Friday, November 30th, 2007 ... 3:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. ... KZSU, 90.1 FM

(Return to playlists.)

This blog posting from Steve Smith's excellent "Night After Night" (which lets folks like me live the NYC music scene vicariously) has me inspired to try to make a bigger deal out of the reunion of Tim Berne's Bloodcount. This is the exact band that really catalyzed my interest in creative music, after all.

A Bloodcount song feels like traversing a deep forest, or tracing the arc of an epic tale. These are novels, framed by a composition and predetermined structure, with improvising filling in the gaps. As with any good musical group, the permutation of players is crucial; I can't imagine Bloodcount being Bloodcount if a substitute sat in for Speed, Black, or Formaek, or if one were missing. I have to admit the band works very well without Marc Ducret on guitar -- nothing against his playing, which was excellent on the three original CDs, but like Smith, I've come to think of Ducret as a special guest rather than a regular. Besides, he's been involved in several other Berne bands over the years.

I'd like to play a Bloodcount song every week, probably around 4:00, to celebrate. Song length is going to be a problem, though. They've got several 10- and 15-minute tracks, which wouldn't be anomalous for my playlists, but some of the more powerful pieces run 30 or 40 minutes, and Memory Select, the CD from which I stole my radio show's title, has a track clocking in at 51:20.

While I don't relish the idea of squeezing the new and local music into a smaller percentage of the show, I'm probably still going to do this. Maybe I'll get tired of it before January is out, who knows.

Bloodcount is playing at Joe's Pub on Feb. 3, then in Baltimore on Feb. 9 and Philadelphia on Feb. 10.

Of note this week:

Format:
ARTIST -- "TRACK TITLE" -- ALBUM TITLE (LABEL, YEAR)
Horizontal lines denote microphone breaks.

! Cosmic Invention -- "Ryujin" -- Help Your Satori Mind (The Now Sound, 1997?)

Japanese psych. Kind of inspired by my descent into Damo Suzuki music last week. Friendly and sometimes blues-rocking stuff, very 1969 feel as DJ Mike noted, with some reasonably well known names, such as Masaki Batoh of Ghost, and Michio Kurihara (also noted last week).

! Three Piece Combo -- "Walk It Off" -- Three Piece Combo (Feast or Famine, 2005)

Local math-rock trio. Saw them live this year at the Starry Plough. Interesting setup: The drummer, Jon Curtis, seems to be the leader and gets situated up front, in line with the guitarist and bassist. With the complexity of the written lines, he's definitely a core element (I guess every member of a trio is "core"); anyway, it was apparent why he was up front. Good drummer, too.

Previously noted here.

Previously noted here.

* David Slusser and Rubber City -- "Legend of Ornette" -- Trouble in Tiretown (Jazz Excursion, 2007)

Previously noted here.

"Pan-Mediterranean" artist whose music incorporates various Hasidic and Sephardic elements, and no, I wouldn't know the difference. Layman's terms: Middle Eastern-sounding music with a jump in its step, using oud and violin ans primary voices. This one's got an avant-jazzy kick to the beat, but other numbers apparently come across more courtly.

I haven't liked Pasqua's previous jazz work, which relies on heavy straight-jazz piano and an overall mellow sheen. Maybe I also can't get out of my head Pasqua's 1990s work with Allan Holdsworth, instrumental rock with a fusiony mask. I got into that during the smooth-jazz phase we don't talk about any more.

Pasqua's past work crops up on this disk as well, but he's also got some funkier tones and traces of more active jazz. He uses electric piano for, yeah, a bit of that fusion sound, but makes good use of a couple horns (Ambrose Akinmusire: trumpet; Jeff Ellwood: saxophones) on tracks like this one.

* Splatter 3 + N -- "Stare at the Sun" -- Clear the Club (Rastascan, 2007)

Previously noted here. While a lot of this album is beat-driven and has almost a song feel, this track goes balls-out for a big sonic blur early on. You gotta have a touch of that on an album like this, right?

Previously noted here.

* Groundtruther + John Medeski -- "Taipei 101" -- Altitude (Thirsty Ear, 2007)

Groundtruther is the duet of Charlie Hunter on guitar and Bobby Previte on drums, coupled with some special guest rounding out the trio. It was Greg Osby on their first album, for instance. Now it's an "M" from MMW.

Haven't given this one a full listen yet, but what I've heard is promising. It's two disks. Disk One is electric, with the results you'd expect: Loud, crunchy noodling. Disk Two is acoustic, with handfuls of really short tracks amid the moderately-timed ones. Can't wait to hear that.

UPDATE, Feb. 3: The acoustic disk is spacey, really nice. I should add that the electric disk includes a 15-minute tour de force titled "Empire State," which keeps the sinister mood going while developing into the kind of groove you'd expect from Charlie Hunter and John Medeski getting together.

Tim Berne's Bloodcount -- "Bloodcount" -- Low Life: The Paris Concert 1 (JMT, 1995)

I'd made note of this on-air back in the early days, that Low Life was the first Tim Berne album I'd bought and the one that convinced me this kind of avant-jazz was right for me. "Bloodcount" is one of the band's more famous tracks, in a way; it's been on a live album and got covered by the Orange Then Blue big band on the GM record label. It opens with a busy but sparse improvisation that promises of things to come, and later gets into two horns soloing over a really long repeated bass vamp. As that segment builds, the horns coalesce into a written passage. I'll admit, it was a few listens before I caught on to the overall structure, and it was very rewarding to discover -- one of the reasons why Bloodcount's pattern of improvisation around composed segments is so successful.

Another reason is that some of the composing is just plain rockin'. Might explore that next week with the "Loose Ends" track of Unwound.

* David Torn -- "Bulbs" -- Prezens (ECM, 2007)

Previously noted here.

Two women named Haley and Sarah doing weird, kind of artsy songs with half-jokey vocals. Can't understand what they're saying all the time. And then, on the fourth and final track, they dive into an outright metal song, an unexpected twist that got a chuckle out of me. The songs are quite creative and, aside from the vocals, not too sloppy. I dug this.

From a new solo album of "hyperpiano" -- playing outside and inside the piano itself, including using metal bowls as slides on the strings. Denman Maroney has done a lot of work in this area, and Looney credits him as an influence. Lots of cool crazy sounds on this album. Looney has also done some work closer to straight jazz.

Looney is a big part of the local scene, hosting shows at the 1510 8th St. venue in Oakland. I don't get down there nearly as much as I should.

? Jess Rowland -- "Kotekan Seniman Alam/Waves Fade into the Distance" [excerpt] -- The Shape of Poison (Edgetone, 2007)

Another new piano album, this time in a surprisingly new-agey bent, with some electronics added. The music was apparently written for ballet performances, which kind of explains the Philip Glassian rhythmic jangling and the overall atmosphere. Active, pulsing work that's interspersed with some really quiet experimenting. Quite accessible.

I think this is more what Jess Rowland is normally like. An album of various improvised noises on various instruments, plus vocals. It appears to be a soundtrack created for a reel of film Rowland found, weird conservative-America footage of things like a live "Barbie" musical and McDonald's propaganda for kids -- also John Ashcroft singing. I picked a softly percussive track that's not too hard to listen to; sounds basically like laptop noise. Elsewhere, things get more raucous and abrasive.

* Marty Ehrlich and Myra Melford -- "Blue Delhi" -- Spark! (Palmetto, 2007)

Second duet album of clarinet and piano from these two. It's good stuff but with a very polite, concert-hall feel. Some tracks do get looser and playful, revealing some of the free-jazz cred behind Ehrlich's and Melford's careers. It's the kind of session where there's a lot of improvisatory depth that's not immediately apparent due to the lack of "skronk," it's more subtle than that. I also wonder if the composing has some tricks my ears aren't sharp enough to get. This track's title suggests it's got some Indian influence -- Melford has studied extensively there -- or that maybe it's an Indian line translated into a blues mode? I can't tell.

Interviews with Melford noted here and here.

Previously noted here. Alarm Will Sound (noted below) will apparently play a couple of Nancarrow's player piano pieces at their concert tonight here at Stanford.

Yes, an album of Aphex Twin covers. The result is quirky and lively, with recognizable orchestral touches: horn blasts, string interludes, etc. It reminds me of the music you hear behind high-budget commercials, substantive and fun but a shade too hip for its own good. I do like Alarm Will Sound's overall attitude, though, and am curious to hear more from them.

* Larry Ochs Sax and Drumming Core -- "Neonawi" -- Up from Under (Atavistic, 2007)

Second disk from this band of one sax and two drums, an interesting experiment that I didn't expect to get repeated. The first CD came out in 2002; noted here. Ochs, from ROVA, provides the front melody and apparently the compositions that frame these pieces. Scott Amendola and Donald Robinson do have contrasting drum styles, which comes across clearly in live performance. Their energy is different; Amendola gets more boisterous, while Robinson subtly plays out cool fills and deft mallet rolls. Both play loudly and both play softly, but those are the elements that stuck with me the one time I've seen the trio live. Probably it's an unfair reading.

Played the concluding movements of this piece by Steve Adams (who's technically the "V" in ROVA nowadays, having replaced Andrew Voight years and years ago). It's a perky and rhythmic segment.

ROVA is performing this weekend to celebrate their newest CD, The Juke Box Suite. Appropriately dedicated to Alan Lomax, the CD is Jon Raskin's exploration of what the "perfect" jukebox would be, borrowing themes from musics around the world.

Francis Dhomont -- "Un Autre Printemps" -- Jalons (Empreintes Digitales, 2003)

An outfit called NEXMAP is hosting Dhomont and Louis Dufort (below) for a show tonight. Both are sound artists -- that is, computerized sounds, musique concrete,, that sort of thing.

This Dhomont piece is a wisecracking take on the springtime movement of Vivaldi's Four Seasons. In addition to orchestral samples, it's got computer-created sounds of springtime, like a splashing pond or various animals. The computer frogs were particularly amusing.

Dufort's work, at least on this CD, is more homogeneous than Dhomont's. He tends to set up a mood and then ride it, trance-like, for several minutes. That leads to some new-agey sounds on here, but this track is more along the lines of insect chatter that dips into a long quiet period after the opening minutes.

Previously noted here.

Previously noted here.

* Michael Musillami Trio + Mark Feldman -- "Human Conditions" -- The Treatment (Playscape, 2007)

Previously noted here.

* = 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.