cyberinsekt

Is it okay to admit that I feel slightly let down by Power Tools? When I heard that there was a 1987 trio featuring Bill Frisell and Ronald Shannon Jackson and that they were called Power Tools, I thought it was going to be the missing link between Last Exit and Naked City. I wanted them to make a fucking almighty racket. And they didn't.

Sure, the musicianship is there. Frisell shreds and Jackson does his quasi-military thing, but I wanted something with a bit more grunt, a bit more bottom. Instead it's all spacious and delicate, and the funk edge added by bassist Melvin Gibbs is just a little unconvincing. It just doesn't feel like they're filling all of the available space.

Still, what is a drawback on the preceding 9 free jazz originals is made up for by Strange Meeting's closing track. A cover of this '60s pop standard needs the sort of airy subtlety that these three guys were giving. An unashamed pleasure.

Power Tools - Unchained Melody
(alternate download)

Time for some inscrutable black metal from the impossible-to-pronounce Wrnlrd. If you're wondering why you should give a toss about some lo-fi noise rock from a one mand band you've never heard of (and are frankly unlikely to ever heard of again) it's simply this: it's fascinating. Take a chance and listen to Marauder. It's only 82 seconds long, but it somehow manages to evoke a dark folk music, with a melody of extraordinary sadness buried beneath the roar of distorted guitars. Startlingly good stuff. It's taken from Wrnlrd's 2007 album Cperadt, which seems to be all about werewolves. Hey, nothing's perfect.

Wrnlrd - Marauder
(alternate download)

I shouldn't really be posting another Eyvind Kang track so soon, but have come to the realisation that you really ought to hear this one. Doorway to the Sun is the longest track on his 2004 album Virginal Co-Ordinates. It's got that easy lack of genre associated with film soundtracks, and the fact that it's played with a small orchestra helps that. Sonorous textures, chanted vocals, and some particularly satisfying clay pot-sounding percussion keeps this one alive for close to twenty minutes.

Eyvind Kang - Doorway to the Sun

I hope you're not getting fed up of all the recent Malian music that's been featured here of late, because I find this stuff irresistible. This is particularly good. Bassekou Kouyate plays the ngoni, a traditional instrument which looks like a cricket bat and sits somewhere in between a lute and a banjo. Ngoni Fola is taken from his 2007 album Segu Blue and the terse, clipped phrases are played with a rhythmic drive and rush. Just when you think you've got a handle on things, Kouyate starts mixing things up to make some of the most honestly thilling music I've heard in quite some time.

Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni ba - Ngoni Fola
(alternate download)

Today I had an unexpectedly thrilling adventure, as I was invited to see the inside of a working 89 key, 440 pipe fairground organ.

Let me explain. For years, my father volunteered for the St. John's Ambulance service. This meant that many summer weekends the family would go off to visit some random event, dad in his uniform and the rest of us along for the ride. Summer fêtes, charity sporting events, motocross rallies: we did them all. If you ever needed a childhood education in the absurdity of human endeavour, this was it. A few highlights stand out: playing vintage bagatelle tables, winning the grand prize of a bumper Danish Tourist Board information pack, and standing in front of vintage mechanical organs as they blasted out hokey old tunes.

The Gavioli (of 31 Bond Street, New York) organ is not hokey. It is truly mammoth. It weighs about four tons, fits into the back of a lorry, and when it opens its pipes the volume is intense. I'll tell you something: the recording I've found here doesn't do this beautiful beast of an instrument justice. It sounds slightly weedy, and slightly out of tune. The one I had the joy of exploring was not only properly maintained, but it could make a racket like nothing else. Concertina stacks of punched cards sped through its feeder as the drums, triangle, cymbals, glockenspiel and several hundred feet of organ pipe blared away just inches from my ears, the huge flywheel spinning constantly, and the release valves blowing the unused air back at the operator. Tremendous, and if you ever get the opportunity to see one of these glorious old machines in action you should not pass on it.

Thanks to Slothy's Pigeonshit for providing the rip of this track, taken from the album Fairground Fantasia in Stereo.

The Mammoth 89 Key 'Gavioli' Fairground Organ - Twelfth Street Rag
(alternate download)

I have very fond memories of John Surman's Private City. It was on my walkman a lot in the early 1990s as dérived through the streets of Edinburgh. I had the notion that this would be the ideal album for exploring the psychogeography of the place. With a title like that, how could it not be? As it happened, I was completely wrong, and it turned out that the urban mythologising of The Fall was far better suited for my purpose, but at least I got lots of exercise and listened to Surman a lot, and that's never a bad thing.

To be honest, on revisiting this album I cringe a little at some of the synth sounds. They're all a bit wibbly wobbly, you know? When Surman was doing his thing with multitracked woodwinds it's all a lot more satisfying. Here's the gentle and quite delightful Roundelay. Surman often used sequencers and delay effects, creating a bass line on one instrument which he could then repeat and play over on another. There's something of that here, but in this case the repeated bass figure gives this an almost baroque feel, despite the pronounced but delicate swing. It might be polite music, but there's a passionate restraint at play here. Excellent.

John Surman - Roundelay
(alternate download)

Boubacar Traoré has been called the Malian Robert Johnson. A pioneer of West African blues, he was a hugely popular performer during the '60s. It wasn't until 1990 however that he was able to record an album. That was the haunting and desolate Mariama, a classic of the singer-songwriter with guitar genre.

Fast forward to 2005 and the release of Kongo Magni. It's a decidedly different beast, with Traoré in command of a full band. Here's the extraordinary Kanou, where his guitar takes a back seat to some wickedly sprightly Arabic accordion playing from sideman Regis Gizavo. It's got that classic North African call and response thing going on. Real melting pot stuff, and absolutely terrific with it. You will love this.

Also beaupepys.com is open. Go visit!

Boubacar Traoré - Kanou
(alternate download)

It takes a certain kind of man to leap from a helicopter, dive from a cliff and fight off sharks, leap a broken bridge in a sports car, pilot his speedboat over a waterfall and then blow it up to cause a distraction so he could sneak into a woman's boudoir. In more innocent times, men were doing this on a daily basis, just so they could deliver boxes of chocolates. Nowadays we call those sorts of men stalkers. I wonder though, mightn't the world be a happier place if there were more tight black polo necks and fewer restraining orders? I do believe we can create that world together, dear readers, and we can start by listening to Cliff Adams' The Night Rider, better known as the theme to the Cadbury's Milk Tray adverts. Before you know it, we'll be zipping down rope slides and climbing through skylights like we were meant to. Happy days.

Cliff Adams - The Night Rider
(alternate download)

Michael Harrison studied with La Monte Young and Pandit Pran Nath. You know the difference between equal temperament and just intonation, right? Just intonation divides the octave via use of whole numbers, and is said to produce more characterful sound, but it sounds pretty terrible when you change key. Equal temperament, what we've mostly been listening to since the 18th century, uses a logarithmic division of the octave whereby adjacent notes always have an equal interval. Harrison is firmly on the just intonation side of the musical divide.

For years he had been playing his harmonic piano, a dramatically retuned instrument that allowed the division of the octave into 24, rather than 12, parts. That changed with the release of his work Revelation, where he pulls yet stranger harmonic tricks. From Revelation, this is Homage to La Monte which is a spectral and tentative thing. My only complaint is that this falls into what's become the signature trap of modern microtonal music, melancholic wistfulness. Microtonal music doesn't have to be mournful, and I'd be fascinated to hear what else he could do with it.

Michael Harrison - Homage to La Monte

Thirty years on, perhaps the strangest thing about Nurse With Wound's debut album is just how non-threatening it now seems. To be sure, Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella is still a seminal piece of industrial noise. Perhaps its the nostalgia speaking, or perhaps it's the caterwauling guitar that adds a certain period charm. Still, don't go listening to this looking for an easy ride. Two Mock Projections is the opening track, and so for many people probably marks the first and last time they ever heard Steve Stapleton. But go on. Search out some more. He doesn't bite, much.

Nurse With Wound - Two Mock Projections
(alternate download)

All you need to know about Manolo Kabezabolo is that he is a Spanish outsider punk one man band, and that the Spaniards are the sort of crazy people who believe that mixing red wine and cola is a neat idea. Inspired brilliance one moment, utter lunacy the next. As his cover of God Save the Queen is barely a minute long there's not much space for moments; this stays brilliant. You will not hear its like elsewhere.

Manolo Kabezabolo - God Save the Queen
(alternate download)

Tiny Tiny is a brief interlude from Japanese-born sonic artist Sawako. She captures the delicacy of the music box and via some rich reverb uses it to fill a much larger space. It sounds like looking back on the past through a fisheye lens. Exquisite. Taken from her 2007 album Madoromi.

Sawako - Tiny Tiny
(alternate download)

Recently on different waters Zhao posted a couple of amazing videos of Ethiopian Orthodox sacred music. The style seems to be called tehwado, and consists of a singer accompanying him or herself on a 10-string bass lyre called a begena. It's mesmerising, haunting music which sounds almost unfathomably ancient.

Since then I've been trying to investigate the music of Alemu Aga, a man often credited as being one of the masters of the begena. It's difficult going. Tehwado is a subtle music, and learning to distinguish its nuances will require some heavy listening. Time well spent, however, as if nothing else, this is a fantastic sound. Sele Sene Fetret is taken from a compilation of Aga's works, Ethiopiques vol. 11. It features typically meditative string patterns and his softly spoken half-sung vocal delivery. Quite amazing.

Alemu Aga - Sele Sene Fetret
(alternate download)

You might think you know your way around a lengthy psychedelic excursion. After all, it's a familiar format; you probably wouldn't have to do much listening before you knew what they were all about. Here's something that might change your mind.

Group Doueh hail from Western Sahara and have been doing this sort of thing for over 20 years. Exactly what "this sort of thing" is tends to be rather hard to describe. Doueh himself sounds as if he clutches at his guitar strings, grabbing handful after handful of notes none of which seem entirely comfortable next to each other.

Tazit Kalifa is a side-long track from Group Doueh's 2009 album Treeg Salaam, which is already out of print.

Group Doueh - Tazit Kalifa

It has been a very long time since there was any John Fahey to listen to here at Doklands. Obviously, that was an untenable situation. You can't go about not listening to John Fahey. There's a law about somewhere. I read it on the internet.

Orinda-Moraga is from the 1963 album The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death. What I love about is it's sheer unexpectedness. I've lost count of the number of times I've listened to this, and yet it still manages to surprise me. It's almost as if it's in disguise. Under the veneer of fingerpicking guitar there lies something much stranger, but the costume is so good that I get fooled every time.

John Fahey - Orinda-Moraga
(alternate download)

Somesay might be the most rock'n'roll song of all time.

Let me clarify that.

IF rock'n'roll is the sound of defiance AND IF it is about passion and feeling AND IF it is about pumping your fist in the air AND IF it is a sound that enables all of these things THEN Somesay IS the most rock'n'roll song ever. I have loved this music since I first heard it in 1981 and on considered reflection it is still the motherfucking bomb.

Don't be fooled by the album version from Wah!'s earlier Nah=Poo - The Art of Bluff, the recording is anaemic. This is the single - it's shorter, tauter, and it starts loud and stays there. I may be subject to generational bias here, but just listen to Pete Wylie as he sings "Fight the liars" at the end, and tell me this isn't the greatest thing ever. This is music to shout along to. Ain't it the truth.

Wah! - Somesay
(alternate download)

Here's a brilliant slice of West African blues from the late Malian guitarist and singer Ali Farka Toure. Penda Yoro is taken from his final album, the posthumously released Savane. The sharp fluidity of the guitar as it rolls through the song is a real delight. It's unfussed and joyful.

While Toure was undoubtedly a great musician, it seems he didn't much enjoy the celebrity that his music brought him. In his later years he preferred life on his rice farm to life on the road or in a recording studio. It's for this reason that his final songs are such rare treasures. He knew that he was dying of bone cancer, but perhaps wanted to give the world one last thing to remember him by.

Ali Farka Toure - Penda Yoro
(alternate download)

If you like something then more is better, right? I like Machinefabriek, but I really don't know that I could cope with more on the scale that Rutger Zuyderveldt provides. Zink is taken from his album Ranonkel, released in early 2008, and since then there have probably been another twenty or so entries to his prodigious discography.

Still, forget about that and give this a listen; live in the moment for the seventeen minutes of Zink. It starts as a gorgeous electroacoustic drone piece, full of fragile microsounds. For a while this is joined by some mournful guitar noises, and then the whole thing reverbs out and seems to stand still, right on the edge of hearing. Beautiful and melancholic.

Machinefabriek - Zink

I was totally unprepared for this; it's not even funny.

I've been listening to Bobby Previte for years. It all started quite by mistake, somehow getting him confused with Eddie Prevost, and walking away with a cheap copy of his solo electronic album Dull Bang, Gushing Sound, Human Shriek. It was exactly as dark, murky and unpleasant as the name suggests. Since then I've followed him through his more familiar jazz and avant-rock releases, and been well rewarded along the way. But this - this is something quite terrifying.

Mute the Send is taken from his latest release, 110. It's another solo album, but quite, quite different. It's a live studio performance of electronic drums and samplers, but that doesn't tell you the half of it. This is a monstrous barrage of cataclysmic, tearing sound, redlining at every opportunity. You'd never guess that these sounds were triggered in this way, but it's somehow appropriate. The drum kit is one of the most physical of all instruments, and this is a sound with real physical presence. It's weighty and imposing, and quite, quite magnificent. Not for the faint of heart.

Bobby Previte - Mute the Send
(alternate download)

This is what we had for tea tonight. It was delicious. beaupepys had most of the fingers, but I made sure I got the wrist with the lovely juicy bone sticking out of it. I owe my cannibalistic inspiration to Megan of not martha. Thank you. I am now a confirmed fan of the long pig.

Here are (of course) Sunburned Hand of the Man with Me & My Marrow from their great album Closer to the Bone. All very murky and tribal and utterly delicious. If the percussion isn't played with bits of old bone, it certainly should be.

I am already looking forward to next year. I wonder if it's possible to pour an egg into one of those plastic spheres that hold the prizes in vending machines and then to hard boil it. Sounds like a great starting place for eyeball salad.

Sunburned Hand of the Man - Me & My Marrow
(alternate download)