| AS ORIGINALLY PRINTED
IN RHYTHMS MAGAZINE
CAN’T HEAR THE FOREST FOR THE TREES
As we crawl from the wreckage of a year that promised
nothing & delivered even less, many of us at least still find
some succour in music, but remember, there’s also a sucker
born every minute. And it would seem that there’s a record
made or released almost as frequently.
As I contemplate the teetering tower of music
from the past year (& that’s just the stuff that I’ve
managed to bump into), adding to the already monolithic mountain
of music already available from the past, it’s dawned on me
that we live in an era of overproduction of music.The sheer volume
of available material has splintered & fragmented the music
scape such that many simply retreat into genre, putting on the musical
blinkers & opting to like a couple of musical styles & ignoring
the rest, with few surprises or accidents. It’s more a policy
of exclusion than inclusion, avoidance rather than adventure.
But as a dyed- in- the wool generalist I find
that all the just OK, indifferent, mediocre stuff simply gets in
the way of the quality, I find myself skimming or channel surfing
through so many records simply to find the precious few. Although
I’m not as bad as many of my peer group who are obsessively
downloading music, always wondering what else they can add to their
iPods, adding up their number of downloads like compulsive pokie
players, always in search of the next thing rather than appreciating
the musical moment. As the sheer amount of music thrown at us increases
you start to wonder if there’s going to end up actually being
a shortage of musical consumers to listen to it all, because everyone’s
making a goddamn record!
Now don’t get me wrong, creative expression
is a wonderful thing & for centuries before recorded music,
society was enriched by their artisans & music flourished &
developed. But when you make a record & sell it you are making
demands on people’s time, money & attention, it’s
quite a conceited & presumptuous thing to do really. Like being
in a rock n roll remedial class, where self expression starts to
demand an audience rather than be an end in itself. Play. But for
God’s sake don’t make a record & expect anyone to
listen to or buy the thing, unless you’re going to add to
the sum quality of music on the planet. Just stay out of the way!
You drown out the good stuff!
So, this was a year when too much BOB DYLAN was
never enough or more than enough, depending on your bank balance,
only rivalled perhaps by local ED KUEPPER, who released 2 triple
CD retrospectives, almost 100(!) tracks that exhibited all of his
sins & virtues.
As I said last month, I’ve acquired a lot
of remasters this year but some apprentices did shine out of the
dross.
Newcomers ANTONY & THE JOHNSONS & RICHARD
HAWLEY both gave us debuts of contrast, one voice full of more idiosynracies
than Jeff Buckley, while the other charmed simply because it was
so free of artifice. The intelligent idiolects of ROOTS MANUVA,
DAMIEN MARLEY ( the most talented of Bob's brood) & the- one-
man- do- everything amalgam of EDAN gave us a melting pot of high
fibre funky rhythm & righteous rap/sing.
Speaking of one man music, France’s M83
produced one exhausting ornate musical orgasm after another, while
the precocious New York sounds of LCD SOUNDSYSTEM gave us the best
party handclaps on disc this year. Meanwhile locally The DEVASTATIONS
bought us immaculate Melbourne mope rock. Veterans KRAFTWERK ‘s
live album proved that they’ve always been in the future waiting
for the rest of us to catch up, the most overrated man in modern
music BRIAN ENO gave us a song orientated album, his first in more
than a decade, that had a contagious melancholy humanity, while
after the stark emotion of his previous album, David Sylvian wrapped
his lush lugubrious voice with elegant electronica in NINE HORSES,
while RY COODER etched an affectionate musical documentary of a
culture disappeared. (Other) world music from KONOMO # 1 introduced
us to their exuberant cacophonous junkyard noise straight from the
slums of Kinshasa.
For exquisite psych rock folk mantric drone, debuts
from URDOG, WILDERNESS & my favourite of the year BLACK MOUNTAIN
gave us the high decibel guitar driven whisper quiet wigouts that
we all crave.
My award for the no time wasting all quality record
label of the year goes to SoulJazz Records who unearthed gem after
gem, compiled enriching techno, postpunk, latin & jazz collections
& topped it all off by releasing Spirit Walk, an album by the
STEVE REID ENSEMBLE. Matching veteran jazz drummer Reid ( he’s
played with Fela & Sun Ra amongst others), with 4 whisper to
a scream supple saxophonists, funky keyboard & pulsing bass
plus youngster Kieran Hebden (Four Tet) who supplies the electronics
& noises. It’s a vibrant swinging set of musical conversations
between masters of sound from different dimensions that transports
you beyond your musical limits.
But of course, as always I’ll still be discovering
valuable things that I’ve missed this year for years to come.
If all that other stuff would just get out of my way!
PLUS some other stuff that didn’t quite fit , like ….
I‘m a slave to the remasters:
ENTRODUCING / DJ SHADOW
A modern masterpiece & one of the most complete
music suites ever recorded has never sounded this multi dimensional,
plus a bonus CD of odds & ends. Essential.
FUNHOUSE / THE STOOGES
Take after take of one track a day for 12 days & Iggy with a
hand mike in the studio, this puts you right in there with them.
Dumb Genius
FUNKADELIC / FUNKADELIC / MAGGOT BRAIN / STANDING
ON THE VERGE OF GETTING IT ON
The original CD transfers were flat & muddy, but now, these
3 albums with underrated emo guitarist Eddie Hazel, vibrate with
psychedelic rainbow funk.
THE CURE / 17 SECONDS / FAITH
Miserablist masterpieces with almost cinematic emotional power
CAN / TAGO MAGO / SOUNDTRACKS / FUTURE DAYS
The greatest most inventive & innovative Krautrock band ever’s
3 finest are now a revelation of detail, depth & dynamism.
But from the here & now
JASON FORREST / SHAMELESSLY EXCITING
The title says it all really, from the most intelligent, inventive
& humourous modern sampledelicist.
AKRON FAMILY / AKRON FAMILY
Culled from the 3 albums that they recorded in their tiny Brooklyn
apartment, they sound both ancient & modern, from another contemporary
era. Otherworldy.
BRUCE LANGHORNE / THE HIRED HAND SOUNDTRACK
Available for the first time in 34 years, this psychfolk unheard
classic still sounds outside of time.
F/I / BLANGA
Supersonic space rock over a Gaian heartbeat.
TOM RUSSELL / HOTWALKER
A musicumentary on a bygone era in American culture, the voices
of Charles Bukowski, Jack Kerouac, Lenny Bruce & others meld
with Tom’s hardbitten burr for a bittersweet lament.
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