Bowling for 47

School of Language - 45 (2019)

This might be one of the catchiest pieces of satirical agitprop you might ever come across, but as its subject, the 45th POTUS, returns to the ballots forcefully hoping (to put it mildly) to be recast as the 47th, it also seems to be objective proof of how ineffectual the genre can be, regardless of its artistic merits. 

Regardless, or because of them? I wonder.
Like humor (as Henri Bergson unwittingly proved, trying to come up with an unfunny explanation of how it works), despite millennia of applied ridicule of others, there's hardly a general theory of satire to be had, not least because its social uses are not restricted to the field of art, thereby muddling the criteria used to determine what makes a good piece of satire: one that is aesthetically interesting (whatever the criteria used to determine that as well) or one that effects a desired social change (and how does one measure that)? 

At a first glance, it might not be too unreasonable to pit the modern effectiveness of satire against its very artistic merits. In modern society (though, perhaps, not for long, in a post-modern, social-media escalated world, where people like me can pretend to have informed opinions to legitimize their subjective taste, and publicize them, however ineffectually), with its specialized critics and art history departments exercising authority on what gets to be defined as 'art', and how is it to be socially ranked, to appraise something as art tends to take on a bourgeois bent - privileging distanced forms of judgement, filtered by historical selection and theoretical apparatuses, to upkeep a certain aesthetic status quo, certain standards of (good) taste. 

Contrary to that, the satirical impulse tends to be primary and distasteful, like things you shout at the news on tv (if you're old as me), born out of disgust with a state of affairs, which entails that, for a piece of satire to be welcomed as an artwork, it probably has to sacrifice its immediate emotional urge to object and ridicule, until it becomes something the good society can be comfortable with, something witty rather than blunt, perhaps scathing but self-reflexive, provocative but not too edgy. 

However, that might be too narrow a view of what satire can do; for instance, tying it up to an immediate scale of events, and a single-handed causal effect over them; when it might be much more likely for it to participate in the shaping of wider and longer cultural processes, for which its artistic merits, while not guaranteeing instant instrumental rewards, might grant it more of a lasting influence. 

Furthermore, when the manichaean impulse that first drives satire begins to inform the majority of public discourse; when apparently no one seems to recognize themselves in the status quo anymore; and when the role of democracy in human affairs seems to be increasingly deformed, from being a way to achieve forms of compromise that accommodate the diversity of human prospects and constituencies, to a utilitarian way (among undemocratic others, if need be) for some to achieve supremacy over others, what is there even left for satire to do? 

I wouldn't know, otherwise I'd be paid for it, but one answer might be what this record seems to do. 

First of all, of artistic merits, it seems to have its fair share. The first one lies in the formal device employed to effect said satire; one that circumvents the easy route of simply looking down on the object of its scorn, by avoiding explicit commentary. Not only does it embody verbal discourse in specific, real-life characters, but further draws on their own, all too familiar, public words, to make them recognizable and produce something of a collective portrait in music of Trump's (first?) presidency. 

Of course, the splitting and splicing of that discourse, and the musical choices to soundtrack it, amount to a form of commentary themselves, like montage in a documentary; but by eschewing the equivalent of a voice-over (à la cinéma vérité, so to speak), even while sporting a point of view, you do afford the material some measure of autonomy to speak for itself. So much so, that while the satirical rationale for this might have been the proverbial 'give 'hem enough rope' - for people to call themselves into to question by highlighting their own words and actions -, as Trump's specific appeal is by now proven to be all but immune to that type of social checks and balances, he himself could probably endorse this record as a flattering musical fluff piece on himself (well, minus the "f#&$+=% moron" bit; perhaps).
The other main reason for the artistic success of the album is not only the obvious musical talents of Mr. David Brewis - one half of art-pop savants Field Music, and the whole of School of Language -, who is able to infuse these songs with the exact amount of detail and intelligence just this side of going prog, but also his specific aesthetic choice to adopt a funky r&b aesthetic for this. Surprisingly, that significantly furthers the embedded satire of (specifically) Trump's discourse, as it matches with musical swagger his brash rhetoric, to the point where the satire boldly risks to turn on itself, and make you glimpse some of what might draw in at least part of his acolytes; and while that could make this a self-defeating venture, maybe the end goal of a good satire in these circumstances might no longer be the lost hope of changing the hearts of those it opposes, but to give others insight on them. 
There are too many, too wide-ranging variables, both old and new, converging on the perfect political storm that is making it rain cats and dogs all over Fukuyama's globalized liberal democratic dreams - which makes the compilation of a grand theory impracticable and too sluggish to face a systemic state of political emergency; and the singling out of certain explanatory mechanisms a sitting duck for accusations of simplistic thinking; all of which might easily lull us into being spectators of our real-life rendering of how the world is doomed. 
Obviously, to work that out is not Brewis' or this record's burden, but that doesn't mean it can't contribute to the general figuring out of things - which is all anyone and anything can, to varying degrees -, and it might not be too out of place to argue that this does effectually (however a-theoretically) touch on and enact a critique of the contemporary society of spectacle, with the generalized commodification of human life in a reality tv / social media culture reconfiguring all of existence as an ongoing show, where constantly entertaining and being entertained becomes the primary mechanism of ascribing value to individuals and social interactions - and are we not 'entertained'? 

More than that - even as certain strands of political discourse, however well-meaning, seem to be tentatively pushing the social world to resemble the inside of a catholic boarding school, chastising the public into imposed virtuousness, while signposting their own -, what the spectacle of unconscionable narcissism and unfettered vitriol laid bare in these songs, along with a groovy beat, can bring to light, is how that might actually be perceived as liberating or inspirational by anyone who, in the face of all the frustrating intricacies and moral quandaries of working social and political systems, might increasingly pin for someone, however unfoundedly, to just validate our individual needs and unchecked opinions, to hold them as the things against which all others must be measured, make us believe in the logical impossibility that all social arrangements should and could be made in one's own image, to the detriment of all others.

Someone, simply put, giving us license to listen to the worst angels of our nature - which some's rousseaunean optimism might have been too naive in believing could be simply shooed away, instead of having to be bargained with, in political life, as we do every day in our personal one. 

In that respect, however critical, this record could be the closest anyone with no sympathy for Donald Trump might ever come to understand his mass appeal, without needing to make any apologies for it. Whoever turns out to be 47 (worst case scenario (from where I stand, anyway), in lieu of the Titanic ensemble, we might at least hope for a funky follow-up to soundtrack our drowning in the water from the icebergs we won't be able to crash into anymore), in the certainty that whatever brought us to this stage won't simply go away, maybe what this record ends up doing is what most political and social actors of all kinds increasingly can't or won't, and that is, in a sense, in the very least, to keep your enemies closer. 

Maybe that's the scariest omen of all; that the only relevant role left for satire to fill in the world right now is to be the adult in the room.

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 - 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. 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.