This Heat – Health And Efficiency (ep,1980)

I suppose one can come to accept (it is harder to embrace) the flip side of this EP, "Graphic/Varispeed", as a kind of zen-inducing aural mechanism, but it's one of those pieces of sonic art I think most people need to find a rationale for, to somehow appreciate (these days, calling it drone apparently helps). 

The concept of designing a vinyl track that could be played at different turntable speeds, artistically exploring the physical properties of the record medium itself (as others have with, say, locked grooves or scratching; albeit with widely varying degrees of artistic success and cultural traction), was certainly valid - suffice to think of how the very physical properties and specs of film stock and the cinematograph, which (quite incidentally) allowed for that continuous strip of sequential photographic images to be projected backwards, all of a sudden (right from the pioneering Lumière brothers, with Démolition d'un mur) visually shaped and materialized the conception of literally turning back time for human culture (and the psyche of anyone who has ever called out an ex's name while having sex with a soon to be another ex). 

Unfortunately, in this case, as Graphic/Varispeed plays out, not only is it hard to identify any revolutionary or particularly (un)pleasant cultural takeaways from it, but time itself, or more precisely the technological transformations in music distribution that accompanied it, have rendered the experiment largely anachronistic, lest you can get your hands on a vinyl pressing, and even then, it can't make the same sense under so different a material musical culture. Some CD reissues only feature the track at 45 rpm, implicitly recognizing that as the standard speed (and even more implicitly suggesting that spending the extra time required to listen to it at 33 rpm was somewhat akin to getting caught in a cultural ruse), other digital releases feature it played at different speeds as different tracks; but as its entire rationale was predicated on the technical specificity of phonograph records and players, at a time and place when and where that medium was (still) dominant in that culture, those workaround versions can only stress how this has essentially become something of an archaeological artifact, requiring historical contextualization and adaptation to make some sort of sense and be experienced today. 

As such, in this day and age, I would mostly take it as an example of the type and array of experiences these guys had to go through to produce unique sounds and then (like turning musique concrète into song) be able to technically coalesce them into the disjointed complexity of pieces like the title track, which very much is a clear example of just how evolved This Heat must have sounded back in the post-punk primordial soup (to say nothing of the "pre-post" one - and with their legacy still going "post-post" strong).

Nonetheless, as the imposing availability of music being force-fed to humanity has turned so many of us into sonic bulimics, ceaselessly consuming musical products, mostly without considering for one second how they came to be and came to us, it's good that, once in a while, a musical head-scratcher like this can still stop us in our tracks, make us briefly contemplate some simple but sometimes willfully ignored notions - (good) music is (usually) hard work; our aesthetic perceptions are as culturally/historically contingent as all the works of art we so often briskly appraise regardless of how equipped we might be to properly appreciate them; the medium through which we experience a piece of music affects the nature of that experience and its conditions of existence - and leave us to ponder how that should be present in the way we relate to it. 

And now, here "it" is on youtube...

Telectu - Ctu-Telectu (1982)

Future veterans of portuguese experimental music, Telectu, kick-started things, the year Philip K. turned astral, with a dystopian Dick-inspired improvisational new-wave soundscape, that expanded on what 1/2 of Telectu, Vítor Rua (Jorge Lima Barreto being his academically savvier half in the group) was up to at the time with then pop experimentalists GNR (no apostrophe) on Independança, also from 1982. 

What's interesting is that, just as in that record GNR pushed their experimental tendencies to the edge - particularly with a side-long track, Avarias (which I find historically significant, but not entirely successful in itself), that sounded like an approximate answer to the question 'what if Can were a new-wave band' -, it could be argued that, while much more abstract, Telectu's debut, which even featured GNR's drummer, might in turn have been tempered by some of this group's parallel concerns with accessibility and engaging with the 'now' - concerns that would often elude a less immediately welcoming part of Telectu's subsequent career path and notable avant-garde collaborations, with the likes of Chris Cutler, Jac Berrocal or Louis Sclavis (not to say that Ctu Telectu - which is not some literary crossover wordplay on Cthulhu; I checked; you're welcome - could be accused of bearing any particular sympathy for success either). 

Does all that mean that artistic virtue lies in the middle? I don't know; nor, more importantly, do I know if one rule fits all, at all (well, that's rhetorical; I don't really think it does; different talents require different strategies to operate properly in different conditions, and figuring that out is a big part of their struggle). 

Either way, I also couldn't say how the tiger with the tie ties in with all that monkey business, but he sure looks snazzy - and isn't that its own reward?

GNR - Psicopátria (1986)

The defining portuguese new-wave group (probably), with a frontman (not Axl Rose) full of literary swagger (maybe more like a Lloyd Cole gone off the rails), bringing on the sound of a fun night out in the alternative eighties with their breakthrough album, with a great title, and a great cover! They were on a (cocaine-fuelled?) roll. They were also soon to run out (right after their fine mid-career-summation live album, In Vivo, from 1990) so, if you are looking to score some more, I would backtrack to their more avantgarde days (however hit-and-miss they could be) instead of the generic pop act they would morph into in the following years, which, as I seem to recall, saw them getting blander and blander, as their then chubby drummer Tóli got thinner and thinner. Correlation or causation? Unless we can convince him, in the name of science, to regain a few pounds and have the band record another album, I guess we'll never know.

Felt - Train Above the City (1988)

One is always quizzical about these apparently self-destructive moves in a musician’s career. Was it meant to sabotage an imposing record company; to free oneself from the aesthetic shackles of fame and fortune; or is it just sheer laziness posing as artistic intent? And why do we care? Well, on the one hand, possibly because we are culturally driven to reaffirm purposefulness as an imperative that should inform artistic endeavours - things must mean something, lest we plunge into aesthetic entropy, and obviously end up eating each other. On the other (simpler) hand, though, we might care simply because we care; just like people can sometimes push others away in hopes to see them stay, and sometimes they do (and other times everyone ends up miserably alone; so you might want to think that through). 

The same applies here, I think. 

We can put out numerous hypotheses on why "just Lawrence", mastermind of a band that had already made a jangle pop name for themselves, would out of nowhere have it release a record of basic loungey jazz in which he played no part. 

From a structural perspective, there was the self-imposed artistic equivalent of a soviet five-year centralised economic plan in play - in this case, both extended and limited to ten years (the band's pre-determined shelf life), to be filled with precisely ten records and ten singles - which had arguably already been at the root of some anomalies in their career to make good on the calendar (if nothing else) - like the equally all-instrumental Let the Snakes Crinkle Their Heads to Death (1986); although, this one was still somewhat recognizably on-(jangly-)brand, so that couldn't be the only explanation, even considering how things get when time's running out, and that creativity is far from immune to getting desperate. 

From a psychological perspective, one could also speculate whether, at the height of some sort of Bloomian "anxiety of influence", Lawrence of no Arabia tried to go for one of Dylan's I'm not there moments and one-up him by taking it literally. 

Even from a game theory perspective, one could argue that removing himself from the picture was in fact a crafty power play out of Sun Tzu to justify his autocratic rule within the band, trying to show how it all would go to crap if he took his hand off the steering wheel - and the first side of this record certainly seemed to make good on that promise. 

Maybe there's a point to all of that but, at the end of the day, phenomenology must always have its own say, because it was only if and when you actually took the leap of faith required to endure the (mercifully short) A-side of the record and still showed the willpower to expose yourself to the B-side, that that other, simpler, hypothesis, would get revealed – that this be perhaps one of the most effective tests for artistic allegiance ever crafted; as indeed, for those proven worthy, on the flip side, the blaze of self-destruction is instantly and permanently dimmed, along with the lights in the imaginary speakeasy where all of this takes place, after the bustling crowd has gone home, and only the familiar downbeat regulars, with nowhere to go, will hazily witness, in the back of their inebriated minds, the musicians being allowed to take off their ties, drop the schmaltzy act, and become one with the sunken atmosphere, before calling it quits for the night, or on life as a project, as soon enough only smoke will inhabit the room anyway. And it's not like this is even a particularly accomplished musical expression of that mood - while anyone who's heard Forever Breathes the Lonely Word knows Martin Duffy was no slouch, the piano-vibraphone interplay here is quite rudimentary - but, ultimately, maybe all those failings are what gives that B-side an extra human dimension, which doesn't necessarily make for good art, but can at times make it extra meaningful. If there's any reason to care about (part of) this record, it's certainly not because it manages to be a successful artistic sublimation of our innermost lonesome feelings; it's because it can somehow make us directly feel, in that atemporal moment recorded music conjures up, transcending the temporal separateness of musicians and their audience, that we are all, at the same time, sharing in the comfort of just giving up together.

Katra Turana - The End (1985) [EP]

Katra Turana formed as a sort of avant-cabaret japanese troupe, led by Atsusai Hiroika, who presented as an avant la lettre non-binary front person - self-described as handling "female, male & effective voices" on their first album, which was mostly made up of frail childlike divagations, feverish flights of fancy, and mumbled secrets, that could only be half-listened, across half-lit rooms, through shut shoji screens. 

Given that, it was something of a surprise to find their following release, "The End", to showcase a rather more bouncy and empowered demeanour (that would carry into their second LP, Kimera, where some of this material would get picked up again), while being dedicated to Jim Morrison, and taking inspiration (for a couple of verses, anyway) from The Doors' terminal tour de force (which Katra Turana did come closer to cover on their literal Reboot album, from 2022; but where - Morrison's words being the only (vaguely) recognizable thing out of the original, and the music being mostly turned into something manically celebratory - the whole piece sounds as if it were being performed by a doomsday cult, in giddy anticipation of said end). 

So what did all that amount to? Basically, an unexpectedly fun and campy take on chamber prog; one actually fit to counteract the genre's dour propensity for making you want to commit suicide. And when you think about it (as bohemians everywhere generally have) it certainly seems to make sense. If love's lost, if life's failed, and if the world is in fact doomed, instead of slitting your wrists or going on a onetime sleeping pills diet, you might as well just go ahead and live a little. 

Or not.

Kristen Noguès - An evor (1990)

So she shared a professor with Alan Stivell, he becomes a world music star, she dwindles into obscurity, and you ask what’s wrong with the world - except that ship has sailed, throughout the entirety of human history in fact, and furthermore continues to roam every body of water and bid adieu to every port, so, perhaps more to the point, you might ask instead what was right with her. 

All suggests Kristen Noguès did pretty much the best she had to do on this earth, with the never enough time allotted to those who do good things with it: offer the most beautiful music she could render from the means of expression specific to her cultural milieu, making them an extension of her personal sensibility, in perfect respect of both community and self, without ever making a spectacle of either; and her legacy, for all its subtle but distinctly heterodox plays on the musical tradition of the Breton harp, from all I’ve heard from her, is pretty faultless. So I guess quiet oblivion really was what she had coming to her all along: considering how the music business works, that's just asking to be ignored. Good for her; shame on us.

 Trape-Zape -  Trape-Zape (2002)

Ah, the (aesthetic, and no other) strength of musica povera. This is very pleasantly hard to define. Maybe you could call it something like progressive chamber jazz (though it is mostly composed), but it just feels like something close to being 'pure' music, i.e. music with no strict adherence to any concept or genre (nor to the cross-breeding of different ones), designed by a band of like-minded musicians simply happy to develop ideas with the (scarce) means of musical production at their disposal, in their own time, because, of course, who would pay upfront for anyone to come up with music with no brand to show for. Led by classically trained guitarist Fernando Guiomar, I for one did not expect a trio of classical guitar, double bass and percussions to fill up a musical room so effectively, but they surely do make the most of what they have, with nary a predictable moment or lull for the whole duration. 

Anyone who has ever had the pleasure of playing music with other people (particularly in close musical quarters, like chamber music) is bound to know that it is one of the most intimate and gratifying forms of social interaction one can enjoy without being naked - without even liking the persons you're with; just being bound together in the conjoined making of a transitory thing of beauty. This record feels simply, precisely, and entirely like an expression of that desire, a pursuit of such a pleasure, with no other agenda in sight. The fact that such a well-rounded labour of artisanal love couldn't come close to earn these musicians a marketable living pretty much ties all things still right and wrong with the musical world into one anachronistic rectangular flat factory plastic package. You should get it.

Hughes De Courson – Lux Obscura (2003)

One of the most frustrating records on record: this is like a dumb remix (there’s a tautology for you) of a great album, except we can’t get the original and we’re stuck with the insufferable ersatz. If possibly nothing I ever heard ever called for a remix, this certainly calls for a demix, and if Hughes de Courson came to his senses he should re-release it minus the moronic beats. As it is, half of this is infuriatingly unlistenable; the other half is frustratingly listenable, as it hints to what the rest could have been.

While one can sometimes feel, and especially think, that there is something a bit forced in Courson’s crossover releases, mixing classical music with other musical traditions and cultures (as in Bach to Africa (really?), Mozart in Egypt (his best), or (brace yourselves) O'stravaganza: Fantasy on Vivaldi and the Celtic Music of Ireland), the interweaving sophistication of his ecumenical approach usually makes it intriguing and enjoyable enough, even when not entirely convincing in conceptual terms.

Here, the flirt with dance music, over medieval material (by the likes of Guillaume de Machaut, who would surely beat himself up for not having thought of laying down some chill grooves all up on his motets first, and have them court ladies leave it all out on the palace dance floor), just comes across as an opportunistic afterthought, with no organic justification, brutishly superimposed upon the, as usual, very enticing instrumental and vocal work, for which a stellar cast of performers was assembled (such as Gilles Chabenat and Brian Gulland), only to then largely waste that unique bounty of talent in an equally one-of-a-kind operation of artistic vandalism. Curiously, this also includes two numbers with Courson's previous partner in the all-mighty Malicorne, Gabriel Yacoub, who is spared the downtempo treatment, out of respect one assumes (or loyauté, as the title of one of the compositions he sings suggests), which must be a sign that Courson had some sense of the mess he was making by jumping on the Enigma bandwagon, but decided to go through with it all the same, like people pouring ketchup all over their lobster Thermidor.

Could all this egregious sabotage be conceptually taken as an aural approximation to the artistic gesture informing Rauschenberg’s Erased de Kooning Drawing? Not even that; and it would hardly be any less regrettable for it. Besides, arguably, Low, of all people, had already made that point much more effectively in music, with their first muddled-tape recording of the spectrally gorgeous Will the Night - giving an added physical expression to its take on the precariousness of human entanglements (including, as it so sadly came all too soon to pass, theirs with each other, and ours with them), as conditioned by forces beyond our grasp - and even they had the later generosity of offering those less artistically forward-thinking of us an archetypal recording of the song, to be preserved in Plato's Cave for the ages. In this, as in so many things, one should take a page from those Mormons’ book. I miss them.

One of the good ones:

Sérgio & Odair Assad – Saga Dos Migrantes (1996)

Let's just get this out of the way: this is probably the apex of the Assad Brothers' output, which is to say it is probably the greatest classical guitar (duo) record of all times (with the close and sole competition coming from their other records). 

As siblings, Sérgio and Odair always sounded like they made the absolute best of the opportunity to build, pretty much from the cradle, an artistic understanding and a technical synchronicity that bordered on the telepathic. However, even for them, this record sounds like an aesthetic singularity; that freak event when the (conjoined) expressive capabilities of (in this case) musicians transcend the technical constraints of their instruments of choice. 

This is beyond the conventions of classical (guitar) music, but from within - where and when technique becomes a meaningless word, and you can make the instrument bend time and sound like whatever fits your aesthetic needs at any point; not to check your virtuoso card or showcase freakish extended techniques (even though they did enjoy at some point doing their two-guys-four-hands-one-guitar parlor trick, to round up their live shows), but as a pure expressive necessity (and ability) to produce the exact sound that best delivers the idea and emotion at every single point. 

That actually makes them almost co-composers of every piece they did not write (the title suite here is from Sérgio, and one of his best), not only given the absurd richness of their interpretations (as in the way they always make me think more highly of Gismonti's music than Egberto himself performing it usually does), but because, even then, they still manage not to make the pieces about them (as opposed to, say, Al Di Meola’s apish mangling of Piazzolla’s extraordinary Tango Suite - originally written for (and extraordinarily recorded by) the Assad, for good reason). 

In fact, I don’t even think the Assad qualified as a "guitar duo" at this point. When you get to the never-ending layers, textures and nuances of their reading of Ginastera’s first piano sonata, the whole experience turns into something akin to seeing a human being in the middle of the street suddenly take flight, or simply listening to Pawn Hearts: you know some general law of nature was being broken.

When - The Lobster Boys (2001)

When is the brainchild of one strange norwegian, Lars Pedersen, from whom you really never know quite what to expect: depending on which record you happen to pick up, you can either get foreboding sound collages that seep into the air like miasmas - bearing titles such as Drowning But Learning, Death in the Blue Lake, or The Black Death (not sure if you managed to grasp the common thread running through those; it is quite subtle) - or (case in point) be offered an excitingly shambolic foray into psychedelic sunshine pop, voraciously incorporating all manner of musical things, through the use of a high-powered sampler particularly in tune with the synesthetic perfume of some intoxicating arabic and oriental motifs that, like a spice rub on your sunday roast, is able to elevate even a couple of more prosaic "indie-rock" moves, by instantly transporting us to a sonic souk. 

I have yet to delve a bit more into Pedersen's output to better figure out what my general thoughts on it might be (or simply if there are any to be had), but at this point I would say, despite it being very antithetical to how I generally feel about things: I think I prefer it when he's happy.

The Incredible String Band – Earthspan (1972)

This was the first Incredible String Band record I heard, way back in the day, which explains why several years passed before I was willing to give them another chance, or, instead, makes me now wonder how I ever came to give them said chance (not to say I regret having done so). 

The ISB pretty much erected an entire aesthetic – freak folk avant la lettre - around, among other things, a certain disregard for musical proficiency, which, on albums like The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter, sparked in them the unimpeachable ability to craft nonsensical songs that employed no compositional rationale known to civilized society (whatever that may be), using whatever instruments might come their way, in whatever way they saw fit, including, I can only assume, at some point, having sex with them (friction being a time-honored method of getting sounds out of things). 

However, by Earthspan, perhaps mirroring their "spiritual" migration towards more corporate forms of mysticism (i.e. scientology), that former carefree pack of pagans seemed to have been decidedly edging towards mainstream musical industry, taking a stab at delivering a more “professional”, streamlined product, while, unfortunately, showing no signs of having acquired the skills required to do such a thing – which they (skills) are (required): you don't get to be a sellout out of sheer want. 

The result is a most unholy union of amateurishness and frivolity, wherein church organs and straightforward rock n’ roll drumming (courtesy of the omnipresent folk-rocker Dave Mattacks) or smooth jazz ambiences and howling lads and lasses, can freely mingle, alas with no apparent sense of irony or self-awareness (à la, say, The Flying Lizards) to at least pass it off as subversion or comment re the music business, of which they awkwardly really seem to be posing as committed stakeholders. 

What could be good ideas still rear their heads here and there, but they are almost immediately taken out back to slaughter amidst loud alley cats. "Antoine" might be the only thing here kind enough not to get on my nerves at some point - something the rest of the record makes a point of doing on a regular basis. Right from the get go - just a few seconds into the record - when - as if crying murder - a sharp voice - so pitch-challenged as to make ISB’s front men Robin and Heron (compared by Luke Haines (look who's talking), in a song of praise for the band, to "a couple of weasels trapped in a sack") sound as accomplished singers as their winged namesakes - shrieks in in chorus, I already want to smash this record – twice!, to make sure it stays smashed. The fact that I have listened to all of it, more than once, is bound to raise questions as to how I have been spending my time on this earth, but, in the very least, if my sacrifice is not to be in vain, and while I have not had the fortitude to go beyond this point in their "career" (nor do I think I ever will), I can only suggest this be one of the very last things you ever, if ever, listen to from these cleaned-up weirdos. I'll take mine shabby, thank you very much.