Leap
Second Neutral
by Machine and the Synergetic Nuts
2005
CD-ROM, Rune 210, $13.00
Pork
Chop Blue Around The Rind
by Fast n' Bulbous
2005
CD-ROM, Rune 205, $13.00
Emissaries
by Radio Massacre International
2005
CD-ROM (2-set), Rune 211/212, $15.00
Cuneiform Records, Silver Spring, MD
Distributors website: http://cuneiformrecords.com/index.shtml.
Reviewed by Michael R. (Mike) Mosher
Saginaw Valley State University
mosher@svsu.edu
Vade Retro Satanas! Get thee behind the
times in thy musical inspirations, and
therefore get ahead of the rest of pack
on the cutting edge. In all three of these
recent releases, something old is re-examined
under fresh light, reframed, remade/remodeled,
made new again. This has long been a creative
musical strategy, and three CDs on the
Cuneiform label affirm its efficacy. These
CDs also all have their comic moments,
a certain comedic intensity, the sweep
and scope of the best graphic novels.
Passages have bright musical colors, quirkiness
and exaggerated sound comparable to the
best comic books or comic strips, whether
the Katzenjammer Kids and Happy Hooligan
of a century ago, or today's Japanese
manga intended for businessmen, whose
characters eyes cross and noses expel
rivers of snot.
Leap Second Neutral by Machine
and the Synergetic Nuts is the second
release by a Japanese quartet whose playing
is as driven, savvy in its quotations,
intense and brightly colored as a Quentin
Tarantino movie. The director should consider
hiring them for soundtrack work. These
Nuts are dynamic jazz players. The opening
cut "M-B" is fun spy movie jazz layering
a Hammond B3, Fender Rhodes piano and
saxophone to a clamorous finale, then
a delicate piano coda. "Neutral" has layers
of piano seriality, interesting time signatures
and honking sax, as one is reminded of
"Headhunters"-era Herbie Hancock club
jazz. Some cuts have the feel of 1970s
big band arrangements by Gil Evans, others
evoke smaller combos more caffeinated
than Medeski, Martin and Wood. "Trout"
is quizzical seventies movie or TV music,
ending in a peep.
Sometimes the Synergetic Nuts are solidly
in the rock camp. Evocative of John Bonham's
drumming, "Solid Box" hurls two-chord
stomping about like Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir"
as danced by the thunder lizard Gojiro
(Godzilla to the West). Soon the track
is whirling, then ultimately low and sexy.
"Texas" is workout reminiscent of Prince
as he proved himself an erstwhile student
of James Brown, with short four-note funk
figures and stop time. "Normal" begins
with dreamy piano evocative of the 1970s
Japanese rock band the Sadistics (released
in the US as Sadistic Mika Band). "Oz"
is horn-propelled yet self-contradictory,
as its preamp-saturated fuzz guitar cuts
through the expectations it has set up.
A California music teacher once boasted
to this reviewer of his band students
marching to his arrangement of Sun Ra's
"Space is the Place". Equally eccentric,
Pork Chop Blue Around The Rind is
by Fast n' Bulbous, the Captain Beefheart's
Magic Band tribute project led by New
Yorkers Gary Lucas and saxist Phillip
Johnston. Captain Beefheart was the musical
persona of the painter Don Van Vliet,
and Lucas was guitarist for the Magic
Band a quarter-century ago, in its final
years.
David Fricke wrote in Rolling Stone
that Fast n' Bulbous prove "Beefheart's
songs deserve to be played in his absence
and are, for all their knotty logic, quite
playable". Fast n' Bulbous use the horn
section to take the place of the Captain's
unmistakably gruff and poetic vocals.
Without the Captain's vocalsa
growl as memorable as Howlin' Wolf or
Tom Waits, delivering quirky poetryone
appreciates the songs as band workouts.
Sometimes they sound like a particularly
spirited high school marching band, and
there is a sense of fun that propels "Veteran's
Day Poppy" and "Candy Corn". Some of the
soloists soar inventively, while others
seem as tired and quotidian as a Florida
hotel band chewing through their identical
set every night.
Finally, this reviewer truly expected
Radio Massacre International to inspire
his art students to create expansive,
space-age works. Inspired by the "Emissaries"
comic by Matt Howarth (included in PDF
form), the music is instrumental space-rock
in the tradition of Pink Floyd, Hawkwind,
Alan Parsons Project and Tonto's Expanding
Headband. There are the aural vacancies
of space and the whoosh of craft traversing
its distances. There are the noodling
synthesizers of "The Exorcist" theme from
Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells" of 33
years ago. There is a dash of chinoiserie
like the orientalism of some of the robes
and royal chambers in "Star Wars" too.
I enjoy the rippling programmed synthesizer
riffs, and give-and-take improvisational
passages, though some guitar solos seem
a bit hackneyed. Yet when I put when I
put Emissaries on the studio classroom's
CD player while art students worked on
their projects, as soon as I left the
room they removed it. To them, raised
on heavily-conceptualized, focus-group-tested
three-minute pop, it probably seemed as
absurd as Spinal Tap's stage prop Stonehenge.