Reviews by kuvien

The line isn't clear. It's not even close to clear. Sure, the notes are clear, sometimes soothing, sometimes wild, but the line isn't clear. How can it be when there's no rhythm section? This is merely an observation, not a criticism. The inventive, playful way in which the 13 horns are used is a fascinating adventure in the unfolding saga of modern experimental big bands.

I like how this one goes off course a bit, not sticking merely to groovy bass-driven post-bop but strays into noisier, more experimental territory... even if just briefly.

This live set of glorious chaos is the grandest of all testaments to the power of music, crossing borders, clandestinely or not, and influencing people in far-flung reaches of the world. The musicians, when young, listened to jazz on their late-night radios and recorded it on handheld tape recorders, but not having reliable access to jazz and its sheet music, they were left with a lot of gaps in their knowledge, which they filled in with their own ideas, their own improvisations... which, we all know, is an excellent way to play jazz! There is so much Lithuania pride, so much local culture in all this music. I mean, this music is as Soviet as it gets, considering how these guys got their start in a café that was later shut down by the KGB because the crazy music kept the KGB from eavesdropping on foreign customers. This recording is an excellent example of the use of cheat sheets--jazz musicians having a few ideas jotted down, a loose structure, and then they go on stage and fill that structure in the moment.

Recorded 1976-1978, the only instruments missing in this eclectic borscht are the hammer and sickle. Jazz groovy, cool, and experimental enough to make the most grizzled comrade blush, to make the most stolid department head howl with joy!

This album begins with a powerful metaphor of rainfall, interpreted however you wish: a deluge, an agent of change, a harbinger of storm, a cleansing, a nourishing. Somewhere between the studio and the street, somewhere between academia and instinct, lies this spiritual jazz masterpiece, held up as a mirror to the turmoil of the latter half of the 1960s. The inclusion of double lead drummers and double lead bassists is a crazy choice and is just right for this incendiary statement, creating fullness and immediacy while skirting the edge of chaos. From the streets of Brooklyn to your ears!

Listened as part of a Discord server album exchange. Not my jam at all. She had so much culturally to draw from for music expression but just decided to (1) ape American R&B and (2) name her album after her favorite color. That's it. No shade on the recommender, but all the shade on generic ass shit like this. Nobody else knows her like you do, no one makes her feel the way you do. Wow. Groundbreaking lyricism.

Unhinged. Amazing. Frightening. Everything jazz standards can be when an artist has the balls to do it.

If you ever wanted to know what Dave hears when he's like this: https://consequence.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/infinite.jpg

pop shebam whizzzzz! Oh I almost forgot….shuba doo ba loo ba!. If you’re not sure what to say in bed next time you’re having a toe-curling orgasm, there are a couple of options for you. Remember to drive a fast car, too, you bon vivants!

As soon as this started, I said out loud, with a heavy dose of levity, "Oh man, this is going to suck, but it's gonna be so fun. I can already tell." This prediction turned out to be true. Some real laugh-out-loud moments here, an (un)healthy mix of honesty and cringe. Trans? h/j suicidal ideation? Simultaneously bemoaning and celebrating one's outcast state? Discordcore. Ariel Pink strutted so Gezebelle could tuck.

This album is an audio recording of the psychograph of an exobotanist exploring an alien world where no foot had ever trod before. This expedition ends, however, in the destruction of the organic in favor of artifice, where a vestige of what once was is now on life support.

Artists often portray dystopias as more interesting than they actually are. We live in a rather boring dystopia right now, but judging by the music we wouldn't think so. We'd like to imagine standing at the floor-to-ceiling windows of some high-rise apartment looking out over the last flickering lights of a dead city, but instead we see shopping malls and billboards. We'd like to imagine that we lost all our friends in the quagmire, or they fell into an abyss, but really we just drifted apart and they're out there shopping. And so are we.

An epic four-hour opera about adultery.

English and Appalachian? That's quite a blend. Don't listen for any wheel reinvention here. It's solid interpretations of solid folk songs. The guitar modernizes these tunes a bit, and the four players take turns with the mic. The one moment of this collective stretching their creative powers into something outstanding is the long, haunting, and droning "Polly Vaughn".

What exactly is the state of being known as standing on the verge of getting it on? Sex? Nope. Well, yes, but only coincidentally. It is a state of mind in which one is receptive to the embassage of P-Funk, the soul-freeing consciousness that manifests itself in a kind of music your ears have never heard before--but your soul felt it before you ever knew. And that music--that guitar music--is righteous. Sit and listen, or move and listen. It makes no difference. With each track, you understand more, and maybe, at the end, when you think it cannot get any better, the guitar solo on "Good Thoughts, Bad Thoughts" will--like it did to me--slay you and make you actually say out loud, "How the fuck did they do that?"

My favorite thing about this slice of funk perfection is how George Clinton lied about a nameless, heroin-addict guitarist coming in off the street and playing the guitar on this album for $50... when in fact, it was an established guitarist who'd worked with many artists before and after the recording of this album. Why is that my favorite thing? Because it demonstrates Clinton's escapist tendencies. He doesn't live on this planet, and his lies are more like alternate realities than prevarications.

Clinton has a coin resting on this thumb, and he asks me, "Quirky vocal funk or psych guitar shredding?" He flips the coin into the air. "Call it." Paralyzed by indecision, I swallow hard in anxiety and adjust the angle of my dangle. Too late! The coin hits the floor, and Clinton smiles. "Let's shred!" The band does, and the question is repeated. But the bandleader laughs away my ready answer. "It doesn't matter. This is a trick coin. Both sides are heads, and you win every flip." Indeed, George, indeed.

This debut is sexy from the start, and unapologetically so. The opening track establishes the background, summarizing a journey of one man who went 'round the sun to find the moon, or a quest that ended in understanding that coolness is within and you carry it with you, no matter how far you travel from the roots of your home. Music is rooted in the soul--you know, that place where you roll joints with toilet paper--whether you're in NYC or some North Carolinian back country. These cats wield psych and funk with equal proficiency, and both form a dual-grooviness that cannot be denied. Wait...did he say he came from North Carolina? Okay. But what planet? Wherever it is, I'm sure they don't eat Corn Flakes there the way we do.

"Free" is the operative word in the album title here, what with the music being loose, breaking out of its tight bounds, the playing being more free, like a bunch of friends sitting around without any plan, just expressing themselves. Hazel's guitar is raunchy, a presence right there in the forefront the whole time, like a bare ass shaking in your face.

[https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wZV7VJiRDYQ/V_i1tmmjJEI/AAAAAAAAWoE/3kzt4miAlxwgSQ8MJgki82kkpCm2ckFzgCLcB/s400/Crash.gif,A humble prayer.]