MUSIC | Records – Jazz & World ALSO RELEASED
JAMES YORKSTON The Cellardyke Recording & Wassailing Society (Domino) ●●●●● It would be tempting to declare this customarily brilliant piece of work from Fife’s other contemporary folk troubadour a fond farewell to the Fence Collective as-was, with its bittersweet tone and haunting vocal interjections courtesy of KT Tunstall and Johnny Lynch. Yet it proves to be so much more than that: an understated but mighty record with a warm heart. (David Pollock)
LIA ICES Ices (Jagjaguwar) ●●●●● The third long-player from US singer-songwriter Lia Ices (pictured, above) is an elevating affair. An experimental electro-pop homage to levity, flight and getting high, Ices is layered and intricate, yet instantly accessible – from heavenly processed-rock aria ‘Thousand Eyes’ to shimmering off-beat lullaby ‘Creature’. Embracing Persian rhythms, Pakistani pop, psychobilly, space-rock, gospel and dub, it's an uplifting excursion. (Nicola Meighan)
INTERNATIONAL OBSERVER Touched (Dubmission) ●●●●● MOON DUO Live in Ravenna (Sacred Bones) ●●●●●
Tom Bailey co-founded 80s pop outfit the Thompson Twins, worked with Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, played keyboards for Grace Jones and wrote for Debbie Harry. This fifth album from his New Zealand-based International Observer alias takes the dub influences of the above and runs with them, creating an often moody selection of remixes with an occasionally Eastern feel. (DP)
VARIOUS ARTISTS Late Night Tales: Franz Ferdinand (Late Night Tales) ●●●●● Franz’s own cover of Jonathan Halper’s ‘Leaving My Old Life Behind’ isn't the only reason to own this strong, if jaw-droppingly odd, selection. It surfs through Sandy Nelson’s thundering ‘Let There be Drums’, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s mighty ‘Disco Devil’ and Paul McCartney’s ‘Nineteen Hundred & Eighty Five’, before a shift to the contemporary with Boards of Canada, Oneohtrix Point Never and Justus Kohncke. (DP)
This ace, coruscating live wig-out from San Francisco psych trippers Moon Duo sees Sanae Yamada (keyboards, vocals) and Wooden Shjips’ Ripley Johnson (guitars) throw caution to the numerical restrictions of their moniker by throwing a third member into their equation, drummer John Jeffrey. The results are cosmic, groove- fuelled and intoxicating. (NM) ■ Moon Duo play the Caves, Edinburgh, Thu 4 Sep. TRANS AM Volume X (Thrill Jockey) ●●●●●
This tenth long-player from electronic shape-shifters, and post- rock innovators, Trans Am, sees them further advance the complex sonic template(s) for which they’re known and loved – heady, rhythmic instrumentals (‘Reevaluations’); dizzying motorik grooves (‘Night Shift’) – but they lob in surprises too, including robo-serenades, MOR and the mangled speedball- thrash of ‘Backlash’. (NM)
EARTH Primitive and Deadly (Southern Lord) ●●●●● PERE UBU Carnival of Souls (Fire Records) ●●●●●
Dylan Carlson’s Seattle-based band of drone warriors are back with five lengthy tracks which explore the outer reaches of more traditional metal realms. Each song is an epic, dense churn of hard-edged, squalling riffs set off by Carlson’s quasi-mystical growl, with tracks such as ‘Torn By the Fox of the Crescent Moon’ unravelling as taut but unhurried epics. (DP) David Thomas’ legendary Cleveland experimentalists Pere Ubu have never rested on their post-punk laurels, dispatching a series of polarising, fascinating subterranean-pop albums along the way. Carnival of Souls (a reference to the 1962 B-Movie in name only) offers another dark and filmic (bad) trip through pop-noir, avant-garage and terminal anarchy. (NM)
72 THE LIST 21 Aug–18 Sep 2014
JAZZ & WORLD WORLD ABY NGANA DIOP Liital (Awesome Tapes From Africa) ●●●●●
First released in 1994, Liital was the late Senegalese griot (travelling musician) Aby Ngana Diop’s only album, but it was a game-changer, being the first commercially released album to feature a female taasukat (a Wolof language praise poet) performing to a modern Mbalax sound. And what a sound it is, with arresting vocal chants over a frenetic mix of relentless live percussion, pounding drum machines and minimal synth. Opening track ‘Dieuleul-Dieuleul’ is a serious banger, as a cheerful synth intro gives way to a block-rocking breakbeat and screaming whistle sample that recalls Public Enemy’s ‘Rebel Without a Pause’. Thunderous djembe polyrhythms push and pull at the groove to sublimely disorientating effect. Enter Diop and her co- vocalists, chanting and rapping in a thrillingly raw call-and-response routine. Field recordings of a train and a horse and carriage intersperse the tracks, underlining Liital’s electrifying synthesis of the modern and traditional. (Stewart Smith)
WORLD ORLANDO JULIUS WITH THE HELIOCENTRICS Jaiyede Afro (Strut) ●●●●● The excellent Jaiyede Afro sees London groove collective the Heliocentrics commune with Nigerian legend Orlando Julius, reworking some of his deep cuts and exploring new territory. ‘Buje Buje’ is classic Afrobeat with a psychedelic twist. Its low-slung groove rolls with funky intent, while the horns add gutsy accents and a heat- haze organ shimmers. A hallucinatory twilit atmosphere permeates the Afrobeat epic ‘Be Counted’. As Julius pays lyrical homage to Nelson Mandela, drummer Malcom Catto sets up an indelible groove, building a gorgeous tension that is never fully released, even when the saxophonists and trumpeters come together in a controlled explosion of altissimo squalls, baritone burps and silver trills. Instrumental sketches such as ‘Sangodele’ and ‘Alafia’ take the group into cosmic regions. On the latter, the organ and wah-wah guitar drip with ectoplasmic reverb and delay, as if Sun Ra and King Tubby had met on a spaceway to Lagos. (Stewart Smith)
JAZZ DAVE LIEBMAN & STEVE DALANCHINSKY The Fallout of Dreams (Rogue Art) ●●●●●
Jazz and Poetry: all those clichés of earnest Beatniks reciting sub-Ginsberg doggerel over generic bebop . . . euch! Yet, at its best, it can be a revelation: the militant rage of Amiri Baraka and Sunny Murray’s ‘Black Art’, the ecstatic picaresque of Jack Kerouac’s ‘October In The Railroad Earth’. Echoes of the latter are ‘carried like stars on the poets’ backs’ through ‘The Leaves Are Changing’, as pianist Richie Beirach weaves bluesy
asides and Satie-like impressions around Steve Dalanchinsky’s neo-beat visions. Dalanchinsky has a splendid Noo Yawk accent, lending authenticity to his evocations of the Brooklyn childhood he shared with saxophonist Dave Liebman. The two Beirach tracks aside, this is a duo affair, as Liebman provides inspired commentaries on a range of instruments: swooping, spiralling soprano on ‘The Breath (For Evan Parker)’, clattering drums on ‘Cosmic’, airy flute on ‘Magical Realism’. A beautiful conversation. (Stewart Smith) JAZZ MAX JOHNSON, INGRID LAUBROCK, MAT MANERI, TOMAS FUJIWARA The Prisoner (No Business) ●●●●●
This avant-jazz suite is inspired by Patrick McGoohan’s psychedelic television classic The Prisoner. A New York improv scene stalwart, bassist Max Johnson captures impressions of the show’s mystery, paranoia and tension through a series of structured improvisations. ‘No. 6 Arrival/No. 58 Orange Alert’ opens with several minutes of slow, atmospheric textures. Tenor saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock strides forward with a Morse code- like statement, before the rhythm section strikes up a bebop strut. In ‘No. 24 Hammer Into Anvil’, Mat Maneri’s violin twitters in a maddeningly high register, before Johnson’s bass emerges from a creaking trapdoor. Minutes later, an ominous force creeps up, provoking a demented free improv dash where Tomas Fujiwara’s drums trace crazy patterns in the sand. (Stewart Smith)