DROP THE BASS - MY FAVORITE PLAYERS

I was going to do a “Top 10” list of my favorite bass players, but I came up with 11 names, so in the spirit of Nigel Tufnel, I’m going that extra digit for sheer intensity’s sake!  These are all people who have made me appreciate the instrument in a special way and whom I personally feel have contributed something unique to the way the instrument is used.  The order is somewhat arbitrary, though some names do have more significance to me than others and I’ll make note of that as I go along and talk about each. 

The bass guitar, in my mind, was initially a rather mysterious presence and lacked the glitz and glamour of its more easily identifiable six stringed cousins.  When I first started seriously listening to music, I didn’t quite comprehend what it was, but gradually, I discovered bands and players who brought my attention to it and made me realize that the bass had a special power all its own. This is something which has become more and more apparent as “bass music” (funk, dub, drum & bass, downtempo, dub-step, etc) has gained prominence since the 1970s. 

It was really funk and reggae music which first gave the instrument a place at the front of the pack, making it a tool for driving song structures from the ground up.  Where it was traditionally used as merely a means to fill out the lower end of the frequency range and give an arrangement a sense of presence, it was also neglected for a long time because most people didn’t listen to music on stereo systems capable of reproducing those frequencies.  It was only in the late 1960s when “high fidelity” sound systems became more ubiquitous that you start to hear producers going for full stereo mixes as a default instead of focusing on radio friendly mono productions.  FM radio also made it possible to broadcast in hi-fi and the album came into its own as an art form rather than as a medium for hosting a hit single and a bunch of filler tracks.  When all these factors came together, you started to hear the instrument take on a new roll as a critical component rather than merely a sonic spectrum filler. 

With that in mind, let’s get into some specific individuals who are responsible for bringing the bass into prominence.  

Carol Kaye

I’ll begin with this lady though my appreciation of her has only surfaced in recent years with the release of the documentary film, The Wrecking Crew.  Though I’m old enough to have grown up with many of the 1960s hits she played on, I had no idea who the musicians on so many of those records were until seeing this film.  It was a true moment of revelation to witness this unmasking of these incredibly talented and significant music makers.  Finding out she was responsible for the bass line in Sony & Cher’s hit, The Beat Goes On, blew my mind as it was one of the very first songs I can recall where a bass line was integral to the essence of the song.  She may not have a writing credit for it, but that hook is EVERYTHING to me when I remember it.  And then there’s that descending step bass at the beginning of Glen Campbell’s Wichita Lineman, another example of the instrument being used to provide an immediately recognizable musical motif, one which identifies the song the instant it saunters out of the speakers.  Those are only a couple of examples in a career spanning decades and hundreds, if not thousands, of recordings.

John Deacon

As a teen in 1977, Queen was the first band I got into in a BIG way.  They were the first group I delved into in order to pick apart what they were doing and try to figure out what was going on structurally.  Before them, I’d listen to music and only hear a totality of sound and not be able to identify individual elements and instruments.  With Queen, however, I was so fascinated by what they were creating, the palette of sounds they were using and the variety of styles they encompassed, that I was compelled to analyze it and decipher what was the source of each sound.  Though there was more than enough to digest with the voices and Brian May’s guitar parts, John’s bass playing still managed to come through and distinguish itself.  Deacon was the quintessential rock bass player in many regards, often seeming stoic and quiet, but there was a lot going on under the surface.  He impressed me to such an extent that I decided to switch instruments I was learning at the time.  I had taken up guitar lessons that year and, after getting into Queen, I felt driven to bug my parents to buy me a cheap Fender bass copy (as close to the one John played as possible) and start taking lessons on that instead.  John proved himself again and again as a song writer and, on Under Pressure and Another One Bites the Dusk, he showed precisely how a bass line could become a hook that could sell a million copes of a record.

Jah Wobble

John Wardle, Christened “Jah Wobble” by a drunk, slurring Sid Vicious, was a buddy of Johnny Rotten’s during the Sex Pistols days.  He was one of the "gang of Johns", which included John Beverly (Sid), Johnny Rotten and a fellow named John Gray.  He was a rough and tumble punk with a reputation for putting the booze back.  When the Sex Pistols fell apart, Rotten became Lydon again and recruited Wobble, who had no real experience, to play bass in his new band.  It was a stroke of luck and possibly divine intervention that put the bass guitar in this man’s hands because it became an instant appendage for him and he took to it like the proverbial duck to water.  Right out of the gate, he guided the instrument into a new zone of significance in Public Image Ltd.  This is apparent from the first notes of the first single from their “First Issue” debut LP.  That bass line kicks off the song, Public Image, and announces the arrival of the band with a thrust and vigor that left no question as to their intent.  From there, Wobble would provide the foundations of their sound throughout two seminal LPs, the second of which, Metal Box, cementing his position in music history as a true innovator.  Borrowing from reggae and “Krautrock” and combining the two elements into a fusion of low frequency omnipotence, Wobble set the controls for the heart of the sub and never looked back.  Since leaving PiL, he’s secured himself as the ever prolific and consistent producer of quality bass music spanning over 4 decades now.  His influence on my own creative direction has been immeasurable and unparalleled.

Mick Karn

Japan first came to my attention in early 1980 with the purchase of their 3rd album, Quiet Life.  Beneath all the makeup and pretty clothes, they turned out to be a rather talented collective of self taught musicians and Mick Karn easily stood out with his slippery fretless bass work.  The way it slid around underneath Steve Jansen’s syncopated percussion, such as on songs like The Art of Parties, created a a sinuous, fluid motion that gave the foundations of the music a kind of elasticity that I’d never heard in other bands.  Karn’s solo work continued to explore the range of his instrument until his tragic, untimely death in 2011.

Holger Czukay

Far more than simply a bass player, Czukay nevertheless established a distinctive presence for the instrument in CAN and in his solo works.  The primal, muted thud of his playing technique meshed with Jaki Liebezeit’s drums in a way that fused them into a single entity, accenting the bottom end of the rhythm section.  It was an understated approach, but hid a powerful propellant which was crucial to the interplay of grooves that was CAN’s hallmark in the best of their songs such as Halleluhwah.  You can see this in some of the live footage of their performances, where Holger’s bass and Jaki’s drums push the energy levels of the music and build up tension as they strain against each other while remaining seamless. 

Tina Weymouth

Talking Heads stood out from the pack of CBGBs bands for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which was their petite little powerhouse of a bass player.  At a time when rock music was largely dominated by men, she was a precious anomaly - this diminutive mouse of a girl busting out the funkiest grooves on that beast of an instrument.  Her most notable moment with it came with the infectious dance hit from her side project, Tom Tom Club, and their funk masterpiece, Genius of Love.  Here was a bass line that would get sampled and recycled again and again, for generations of hip-hop music fans.  On Talking Heads transcendental afro-fuck classic, Remain In Light, her playing took on dimensions heretofore unheard in alternative rock.  

Peter Hook

Joy Division took the sound of the bass in a completely different direction than most other bands, particularly within the post punk scene.  Developed primarily for practical reasons, so that it could be heard more clearly on stage, Peter Hook decided to emphasize the top end frequencies of the instrument and inject a melodic, riff-centric approach that became Joy Divisions calling card.  His riff for She’s Lost Control is a perfect example of this technique being used to stamp a song with an unmistakable trademark, something that is recognizable within seconds of it sounding out.  

Bootsy Collins

William Earl Collins may have got his big break with James Brown, but he was never suited to Brown’s micromanaging, regimented band leading style.  Thankfully, George Clinton unharnessed Willy’s wings and let him fly.  "Bootsy" was born in Clinton’s open format freak-fest within the P-Funk family and soon brought the gospel of “the one” to the dance floors of the era with unstoppable riffs like on Mothership Connection.  R&B, soul and, ultimately, funk music in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s truly ushered in the age of bass as it was used as a central structural element in arrangements for the first time.  A funky bass line could send a crowd into a frenzy and no one was funkier and fresher than Bootsy, baby!

Robbie Shakespeare

Coming close on the heels of funk, reggae music also recognized the potential of the bass guitar and, in the heat of the Jamaican sun, slow cooked that smooth, deep resonance which would become a hallmark of psychedelic bass music for decades to come.  That deep throb was more than just a backup for the other instruments.  It drove the melody in a way that was completely new in music.  Within that scene, Robbie Shakespeare became one of it’s most accomplished and prolific practitioners, playing on some of the greatest tracks to come from the island such as Bunny Wailer's Blackheart Man. 

Jean-Jacques Burnel

The Stranglers were initially swept up in the surge of “punk” bands in the UK in 1977.  Though they were labelled as “punk”, they were actually a bit too old and accomplished as musicians to truly merit the label.  Frankly, they outclassed the average punk band by a few miles and part of the reason for that was the distinctive snarling bass of “JJ”, Jean-Jacques Burnel.  JJ had stumbled on his sound by accident while trying to work with a blown speaker cabinet.  Listen to Peaches and you can hear that stamp of authenticity in the roar that comes from his instrument. That raunchy buzz drove the band through their first three albums before he decided to tone it down a bit before it became too much of a limitation on his style.  But even with a cleaner, more subtle approach, JJ’s playing retained it’s distinction and swagger.

Bill Laswell

The New York “No Wave” scene is where I first encountered Bill Laswell as part of the group, Material.  It was their Temporary Music EPs which initially caught my ear, especially tracks like Reduction.  His frequent use of a strange filter effect, which gave his bass a kind of “talking” auto-wah sound, became a signature and point of reference when trying to identify him in any mix. Soon, I started to see Laswell’s name crop up over and over again in one production after another.  Eventually, it was clear that this man had his hand in an endless number of pies in the alternative scene and this activity only grew exponentially throughout the 1990s and into the new millennium.  Work with artists as diverse as Public Image Ltd and Yoko Ono and innumerable solo and side projects established a landscape of music driven by a love of atmosphere and low frequencies.  It’s impossible to comprehend the full scope of Bill’s work over the years because he’s simply done too much to be able to fully capture it all.  Stylistically, he’s traversed the realms of jazz, funk, dub, reggae, folk, techno, ambient, metal and nearly every other contemporary genre he could find his way into.

There are certainly other names I could and should check here, but I’ll let you, dear reader, come up with those on your own.  I’m sure I’ve missed one or two of your personal favorites, but I had to draw the line somewhere and these were the names that came to my mind the most readily. Bass guitar has dominated my musical explorations now for almost half a century and it still has the seductive allure to get my heart beating, my head bobbing, my toe tapping and my soul soaring. 

THE PAPER AGE - MUSIC BEFORE THE INTERNET

I’ve been contemplating life before the internet lately, specifically how I acquired information about music when I first started collecting it.  Long before there was a Google or Discogs or YouTube, one had to do a bit of reading the old fashioned way, in printed media, in order to learn about things that were happening in certain corners of the world.  Of course, there was radio and TV available to expose some of what was going on, but by and large, those media outlets focused on the mainstream  in a fairly superficial way and you had to go to other sources if you wanted to discover anything off the beaten track or more in-depth.  You might see the odd new wave act on Midnight Special or Saturday Night Live, but the music press was where you got to know these artists in detail and discover what they were doing and when.

I first started to collect records when I was 13, back in 1976.  Soon after that started to develop into a serious interest, I also discovered there was a variety of magazines on the shelves of my neighborhood corner shops with all sorts of fascinating stories of my favorite performers and their adventures, interviews with the them and reviews of their work.  It didn’t take long for me to get just as hooked on these as I was on the records.  So much so, in fact, that I got to the point where I’d use my lunch money to buy magazines instead of eating.  I’m thinking now that this may have been part of the reason I got so svelte in my last year of high school.  Oh well, food is over rated! 

The first publications I came across were rags like Hit Parader, Circus and, occasionally, Rolling Stone.  I never got into RS much because there were a lot of non-music articles and that stuff just didn’t interest me.  I only wanted to read about rock stars.  The other two were pretty light weight, however, and I found them to be a bit sycophantic, even at my young, naive age.  But then I came across CREEM and that one really caught my fancy.  It was not so concerned with stroking rock star egos or cheap gossip.  I didn’t understand it at the time, but it was more akin to magazines like National Lampoon and harbored a kind of “gonzo” style which often took great delight in ridiculing some of the subjects covered in its pages.  The captions to the pictures were a clear case in point.  Every one of them was a joke, often at the artist’s expense.  You never got a serious comment in the photo captions.  And they had writers like  Robert Christgau and the notorious Lester Bangs, who made an art of taking the piss out of the folks they covered.  Bangs’ LP reviews were some of my favorites.  I recall one he did for Queen’s Day at the Races that read like a bad trip and I’d never even done drugs yet.  

Eventually I discovered a used book shop downtown and it’s shelf full of old magazine back-issues.  This became a regular haunt for me and I was able to find many of the older issues of CREEM going back to the early 1970s.  This became a priceless resource to me and gave me a lot of background on my favorite bands and their history.  On the other end of this spectrum, the new issues of CREEM that were coming out at the time were starting to clue me in to a lot of new music that was coming out of places like New York and London.  They began to feature bands like the Sex Pistols, Ramones, Devo and Elvis Costello.  I remember seeing an issue with Johnny Rotten on the cover and, at the time, I thought he just looked stupid and weird and found it all rather annoying.  It wasn’t until I began to get dissatisfied with the tedium of top 40 rock music that I started to wonder what all the fuss was with these new groups and why they were getting so much press.  

Like a damn bursting, my curiosity soon got the better of me and I went out and started buying records by these people.  I can actually remember a day, flipping through the pages of a magazine in my bedroom, where I made a conscious decision to go out and buy some of these records.  It started small, with The Cars, then The Clash, Ramones, Costello, Devo and, finally, the most naughty band of all, The Sex Pistols.  I remember putting on the first Clash album and feeling like someone had blown the dust off my mind to reveal it's bright, shining surface.  I remember pulling out the lyric sheet for the Ramones' Road to Ruin and being gobsmacked that there were so many songs with just four or five lines of lyrics.  And they were fucking hilarious!   It was a few days of complete revelation that would trigger a lifetime of exploration and it all came from some ratty little music magazines.

Soon, I was on the hunt for even more magazines that featured these bands.  This is when I came across rags like Rock Scene and Punk magazine.  They were both very New York centric and featured all the CBGBs bands.  Rock Scene had a LOT of press for Patti Smith, thanks to her hubby, Lenny Kaye, being the editor.  I must admit I kinda got turned off a bit to Patti for a bit because her features in the magazine became so gratuitous and obviously so.  But still it was a valuable reference, though pretty light weight in terms of coverage of these bands.  It was mostly a scenester, “who’s with who”, kinda vibe.  Punk Magazine seemed to be the most underground and hardcore at the time.  I’m actually pretty surprised, looking back, that it ever landed in a middle of nowhere town like Thunder Bay, ON.  But it somehow managed to find its way into my hands and gave me another perspective into the alternative music scene.   

In 1979, the ultimate underground magazine started hitting the local stands, Trouser Press.  This was the most out there publication I’d managed to come across and it was in its pages that I first read of names like Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, The Residents and others who were truly foraging on the fringes of experimental music.  I became obsessed with snapping this one up as soon as it hit the stands.  It was coolness in print.  And it wasn’t easy to find as only a couple of places carried it, so I’d be on the lookout for each new issue with hawk-eyed determination.  It wasn’t a fancy looking magazine either.  It was plainly designed in terms of the graphics.  But it had the best written articles and most thoughtful reviews I’d come across.  Though the irreverence of CREEM was entertaining, it was nice to have something that really dug into the new music with a more serious tone. 

Sometime in 1980, the next phenomenon to hit my collecting obsession arrived in the form of the “import”.  The little record shop I favored, Records on Wheels, introduced a small bin of LPs labeled “Imports”.  The concept was utterly new to me, but I soon realized there was a whole world of music being released in other parts of the world than never got released in Canada.  Now, most of these ended up being imported from the UK, but that was enough as all the strangest stuff seemed to get released there.  Along side these import records, the shop also started getting UK music papers.  Things like NME and Sounds started showing up and these were a whole new world of music journalism. 

I even discovered I could purchase records directly from these papers.  They had classified ads in the back pages.  This is where I found I could actually get a copy of the holy grail of albums for me at that time, Public Image Ltd’s Metal Box.  I’d read about it in some publications and it had a sort of mythical allure about it because it was so exotic sounding.  The standard double LP version had been released in Canada and I'd fallen in love with it, so there was no question that I needed it in its original format.  Finding out it was just a matter of calculating the currency exchange and sending off a money order was thrilling to me, but also nerve-wracking.  This was, of course, long before internet or cheap international phone calling, so putting money in the post and having to wait three months in the blind hope that something would come back was a bit daunting.  But it worked and, after duly and patiently waiting, I had my hands on my treasure, greedily drooling over it like Gollum with his “precious” ring!  

When I moved to Vancouver in 1982, I continued to buy the UK papers as much as I could afford to, though I would often just read them in the import record shop that got them in.  In Vancouver, it wasn’t just a bin in the shop that sold imports, it was an entire store dedicated to them.  I swear, the first time I walked into Odyssey Imports, I was like Dorothy prancing through the gates of the Emerald City.

As I got settled in a new city, I found I was buying fewer and fewer magazines.  Trouser Press ceased publication in 1984 and CREEM in 1989 (though it kinda lost its edge a few years before that and I stopped collecting it).  The UK papers still had some attraction, but by the early 90s, I wasn’t buying records much anymore because I was so poor.  There was also the transition to CD going on and CDs, particularly imports, were going for stupid prices like $40 a pop!  It’s funny now that’s the average price for a domestic piece of new vinyl these days, but you practically can't give a CD away. 

It wasn’t until the dawn of the new millennium that I was set up with a proper computer, a high speed internet connection and a functioning credit card so that my collecting bug could lurch back to life and i dove head first into the world of online shopping.  I was working a decent job with a reasonable bit of disposable income at hand, so no limited edition collectible was out of reach for me and I had the tools to track who was releasing what and also follow recommendations for new artists.  I had automated “sniper” tools for buying on Ebay so I could snap up rarities at the last second.  I went a bit nuts, I must confess.

These days, I’m poor again, but the internet and YouTube have offered me a new way to indulge my music mania and I’m swimming in an ocean of music, both old and new.  While I love the convenience, I do still have fond memories of those bygone days of picking up a magazine and reading about some strange new artist.  I was thinking the other day about the old ads from Ralph Records for The Residents and that got me inspired to write this piece.  I recall the strangeness and mysterious infatuation with their mystique that drove my imagination.  That sense of wonder is so much harder to find or create these days. 

These days, I don't read much about music, particularly reviews of albums.  I find I don't rely on them to discover new music anymore.  I use my own judgment as to whether I want to investigate something because I can always preview it, usually on YouTube.  I use Discogs "Explore" feature to play with search filters to find interesting combinations of genres and styles.  I still read the occasional interview or analytical article, perhaps on an old release being re-appraised or celebrating an anniversary.  But I look at magazine racks in the stores and there's nothing there anymore for me to pick up.  All the music magazines have pretty much vanished or you have to go to some out of the way specialty store to find them and I can't be bothered. 

I used to have a huge box of all my old rags I'd kept for many years.  I think I may have held onto them until the end of the 1990s before I finally dumped it all.  I wish I still had them now.  Some are available online, but it's not quite the same as holding it in your hands.  Kids don’t understand it now, but I remember it and I’m glad I got to bridge both worlds.

ONE AND DONE

ARTISTS WHO RELEASED ONE LP

I recently posted a daily series for a week on "One LP Wonders".  This involved digging up some bizarre, obscure albums by bands/artists who released one album and that was it, there was nothing else from that configuration of people. This means one completed studio album, not live albums nor compilations of unrelated or previously unreleased tracks. I aimed to dig up stuff that didn't get much attention, but deserves it. The following are arranged chronologically. 

The United States of America (1968) 

In 1963, aspiring avant-garde composer and musician, Joseph Byrd, was in New York, studying music and participating in the Fluxus experimental music movement along with contemporaries such as John Cage, Morton Feldman, LaMonte Young, David Tudor & Yoko Ono.  While there, he met vocalist and fellow music student, Dorothy Moskowitz.  The two began a personal and professional partnership which would see them relocate to LA later that year. 

After a time, Byrd, who was rather politically motivated and had joined the Communist party, decided that popular music, specifically the more psychedelic rock of the late 1960s, would be a suitable vehicle for him to express his musical visions while also communicating his radical political views.  To this end, he recruited 3 additional band members to augment his various electronic keyboards and Dorothy’s vocals.  The band coalesced with the addition of Gordon Marron (electric violin, ring modulator), Rand Forbes (electric bass) and Craig Woodson (electric drums, percussion).  Together, this quintet would create their one and only self titled 1968 debut. 

Byrd chose the name of the band for deliberately provocative purposes, reasoning that it was similar to hanging the flag upside-down, as a symbol of distress and to  draw attention to the problems facing the country.  The band’s structure was unusual for the time not only for the emphasis on the then emerging new electronic instruments (synths and ring modulators, etc), but also for its lack of guitars.  With no real experience creating “rock” music, Byrd went into composing and arranging the album with the sensibilities of a contemporary, experimental classical composer, something he later regretted due to his naivety.  However, the resulting recordings were striking in their strangeness and unique approach to the medium. 

At the time of its release, the album gained little traction and the group quickly disintegrated in a frazzle of personality clashes and musical differences as they each pulled in different directions.  This even went as far as petty instances of “volume wars” between musicians on stage and fisticuffs after shows.  The group duly disbanded and it’s members pretty much all went on to more rewarding careers.  Byrd went on to do film and TV scores and teaching, Moskowitz also took up teaching and making children’s music while the others had mostly successful session musician careers. 

It would be years later that the album would be recognized for its truly pioneering approach and incorporation of cutting edge electronic instrumentation along with the likes of groups like Silver Apples.  Personally, I discovered the LP in 1983, shortly after moving to Vancouver.  I was sharing a rental house main floor with some band mates and the manager of the property had a small garage in the backyard which was filled with his massive record collection.  It was wall to wall, floor to ceiling, packed with shelves full of thousands of records.  He took a liking to us being musicians and gave us free access to search through and borrow records.  The United States of America stood out for me immediately when I looked at the cover and saw pictures of the electronics.  I was not disappointed by what I heard.  I recorded a few samples from it on reel to reel, but it wasn’t until 2004 that I finally got a CD copy and had a chance to enjoy the album in all its remastered glory. 

Today, it persists as a distinct product of a strange time. For it to stand out against the backdrop of so many other musical achievements is truly remarkable. 

Cromagnon (1969)

Cromagnon’s eponymous 1969 release (alternately titled “Orgasm” or “Cave Rock”, depending on the re-issue) stands as a singular outlier artifact of 1960s psychedelic rock. Calling it “rock music” is even a bit of a stretch. In so many regards, this album exists well outside just about any convenient classification and even this fact seems anomalous. The core group founders, Austin Grasmere & Brian Elliot, were primarily known for their group, Boss Blues, who released a couple of very conventional and unremarkable psyche-pop singles in 1967 & 1968. By 1969 however, Grasmere and Elliot were possessed by some sort of very strange, inexplicable muse when they embarked on this pastiche of noise, tribalism and altered states. There are moments on this album that could have dropped in from the future by groups like Nurse With Wound. Indeed, there’s much about this album that is completely anachronistic to the times and belongs in another era that wouldn’t become defined for another decade or two. 

The album is something of a hodgepodge of styles and techniques with mad experimentation the only unifying thread. Sometimes things work better than others, but there’s always a sense of wonder in the attempt. What they were trying here is simply so unprecedented that the results of it still don’t quite jive with anything else that was going on at the time nor since. From the opening, Caledonia, with it’s thundering drums, screeching bagpipes and whispered vocals, the stage is set for something completely different. And you get it with the abrupt shift into the next track. It’s built around incoherent grunting and torturous screaming and a sparse percussion with some unknown noises going on in the back. The madness continues with a percussive free-for-all (courtesy of random people plucked from the street outside the studio) on the third track, which also incorporates a myriad of voices intoning “sleep”, while you know you’re not getting any with this racket. The weirdness continues along until we get a bit of a respite on the 5th track with something almost musical, in the spaghetti western vein, with the fifth track, Crow of the Black Tree. This one wouldn’t have been out of place on the first Psychic TV album or as something by Current 93. The rest I’ll leave for you to discover on your own.

Obviously, at the time of its release, it garnered little in terms of audience appreciation or attention, but it eventually became infamous for its idiosyncrasy. It’s creators, on the other hand, seem to have sunk into obscurity after its release. As a result of its snowball effect in terms of its notoriety, it has seen numerous re-issues, both on LP and CD, over the intervening years since its original release. I came across it sometime in the 2000s when I spotted a CD reissue listed in the Forced Exposure online catalogue and couldn’t resist checking it out. It’s not for the faint of heart, but it rewards those who appreciate true, bold experimentation.

Mustafa Özkent Ve Orkestrası - Gençlik İle Elele (1973)

Beginning his career in 1960, Turkish guitarist, Mustafa Özkent, quickly became an in-demand session musician, arranger and producer, but it was a unique group effort which has transported his name outside of his native country and given him his reputation as a musical “Dr. Frankenstein” beyond his Middle Eastern roots.  After spending his career in the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s doing session work in Turkey, he secured a recording contract with Evren Records, a company renown for their high fidelity recordings.  In 1973, he set about assembling an “orchestra” of hand picked instrumentalists.  With this band assembled, they began working on a collection of Mustafa’s original compositions which would be released that year under the title, Gençlik İle Elele, Turkish for “Holding Hands with Youth”.

The album offered up a veritable “Güveç” (Turkish stew) of cross cultural references, combining elements of traditional Anatolian folk music with western pop influences of funk, psychedelic rock and jazz. The album cover featured a chimp mischievously manipulating a reel to reel tape recorder, securing the album’s perception as the oddball concoction of a mastermind of sonic non sequiturs.  Though it’s initial release in 1973 failed to generate significant attention, over the years, it began to lurk within the nether regions of cultish collectibles until it was eventually reissued in 2006.  This reissue brought the LP to a whole new audience and widespread, long overdue, acclaim.  I came across it only recently as I was spelunking through Discogs’ database, looking for unusual lost gems to add to my library.  This one caught my attention because it cut across so many disparate musical categories.  It has since become one of my favorites in the realm of vintage instrumental grooviness.

This was Özkent’s first release under his own name (and the only one as a “group”) and, while his subsequent solo albums have sustained his reputation for musicianship, stylistically, he never again managed to capture the sense of kitschy “Middle East meets West” funky fresh goodness which reverberates from every groove of this album.

Wolfgang Riechmann - Wunderbar (1978)

Wolfgang Riechmann began his musical career in 1966, lingering around the Düsseldorf music scene. His early projects included the group, Spirits Of Sound, founded by Wolfgang Flür, who would go on to join the “classic” Kraftwerk lineup from 1975-1986, and Michael Rother, who would also spend some time in an earlier incarnation of Kraftwerk as well as founding the bands Neu! and Harmonia. In 1977, Riechmann joined the progressive rock group, Streetmark, essentially taking over for their 2nd LP, Eileen. He then decided to go solo for his next recording project, recording the 1978 LP, Wunderbar. Here, he wrote and performed everything except the drums. Tragically, before the LP’s release on Sky Records, Wolfgang was randomly assaulted and stabbed to death by a couple of drunken thugs on the streets of Düsseldorf. His one and only solo LP stands the test of time as a classic example of German synthesizer music on the cutting edge of the genre. We can only imagine what more he could have done had he survived, but at least we have one solid collection of his brilliant works.

Masstishaddhu - Shekinah (1988)

Masstishaddhu was a one-off collaboration between Mike Watson, Richard Rupenus & Sean Breadin.  All three were associated with John Mylotte’s ritualistic improve collective, Metgumbnerbone and there are also connections to other experimental projects such as The New Blockaders, Bladder Flask & Nihilist Assault Group.  In 1988, this trio recorded the two side-long drone pieces for the LP, Shekinah.  It was released on Steven Stapleton’s label, United Dairies, in an edition of 1000 copies.  Stapleton also provided the cover graphics.  The album would eventually get a small CD re-issue in 2000 on Psychedelic Pig, a small mail order label which only released a handful of rare experimental titles before folding in 2005. As such, it has remained an obscurity among most fans of dark, occult-inspired ambient and drone music. 

I came across the release when it originally showed up as an import in Vancouver, shortly after its release.  As an avid Nurse With Wound fan, its being released by UD was something that caught my attention as potentially interesting and I wasn’t disappointed.  The two side long drone pieces feature moaning voices, guttural groans (reminiscent of Tibetan religious music), sinuous strings and primitive percussion.  It’s all beautifully recorded and mixed in high-fidelity, which is uncommon given the production values of most of the other projects tangentially connected to this.  Most of those were recorded on primitive cassette formats with little in the way of studio polish.  The addition of proper recording quality makes this a particularly enjoyable listen as it captures all the nuances of the voices and instruments being used.  If you’ve got any sacrifices or special magical moments requiring a suitable soundtrack, this is a fine option for summoning a serpent or some other denizen of the deep.

Trancendental Anarchists - Cluster Zone (1994)

In the 1990s, Kim Cascone’s Silent Records was something of a hotbed of electronic music, especially stuff on the more ambient end of the spectrum. At the time, being the pre-internet days of having to go and buy books to get knowledge, I was very deep into my esoteric and occult literature. Kabbalah and Crowley were dominant in my library and I was looking for music which reflected that. Bands like Ambient Temple of Imagination had caught my ear and it was through their association with Silent Records that I came across Trancendental Anarchists and their 1994 CD, Cluster Zone. Created by Australians, Pam Thompson & Paul Bambury, my research on them has turned up very little beyond a few guest credits here and there on a smattering of not-so-notable projects. As such, this one CD stands as their primary contribution to the world of music, but what a wonderful contribution it is! The album offers up 8 longish pieces, soaking in the thick atmospheres of ancient mysteries and melding in hypnotic, techno-tribal rhythms to send you into your inner-space journeys. It’s perfect chill room material and really lets the listener lose themselves in the mood of each piece. It’s a collection of moods and movements that was fairly neglected then and now. I’ve come across little indication that this has garnered any real following over the years, but it does deserve some attention as one of the more nuanced and intricate tapestries of sound out there for the “coming down” set. Thankfully, the re-activated version of Silent Records has reissued the album in digital form for a new generation of tweakers and travelers to discover.

Daiquiri Fantomas - MHz Invasion (2013)

Founded in 2010 by Sicilians, Marco Barrano and Dario Sanguedolce. Daiquiri Fantomas released their one and only LP to date, MHz Invasion, in 2013.  Aside from a couple of Cdr singles from the album, the duo has yet to realize a follow up.  Since it’s been 6 years waiting, I decided these guys qualified for the “One and Done” category, as it seems like they’re pretty much over and out at this point. Other than this album, only Dario has any other releases to his credit that I can find, which consists of one solo track on a 1993 compilation album.  So, for all practical purposes, this is the beginning and end of the line for this duo, which is a shame because this album offers a truly inspired collection of retro sci-fi progressive-rock, electro-acoustic excursions into the outer realms.  With one foot in the past and one in the future, the duo combine a spectacular array of acoustic and electronic instruments in order to engineer their distinctive brand of post-modernist music.  This is another release I discovered while rummaging through the Discogs database, playing their genre and style filters off against each other until I narrowed my results down to this unique combination of influences and styles.  These include modern classical, progressive rock, jazz, psychedelic rock, electronica and pop music.  If science fiction, Italian style and 70s fetishism are your thing, then this is the album for you!