Friday, March 10th, 2006 ... 3:00 p.m. - 5:45 p.m. ... KZSU, 90.1 FM

Another game that was followed by Stanford baseball. You'll see a reference to rain near the bottom; the baseball game was down at USC, where it was apparently cloudy but not yet raining.

The big weather news today was the possibility of snow even at sea level -- yes, snow in Silicon Valley, snow in San Francisco! As of this writing it hasn't happened (it would be an overnight kind of occurance). Hope it doesn't -- no one out here, especially me, knows how to properly drive in snow, and we don't have snow tires anyway. Even the slightest dusting could cause problems, especially if it melts over into ice with the morning sun.

It snowed on us once here, when I was about nine. Not enough snow to do anything with, but everybody had to go outside and check it out! Big fun.

Format:
ARTIST -- "TRACK TITLE" -- ALBUM TITLE (LABEL, YEAR)

* Patrick Cress' Telepathy -- "Zum Bolly Boli" -- Meditation, Realization (Odd Shaped Case, 2005)

It's the final week in rotation for this gem of an album, which combines Klezmer, twisty modern bop, and occasional free-jazz chaos. They're Bay Area folks who play around town a lot (in addition to Cress, look for Aaron Novik's name, a clarinetist with a band called Gubbish). This particular track is a nice opener for the CD, an upbeat track that builds a tumbling momentum.

This one's got a very "world" looking cover, with images of wanderers in perhaps the North African desert? But it's mostly straight-up jazz, a mature and relaxed sound, led by sax and jazz guitar, with occasionally African-influenced elements. Nice stuff that manages to get cooking on a couple of tracks. There's also an untitled hidden track, apparently excerpted from rehearsals, that's just a fragment of an interesting jam -- very cool, but with a fade-in/fade-out that makes it feel incomplete (i.e. awkward for radio purposes). Kell, btw, is the bassist and composer here.

Interesting project: A small orchestra plus jazz folks, including Lambert (drums), Ellery Eskelin (sax), Dominic Duval (bass), and Malcolm Goldstein (violin, with some really cool solos). This does not have that lush orchestral sheen to it; rather, the orchestra members play jumpy, dissonant lines or dive into a rustling group improv a la the London Improvisers Orchestra (which records on (Emanem).

Half the album consists of a suite called "Le Passant" ("The Wanderer"), while the other half consists of mostly short improvisations by the featured players and the orchestra. Overall, a high-spirited attack that melds modern classical with modern avant-garde jazz. It's ambitious, energetic, exciting. This is its first week in rotation, and I'm looking forward to giving it more spins in weeks to come. For now, though, I kind of buried this in the middle of a set -- nothing wrong with that, obviously, but it gives the track a little less publicity "oomph," compared with having it start or end a set. It'll get its chances.

* Badlands: Simon H. Fell, Simon Rose, Steve Noble -- "Society of the Spectacle (Part 1) -- The Society of the Spectacle (Emanem, 2005)

Vicious improv led by Rose on sax, nice dark feel. It downshifts suddenly into a quieter (but still chaotic) final minute, which made a nice segue into ...

Ah .... warm, sunny, a bit of South African township feel ... and a loose structure that leaves little trace of a formal composition. It rushes over you like waves of a time-lapsed storm (except it's happy and sunny, as stated). Great to see Andrew back in the studio -- or, more properly, great to see him getting a contract!

Catchy little tune full of little avant-garde kinds of trills in Gordon's guitar playing but accessible. Gordon has a unique voice on jazz guitar; he's a local guy and I'm hoping this is just the first of many releases from him.

Aren't these guys an instrumental hip-hop act? Well, they've got four tracks with a rapper on this one, but the overall sound is the same downtempo glitchiness as before. Quite cool and intellectual sounding, and it comes with a lyrics sheet, which I found pleasantly surprising.

Yet another spin for what's become the "hit single" off this album, at least in my mind. I really need to give more time to the other jams on here -- the slow slow bluesy ones, the upbeat folky/psych ones, all that good stuff. Hey, if the "hit single" thing helps them get attention for the CD, then I'm glad to be doing it, although it does make for less creative radio.

Marcus Shelby Trio -- "Dance of the Mission Babies" -- The Sophisticate (Noir, 1998)

Shelby is playing tonight in a 15-piece Orchestra setting (think Duke Ellington), performing "Port Chicago," his suite commemorating the 1944 deaths of African-American navy sailors in a munitions explosion. It's a free concert here on campus, so I tried to play it up. Shelby is a shining light in the local jazz scene, and he'll be the subject of a profile in Downbeat in July or thereabouts, so says DJ Fo.

The second half of these trio concerts on CD, a light, comforting, mainstream sound that cloaks some clever and subversive playing from Williams, a veteran who's taken instruction from Miles Davis among others. This track is an original with a very "Well You Needn't" complexity in the theme and a great solo that starts with left-handed low-note tricks before sliding into a more conventional mode. The overall sound is more conservative that I like KZSU's jazz to be, but Williams' playing just has such intelligence and flair, it's hard to turn her down.

Another peaceful/fast West African-sounding track with acoustic guitar; I think that's all I've played off this CD so far. The closing track is a 7-minute electric funk adventure, and I'll give it its due one of these weeks.

* Hard Cell with Tim Berne -- "Mechanicals Failure" -- Feign (Screwgun, 2005)

* Joe McPhee and John Snyder -- "Les Heros Sont Fatigues/Red Giant" -- Pieces of Light (Atavistic, 2005; orig. released 1974)

A duo experiment where McPhee plays trumpet or sax and Snyder dabbles on a synthesizer -- a 1974 synthesizer, so it's got quite a dated sound, with some sci-fi effects that might be considered jokey if they appeared in concert today. Still, it's a good effort for the time, and probably sonically fascinating back then. Mostly meditative.

This track is my favorite. McPhee, in the left channel only, starts out with heavy, warm, burly sax tones -- Byrd of Paradise, our blues DJ, happened to catch part of this and was very impressed with McPhee's tone (Joe on a mainstream cool-jazz gig would be dynamite). In the right channel, Snyder conjures up booming thunder-of-doom static, later getting into glitchy sci-fi effects as McPhee switches to a buzzing, fluttering high trumpet. The left/right split is a bit too prominent and distracting, but the way the piece builds is impressive.

Starts with rushing synth-like noises and then gets into Fripp-like guitar picking. 23 guitars/basses on tape plus live solo electric. Brady is a Canadian who's used guitar electronics as the basis for a number of interesting modern-classical works.

Musicworks is a magazine dealing with experimental musics; each issue includes a CD. Check it out.

I've commented on this one before, and played this track before. But this time, for some reason, I wanted to offer up a second track from the band, to show they're more than a novelty act. So I gave them a second spin, one with an admittedly jazz/blues lilt (instead of the metal that more characteristically influences leader Cornelius Boots).

* Edmund Welles: The Bass Clarinet Quartet -- "The Black Lodge" -- Agrippa's 3 Books (Zeroth Law, 2005)

Ellery Eskelin -- "Terra Firma" -- Vanishing Point (Hatology, 2001)

From Eskelin's chamber-jazz album, a band with himself (sax), Mat Maneri (viola), Erik Friedlander (cello), Mark Dresser (bass), and Matt Moran (vibes). Actually, it's musically along the lines of Eskelin's usual work, but it gets that serious chamber sound from the instrumentation. This track develops into a nice beat with an almost world-music flavor thanks to Friedlander's pizzacatto cello.

* Mats Gustafsson and David Stackenas -- "Rotten Herring Blues" -- Blues (Atavistic, 2005)

I've been waiting weeks for the exact right time to spring this track out. The CD consists of sax/guitar duets, but there are a lot of electronics, effects, and loops involved on some tracks. Bottom line: this one sounds like a bunch of jackhammers. Cool!! Some slow, morose, quiet sax comes in at the end, just letting you know these are regular instruments here.

I've been remiss in not giving this one air time. Frisell makes an experimental departure, putting together a strings-and-violin mesh, long waves of abstract sound, done in response to the artworks of Gerhard Richter. This track is kind of cheating, as it gets into a bouncy folky beat led by Jenny Scheinman's violin.

* Matthew Shipp -- "Patmos" -- One (Thirsty Ear, 2005)

I played this one to match the gloomy, rainy atmosphere outside. (I'd later learn it was hailing at the time.) And as it was spinning, I realized just how similar this track is to George Winston's albums on Windham Hill, for those who remember that 1980s new-age hell. OK, I own one of those albums and still enjoy it in small doses, but still ... please don't descend down that path, Matthew! I'll add that other tracks on One have a darker mood and interesting twists, so all is not lost. And as mentioned elsewhere, I like and respect Matthew and think it's good that he's exploring other musical avenues. But I marked this as a "recommended" track for my fellow DJs, and I'm thinking I should rescind that.

Nice world/jazz mix, as I've commented before. The track ended exactly at the right time for the baseball pre-game show to begin. Wow. Never had that happen before, in however-many years of doing this.

* = Item in KZSU rotation
! = Pop anomaly
? = Item not in KZSU library

-- Go back to Memory Select playlists.
-- Bay Area free/improv music calendar: http://www.bayimproviser.com.