Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society made an impressive debut with Infernal Machines in 2009. Machines features tightly-written and expansively-played charts with memorable melodies and rich harmonies—”Phobos,” the opening track, is a favorite of mine.
The music on the Society’s new disc, Brooklyn Babylon, began life as the musical component of a multimedia celebration of the eponymous borough. The disc consists of 17 sections, some only a minute or so long, others over five minutes. Argue’s compositions are eclectic, partaking of a wide variety of styles and techniques, including melodies that sound like ethnic street music, acid guitar solos, and post-minimalist moves that are very much at home on the New Amsterdam label.
As a former trombonist, I have to admit that Ryan Keberle‘s work in the first interlude (“Infuse”) is a highlight of the record for me. What strikes me most on both this program and Infernal Machines is Argue’s feel for big band orchestration. When he is after luxurious harmonic progressions, the blend of the instruments is spectacular, and that’s not as easy to do as it may sound. At other times, the colors are as distinct as they can be. If you are a fan of big band jazz and want to see it flourish, you need this disc.
The three sections of Wallace Stevens‘ lyrically epic (or epically lyric) “Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction” are titled “It Must Change,” “It Must Be Abstract,” and “It Must Give Pleasure.” Lee Hyla‘s music, from the pieces that brought him his first attention, like Pre-Pulse Suspended (chamber ensemble, 1984) and Amnesia Breaks (woodwind quintet, 1990) through the recent works on this Tzadik release, has embodied all three of those traits, in varying relationship and balance. Drawing liberally, and more importantly, with subtlety from the entirety of his musical experience, Hyla crafts music that is very much of our time (pleasure), keeps our ears on their toes (change), and is very much pure music (abstract).
These attributes are on plentiful display in all three pieces here, which are given electrifying readings by the Boston-based Firebird Ensemble, for which two of the pieces were written.
Polish Folk Songs (2007) highlights Hyla’s much-commented-on eclecticism, with its quotations of song and occasional expansive chordal writing. The three movements are thematically and harmonically related, and make a satisfying whole.
Field Guide (2006) illustrates Hyla’s approach—in it, bird songs from around the world are associated with specific instruments, though the songs are often heard on the other instruments as well. The result is a teeming imaginary aviary of sound.
The title work of the disc is My Life on the Plains (2010), a three-movement concerto written for and dedicated to the Firebird group. (The role of virtuoso ensembles in the development of 20th and 21st Century music cannot be overstated.) For 29 minutes, My Life presents challenges to both performer and listener, with its wealth of material, ever-changing relationships between the materials and the instruments, and its elusive movement through time.
I will admit that Lee Hyla is one my favorite living composers, and so I may not be able to give an “objective” (whatever that might be) view of his music. Even with that said, I feel confident that MyLife on the Plains will make you a fan, too.
It’s temping to judge the merits of music produced in the developing world through the tinted lens of cultural sensitivity: to let certain matters slide, whether shoddy production or naivety in songwriting, because it’s all so new to them, or they don’t know any better, or some such patronising nonsense. And it’s especially so when musicians from the ‘Global South’ operate in genres that seem diametrically opposed to the prevailing culture, at least to myopic Western minds.
So it’s easy to imagine someone coming to Era of Tribulation—the 14-track compilation gathering the recorded output of Indian death-doom outfit Dying Embrace—and thinking it’s so cool that amid all the Bollywood dancers and slumdog millionaires and sitar-playing Ravi Shankars, there’s a gang of dudes in gory T-shirts with loud guitars and Cookie Monster growls ripping up conventions and blowing minds asunder. But the reality is that the band are a mainstay of a vibrant underground scene in their hometown of Bangalore, which, like all the major urban centres in India for that matter, is a 21st Century metropolis replete with skyscrapers and shopping malls and all the trappings of the west. As such, Dying Embrace stand out in their homeland about as much as, say, Cannibal Corpse do in America, which in 2013 is not much at all.
The only way to be fair to Dying Embrace is to evaluate their music in the context of the genres they move in, and by that standard their efforts are hit and miss. “Blood Rites” kicks things off, the first of two tracks from the 2002 Misanthrope 7″, and it’s meat-and-potatoes stuff, marrying a doom-laden groove with deathly guitar tones and Mortician-style vocal gurgles, and rendered even more amateurish by the crappy-demo production job. “Cromlech of Hate” is more adventurous in structure as it shifts gears between tempos, but the playing is as sloppy as the sound mix. It’s not a good start.
Next up are three tracks from 1998′s Grotesque EP, which at least showcase much stronger songwriting in the acid doom vein of the Rise Above roster. “The Passing Away” and “Grotesque Entity” are dripping with filthy grooves, while the intricately arranged “Oremus Diabolum” radiates with Cathedral-esque swagger. The players—guitarist Jimmy Palkhivala, bassist Jai Kumar and drummer Daniel Marc David—are also tighter here, and only really let down by the awful recording quality, as if someone bootlegged their studio session with a dictaphone.
“As Eternity Fades” leads off the six tracks of the Serenades of Depravity mini-album, also from 1998 and another weak and murky production which shifts the sound back to death-doom, with Vikram Bhat‘s reverb-heavy death grunts contrasting with the classic Black Sabbath groove. “Spawn of the Depths” places a heavier emphasis on the death metal side, with a distinctly Swedish influence as the tempo picks up. “Dagda—His Time Has Come” comes and goes unmemorably in its allotted three minutes, and “D.T’s” is a jammed-out instrumental that doesn’t go anywhere, like the short outro “Elegy for the Damned.” But “Degeneration” stands out with its heady mix of Bolt Thrower‘s percussive blast and weird guitar harmonics with a turbocharged polka groove (strange as that sounds, it works).
The compilation closes with demo versions of the Grotesque tracks that are virtually identical in recording quality, lacking only the official release’s layer of psychedelic guitar swirl, and are pretty much redundant to all except the diehards. And I’m sure there are some who will leap to the defence of the poorly produced studio efforts collected here as some kind of “cult” hidden gems, like the low-fidelity output of the Norwegian black metal scene 20 years ago. But there’s a line between deliberately poor and just plain inept, and sonically speaking, much of Era of Tribulation falls on the wrong side of it.
Here’s some video of a reunited Dying Embrace performing “As Eternity Fades” at the 2011 Undergrind Fest in Bangalore:
Live In Europe 1969: The Bootleg Series Vol. 2 (Legacy)
by Phil Freeman
This second volume of Sony Legacy’s 3CD/1DVD sets of live Miles Davis material documents a band that never made it into the recording studio: the quintet of Davis, saxophonist Wayne Shorter, keyboardist Chick Corea, bassist Dave Holland and drummer Jack DeJohnette. (Yes, these guys can all be heard on Bitches Brew, but they were surrounded by other players—the quintet was solely a road band.) The four shows here document a band in transition, not only from month to month but even from night to night, as the inclusion of two back-to-back shows at the Juan-les-Pins festival in Antibes, France on July 25 and 26 show quite clearly.
Only three songs, all newish compositions, are performed on both nights: “Directions,” which would be Davis’s opening number for several years, “Sanctuary” and “Miles Runs the Voodoo Down.” All three were tunes he was working out on the road, but had yet to record. The rest of the set on the first night includes numbers the 1965-68 quintet made famous (“Footprints”), but goes as far back as the early 1950s (“‘Round Midnight”), too, and concludes with a fast run through “The Theme,” which he’d been closing sets with for virtually his entire career as a leader. The set from the following night focuses much more on newer music, bringing in “Masqualero,” “Nefertiti,” and “Spanish Key,” but adding two more old favorites, “I Fall In Love Too Easily” and “No Blues.”
What becomes clear when listening to these raucous, electric (in the literal and metaphoric senses) performances is that the band wasn’t just transitioning from an acoustic jazz sound and mindset to an electric, rock-informed sound; it was also splitting into two different bands, sort of. Though Miles Davis was the leader, and the star attraction, he was in danger of being overshadowed by his sidemen. The quickest way to understand what was going on is to listen to Jack DeJohnette. When he’s backing Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea and Dave Holland (and even more so when Shorter steps away, too, leaving the band to function as an electric piano trio), he plays like Mitch Mitchell of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, battering the kit into submission. When Miles steps to the microphone, DeJohnette frequently reverts to conventional swing—an aggressive version of swing, to be sure, but it’s definitely “jazzier” than what he’s playing when the boss walks away. Corea and Shorter are also playing much more “out” stuff than Davis; the electric piano jabs and spits sparks here.
