THE GOLDEN PALOMINOS @ 40

Marking its 40th anniversary today is the eponymous debut LP from New York art-funk freaks, The Golden Palominos, which was released on May 20th, 1983. Combining elements of funk, hip-hop, no-wave & jazz, it was an album of extreme fusions and deliberate confusions.

Formed by acclaimed session drummer/producer/arranger Anton Fier in 1981, along with Material members, bassist Bill Laswell and guitarist Nicky Skopelitis, the extended lineup of the group was as consistently mutating as the music itself. For their recording debut, the core trio were augmented by DNA frontman, Arto Lindsay on guitar and vocals, violinist/guitarist Fred Frith, percussionist David Moss, turntablist M.E. Miller and keyboardist Michael Beinhorn (also a member of Material). The inclusion of a DJ scratching along with the music made it one of the first records outside of the rap genre to incorporate the technique.

As an album, the music occupies a soundscape of idiosyncratic hybrids skirting the edges of numerous avant-garde sub-cultures of the early 1980s, offering a cutting discordance along with the interplay of tribal-verging-on-funky rhythms. It’s not easy listening by any stretch, but it remains one of the most distinctive creations of the era, particularly in its ability to pull in strands of the burgeoning hip-hop scene, utilizing DMX drum machines along with scratching, but bending them into contorted free-jazz influenced shapes. It’s a record that creates its own rules, which it then indiscriminately breaks. 

THE STRANGLERS - BLACK AND WHITE @ 45

 

 

Marking 45 years on the shelf today is The Stranglers' third LP, Black and White, which was released on May 12th, 1978. It’s an album which continued to highlight the band’s distinctiveness, well beyond the limitations of three chord slashing, bog-standard punk rock. The album showcases the group beginning to develop a more introspective emotional lyricism along with an increased sophistication in their song-craft, introducing elements like the 7/4 time signature in the song, Curfew. For some, the shift towards a more refined sound came at the expense of powerful songwriting, as showcased on their first two LPs, but for others, the writing was just as solid, while pushing musical boundaries with implications of influence upon contemporaries like Gang of Four, Joy Division and Public Image Ltd. Clearly, they were on a path which was akin to those “post-punk” allies and their continued evolution down that path would quickly lead to some significant pop classics down the road. Not that Black and White doesn’t have its own cherries to be picked. Tracks like Nice ’n’ Sleazy, Toiler On the Sea, and Death & Night & Blood are just some of the songs which have become essential listening in the classic Stranglers canon.

The initial release of the UK version included a white vinyl 7” which included a cover of Burt Bacharach’s Walk On Buy, along with two other bonus tracks. The US release did not include the single, but was pressed on black & white marbled vinyl. The album was a critical and commercial success at the time of its release, though retrospective critical praise has been a bit more mixed in light of the band’s evolution. Still, it remains an essential piece of the band’s legacy for any serious fan.

TODD RUNDGREN - HERMIT OF MINK HOLLOW @ 45

 

Released 45 years ago this month, it’s Todd Rundgren’s 8th studio album, the very literally titled Hermit Of Mink Hollow, which was issued in May of 1978. After his excursions into the far reaches of progressive experimentation and excess with his band, Utopia, and solo albums like A Wizard, A True Star, this album found the eccentric genius in an introspective and minimalist mood, stripping back his style to a kind of accessibility which hadn’t been heard since 1972’s Something / Anything.

At the time the album was produced, Rundgren had recently ended a serious romantic relationship and was looking to regroup in a more private setting. He also wanted to simplify his arrangements to the bare bones of drums, bass, piano and vocals, with the emphasis on the last, for which he’d developed some new techniques while out on the road with Utopia. Ensconcing himself in his home studio at Mink Hollow Road in Lake Hill, New York, Rundgren set about creating the album entirely on his own, producing and playing everything, with only the occasional visit from engineer Mike Young. That “do it yourself” approach proved to be somewhat tedious at times, especially with the drums set up in the basement while the control room was upstairs. With no remote controls for the recorder available, Todd would have to bolt up and down the stairs to activate the machine and get the recording done. If he made a mistake, he’d have to dash back upstairs to reset the tape machine.

To help relieve some of the tedium, Rundgren would approach particular instruments and recordings by adopting “characters”. For example, he might imagine himself as Paul McCartney for a particular bass part, channeling characteristic runs and fills after the musician. Songs were generally built up from the drums & bass, with vocals coming in as the final element. After having gone through a breakup, Rundgren’s lyrics tended to be more intimate and confessional, though he later denied that they were directly biographical in nature.

Upon its release, the album received mostly positive critical reviews, with many noting his “return to form” with more modest and accessible pop sensibilities dominating the proceedings. The album performed reasonably well on the charts and the single, Can We Still Be Friends, became his most frequently covered composition, with versions by Robert Palmer, Rod Stewart, Colin Blunstone, and Mandy Moore.

NEU! - 2 @ 50

 

Marking it’s golden anniversary today is the sophomore LP from Krautrock pioneers, NEU! as “2” turns 50 years old, being released on May 7th, 1973. While on the one hand, it furthered the group’s position as the premier ambassadors of the “Motorik” sound, it also generated controversy with its unorthodox approach to dealing with a limited production budget.

For their second LP, Klaus Dinger & Michael Rother, along with producer, Conny Plank, continued to explore the hypnotic, driving grooves which had made their debut album a landmark, creating a sound which would become emblematic of the German music scene of the decade and inspire countless musicians for generations yet to come. While the first side of the LP presented a set of four new finished tracks, the budget for recording had run out by the time they’d completed those pieces. Desperate to find a solution to fill out the other side of the album, the group took the previously released single,“"Neuschnee/Super", and proceeded to create a series of “variations” using no more than a turntable and cassette deck.

The song was played at different speeds, manually spun or mangled on the cassette tape. The result was a set of six “remixes”, as Dinger would later classify the recordings. At the time of the album’s release, critics and fans considered the tactic a con or a rip-off, a “cheap gimmick”, though the band were, in reality, displaying an unprecedented sense of ingenuity when faced with a difficult circumstance. In fact, the move was actually quite in keeping with their artistic aesthetic and approach to “pop art”, presenting an innovative use of a “ready made” sound object, subverted and reshaped to create an entirely unexpected result. It was an approach that would be exploited by many other advocates of experimental music in numerous manifestations over the ensuing years.

Despite the controversy of some of its content, the album is still considered one of the foundation recordings of the German alternative music scene of the early 1970s, presenting a distinct and revolutionary sound, freed from the influence of American blues based structures and building on a completely re-imagined musical scaffolding.

GOD BLESS THE RED KRAYOLA AND ALL WHO SAIL WITH IT @ 55

 

Released 55 years ago this month is the sophomore LP from Red Krayola, God Bless The Red Krayola And All Who Sail With It, which was issued in May of 1968. Shifting their sound radically from their debut, the band inadvertently predicted post-punk atonality and minimalism a good decade before it would become trendy.

After the psychedelic hippy freakout that was The Parable of Arable Land, which inter-cut wildly effected songs by the band with improvised mayhem from the collective, The Familiar Ugly, a group of some 50 hangers on and friends, things got paired down significantly for the followup. The group were down to a trio with a scant few guests to join in. The production also took a radical shift away from what had been done before, with the band opting for a completely stripped down and flat production sound. No effects, reverberation or delays were used at all, save for the last track on the album. Only the natural acoustics of the studio room were used with even the EQ on the tracks was deliberately kept flat to avoid adding any color that was not inherent in the natural sound. Combined with the disjointed, angular and obtuse performances on their instruments, the band created a sound not dissimilar to what would come out of New York ten years later with the “No Wave” scene, which incorporated many of the same stylistic cues of free jazz improvisation, atonal musical structures and stark minimalism.

At the time of its release, it was completely misunderstood by fans and critics and it sold exceptionally poorly compared to their previous record. Yet in the ensuing years since its release, it has become recognized as a critical touchstone for bands which would become cutting edge with a decade of musical evolution behind them to provide context. For this album, when it hit the record shops in 1968, there was literally ZERO context for anyone to relate it to and try to understand what was going on. It was simply unprecedented. 

FUNKADELIC - COSMIC SLOP @ 50

 

Marking half a century of funkin’ it up is the fifth studio LP from Funkadelic, Cosmic Slop, which was released in May of 1973. After staring their career as a fusion of psychedelic rock & R&B, the “Funketeers” were starting to refine their sound into something which would soon define ‘70s funk, landing the accent firmly on the ONE and building the foundation stones for the hip-hop revolution which would inherit their grooves in future decades.

The shift away from the heavier rock sound of their early albums into the smoother grooves of what would become classic P-funk had begun in earnest on their previous, sprawling double LP, America Eats Its Young, an uneven album, but one which put some key elements into place. The evolution of the band’s lineup had stabilized somewhat by this point with the addition of key players like Bootsy Collins and singer-guitarist Garry Shider. These changes fueled the collective for the remainder of the decade. Such a significant revamp, however, initially left their fan base and critics out of sync with the band at first, with the results being poor sales for Cosmic Slop, which failed to produce any hit singles. Since its release, however, it has been significantly re-evaluated and recognized for its virtues, which become clearly evident when the album is contextualized by the rest of the group’s output. Cosmic Slop clearly shows the band finding their creative feet and stomping them with conviction and confidence. The rest of the world simply needed to catch up to where they were headed.

This was also the first Funkadelic LP to feature the graphic art genius and liner notes of Pedro Bell, who assumed responsibility for the band's gate-fold album covers and liner notes until their collapse after 1981's The Electric Spanking of War Babies. This is where the mythology of P-Funk truly starts to take flight and flex its muscles, creating an identity and presence which outstripped any other funk outfit roaming the American landscape during this golden age of the groove. Cosmic Slop simply set the standard and the P-Funk gang kept upping the ante throughout the rest of their career, maintaining both Funkadelic and soon Parliament, as well as a number of other side-projects, in an ever expanding universe of funk dominance.

NURSE WITH WOUND - SOLILOQUY FOR LILITH @35

 

Celebrating its 35th anniversary this month is Nurse With Wound’s triple LP slab of droning ambience, Soliloquy For Lilith, which was released in May of 1988. After nearly a decade of warping minds with a series of surreal and jarring excursions into sonic malfeasance, Steven Stapleton charted an abrupt change of course for this album, into a world of serene solemnity, forcing his fans to reconsider what was possible for the project while creating one of the most enduring and admired titles in it’s vast catalogue.

From its inception, Nurse With Wound had established itself as a true eclectic outlier within the experimental music community, creating a series of idiosyncratic releases which generally involved extensive use of disorienting editing and audio cutup techniques. Soliloquy, however, would rely on a very different approach, with Stapleton and wife, Diana Rogerson, claiming to have used no instruments of any kind in the album’s production. Instead, the sounds originated from a series of effects devices and pedals which were wired together in sequence to form a closed feedback loop, with no original source instrument or microphone to generate the sound. The noises that emanated from this configuration were believed to have resulted from an electrical wiring fault in the studio which caused a “hum” to be picked up in the wiring. This noise was then morphed and amplified by the feedback loop of effects pedals. Changes to the tone and texture of the sound were triggered by Stapleton’s physical proximity to different devices in the chain. Moving & gesturing near them, like one would do with a Theremin, caused oscillations and other modulations. A series of six recordings of this setup were captured, each lasting no less than 17-18 uninterrupted minutes in length.

Nurse With Wound releases are often packaged in limited editions, occasionally with one of a kind cover art for the extremely rarefied items. For this release, Stapleton & Rogerson created a new, though short-lived, independent label imprint, Idle Hole, and assigned the album a catalogue number of Mirror One. Funding for the project was aided by a government Enterprise Allowance Scheme grant. The album was packaged as three LPs enclosed in a glossy black lidded box, embossed with a gold foil radiating disc graphic & title texts. An insert included with the set depicted the Burney Relief (also known as the Queen of the Night), a Mesopotamian terracotta plaque in high relief of the Old-Babylonian period. It depicts a winged, nude, goddess-like figure with bird's talons, flanked by owls, and perched upon two lions. The figure is often associated with the biblical figure of Lilith, a female in Mesopotamian and Judaic mythology, theorized to be the first wife of Adam and supposedly the primordial she-demon. The title of the album, while being archaic and occult in nature, also referred to the couple’s daughter, Lilith, who was born earlier in 1988.

Although a limited edition, the album quickly sold out, even at the exorbitant price necessitated by the elaborate packaging. I recall paying $60 CAN for mine in the local import record shop, a steep price in 1988. In fact, it quickly became Nurse With Wound’s most popular release, with funds generated by its sales contributing to the Stapleton family being able to finance the purchase of farm property at Cooloorta in County Clare, Ireland in 1989, where they maintain a homestead to this day. The album was reissued on CD, first in 1993 in a standard jewel case 2CD set, and then again in 2003, this time in an expanded 3CD edition with packaging emulating the original LP embossed box. The third disc, added to further emulate the original LP configuration, adds two remixes to the set, bringing the total to eight movements. The reissues continued to sell better than nearly any other Nurse With Wound title and the album remains in print. It easily stands as one of my all-time favorite releases from Nurse With Wound, as well as one of its most listenable.