It would appear that Jim O'Rourke's excellent Moikai label has
several new releases lined up for the next month or two. Here is
the info on each...
. Russel Ray: Live at the I.C.A./Retrospective 2xcd (Moikai 04)
The English free jazz improvisation scene of the late 60s and early 70s was an incestuous breeding ground. Robert Fripp was producing albums by Keith Tippet, Brian Eno was using Derek Bailey and Evan Parker on albums of odd Russian electronic music on Island, and labels like EMI and RCA were actually taking a stab at selling this music to a large market. Amidst all this was Ray Russell, a popular session guitarist, also playing in John Barry's group, also reputed to be the first guitarist in England to have a pedal setup, and also the man responsible for the guitar freak-out on the Dr. No soundtrack album. CBS and RCA started releasing records of his free jazz groups. They started innocently enough, but eventually Russell started to break free. At a time when hollow body guitars and a clean sound were the norm, he had his Fender guitar in one hand and a fuzz box in the other. For a period in the early 70s he made records of unknown hybridibastardization of the rock sound and free jazz energy. He was Caspar Brotzmann when Caspar's dad was still writing blueprints for the continental Europe free jazz sound. Then he moved on, as people do, and the records became impossible to get. His efforts dropped off the face of the free map. The sound is recognizably jazz -- rhythm section, horn, playing heads; group improvisation. But even after all these years it's still a shock when Russell comes up to bat. His lines are not so much melodic variation, or even Coltrane-like walls of sound. Instead it is what, 20 years later, was termed 'skree'; sharp, angular bursts, like a Pollock painting mounted with guitar pickups, the sound of explosions. Like contemporaries Sonny Sharrock and Terje Rypdal, Rusell makes it sound as if the guitar is not enough, as if he's reaching for something wilder, something that can't be contained within the 6 string cage.
. Rafael Toral: Sound Mind Sound Body cd (Moikai 06)
Rafael Toral's music is guitar based, but doesn't seem to involve any of the usual guitar histrionics. Instead he focuses in on the little details, the expansion of the sustained note. Sound Mind Sound Body is indeed a sustained note; the music is not dissimilar to Fripp and Eno's classic extrapolations, to Toral's mentor (and former NYC landlord) Phil Niblock, or to other like-minded drone masters. What is special is its (for lack of a better word) tenderness and hands-off gentleness. For this reissue, Toral has restored some pieces that were edited from the original and remastered the whole bloody thing for maximum drone effect.
. Kevin Drumm: Comedy cd (Moikai)
Comedy is his third album, recorded over two years ago. It floated around in a provisional version, entitled Organ, for quite a while and caused a genuine bidding war between labels, at least five of them, which caused our Kevin to retreat in his special endearing way, and ultimately decide not to do anything at all with it. During this hibernation, Organ underwent some changes, being dissected and bisected and now including three electronically generated magnifications, bookended by the original monolithic organ recording. The album opens and closes with this would be title track, and it's awesome. 'Organ' is firmly in line with monster-minimalists Tony Conrad and Phil Niblock. The recording of this could honestly be heard over a block away from his apartment. The middle pieces are, like his album Second, extrapolations of microscopic detail and will be familiar terrain to fans of Bernhard Gunter and the Mego scene. But Drumm is so all-American, his sense of intuition over form is totally there, that classic intuition that got us all the patents.
-->-Lance---
lance@inaudible.com
p.o. box 450715
westlake, ohio 44145
united states
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