The Knitting Factory/Texaco Jazz Fest has also been a blast. Although everyone seems to feel that it is just too much at 14 days, with 100's of bands, there has been a large number of outstanding gigs. Superb sets seen by me include John Zorn & Milford Graves with the Sun Ra Arkestra & Naftule's Dream, Muhal Richard Abrams QT., Mark Dresser QT., Hann Bennink Trio, Harriet Tubman (Brandon Ross power trio), Franklin Kiermyer trio, Susie Ibarra & Assif Tsahar, Joel Harrison Octet, One World Ensemble & Reggie Workman's Summit Conference. Dave Douglas gets the award for trumpeter/leader of the fest/year! Each of his projects were phenomenal-his trio with Myra Melford on harmonium & Samir Chattergee on tablas; his jazz qt. with Chris Potter, James Genus & Ben Perowsky; his new unit with Guy Klucevsek, Mark Feldman & Michael Formanek as well as the Tiny Bell Trio, all great!! More info on upcoming gigs later, but first:  

NEW RELEASES NEW RELEASES NEW RELEASES NEW RELEASES NEW RELEASES:  
  

• 1.JOHN ZORN/WAYNE HORVITZ/ELLIOT SHARP/BOBBY PREVITE-Downtown Lullaby (Depth of Field 2) All improv, studio date $14.
• 2.THE LOUNGE LIZARDS-Queen of All Ears (SBM 15) Long awaited studio effort. $14.
• 3.MARC RIBOT-Los Cubanos Postitos (Atlantic) Finally! $14.
• 4.DAVE DOUGLAS-Moving Portrait (DIW 934) Tribute to Joni Mitchell, w/ Bill Carrothers on piano, James Genus in bass & Billy Hart on drums. $18.
• 5.FRED FRITH-Pacifica (Tzadik 7034) Modern classical for large ensemble. $14.
• 6.DEREK BAILEY & MIN XIAO-FEN-Viper (Avant 050) Superb duo w/ pipa master! $18.
• 7.DAVID WEINSTEIN-Perfume (Avant 020) Solo sampler for microtonal worlds. $18.
• 8.PHILLIP JOHNSTON-Music for Films (Tzadik 7510) For over 30 all-stars. $14.
• 9.NORMAN YAMADA-Being & Time (Tzadik 7035) Cobra prompter & all star units. $14. 
• 10.RUINS-Symphonica (Tzadik 7215) Expanded unit w/ 2 vocalists & keys. $14.
• 11.URI CAINE-Gustav Mahler, Primal Light (W&W 4) w/ Dave Douglas, Joey Baron, Mark Feldman, Don Byron, Arto Lindsay & Josh Roseman. $14.
• 12.PAUL MOTIAN TRIO-Sound of Love (W&W 8) w/ Bill Frisell & Joe Lovano. $14.
• 13.MARK HELIAS-Fictionary (GM 3037) w/ Mark Feldman and Ellery Eskelin. $14.
• 14.BILL LASWELL-Oscillations 2:Advanced Drum & Bass (Sub Rosa 133) $14.
• 15.TIM HODGKINSON-Pragma (ReR TH1) 2nd solo cd in 20 years since Henry Cow. $14.
• 16.JON ROSE-The Fence (ReR JR5) Solo effort for mutated strings. $14.
• 17.CASSIBER-Live in Tokyo (ReR CGZ2) 1 live cd, 1 cd remixed by Ground Zero $21.
• 18.BUTCH MORRIS-Berlin Skyscraper (FMP 92/93) 2cd set w/ German unit. $32.
• 19.CECIL TAYLOR-The Tree of Life (FMP 98) Solo piano masterwork. $17.
• 20.JERRY GRANELLI-enter, a dragon (Songlines 1521) w/ Chris Speed. $14.
• 21.WALTER THOMPSON ORCH.-The Colonel (Nine Winds 205) w/ Thomas Chapin, Dave Douglas, Dave Tronzo, Frank London, Herb Robertson & Steve Swell. $14.
• 22.ACCORDIAN TRIBE-s/t (Intuition 3220) w/ Guy Klucsevek, Lars Hollmer, Maria Kalaniemi, Bratko Bibic (of Nimal) & Otto Lechner. Beautiful accordians! $14.
• 23.TIM BERNE & MICHAEL FORMANEK-Ornery People (Little Brother 013) duo! $14.
• 24.MICHAEL FORMANEK-Am I Bothering You? (Screwgun 70006) solo acoustic bass $14.
• 25.THE WIND RISES-electropleinair sound diary (ReR SD1) w/ Marta Sebestyen. $14.

 

  
• 26.JOHN SURMAN TRIO-The Trio (BGO 231) w/ Barre Philips & Stu Martin. Incredible bari sax/bass clarinet/soprano wizard! Euro free jazz at it's finest, from 1970. Forget his ECM mellow shit. 2 cd set import for $16.!!
• 27.PETER BLEGVAD/JOHN GREAVES-Kew Rhone (Voice. 200) w/ extra cd rom track $20.
• 28.LADY JUNE-Linguistic Leprosy (SFM 350) w/ Kevin Ayers, Pip Pyle & Eno. $14.
• 29.CARAVAN-1st-s/t-(HTD 65) hard to find 1st effort from Canterbury greats. $15.
• 30.THE GP'S-Saturday Rolling Around (HTD 53) w/ RICHARD THOMPSON, RALPH MCTELL, DAVE PEGG & DAVE MATTACKS. Excellent impossible to find live cd from '81! $15.

 

The Lounge Lizards Queen of All Ears  
The long awaited new release by the legendary Lounge Lizards! "Queen of All Ears" features leader John Lurie (composer of the film scores to "Get Shorty" , "Mystery Train", "Down By Law" and "Stranger Than Paradise" the latter two which he also stars in) with the highly esteemed band members Michael Blake, Steven Bernstein, Jane Scarpantoni, David Tronzo, Evan Lurie, Erik Sanko, Ben Perowsky, and Calvin Weston, all of whom can be found on numerous other popular releases in the jazz and rock world. This music runs the gamut from being extremely sensual to religious ecstacy.  

John Lurie Fishing with John  
Latest soundtrack, from the composer of the Grammy-nominated film "Get Shorty", of the comedy series Fishing with John premiering this June on the Independent Film Channel. An extraordinary blend of music ranging from jungle harmonica to string quartets to choral music with insane librettos. Includes the soon to be a smash hit "Shark Drive". Also includes two field recordings from the elusive Tom Waits! The shows guest stars include: Jim Jarmusch in Montauk--Matt Dillon in Costa Rica--Willem Dafoe in Maine--Tom Waits in Jamaica--Dennis Hopper in Thailand.  

John Zorn, Bobby Previte, Elliot Sharp, Wayne Horvitz-  
"Downtown Lullaby"-Depth Of Field  
John Zorn, alto saxophone; Bobby Previte, drums; Elliot Sharp, electric guitars; Wayne Horvitz, keyboards, Hammond organ, piano Another state of the art recording at Avatar Recording Studios, New York City, January 15, 1998!! Recorded by Joe Ferla. Never before have these four seminal players from the New York scene gotten together to play a hisorical event-a daring and ground-breaking recording don't miss it!  

Avant 050 Derek Bailey & Min Xiao-Fen- Viper. Derek Bailey, one of the founding fathers of the European improvising scene and Min xiao-Fen, one of China's greatest pipa (Chinese lute) virtuosos met for the first time in front of these sensitive microphones to record this document of free improvisation at its best and most adventurous. Over the past 35 years, Bailey has been one of the most important innovators in music, with dozens of albums demonstrating his highly influential improvisationa style and guitar technique. The young Min Xiao-Fen has recorded two stunningly beautiful albums of traditional and modern works for pipa and was featured on John Zorn's Filmworks 8. Two of the world's most exciting string players cross boundaries head-to-head in creating a musical meeting of East and West unlike anything you've ever heard before.  

Avant 016 John Oswald - Plexure. One of the most infamous sampling musicians in the world, John Oswald's Plunderphonics is an underground legend. Plexure, his most rigorous and complex work to date, slices, chops and blends literally hundreds of thousands of sound bites from musics known and unknown into a dizzying sonic whirlwind. You have never heard anything quite like Plexure, and you are likely never to forget it. A close collaborator of Henry Kaiser, John Zorn and the Grateful Dead - John Oswald lives with his wife and dog in a small suburb near downtown Toronto. His sound installations, mystery tapes, dance performances, orchestral compositions and saxophone manipulations are known worldwide.  

Avant 020 David Weinstein- Perfume. David Weinstein is a composer who uses electronic and recording technology to fashion improbable orchestral and musical juxtapositions. Utilizing rigorous compositional techniques and hackneyed Hollywood tricks as well as experimental processes, Weinstein composes with an appreciation of the divine in the pedestrian. As a composer/keyboardist Weinstein has recorded and performed in collaboration with the singer/composer Shelley Hirsch, in Elliott Sharp's Carbon, with John Zorn, and a variety of other composer/musicians from Arto Lindsay to Zeena Parkins. Five years in the making, Weinstein's first solo CD Perfume charts a dyslexic and exotic path through microtonal scales towards the world of "just intonation."  

Fred Frith - Pacifica (1993-95). Pacifica is a major new composition by the world-famous guitarist, improvisor and composer, Fred Frith. Over an hour in length and composed for a large ensemble of winds, strings and percussion, Pacifica sets the poetry of Pablo Neruda into a seductive and hypnotizing sound world that slowly metamorphoses into something altogether different. Lyrical written passages, inspired improvisations, sensual vocals and provocative sound effects all come together into a fascinating whole - one of Fred Frith's most brilliant orchestral creations.  

Norman Yamada- Being And Time. Norman Yamada is a brilliant young composer who has worked with Anthony Coleman, Marc Ribot, the Crosstown Ensemble, the Agon Orchestra and was previously heard on the Avant CD by Rough Assemblage. Being And Time, the first CD dedicated to his compositions for small ensembles is an atavistic exploration of rock gestures, ambient noise and today's post-modern malaise. A unique compositional statement from a new generation of genre-busting musical thinkers.  

RUINS- SYMPHONICA. For more than a decade, the Ruins have been one of the most consistently exciting groups out of the Japanese underground. Known worldwide for their complex multi-layered compositions and dynamic live performances the Ruins' ground-breaking music starts and stops on a dime, with the precision of a watch and the power of a sledgehammer. Symphonica is a new direction for this innovative band, which until now has worked solely as a duo. Augmenting their core unit of drums and bass with two female vocalists and a keyboard player of astonishing virtuosity, these brilliant orchestral arrangements of new compositions and Ruins classics display aspects of their music that have been waiting to emerge for years.  

Phillip Johnston- Music For Films. Phillip Johnston has been charming and perplexing audiences for over twenty years with his lyrical music and ascetic wit. The mastermind behind such bands as the Microscopic Septet and the Transparent Quartet, Phillip has spent much of the past five years composing music for films. From silent classics by Georges Melies and Tod Browning's The Unknown, to award-winning contemporary features like Music Of Chance, Phillip's film music shows him to be a brilliant tunesmith and creative arranger with a sophisticated sense of the dramatic. Music For Films collects Phillip's finest soundtrack work on one disc. A surprising and marvelous compendium of the best of one of jazz's quirkiest and most delightful composers  

CASSIBER/GROUND ZERO - Live In Tokyo (ReR C5GZ3)  
This double CD teams the renowned avant rock band Cassiber with Tokyo's finest, the now dis-banded Ground Zero, featuring Otomo Yoshihide. Disc one is the only available live recording by Cassiber from their one & only Tokyo performance, from 10/92. Disc two features a collection of sampled & remixed works with the source materials taken from disc one and put together by Ground Zero. This re-worked material is the final Ground Zero recording project  

TIM HODGKINSON - Pragma (ReR TH1)  
"Not all great composers are dead. Some of them even appear in public as rock musicians. Tim Hodgkinson is such a composer."-Boston Rock. Tim is best known as a founding member of the legendary avant rock group Henry Cow [1968-1978]. "Pragma is an intense fusion of contemporary classical music and rock energy. There are six substantial compositions focusing on horns, violins, percussion, voices, & small orchestral ensembles."  

ISTVAN MARTHA - The Wind Rises (ReR SD1)  
Istvan Martha is a leading Hungarian composer. The idea behind The Wind Rises was to take a recording studio into the Transylvanian countryside; a "sound diary" of village sounds, musicians, people & places. This produced "one of the great albums of the decade, an epic which manages to work as an overwhelming fusion of rock, classical, ambient, industrial & folk styles."  

JON ROSE - The Fence (ReR JR5)  
"Since the early 80's, Rose has been busily building a series of very long string instruments. These creations were originally inspired by the wind- triggered fences of the Australian outback, where air currents hitting the stretched out wires managed to create an aeolian harp effect. When bowed, these fences were found to emit a large variety of sounds."  

Tetsu Inoue- Psycho Acoustic. Perhaps the most interesting electronic music since the classic period of Stockhausen and Xenakis. Tetsu Inoue is a composer and sound artist who has worked in a variety of musics - ambient, sound installation dance music, techno and is a frequent collaborator of Bill Laswell an Haruomi Hosono. This CD features some of the most intricate and fascinating computer generated compositions you've ever heard. Literally thousands of hours went into the creation of these miniature masterpieces charting a world of sound as yet unexplored. Also included is a powerful duet with brilliant electronic percussionist Ikue Mori.  

Merzbow- 1930 The Japanese Noise scene has received much attention in the past several years, and countless bands have flooded the market with CDs filled with horrible sounds and indiscriminate noise- "Merzbow" is the one and only original Japanese noise band, begun by Masami Akita over 20 years ago and he is still the best of them all. This special release for the Tzadik label is one of his most important compositional creations - an adventurous travelogue into his world of analog and digital noises, taking unexpected twists and turns that will surprise even hardcore Merzbow fans. Merzbow is the undisputed king of the Japanese noise scene and 1930 is one of his very finest releases.  

Selfhaters- The Abysmal Richness Of The Infinite Proximity Of The Same. Jazz, classical, Klezmer and improvisational traditions blend and crash in Selfhaters, Anthony Coleman's most personal project. A disturbing and all-too-close peek into the very Jewish world of alienation and self-revulsion. Two long masterful compositions separated by a strange solo piece for voice and piano, The Abysmal Richness Of The Infinite Proximity Of The Same is one of Anthony's greatest creations. A CD that will vex you till the crack of doom.  

Welcome to MIKESSPACE. Unlike the tragic recent month here at DMG, this month has left me ecstatic over a couple of new releases and so I'll dispense with the pleasantries and get right to work with some reviews/worship. Oh wait... an inspiration. I'll call it "THINGS I'D LIKE TO SEE".  

I'd Like To See... (movies)  
 

• 1. A movie where the family dog DOESN'T make it. (Independence Day, Volcano) 
• 2. A movie in which there IS a competent pilot who can land the plane after the pilots are killed or incapacitated. (Turbulence, Executive Decision) 
• 3. A movie in which the laws of physics aren't broken every time something crashes into something else. (Con Air, Speed, Speed 2) 
• 4. A movie in which the bad guy doesn't shoot one of his own men to show just how evil and heartless he is. (all of 'em) 

New and exciting from the band that practically created Industrial-Metal is Voivod's "Phobos". This piece continues the climb out of their late-80's-Pink-Floyd-wannabes pit. Their career has been a varied one with a painfully raw first album, a peak in aggression and technicality by their third and a masterful melding of technical/musical skills and psychedelia by their fifth. Then the bottom dropped out and I, their biggest fan (17 shows in the US and Canada), was left to suffer through "Angel Rat". I had to go and get into Industrial-Techno just to keep my spirits up. "The Outer Limits" offered some hope, but not enough. Finally the muses smiled upon us all and they produced 96's "Negatron". That CD was a breath of life from a band that I had left for dead. Now they're off the respirator and resting fitfully, totally ready to get out of the hospital and live. 4 1/2 Crowns  

Imagine if The Carpenters were on the 4AD label (the early days). Then imagine that those recordings were re-mixed by Slowdive or Labradford, that's what Japan's Sugar Plant sounds like. Shoe-gazer, psych/swirl rock with a distinctive knack for hook. This sad, little duo shines pretty brightly on "Happy/Trance-Like Mellow" their latest release on World Domination. This 2 CD set is a collection of 2 long EP's previously unavailable here. The more I listen to this thing, the more influences I hear; so far... O.M.D., Fleetwood Mac, Spacemen 3 and a Quaalude-blunted Burt Bacharach pop sensi(milla?)bility. 4 Crowns  

Some stuff that just simply kicks BUTT!!!- Various Artists- Blackend 3. Another winner in this series that tries to present a worthy cross-section of the ever expanding (with declining quality) Black Metal scene. Standouts are the always mighty Emperor, Enthroned and Lord Belial. If you've wondered just what the Hell I've been talking about regarding this style, here's your open door to damnation. A bargain for a 2 CD set to boot!!! 4 1/2 Crowns  

"Ill-Natured Spiritual Invasion" by Old Man's Child is at least a light year beyond their last effort "The Pagan Prosperity". Can't say why except that it's just so much more vicious and catchy. Still the same mid-tempo Norwegian darkness that they're known for, just more of it with fewer slow passages. 3 1/2 Crowns.  

Progressive and heavy are just 2 words I'll use to describe Arch Enemy's "Stigmata". YES meets Dismember, or something like that. Twin guitar leads, heavy, mid-tempo chug-along sections and a pummeling vocal delivery are the things that have sold me on this disc although it took a few listens. Carcass fans take note, Mike Amott is in this band.  

Anyway, that's about it from me for now. Apologies are in order since my output has been so spotty lately but my life has been pretty turbulent lately. Thanks for reading... The Emp.