ve been feasting ever since…)
Another display of musical bravery, Rockets is a collection of live recordings and studio alternative takes. A delicious reminder of the live show we caught in Boston last May at the Paradise Club: broad, deliberate strokes; a visceral demonstration of instrumental performance and songwriting; delicacy and vulnerability meeting strength of voice and craft and the learning of distance traveled.
Rockets is raw, it is a personal note from an artist who is known for bringing out the most personal in other artists in the role of producer. This is music to learn from, to take to heart, to enjoy.
