Author Archives: Joseph Neff

The core of Solid Bronze is Ian Everett and George Miller, both New Jersey residents with a loud-and-clear love of the soulful and funky. This fact is evidenced on The Fruit Basket, their full-length debut, a deliciously off-kilter ’70s-styled groove-fest spiced with strains of jazziness, touches of reggae, and excursions into psychedelia. Recorded and co-produced by Dean Ween with notable guests including Atlanta-based hip-hop artist CLEW, Morphine saxophonist Dana Colley, Ween/ Blood, Sweat & Tears keyboardist Glenn McClelland, and Parliament-Funkadelic guitarist Michael Hampton, this last name is quite appropriate as the influence of P-Funk is strongly felt. It’s out now on LP via Schnitzel Records.

Earlier this year, Solid Bronze released a 45 featuring The Fruit Basket album track “The Invisible Man.” It was and remains an enjoyable little number, but it was backed with a dub mix of the track by Lee “Scratch” Perry, not in itself a bad thing (to the contrary, the version added to the general positive vibrations of Perry’s most recent comeback), it just didn’t necessarily provide further insight into Everett and Miller’s overall thing.

That Michael Hampton contributed guitar to “The Invisible Man” did present a clue into one possible avenue in Solid Bronze’s roadmap, though just as prominent in the track is the Auto-Tuned crooning of Atlanta rapper CLEW, along with a contrasting deep voice offering spoken smoothness of a decidedly ’70s comportment.

But The Fruit Basket’s opener “Papa’s Bug” jumps right into buoyant Clinton-esque funkiness with wiggly tech flourishes and unperturbed vocalizing that also nods back a bit to Sly Stone. It’s an appetizing start that’s followed by the slower groove of “The Invisible Man” as Hampton’s soloing accents the psychedelia in Solid Bronze’s equation. From there, “Hard to Keep the Faith” introduces a danceable mid-tempo spiked with saxophones and capped with sharp jazzy jaunts and an instrumental passage putting keyboards and additional rock guitar action squarely in the foreground.

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No discussion of the 1960s avant-garde is complete without touching upon the work of singer Patty Waters, as she predated such vocal iconoclasts as Yoko Ono and Linda Sharrock. Additionally, she was a prime influence on Patti Smith and perhaps most pertinently, Diamanda Galas. Live, her latest and first new release on vinyl since 1966, was captured in performance at the First Unitarian Congregational Society in Brooklyn on April 5, 2018 with the pianist from her debut Burton Greene, bassist Mario Pavone, and percussionist Barry Altschul. Dedicated to the great pianist Cecil Taylor on the day of his passing, its run of 1,000 LPs and 750 CDs is out September 20 via Blank Forms.

“People ask me (about) my influences, I would have to say Patty Waters. They say other people and I say, nahh, Patty Waters, listen to Patty Waters. I listened to her twice. That’s all it took for some grain of inextricable influence” —Diamanda Galas

Patty Waters’ two greatest albums, Sings from 1965 and College Tour from the following year, combine to secure her reputation as an avant vocal priestess of the first order. They were cut for the storied label ESP Disk, an enterprise known for its stable of fringe ’60s artifacts ranging from the proto out-rock of The Godz and Cromagnon, assorted strains of folk including The Fugs, Pearls Before Swine, The Holy Modal Rounders, Erica Pomerance, and Ed Askew, and most prominently, a ton of the era’s avant jazz; in fact, it was saxophonist Albert Ayler who introduced Waters to ESP’s owner-operator Bernard Stollman.

Instead of its deceptively plain title, her debut for the label could’ve been called The Vocal Extremities of Patty Waters, for its first side offered seven short tracks of hushed and isolated intensity, with Waters’ accompanying herself on piano, while the second held one side-long dive into the emotional abyss, with Waters working herself into a wailing screaming frenzy as Burton Greene plays piano and piano harp, Steve Tintweiss works the bass, and Tom Price delivers percussion.

Like many ESP Disk titles, the back cover stated, “You never heard such sounds in your life.” This was no exaggeration. Her detonation of “Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair” still has the power to unnerve a room. While Sings has much in common with the ’60s free jazz movement, to simply label it as an out-jazz record does it and Waters a disservice. It’s undeniably an avant-garde experience, and I rate it as one of the decade’s very best.

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Today we remember Daniel Johnston who passed away on Wednesday, September 11, 2019 with this look back from our archives. —Ed.

Of all the fine stuff scheduled to hit the racks last week for Black Friday, one item particularly stood out in large part due to its belated appearance on vinyl. In all the excitement and hubbub of the holiday festivities, it was easy to miss the last minute cancellation of this record, shifting the focus below from an appreciation of a long-delayed vinyl slight to a consideration of a release whose LP coronation continues to be denied. The subject is Fun, the sole major-label entry in the discography of Daniel Johnston, originally issued by Atlantic Records in 1994. Hopefully its eventual emergence on vinyl comes sooner rather than later.

While I won’t be so bold as to say there was no middle ground, the reaction to Daniel Johnston’s original home recordings did largely run to extremes. On one hand, there were those who championed a new and startlingly unique pop singer-songwriter. On the other were the strident doubters and the often exasperated reactions of folks who considered it all a big put on.

Johnston’s advocates largely felt that his crudely recorded homemade cassettes were just as legitimate and deserving of attention as anything being produced for mass consumption in the spacious multi-track studios of the big label machine. Many listeners not smitten with his considerable output identified it as another example of underground tastemakers locating a marginal artist and then lording it over those with enough sense to not buy into the hype.

As more people became acclimated to the uniqueness of Johnston’s work, either through the stumping of music journalists and critics, the name dropping of assorted clued-in musicians, and via his now legendary appearance on MTV’s The Cutting Edge Happy Hour, where he performed during his lunch break at McDonalds, it started to become clear to some of the previously doubtful that the passionate reaction of so many was indeed sincere, the music having struck a deep chord. A fair number of these agnostics listened again, and what had initially sounded strange shifted into something special.

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In 1979, while in the midst of a career-capping comeback, Art Pepper entered the studio to cut a record for Artists House, the label of producer John Snyder. Indicative of how things sometimes work, one album became four, released across the 1980s, with numerous takes left in the can…until now. As part of Omnivore Recordings’ unflagging dedication to returning Pepper’s late work to easy accessibility, Promise Kept: The Complete Artist House Recordings hits stores on September 13, holding five CDs featuring across-the-board exceptional players in tandem with one of Modern Jazz’s finest saxophonists.

Promise Kept might seem like an unwieldy hunk of music to contend with, but if lengthy, it’s easily parsed as the work of two top-flight bands comprising two sessions on opposing coasts (with distinct temperaments to match) as Pepper made good on a commitment to record an LP for Snyder’s small but consistently rewarding label (a handful of classics reside in its discography).

As said, four albums resulted, though only So in Love, the first, was actually issued by Artists House. The subsequent three, Artworks, New York Album, and Stardust came out after Pepper’s death via Galaxy and Victor in 1984-’85. With the exception of take two of “But Beautiful,” the entirely of disc five (titled simply Sessions) is previously unreleased.

Snyder, a jazz aficionado who circa the 1970s was also Creative Director for Horizon, the jazz label of A&M Records, had booked a tour for Pepper in ’77 that included gigs at the Village Vanguard. The success of those gigs instilled a desire in Snyder to record Pepper live at the storied New York club with an all-star group.

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Hailing from Oakland, CA, Howlin Rain’s heavy-acid-jam rock suggests the last 45 years never happened. If you’ve ever gotten so drawn in by the outbound firepower of an early ’70s Grateful Dead tape that you forgot about the portabella mushrooms and tofu pups you were grilling during a late-summer weekend cookout, it suffices to say that Howlin Rain should cruise right down your boulevard. Under the Wheels: Live from the Coasts, Vol. 1, the first in a new live series, is a fine point of entry into the band’s thing, but don’t dilly dally around, as there are only 1,000 copies total in assorted color variations and handmade micro editions, all available now through Silver Current Records.

Howlin Rain is Ethan Miller (formerly of Comets on Fire) on guitar and lead singing, Dan Cervantes on guitar, Jeff McElroy on bass, and Justin Smith on drums (Smith, McElroy, and Cervantes all contribute backing vocals). They debuted with an eponymous LP on Birdman Records way back in 2006 and have released a bunch of material since, a significant portion of it capturing them in performance, so this live album series isn’t exactly a novel concept.

You see, Howlin Rain know what they do well. The studio records they’ve released over the last 13 years are all worthwhile, and a couple, like The Alligator Bride from last year, are borderline excellent, but that’s still not the same as getting on stage and letting loose in communion with a crowd that’s thoroughly focused on the occasion. And this surely reinforces the Dead comparison above, a connection Howlin Rain has openly made themselves, but it’s really only part of their overall sound.

The PR for The Alligator Bride did specifically reference Europe ’72, but that was in tandem with a mention of UK hard rockers Free. And that lines right up with a 45 they recorded back in 2012 that dished “When the Morning Comes” (from American Beauty) on the A-side and The James Gang’s “Collage” on the flip. So, we’re talking lysergic but with a powerful thrust; stretching out to over ten minutes, Under the Wheels’ instrumental opener “To the Wind” gets right in the thick of this heady-heavy mix.

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Circa the mid-’70s Arthur Lee was in the midst of tough times; never a marketplace powerhouse, his critical reputation took a long nosedive post-Forever Changes as his album Black Beauty was languishing in the can. Offered a contract by Robert Stigwood’s RSO Records, Lee reassembled his band and set to work. Detouring from the hard rock of his preceding releases, Reel to Real disregarded familiar garage or psychedelic territory for an unexpected and for some perplexing soul/rock milieu. Few heard the final product.

A little punkish and considerably Byrds-like, Love’s self-titled arrival from March of ’66 endures as one of the stronger debuts of its decade; opening with the emo-purge throttling of Bacharach and David’s “My Little Red Book” and following with over half a dozen gems and no clunkers, the LP consistently wields aspects of Los Angelino garage beginnings as an advantage. For evidence, look no further than “Hey Joe,” a burner arguably on par with the ’65 version by the Leaves and the famous slowed-down take that introduced the world to the Jimi Hendrix Experience in ‘66.

Roughly eight months after Love appeared Elektra unleashed Da Capo, an expanded lineup pursuing psychedelia and baroque pop while retaining the punk edge on “7 and 7 Is,” though it bears noting that particular song, issued as a classic single in July of ’66, derived from an earlier session. Its second side taken up with a 19 minute blues jam (working title: “John Lee Hooker”), many peg Da Capo as half great; irrefutably an indulgence, “Revelation” is nowhere near the blunder its biggest detractors claim it to be, instead illuminating the breadth of the group’s rapid-fire metamorphosis.

A year did elapse before the emergence of Love’s consensus masterpiece, and given its level of ambition, it’s not difficult to see why; Forever Changes ranks amongst the most vivid and boldly scaled epics produced by the ’60s pop-rock renaissance, and if a commercial failure in relation to expectations, it’s become an undying cult item and a frequent entry on lists of the Greatest Records of All Time.

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Although long defunct, throughout the 1990s the UK label Too Pure promulgated a sweet heaping mess of worthwhile musical activity; most illustrious in the outpouring were PJ Harvey and Stereolab, but numerous additional acts fortified the scenario, and amongst the finest was Pram. Formed in Birmingham, England in 1990, the experimental pop outfit released three full-lengths on Too Pure, and the first two, ’93’s The Stars Are So Big, the Earth Is So Small…Stay as You Are and the following year’s Helium received 180gm pressings in 2016 by Medical Records of Seattle, WA.

Pram initially came together in the late ‘80s under the name Hole. Eventually their founding members, namely Rosie Cuckston on vocals and keyboards, Matt Eaton on guitar, Samantha “Sam” Owen on bass, and Andy Weir on drums, changed the moniker to Pram, and their first recordings wielded an abrasive, nervous quality derived from indie rock and traceable back to their home country’s post-punk innovators, in particular The Slits and The Raincoats.

As part of the upside-down musical landscape of the early ’90s, Pram has surely been categorized as one component in the truly seismic indie explosion. But instead of being tidily indicative of the ’80s underground’s absorption into the mainstream of the ensuing decade, the group can be accurately tagged as prescient; circa ’88 as Hole their sound reportedly sprang entirely from vocals and a homemade Theremin.

Pram has been described as everything from experimental pop/rock to neo-psychedelia to dream pop, but they seem best pegged as an early example of post-rock (though at least one member of the band disagrees) as they adopted a wide range of atypical instrumentation, borrowed ideas from a Krautrock and post-punk antecedents, honed their skills as multi-instrumentalists and then strove to not sound like anyone else.

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Broken Fall is the latest release from the improvising duo of Kid Millions, aka John Colpitts, and Sarah Bernstein. Across its seven tracks, she saws the violin and vocalizes while he batters the drums but good; together they heave forth a sound of wild abstraction drawing upon the traditions of experimental noise, free rock and avant-garde jazz. Heavy, lithe, raw and spirited, it’s out August 30 on vinyl and digital through 577 Records.

Kid Millions has drummed in a whole lot of contexts and has amassed an ample discography. In addition to handling the rhythms for experimental rock vets Oneida, he operates the bountiful solo project Man Forever, is half of the Oneida splinter duo People of the North with Bobby Matador, and has collaborated on record numerous times with Borbetomagus saxophonist Jim Sauter and as Fox Millions Duo with Guardian Alien drummer Greg Fox.

And of course, he’s half of Broken Fall’s powerhouse gush alongside violinist-composer-improviser-poet Sarah Bernstein. Originally from San Francisco, the NYC-based multitasker Bernstein has considerable varied credits solo (Exolinger), duo (Unearthish), trio (Day So Far, Iron Dog, Sarah Bernstein Trio), and quartet (Veer Quartet, Sarah Bernstein Quartet), plus a wide range of chamber works (from violin solo to large ensemble to orchestra) and film scores.

Amongst the descriptors Bernstein employs to communicate her thing: avant-jazz, experimental pop, and noise. And so, a seeming natural fit with Colpitts, with the fruits of their pairing abundant of Broken Fall. Actually, those hip to Tense Life, Millions and Bernstein’s prior collab for 577, which came out in 2017 on cassette in an edition of 50 (still available digitally on Bandcamp), were cognizant of their creative harmoniousness already.

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In the annals of punk rock, Peter Laughner has really been more of a mythic figure than a prime musical influence. While he was a member of two crucial Cleveland punk bands (Rocket from the Tombs and Pere Ubu), his recorded output has been somewhat slight. The key word in that last sentence is output. Smog Veil’s eponymous 5LP/5CD box set makes plain what heavy-duty Laughner heads have long known; he recorded a whole lot, but just had very little commercially released, even posthumously. This enlightening and highly digestible labor of love from a diligently Ohio-focused label expands his output in both size and range. Featuring a 100-pg hardcover book, it’s one of the best multidisc sets of 2019.

Ten years is a long time. Certainly not in the grand sweep of history, but the statement still rings true; we denote blocks of ten years as decades, and a decade is how long Smog Veil has been working on Peter Laughner. Ten years can build up a whole lot of anticipation, and by extension, unsurmountable expectations, but that’s not how it transpired here.

Up to the eve of its release, there seemed to be hardly any hubbub attached to this project, which fits with Laughner’s essentially underground stature. If you know and care about the man’s work, you likely know a lot about early punk, and there’s a good chance you knew this set was in production. Anticipation likely resulted, but in keeping with the circumstances of Laughner’s life, it was probably best to not get too optimistic.

24 years is 14 more than ten, but in demarking the span of a lifetime, it’s not very long at all, at least in modern terms. And 24 years is how long Peter Laughner lived. A big part of his mythic stature stems from his death from acute pancreatitis, a condition that indicates that he drank (and yes indeed, drugged) himself to death. Since then, many have surely romanticized his demise, but he’s just as often simply one more entry in rock ‘n’ roll’s long list of casualties.

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Few bands are in less need of an introduction than Led Zeppelin. For roughly a decade they reigned, helping to establish hard rock as a profitable genre as they trashed hotel rooms, gallivanted with groupies, and impacted heavy music right up to the nonce. Mothership is less of an intro than stardom’s inevitable career summary and exercise in remastering; it’s no substitute for their great albums, but it does glean two dozen selections from the corpus, many of them excellent, and spreads them across a pair of CDs or four 180gm LPs.

Anthologizing a onetime rock radio fixture and by extension youthful music hound’s rite of passage, it can seem Mothership’s contents generally resist commentary. And yet the notion of nothing left to say is simply a falsehood; love, hate, ambivalence, or indifference, no matter the viewpoint Led Zeppelin remain indisputably important, and on 20 days their oeuvre can be approached from 20 different if not wholly distinct angles, making these 24 tracks quite useful as an impetus for observations.

“Good Times Bad Times” and “Communication Breakdown” (their debut US single!) succinctly emphasize Zep’s crucial hand in the formulation of hard rock and do so without really highlighting the essential blues component in their personality. But don’t let’s get ahead of ourselves; the Jake Holmes-lift “Dazed and Confused” (a.k.a. Drum Fill 101) does illustrate their adeptness in swiping preexisting, and to put it politely, often unacknowledged sources.

So too does “Babe I’m Going to Leave You,” written by Anne Bredon (the version found on Joan Baez in Concert, Part 1 is reportedly the inspiration) and not traditional as it was credited for years (in fairness by Baez as well as Zep). It provides adequate early representation of the band’s folky aspects and rounds out Led Zeppelin’s entries rather nicely.

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A native of Kent, England, Alexander Tucker’s musical roots span back to hardcore in the 1990s, but he’s come to prominence through the interweaving of drone, electroacoustic elements, psychedelia, post-industrial ambiance and honest-to-goodness songs. Tucker’s latest solo effort (he’s also part of Grumbling Fur) is Guild of the Asbestos Weaver, his eighth full-length and the fourth to be released by Thrill Jockey. Offering five expansive tracks and a “classic” album runtime, the contents blend focused experimentation and trad tunesmithing to a result that’s as inviting as it is edgy. It’s out on vinyl, compact disc, and digital August 23.

The title of Alexander Tucker’s new record derives from the underground opposition in Ray Bradbury’s dystopian science-fiction classic Fahrenheit 451, a borrowing that’s representative of the artist’s stated desire to combine his longstanding interest in sci-fi and “cosmic horror” (from comic art, filmic and literary forms) with minimalism, drone and dream music.

To elaborate on that last style, it’s not dream-pop Tucker is tapping into but rather, explicitly stated, the “Dreamweapon” modus operandi of Angus MacLise, a legendary 1960s NYC-based percussionist-composer who was part of La Monte Young’s groundbreaking drone endeavor the Theater of Eternal Music. MacLise died in 1979, and it took roughly two decades for recordings (both under his own name and as a part of Young’s group) to become commercially available.

Still, MacLise’s biggest claim to “fame” (notably a goal he never strived for) is as an inaugural member of the Velvet Underground; that no recordings featuring his contribution survive from this era only adds to his mythic stature. As mentioned above, the impact of MacLise’s aesthetic on Guild of the Asbestos Weaver is right there in Thrill Jockey’s promo text, and it’s worth expanding upon due to Tucker’s similarity, both vocally and compositionally, to MacLise’s associate John Cale.

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