John B

Ok, so the "one a day" idea didn't seem to take hold. RT - How about posting one answer each week? Seven days to type up one artist name, one track title and one album title. It's been 19 weeks since the last guess was posted. We could have had all of the answers to disc #1 posted and the answers to disc #2 well under way by this point. I really don't want to come across as flippant, but I'm baffled why you would not just spend 10 or 15 minutes, post the answers and get this BFT behind you. I'd love to revisit the disc once the answers are posted and I'm sure a lot of other people here feel the same. I'll stop posting in this thread, as I don't see any benefit in belaboring the point any more.

Leo as a label is still there, yes, but almost every album I was interested in is now gone. This includes albums by Anthony Braxton, Evan Parker, Marilyn Crispell, the Ganelin Trio, etc...

I used the discography on his website, plus the two new discs on Utech, to get my total. I have the disc with Marhaug and like it very much. I missed out on the organ duo, unfortunately.

I ordered both Nilssen-Love discs. These two put him up to 12 discs released so far this year. Not bad, but he'll never catch up with Vandermark. DD - Have you heard the Eye Contact or Lotte Anker discs on Utech? If so, would you recommend them? I love teh first Exploding Customer Disc and immediately pre-ordered the new one when Jan posted the offer. That is a fantastic price for an Ayler disc.

I very highly recommend the Avram Fefer / Bobby Few album Kindred Spirits, on Boxholder. It is a gorgeous album, comprised of three Fefer originals and tunes by Monk, Mingus and Duke. I wasn't familiar with Fefer prior to hearing this album and I had limited exposure to Few. I'm really looking forward to hearing their other new release on Boxholder called Heavenly Places. From what I have heard, Heavenly Places is the wilder, more fiery of the two discs. Where Kindred Spirits is composed, lyrical and restrained, Heavenly Places was recorded live, is improvised, and is more "out."

I like Live at the Bottle Fest, but it in no way compares to the show I saw the duo perform in October. Eremite was taping the tour and Michaell Ehlers told me that an "official" cd would be released. I really hope so. Brotz and Waits were on fire and I heard no cliches that night.

I missed one. Vandermark has released at least 23 discs this year: V5 Vs. ATOMIC CD-R: "Live from the Green Mill" only available as part of a $300 V5: FLAMMABLE MATERIAL Poster Boxset

For those of you who like punk and "post-rock", I just got an email that Dischord has been added to emusic, which shocked me. It also appears that most of the Leo catalog is no longer available.

Off the top of my head I believe you are correct. The reissue of Schwarzwaldfahrt on Atavistic's UMS contains an extra disc of unreleased material, too. I think this is Vandermark's year. So far, in 2005, he has released: Ken Vandermark feat. Marcin Oleś & Bartłomiej Brat Oleś -Ideas V5 - The Color of Memory (2cd) V5 - Alchemia (12cd) Territory Band 4 - Company Switch (2cd) FME - Cuts FME - Live at the Glen Miller Cafe Free Fall - Amsterdam Funk Brotzmann Tentet - Be Music, Night Hoxha - s/t That is 22 discs...can any other artists top that in 2005? (details taken from this Vandermark discography.)

Interesting review of Raining Down Diamonds posted over at Dusted recently. Strangely, the negative comments make me want to hear the album more than I did before.

1000 copies, out of print now, 115 pounds new, unless you pre-ordered. I've never heard any of this material, so I can't comment on its quality.

It's been over half a year since I listened to these discs, and I don't really remember what was on them at this point, but I would still really like to know what each track was. What about just posting the answer to one track each day? It would only take 10 or 15 seconds to type in the track name, album title and leader of the date. In a few weeks we would have the complete answers for discs 1 and 2. If, later on, you decide you want to add some comments or thoughts there's no reason you couldn't do so at your leisure. Just my 2 cents.

I'm going to place an order for Roscoe's live album The Bad Guys and was hoping to get some feedback on a few other albums of his that I am considering. The albums I was hoping for comments on are: 3 x 4 Eye This Dance is for Steve McCall The Flow of Things Solo Live at Muhle Hunziken More Cutouts 8 O'clock Four Compositions Sound & Space Ensembles Out of these I am leaning towards This Dance is for Steve McCall, but I would love to hear from people who are more familiar with these recordings. Are any of these a better first choice than the others? Are any of them albums that I should wait on until I get a little farther along in my listening? For non-AEC releases I already have (and love) Snurdy McGurdy, L-R-G, The Maze, Duets & Solos (live) and Song for My Sister. Thanks!

Accesible yet very much a Funny Rat thumbs up. I have nothing negative to say about this disc. How is the live album you just posted in the What Are You Listening To thread?

I just heard this disc for the first time. What a beautiful, beautiful album. Not as abstract as a lot of Roscoe's solo recordings have seemed to me. This disc is accesible, funky, exhuberant and, did I say yet, beautiful. Some of the tracks here make me think that this is what it might have sounded like if the AEC recorded for Blue Note back in the day. Very highly recommended.

Does Rogue Art have any distribution in the U.S.?

This disc has been discussed in the Funny Rat thread and in the Fred Anderson thread. I love this album. Hamid Drake is phenomenal and really works well with Fred, having played with him for 30 years or so. I was at this concert (at Johnson State College in VT) and, while the album does not quite live up to my memory of the show, it is still one of my favorite new releases in recent memory.

AMG is spot on with their comments on "UFO." A little bit disco, a lot Sun Ra and as funky as it gets. This is a killer track and a weird album that a lot of people would dig if they had the chance to hear it.

up for some air... I recently bought this album, Legend Street One (CIMP), and it is really, really good. With a lineup of McPhee, Frank Lowe, David Prentice and Charles Moffett it would be hard to go wrong. The one negative, for me at least, is the sound of the recording itself. This disc sounds flat and dull. Not horrendous, but I think the music would have benefited from a slightly brighter, more "alive," sound. The music is fantastic.

I bought a used copy of this the other day and finally had a chance to listen to it today. I enjoyed it, but will need more time to really assess it. It struck me as almost mellow, at least by Gayle's standards.

The "Jandek for Lovers" mix I was promised in August of 2004 has still not arrived, almost 15 months later. It has, however, been "made available" online. If anyone is still interested in what has been described as a very good intro to Jandek's music send me a PM and I'll let you know the specifics. I'm going to start a rumor that the next album will be all cover songs, starting with Prince's "Raspberry Beret."

After several attempts I was finally able to get a copy of his from Dustygroove. Excellent material. I also bought Feet Music and Boom Boom, which are both very good, but Bikini Tapes is, to my ears, the cream of the crop. For $32 it is really hard to go wrong. Very highly recommended.

Sunday's show is the one I want to hear: "Some info on Jandek's Sunday set at Instal: The set consisted of two pieces featuring different line-ups. The first featured just Jandek on vocals and harmonica and Loren Connors on guitar. It was a spoken piece with 3 distinct sections divided by harmonica solos. The lyrics were very dreamlike, sort of a metaphorical fable with almost sci-fi lyrics. |Jandek began singing towards the end. Some of the best lyrics he's done, incredibly moving. The second half of the set featured Jandek on DRUMS, Heather Leigh Murray on lap steel and wordless vocals, and Alan Licht on guitar, doing a heavy psychedelic piece that lasted about half an hour..." "a few quick notes on jandeks 2nd set of gigs at instal this year... for a start he was the 4th act on. he played 2 short sets. the first lasted about 20 mins approx and was a duo with loren mazzacane connors on guitar and jandek doing a spoken word piece over it. he was very calm and relaxed in his delivery and his voice was very clear and warm. the first section started off with (and im probably mixing stuff up here) jandek describing his arrival at a convention or party where some lady tried to work her charms on him. she was getting nowhere with him but there were lots of other men there so it didnt matter... it then started getting very surreal with jandek recalling how he started to realise everyone was a prisoner in this place but nobody else realised. at the time i interpreted this section as some sort of political commentary but i have no idea really. loren mazzacane was playing very subtle textures on the guitar, very varied throughout but always very subtle and mostly very quiet though often quite distorted too. it was a match made in heaven! everything he played was just perfect and they each seemed to be in tune with eachother. after the first spoken section jandek produced a mouth organ and played that for a few minutes. it was very slow and calm and peaceful, and loren started picking out a short melody. it was really amazing and really beautiful! the second spoken section was addressed directly to somebody and was more personal. this second person had a heart attack and jandek carried this person to the car and drove them to the hospital. there was talk of holding eachother and feeling like he could hold the person forever. i wish i could remember the lyrics better! this stuff was amazing!! there was then another instrumental section similar to the first. the third spoken section covered similar territory to the second, though half way through jandek started singing the words really gently and loren MC dropped away for a while. he was singing melodically although there was no real melody as such. loren came back in slowly and the lyrics wound up (i think) with a repeat of the lines about feeling like he could hold this person forever. there was another few minutes of mouth organ and guitar and then it was over. it was one of the best things ive ever heard! loren looked like he really enjoyed it and was grinning away, though jandek just got on with getting ready for the second set which featured alan licht on guitar, heather leigh of charalambides/scorces/tarpus tula on pedal steel and jandek on drums. the kit consisted of three toms and two cymbals - two toms and a cymbal to jandeks left and the other cymbal and tom to his left, and he played them quite rythmically with mallets. this was a very full on set, heather was flailling away at the pedal steel and doing a lot of wailing, and alan licht was belting away too. they built up an unrelenting wall of noise that reminded my a lot of pink floyds "saucerful of secrets". it was a fun set, and was really loud and rocking, it went on a little longer than it really needed to but it made a nice follow up to the first set which was the better of the two." (both taken from links on Seth's site.)

more Jandek live 2005 reviews. This one (Friday night) is in line with the Glagow 2004 review. "Greetings from the Instal festival! Here's some info on Jandek's set last night. Same lineup as before. Jandek was again playing the fretless semi-acoustic he used in Brooklyn. Richard played a McCartney-style violin bass (I don't think he played this in Gateshead). Initially the lyrics sounded familiar to me, and I assumed that they were some of those he had used for one of the US shows, but having checked the transcriptions this doesn't seem to be the case. The first song made several references to "walking blues" (an obvious Robert Johnson reference) and walking around a "rainy city". Another song mentioned receiving a phone message from a woman (presumably) and listening to it "about 10 times", and calling her five times the following day and getting no reply. Elsewhere he sang of wanting to live in the "rainy city" with her. This was preceded with "I appreciate the work you do for me, it makes me want to live" which I thought might be a tribute to Barry Esson until the lyrics took a more romantic slant... And one song began with him wishing to be made "a moron" so he could ignore his "wasted life". The best piece of the night in my opinion was a particularly hard rockin' number with a refrain that sounded like "Oh, those kokomos"... Alex played a driving, almost straight 4/4 beat on this one, but would disrupt the pattern every few bars, while Richard repeatedly played a glissando from one note for much of it. The lyrics were pretty sparse throughout. Alex dominated the proceedings, playing particularly hard. The interplay between him and Jandek was particularly apparent, while Richard kind of underpinned the two of them. The bass playing was also a bit more involved (but hardly busy) than last year's Instal set and the Gateshead set. Personally I would have liked the guitar to be a bit louder in the mix, but I suspect the dominance of the drums at times was deliberate, as it's somewhat similar to the sound of the early electric albums. The set was about 75-80 minutes long. It was business as usual to some extent, very similar to the previous Glasgow and Gateshead shows. Apparently there will be two short sets on Sunday that will be "different" (it is rumoured) and may sate our desire for surprises... Also, Tokyo's Up-Tight were AMAZING last night... true disciples of Les Rallizes Denudes and early Fushitsusha. Another timely Jandek-related Trip or Squeek strip in The Wire this month too - quite funny." (taken from a link on Seth Tisue's site) The next day, however...

Bagatellen has a review of the new Birgit Ulher/Gino Robair disc Sputter on Creative Sources: "“Sputter”, a collaboration between German trumpeter Birgit Ulher (a new name to me) and percussionist/electronicist Gino Robair is probably the most divorced from jazz-based improv of the three recordings although I think you can still, often, pick up structural elements that come more out of the tradition of call-and-response than out of the AMM, “listening without listening” school. Ulher operates in the post Dorner/Kelley world of brass players—any sound the trumpet is capable of achieving is fair game—though she alludes to the avant smears of Lester Bowie and even Don Cherry at times. Robair, here credited on “energized surfaces” and “voltage made audible” (I gather this doesn’t exclude items being hit once in a while), makes active conversation with her, the chittering, electronic bird flitting around the bell of her horn. There’s an incessant aspect to the “talking” that you’d be unlikely to hear in much eai and there are occasions when part of me wants to say, “Be quiet and listen for a minute” but that’s probably an unfair way to judge this music. As the album title implies, this is work of an aerated, effervescent nature, hearing and responding with quickness, jumpy even at its most inactive. As one warms to the approach, the last several tracks begin to work their logic and cause one to rethink the first pieces. The last cut in particular, the all too brief “Entelechy”, achieves a perfect balance, a fine conversation indeed." Sounds very interesting!