Hallock Hill

Ersen, “Yine Seni Tanınm,” Ersen (Finders Keepers, 2008)

Finders Keepers stands out as the key label for re-issuing some of the rarest and, not unimportantly, most ear-blowing music from around the globe. Rarity for rarity’s sake is pretty meaningless unless it has some real teeth. Ersen Dintelen was the master of the Turkish “Adadolu Pop” movement of the 70s. Blending funk, psychedelia, Spaghetti Western, Mediterranean and rock elements, Ersen’s body of work obliterates much of the kitschier bands that relied on extended jams instead of the tight, taut constructions he favored. Some have called him a Turkish cross between Frank Zappa and Serge Gainsbourg. Yes, and his vocal stylings are at times reminiscent of Arthur Lee, but whatever antecedents you hear, you’ll hear pure imagination at work. Finders Keepers compiled 16 of Ersen’s masterpieces. Each one is worth every penny, as is the 17-page booklet accompanying the disk.

African Brothers Dance Band (International), “Ebi Te Yie” African Brothers Dance Band (International) (Afribos, 1970)

Well, I return, and with a hard-to-find track from the great African Brothers Dance Band (International). By the time they’d released this full-length in 1970, leader P.S.K. Ampadu and his group had recorded 56 tracks “on the 45 rpm” as the sleeve notes read. “The African Brothers Band was formed in the year 1963 where its first inauguration was held in September the same year under the Patronage of Mr. Oheneba Kwabena Nyarko and seven others… Under the leadership and Secretaryship of P.S.K. Ampadu and Nana Nyarko respectively, the Band was run as a ‘Part Time Job’ where bandsmen met in the evenings after closing from their various types of work, for practices or undertook engagements. The African Brothers gained popularity after their first record ‘Agyanka Dabere’ was out which met the public’s satisfaction. That was in the final month of 1966. After this number which gave them the vim of encouragement they tried and produced more hits which earned them more popularity. Of all these hits ‘Ebi Te Yie’ was undisputably accepted by the public to be the best record ever made in those times that was in 1968 where the band had turned professional after Mr. D.K. Nyarko and S.K. Osafo have financially assisted them in purchasing better instruments to work with…”

Noah Lennox (Panda Bear) of Animal Collective acknowledged his recent indebtedness to the band in his interview with Bob Boilen. Listen to the interview here on NPR. This self-titled LP cost me a pretty penny not too long ago, but there are other ways to listen to it.

Stephen Malkmus, “Black Book,” Stephen Malkmus (Matador 2001)

With all the excitement over the announcement that Pavement are going to do a series of reunion gigs, getting back together, playing/talking again, etc. it is worth going into the back catalogue of the band and its leader. Malkmus can be devisive— a singer and song writer who can elicit accusations of “slacker,” a laid-back style that careens out of the side of his singing mouth rather than straight out, a phased-out jammer who can get lost in his guitar. Some see him as the antithesis of Guided By Voices’s Robert Pollard: Pollard the unstoppable melodic and meaty-hook genius whose adherence to the “seriousness” of the history of rock makes him the more pure of the two indie giants. Then there are Malkmus’s adherents, who see the refined angularity of his attack and want to follow that groove as long as they can. I think there is room for Pollard and Malkmus both.

“Black Book” shows Malkmus on his first solo album taking the Pavement model and subtly reshaping it in his own name. A little less overtly glib, perhaps. A little more grit. Those are just words though. The music is what mattered (matters) and he delivers (delivered). His exploration of the guitar has taken on a mystical note that the best improvisers find once they’ve traveled the path long enough. Some never find it, and the listener is left with their drizzling noodling. Malkmus took his craft to the better place, throughout his four solo albums and tours, and it will be a real pleasure to see him with his old band, older, wiser and on target.

Art of Fighting, “Along the Run” (Demo), Every Minute a Mystery (Comes with a Smile Vol. 13)

The late, great Comes with a Smile is sorely missed. No other journal has been able to replace its perceptive interviews with underappreciated bands, or expose us to future indie stars in the same way. That each issue came with a disk, usually of unreleased demos, alternate or live tracks, made it that much more special, and the loss that much more.

This Art of Fighting track has always stood out from the 13th volume. This Australian band has released five albums of jazzy, melodic, structurally interesting pop and this demo has a relaxed motion that captivates. When it appeared polished as the lead track on 2005’s Second Storey, some of this casual charm was lost, but not its soul. They are a band worth finding, if you haven’t found them yet.

Art of Fighting on MySpace

Art of Fighting official site

Peter Broderick, “More of a Composition,” 4 Track Songs (Type, September 1, 2009)

You walk down the street and hear a cacophonous symphony beneath the level quartet of your thoughts. You look east and west and see varying lights, and to the north there may be a cloud. The south holds a promise, but the weather is inconclusive. Within site are a multitude of restaurants: Italian, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Middle Eastern, American, Continental. Some of it has no words, some of it is riddled with words, of a range of import. Classical melodies seep out of some of the doors, cars pass playing hip-hop, some old folkie strums on the corner, a jazz trio has set up outside the subway station, you are thinking of Elliott Smith, and Arvo Part, and Guided by Voices, and Doc Boggs, and everything that played on your college radio station, whether you went to college from ‘80 to ‘84 or ‘90 to ‘94, and you remember the first time you kissed your girlfriend, and now she is your wife, and you’re listening to this Peter Broderick record, and everything seemingly is playing alongside it, just as it always has.

You see, the pianos, guitars, banjos, violins, percussion, are all of a piece— a melange of meaning and timbre and thought and time, to the moment of you, the listener. I cannot remember an album that contained the world in such a way as this— all we hear, whether consciously or unconsciously, voluntarily or involuntarily. Broderick is truly modern, in this way: uncompartmentalized. And yet older: as if pre-cognition. The recent exhibition of drawings from the 8th through 12th centuries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, entitled “Pen and Parchment,” illuminated in stark relief the era prior to the Renaissance’s codification of form and symbolism. This was an era of immense freedom of movement and form, immense graphic imagination. Not the “Dark Ages” we were taught. Broderick may fit well with these thinkers, though perhaps without the stricture of a formal religion behind him. His 4 Track Songs shows a perpetual flight towards expression, within a multitude of forms and structures. Using a cheap microphone to record himself, Broderick transcribed these early compositions (they predate 2008’s Float). As one might record continually over the course of many disparate evenings, Broderick shows the composer’s craft: acts of improvisation leading towards form, towards finality, and therefore to a nascent beauty that has not a boundary. You could say: “File Under R: Rock.” But whoever found it there would be perplexed. If filed under “E: Encompassing” you might hit it spot on. This is truly one of the most inspired and inspiring collections of fragments and feelings you’re likely to hear, assuming you care, and think, and want to be a part of a mystery that can’t be classified by any single genre, or tone, or name.

Peter Broderick’s MySpace page

Type Records

Buy at Forced Exposure

Jordi Savall and Christophe Coin: “Les Pleurs” by Monsieur de Sainte Colombe, Tous Les Matin du Monde soundtrack (1991)

The incomparable Saiinte Colombe performed by his most ardent and skilled modern interpreter on the viola da gamba, Jordi Savall.

The Association, “The Time it is Today,” Birthday (Warner Bros., 1968)

Best known for “Along Comes Mary” and “Never My Love,” The Association was one of the best harmony groups of 1966-69, blending tinges of psychedelia and garage around their gorgeous blend of voices. “The Time it is Today” is off our their fourth full-length and shows their voices working their magic. This is smooth, California pop at its most elemental.

Clouwbeck, “Placer,” Wolfrahm (Shining Day 2009)

Richard Skelton’s latest release under the name Clouwbeck finds him, to my ears, moving into a less introspective and much more externally oriented mode than in his recent works. Other reviewers have noted a darkness and memory-bound heaviness in Wolfrahm which I simply do not hear. As against the heavily memory-infused feel of his recent Carousell piece, Black Swallow and Other Songs, Wolfrahm feels full of light and the present (the “now” as it is being experienced). Where Black Swallow, and Box of Birch (in its recent re-release), felt like expressions of the composer’s internal machinations, feelings and emotions, Wolfrahm reflects the outside world and nature. It is as if Skelton is composing nature, rather than nature serving as an influence on his composition. For lack of a more specific word, Wolfrahm feels “natural” itself. It creates its own weather and geography.

And its own geology. It is critically important to pay attention to the titles of Skelton’s pieces, and to their etymologies. Wolfrahm, for instance, is a variant spelling of wolfram, or tungsten, the steel-gray metal found in several ores that has the highest melting point of any non-alloyed metal. “Gossan” is highly oxidized and decomposed rock, where all that remains is iron oxides and quartz. The six pieces each have names referring to minerals, or mining, or geological entities, from this fragmentary remnant “gossan” to the final fullness of “lodes.” This last is notable for its plurality, as if there are many possible caches of fruition to be had, and not only one. It is opportunity, to my ears, that seems around every turn in Wolfrahm—choice. (I’ve only scratched the surface of these words and their meanings, and as with all things, it is what is underneath the surface that might contain the richest vein for each listener.)

While listening through a third time I felt a natural world taking shape, and Skelton articulating a process of discovery and movement, which I transcribed in the following notes. We cannot say what Skelton “meant” by these pieces any more than we can say what the wallpaper in the dining room “means.” But here I will give you what each conjured, and leave you to listen to “Placer,” one of the most powerful of these pieces.

1. “Gossan.” As if a single chord is continually in the process of forming and then breaking up. Marvellous panning, like a fan with the instruments spread out left to right. It becomes nearly a series of block chords swelling with Skelton’s characteristic bowings and textural scrapings over this continuing chordal bed. Last minute a slow moving wail of gorgeous chords.

2. “Leached.” Major dominant start. Sunny. Like waking up. Again chords form, stop and reform. A melody seems to want to play but cannot get past its hint. More and more voices come in. It is still sunny. Like waves rolling slowly into the shore and on to the sand, only to be pulled back out and then reform, each wave slightly different but containing the same general form. A high note motion comes in as it fades slightly, the listener pulling away from the waves and towards other sounds and memories of sounds.

3. “Black Sands.” Percussive swaying in background. Definite rhythmic beat which can be placed and felt. Swelling motion a transition to a different place. Happy. (Black sand is usually found in a placer deposit, an alluvial deposit of minerals often in the bend of a river, meaning on the surface, not having to be dug into deeply, and one valuable component often found within black sands is… wolframite).

4. “Oxide.” The melody trying to get out in ‘Leached” finds fuller expression. Its repeat binds the opening. Contentment. A satisfaction with meandering through a familiar maze of sound. Longer bowed overlays and major-tending passages. Less of the tension than in “Gossan” where rapid bowings increased alarm.

5. “Placer.” At first a stepping into a tunnel. A bit ominous. Low swells, a windy rush past. A gradual acclimatization and sense of bearing. Low swells take on a major tonality. Very refreshing waves of wind come past and feel comfortable. Placer is what is on the surface. Do not have to dig for it. Just pan for it. A little cave with a few treasures, some of them you find and some you brought with you. And then the surroundings and you, the initial noises and those you brought with you, harmonize and come together as one music. Those earlier sounds become filtered through new instances of themselves. A circle of sound that is content. It gradually fades as if leaving this place, its sounds disipating but remaining in mind.

6. “Lodes.” Morning. Waking bird song. Thoughts extend via short melodic fragments. The discovery of something. A gold fragment. A lode, but plural. Multitude of options seen, no one melody or fragment has to dominate but all can be given a chance to breathe and bear riches. A riches of options. Contentment seen in opportunity. Gradual addition of instruments and voices= expansiveness. Reduction and fade at end of day.

Richard Skelton’s announcement and ordering information

Shining Day

Carousell previously on Hallock Hill

Bill Fay, “Methane River,” Bill Fay (Nova 1970)

If you are looking for a grand message, Bill Fay might not be the right wordsmith to deliver. There is often a certain bluntness to his lyrics that keeps him from achieving the status of Dylan, who clearly served as his model. But for the sheer delight of his whimsical arangements and juxtapositions, Fay is masterful. His most famous song, “Be Not So Fearful,” carries its message crisply and unceremoniously, and it is a thing of beauty (Wilco have covered it for years). “Methane River” is an altogether more peculiar song, its eco-tinged lyrics quite prescient for their time. What makes it so moving is the outstanding orchestration, as if the song were a blend of several works-in-progress that found there way into this two minutes and fifty-two seconds.