Hollow Ear Review Archive
Reviews from past editions

Lisa Gerrard & Pieter Bourke
Duality
4AD Records (www.4ad.com)

Lisa Gerrard, famed vocalist of Dead Can Dance, has been working out of her native Australia these days with Extreme recording artist Pieter Bourke. Bourke instrumentalizes with every bit of the proficiency displayed by Gerrard's long time collaborator Brendan Perry though seems to allow more room in the mix for Gerrard to speak with those silken mystical pipes of hers on Duality. Each recording project seems to find Gerrard wandering into a different church or other ancient soundworld to try on the timbral clothes of that particular tradition. On Duality the flavors run mainly from middle eastern, with their shadowy melismas and minor key pathos, to the darkness & light of early christian polyphony. Historically, Gerrard's many 4AD recordings feature multi-tracked pieces whose only source of development came by way of additive process, insidiously meshing rhythmic textures. Gerrard's voice(s) were often 'the ghost in the machine' of these dense studio constructs and thankfully that approach is less in evidence here. The most successful cuts tend to feature a maximum of her voice and a minimum of instrumental dressing. In this regard "Pilgrimage of Lost Children" is the quintessence of the Gerrard experience (the DCD experience for that matter), a fragment of a ritual that is hard-to-place because it does not exist, but should; a minimalist balance of immaculate tone, handmade drone and simple, beautifully enigmatic melody. This long track record of flirting with the religious underpinnings of music ultimately leaves me personally craving a Lisa Gerrard album that is one long running mass of healing, non-commercial proportions. This one is instead yet another fine and entertaining catalog of competent spiritualized research in a post-artpop idiom. - Steve Taylor

Ralph Towner/Gary Peacock
A Closer View
ECM 1602

A second volume of duets from Ralph Towner and Gary Peacock, this time with more emphasis on Towner's compositions, which are always interesting and musical. These pieces don't fall into the soloist/accompanist pattern very often--Peacock is an equal partner, helping to delineate Towner's often oblique melodies. My favorite piece on the CD is "The Creeper", which is a little freer than some of the others, and at times sounds as if both men are soloing simultaneously. I suppose the classical guitar is a better match, timbrally, with the bass, but I would have liked to have heard more of Towner's 12-string work (it only appears on two of the recording's twelve pieces). Minor quibbles aside, this CD is as good if not better than the pair's previous outing, Oracle. Here's hoping Towner and Peacock find they have more to say in this format. - Joe Grossman

Jerry Hahn & His Quintet
Arhoolie 9011 (www.arhoolie.com)

Jazz guitarist Hahn, whose most notable recent appearance was on one of the Ginger Baker Trio tracks from 1996's "Falling Off The Roof", assembled this remarkably talented quintet in 1967 while playing in and around San Francisco. This challenging but lyrical record attests to a surprisingly fertile jazz scene during the spring that preceded the famous summer there. Jack DeJohnette plays drums in his recognizably hard-swinging, active, detail-rich style while violonist Michael White, Noel Jewkes on tenor sax and bassist Ron McClure join with verve on the opening cut "In The Breeze" and two other Hahn originals plus one from Jewkes. The material is eclectic but spirited, swirled with unconventional yet musical ideas, and truly non-competitive soloing that is succinct, mildly experimental but never nerve wracking. Which means there's no honkin' & squeakin' here, just lively performances that are easy on the ear compared to what was issuing from the free jazz world then. The last two tracks, "Ragahantar" and "Ara-Be-In" feature Hahn playing in minor key mideast mode, first solo and then filled out raucously by the band. Redolent of the times? Yes, but these are not trite semitone novelties, Hahn clearly knew what he was doing. By the way, your money gets you all of 29 minutes of music - shame on Arhoolie for not pairing this with another of the Hahn LPs from the back catalog. - Steve Taylor

Jean Derome
Je me souviens
Ambiances Magnetiques

I love synchronicity. As soon as I check a few books out of the library by members of a literary movement called Oulipo, I get this CD by Jean Derome done as a tribute to Georges Perec, one of the mainstays of Oulipo. The main composition, "Je me souviens," consists of 26 short pieces inspired by musical references in Perec's book of the same title. The music, composed for a 13-piece ensemble, ranges from jazz to circus music to r&b to spaghetti western soundtracks (the booklet lists "models" for each piece). Comparisons to John Zorn are probably unavoidable, but the size of the ensemble here requires the music to be more tightly written and arranged, with a lot less room for improvisation.

The other composition on the CD, "Tu r'luttes," is subtitled "seventeen varied games for twelve improvisers." Much more improvisatory and chaotic (at least it sounds that way), it comes even closer to Zorn territory, yet the instruments, mostly winds and percussion, give the music a feel that is less harsh and more RIO-like.

One final note: for those who care about this sort of thing, each short piece in both compositions is indexed separately, so you have 43 tracks over about 70 minutes. Great for shuffle play. - Joe Grossman

Ketil Bjornstad
The Sea II
ECM

The Sea II is almost oppressive in its minor-key tonality. Composer-pianist Bjornstad, who takes very little solo space for himself, feeds minor chords to guitarist Terje Rypdal and cellist David Darling, who etch and then embellish the melodies with their respective tones. Drummer Jon Christensen keeps the rhythmic side of things flowing, but there's too little variety in the compositions to sustain interest. A few nice moments stand out, like Rypdal echoing Darling's lines and sounding like unearthly harmonics, and a group improvisation with slightly more aggressive playing from all. Later on in the album a few major chords sneak in, but by then it's too late to relieve the somber mood. Yet the overall feeling isn't one of depression, but rather of a kind of sad resignation. Perhaps on its own terms it succeeds as a tone poem, but The Sea II makes for gloomy listening. - Joe Grossman

Joe Maneri
In Full Cry
ECM

The inclusion of a few standards on helps make his improvisational approach a little clearer, at least to this listener. Largely arhythmic, the songs unfold in melodic, timbral, and sometimes microtonal explorations. Ensemble interplay is also emphasized, with Maneri's reeds and Mat Maneri's violin in front of a conventional, though not conventionally swinging, bass and drums pairing of John Lockwood and Randy Peterson.

If this all sounds off-putting, it can be. But for those willing to stretch their ears there is some great music to be heard here. Various duo and trio groupings keep the sound varied. And the musicians pay careful attention to dynamics and, again, ensemble interplay. This band is not out to blow you away by sheer force.

The CD ends with Maneri's charmingly deconstructed solo piano version of Prelude to a Kiss that exemplifies the improvisational approach taken throughout. Adventurous, exciting, not your typical ECM fare, but well worth investigating. - Joe Grossman

Sapho
Digital Sheikha
Barbarity 008 (www.maroc.net/barraka/)

French-Arab vocalist Sapho with an incongruous consort of danceclub buttonpushers and local instrumentalists have manufactured a raving glitterball of chicness appropriate for mating dance rituals of urban North Africa. But not even the helping hand on four of thirteen cuts by producer/bassist Bill Laswell, whose name alone appears conspicuously in capital letters in a font slightly larger than everyone else in the credits list, can save this project from disco ephemerality. Synthetic textures coat much of the surfaces and for this listener, the keyboard handclaps and other artificial timekeeping devices are chafing. Despite the attempt at rhythmic polystylism - an assortment of manic numbers for the Arabian night are featured including a brief go at dubwise skank, tricked-up traditional trance pieces and perky effects-drenched electronica - Sapho seems to forsake much of her vocal and timbral heritage.

Though the press kit claims Digital Sheikha represents Sapho's deepest ingression yet into her Moroccan roots, one could argue that this is the tragic flipside of exotica where indigenous ethnic musical art is suffocated with the novelty of machines. Unfortunately the western hemisphere heard most of these effects years ago. Still this album is not entirely without charm; there is variety and the concluding track's gracious non-sequitur of coquettish poetry dressed up with arty piano fragments(!). Played loud enough Digital Sheikha is perfect for dancing in dark public spaces of the greater Marrakech area right now. - Steve Taylor

The Indica Project
Horn OK Please
Enja

Sessions recorded in Mumbai and NYC, Horn OK Please issues from a worldly gang of jazzmen and percussion players who stir it up in the interest of good feeling and new music. The typically 10+ minute length tracks display loose compositions where everybody speaks over a richly woven mat of handmade rhythm featuring more than 20 percussion objects. The opening track is exemplary and evokes a ragtag procession which subtly accelerates while the various players - brassmen, guitarist, violinist - discuss among themselves on the way. Far more metrically flexible than say, a Shadowfax, the vibe of The Indica Project is one of secular, pageant-like, but most importantly, emergent and unnamable ethnicity, only fleetingly touched on by other early jazz-leaning world music acts with the same earthiness evident here. Graceful and idiosyncratic The Indica Project are an un-self-conscious tribe of patient, seemingly egoless musicians making a music with an off-axis, drunken funkiness and little regard for terms like commodity, profit-margin and bohemianism. A poetic item that will likely outlive the proliferously trendy breakbeat-driven jazz fusion of the 90s. - Steve Taylor

Yasunao Tone
Solo for Wounded
Tzadik (www.tzadik.com)

Tone has been a driving force in the 1960's rooted "Fluxus" movement (with artists like Yoko Ono), looking at sound itself rather than anything that would be strictly defined as organized "music." Using his own 1993 CD Musica Iconologos as the raw source material for Solo For Wounded, Tone disintegrates and recreates his music by means of the physical alteration of the original to use as original sound for a new work. By applying tape to the playing surface of the old work, he creates a strange and utterly unexpected sound, full of somewhat expected stutters and blips, but also subtle, almost pretty distortions. It is out of the composers hands what the sounds will be, but his idiosyncratic arrangement of the ensuing material only adds to the strange, almost paranormal sound of the work - Cliff Furnald

Ben Neill
Goldbug
Antilles

Trumpeter/electronic composer Ben Neill has named his second Antilles release after a "particularly malignant computer virus". Tonally, Goldbug's artistic aspirations resemble the nastiness of this microworlds of brutality theme, but comes up sounding like a dark variant of so-called intelligent dance music. With the market for beatless atmospherics drying up quickly (notable exceptions include the isolation tank crowd), Neill like others, has added rhythm programming punch to his ambient playbook. Here, his notable feel for the synthetic pulse of the internet age (hyperkinetic drum n' bass/jungle beat and the litany of fashionable permutations thereof), is crosslayered, often contrasted, with still more machine rhythm, sample loops, digital zizz and harmonic shadow , solos from his "mutantrumpet" - a hybrid electro-acoustic instrument of his own design with triggering capability -, and some one-off guest-scratchings on turntable, cello and guitar. Neill is without question an authentic craftsman with a fine ear for new sonorities and dynamics. If you're looking for an icy, jazzesque body music/late night motoring soundtrack with up-to-the-minute textures, inorganic sounds, and the bonus of real trumpet playing, this is your poison. - Steve Taylor

Francis Dhomont
Forêt Profonde (Deep Forest)
empreintes DIGITALes (www.cam.org/~dim/)

From the liner notes Forêt Profonde is described as an "acoustmatic" melodrama based on Bruno Bettelheim's essay "The Uses of Enchantment". Canadian composer Francis Dhomont has painstakingly assembled this discursive and fantastical work in his private studio in Montreal using a "real-time sound synthesis system". An acoustmatic melodrama sounds alot like collaged spoken voice recordings of readers and interviewees, some speed-altered, often in multiple languages, offering excerpts of fairy tales or painful personal memoir, with lots of unsettling electronic paint underneath and in between. The sound treatments, which swim, seethe and melt in unpredictable glisssandi, have an opaque, metallic timbre, somewhat cold, otherly and nauseating, never quite outrightly beautiful, never relaxing into a soothing ambiance. The very disconcerting perspective is as if one were a pyschoanalyst eavesdropping on the irrational dreaming mind of humanity healing itself from a world of private and tribal fears. A headfull for the extremely adventurous. - Steve Taylor

Marc Ribot
Marc Ribot & Los Cubanos Postizos
Atlantic

A New York electric guitar-driven trio interpret latin jazz standards by the late Cuban composer/band leader/guitarist/tres player Arsenio Rodriguez. This record starts slow with a mercilessly intimate piece exhibiting gorgeously clear guitar tone before giving way to uptempo material more characteristic of the set as a whole, where the guitar sounds fuzzier and twangier and at times eerily Santana-like. Ribot is more than up for the scrutiny of this high defintion recording displaying succinct feats of liquid ebullience and delicate balladry. Traditional latin percussion (congas, claves et al), bass and occasionally organ fill out the rest of the bandstand while Ribot adds spoken parts on two cuts, one of which features some imprecisely enunciated spanish. There is some quirky sounding keyboard playing here that touches the freaky too. Ribot and his prosthetic cubans deliver this lively and suave music with an odor of urban wildness, virtuosity and relish, but might offend purists with the fresh if somewhat oddly timbred renditions. - Steve Taylor

Claude Schryer
Autour
Emprientes DIGITALes

This is a beautifully packaged and generously annotated edition of the Canadian composers work in collaged location recordings of environmental sound with added electro-acoustic phenomena from the studio. Three pieces, clocking in between 11 and 16 minutes, offer numerous sound bites a minute or two in length from out there in the world, including a catalog of ambient moments from Mexico. The fourth and perhaps most impressive work features an environmental performance "event" set in Montreal's harbor utilizing five boats, two locomotives, the bells of the Notre-Dame Basilica and later embellished by a trio of improvising players on saxophone, trombone and clarinet in a vast studio space. The latter is truly ambitious stuff that blurs the line between naive music on a grand scale and environmental ambience as art, quite literally "inviting the listener to engage in games of timbre, space, dimension, time, transparency and intention". -

Rattlemouth
Fist Full Of Iffy
Cuneiform Records

Yet another RIO band discovered by Steve Feigenbaum at Cuneiform Records offering taut and tricky compositions for saxophone, bass and drums. Danny Finney's sax playing lights the way with highly melodic, meandering riffs while Tom Brickman doubles on bass with his own, twisting, popping, sinuous playing and Robbie Kinter drums with complimentary precision. This well- rehearsed music of sometimes unusually metered dark meat often echoes folk tunes from somewhere between Israel and the Balkans. Clean and unquestionably demanding instrumentalism and anti-fashionable sentiment rule. Includes four idiosyncratic songs. - Steve Taylor

Forever Einstein
One Thing After Another
Cuneiform Records (members.aol.com/Cuneiform2/cuneiform.html)

Guitarist C.W. Vrtacek composes smart, intriguing music for rock trio that is rigorously structured while borrowing from a whole panoply of american guitar styles without really availing any agenda other than possibly humor. In this their third CD offering, the music is not without improvisatory moments though tight, intricately executed phrasing prevails. Hilarious track titles and accompanying manifesto will have you clutching your cortex. A gnomic border patrol steeped in the "moods of the circus" indeed. "Slope on per one interesting origin in the mischievous and bizarre world of the [friendly] Forever Einstein". Tasteful and entertaining music. - Steve Taylor

Various Artists: Untitled (ten)
Extreme (extreme@well.com)

It doesn't seem all that long ago that I heard, on the radio, a short segment of an intriguing piece of dark ambient music, called Deus ex Machina. As soon as I heard it, I had to have it. I sent my local CD shop proprietor into a tailspin trying to track it down for me. All I could give him was the title of the piece, and the information that it was an Australian recording. It took him three months to find it, but it was worth the wait. The fifty-minute CD more than bore out the promise of the snippet I had heard on the radio. Deus ex Machina, by Paul Schutze, the soundtrack for a multimedia art installation, was Schutze's first CD, and the first release on a new label, Extreme. It doesn't seem all that long ago, but it was nearly ten years.

Paul Schutze has gone on to bigger and better things, building a high international profile as a sound artist and performer, and so has Extreme. In 1997 Extreme celebrated its tenth anniversary, and as part of the celebrations, has released a knock-out compilation, Untitled (ten). All ten works on the disk were especially commissioned for, and exclusive to this compilation, and there are some very real and very pleasant surprises. Untitled (ten) gives us a cross-section of Extreme's kaleidoscopic catalogue of sound innovators, and all the big names that have made Extreme what it is over the years are represented.

Pablo's Eye, the Dutch trance/techno outfit, open the disk with a reggae-influenced tribal electronica piece. Like most of Pablo's Eye's work, this sounds almost facile at first, but the more you listen, the more nuances and layers are revealed. Fetisch Park, moving on from their powerful electro-acoustic statement Trost, enter more rhythmic, almost industrial, domains with their contribution Last Strip. With Exit Afghanistan, Extreme veterans Muslimgauze contribute a pungent musical commentary on a tragic story, featuring the wailing bhaivari alat of guest artist Johar Ali. Appropriately following is Ed Pias' virtuoso eastern-influenced drumming piece, Morocco, and then one of the surprises of the disk, the entry from the Melbourne-based samplapedia duo Soma, slowing right down and paring the electronics back to shrieking essentials with Somnabulist's hand. The piece from Social Interiors, Lucas Heights, takes on extra meaning when you know that Lucas Heights is a nuclear reactor outside of Sydney, that's well past its use-by date and is rumoured to be falling apart. Drifting ambient electronics from Skuli Sverisson gives way to extreme noise from Otomo Yoshihide and the legendary Merzbow. Don't wear the earphones for these two. Finally, Dan Burke, brains behind Illusion of Safety, trading as Groovy, wraps it up with a sassy seventies-retro dance piece, which end with a neat little reprise of Pablo's Eye's track.

As if that isn't enough, the release comes with a bonus CD called Untitled (mix) an Extreme cut-up by Social Interiors. Rik Rue, Shane Fahey and Julian Knowles, joined by guest plunderer Tegan Northwood, sampled ten years of Extreme releases and recombined then into ten new sound works. I recognised a fair number of the samples, but the treatment is imaginative enough not to sound like pastiche or collage. It's exactly the kind of retrospective you might expect from an outfit like Extreme.

It seems customary when reviewing compilations to draw attention to their weak points. By their very nature compilations can be very variable in quality, and sometimes some of the tracks can sound like padding. But this is just not so here. Whether it's because each piece was recorded specifically for this compilation, or simply a reflection of the quality of Extreme's catalogue, I can find no weak points in this one. If you've never heard of Extreme or any of its artists before, here is a good place to start, but even if you own every one of Extreme's forty-plus releases, you can add this one without fear of duplication. - Bryce Moore

RINDE ECKERT
Story In, Story Out
Intuition, Germany, via Songline/ToneField (songtone@hooked.net)

Eckert's usual high-energy, quasi-operatic style gets subdued a bit on this album, two long song cylcles with two different groups. The first, "Three Days In The Sun" is performed by Eckert on guitars, harmonica, organ and voice and a minimalist ensemble, Gerry Granelli's UFB adding electric guitars, bass and drums. It a slow, sultry exploration of blues and the American west, tinged with an eastern ethic that never comes too close to the surface and a beat "on the road" theme that's not so beat, not so self concious.

"Four Songs Lost In A Wall" is an altogether stranger thing, the story of Carlo (who lives in a hotel and dreams he is an Italian castrato, Jesus, the king of Spain) and his mechanical bird that keeps the world spinning. It's sung by Eckert with appropriate, high-strung drama, against electric guitar whines and an occasional horn or organ. It is as dark and strange a piece as Eckert has ever done. - CF

Kip Hanrahan
A Thousand Nights and a Night
AMERICAN CLAVE

Hanrahan's dense blend of urban jazz and Latin rhythms never fails to tickle the senses. Sexy, whispery voices recite the beguiling texts of The Arabian Nights over a simmering concoction of anxious congas, smoky jazz and spoken word. "Nights" tends to ramble in some areas, lending a one-dimensional scope throughout when compared to previous masterpieces like "Desire Develops and Edge" -- even the liner notes suggest a nap halfway through to soak it all in properly. But Hanrahan's sophisticated arrangements remain, after all these years, some of the most sultry and adventurous world-jazz fusion available. - W. Todd Dominey

Opeye
Moss 'Comes Silk
Humming Bird (KUNTZH@ceb.ucop.edu)

This recording is not for the sonically challenged or the melodically dependant. Opeye is a "free music" ensemble, that one step beyond free jazz where nothing is predicable and all is predicated on fate and desire. Using their extensive knowledge of central and South American music and instruments and a long if passing acquaintance with traditional jazz, they throw it all together with horns, percussion, marimbas and a kitchen sink of acoustic noise production devices. They call it "avant-shamamic trance-jazz," a phrase as indescribable and elusive as the music they produce. - CF (Real Audio Track used by expressed permission of the composer and publisher)

SHARON ISBIN
Journey to the Amazon
(Teldec)

Well, give her an "E" for effort, and a slightly lesser mark for geography. This foray into unfamiliar territory for classical guitarist Sharon Isbin, finds her teaming up with Brazilian-born percussionist Thiago de Mello and soprano saxophonist Paul Winter.

While the title might lead one to expect that this is Isbin's exploration of Brazilian acoustic guitar music, she plays pieces by composers from several South American countries --and one Cuban. Though the album doesn't have a particular Amazonian or Brazilian feel, like Badi Assad's recent "Echoes of Brazil," it still is immaculately played. Where Assad seems to have the soft polyrhythmic swing of Brazil in her blood, Isbin has a harder "attack," though the fun she is having is still very palpable.

Isbin's technique is, as usual, flawless, but it is not coldly so. Her duets with de Mello have a true collaborative feel, with his drumming following her playing like two birds in flight. Winter guest stars on a few cuts, lending them his trademark dreamy soundscaping.

The disc might not consistently have the lush, tropical sultriness one associates with the Amazon, but it is a work that calls to mind the pristine beauty of the natural world. - Marty Lipp

September Songs
Sony Classics

Kurt Weill is an easy target for covers, going back to The Doors doing "Alabama Song." September Songs is one of the better collections of new covers of his work, with a bright palette of colors to choose from. Standouts include the sparse and painful "Lost In The Stars" sung by Elvis Costello amid a somber string section. Costello has one of those quintessential Weill/Brecht voices, and knows how that cracking sound can be used to good advantage. Betty Carter offers a more lush vision, smokey and mournful on "Lonely House." There is, of course, a classic Lotte Lenya rendition of "Pirate Jenny" that contrasts wonderfully with the agressive and strange Hal Wilner setting of Mary Margret O'Hara's voice on "Fürchte dich nicht." There are some toss-offs like Lou Reed's "September Song" and David Johansen's "Alabama Song." There are gems like Weill's own 1930 recording of "Mack The Knife" who shows how eeire it can be. It ends with a curious summation in "What Keeps Man Alive" recited in typical cynical style by William S. Burroughs. - CF

PER TJERNBERG AND MATI KLARWIN team up on an unusual percussion and voice album called No Man's Land (Rub a Dub Records, Tjarhovsgatan 44, S-116 29 Stockholm, Sweden fax: 46.8.714.91.79 per.odeltorp@abc.se). Swedish musican Tjernberg has been a particular favorite of mine, for his subtle, complex and unfettered approach to new music for percussion. Here he works with poet and painter Klarwin on a soundscape of words and beats that span the globe yet defy location. Lots of sampled voices and sounds are layered over Klarwin's decidedly "Ginsberg-esque" delivery of mostly English language poems and stories. Uniquely personal in its text and its sound, No Man's Land is a special album that fits in no genre. - CF

Satoko Fujii Indication
Libra Records

This is an album of improvisational piano solos, mostly spare and sometimes intricate. The compositions are atonal and linear, and there is not a hummable tune in the house. There are occasional forays into the interior of the instrument (plucking or strumming the strings inside the case). The liner notes give no clue to the thoughts of the artist save for thanks to the likes of Paul Bley, George Russell, and Cecil McBee. Her angular style owes much to the wanderings of the latter, and at times reminds one of Keith Jarrett. There is a sensitivity of touch, but the wandering quality of the compositions leads one to wonder where these pieces are really going. Jazz chording roots underlay many of these sometimes pointless forays. - Richard Epstein

David Byrne's been slurping spoonfuls of world-beat gumbo since leaving Talking Heads, and as a solo artist has continuously tackled the marriage of cross-cultural pop music. Fortunately, he's never marketed his ware like a tacky Benneton-ad campaign. Like kindred soul Beck, Byrne seeks a new musical recipe reflecting global cultural encroachment. On Feelings, he auspiciously finds his direction again after 1994's glum therapy-session, David Byrne.

The polished skin and glassy eyes of Byrne's caricature on the cover of Feelings may impart naiveté, but nothing could be further from the truth. "I've often felt like an object, a product, a cartoon… Here the transformation process is complete," commented Byrne. Like the masked melancholy of a circus clown, Byrne's emotions have hardened to a stony gaze, as anxiety-rich lyrics are packed in the glossy boxes of drum and bass, samba, trip-hop, country-folk and straight up rock.

Byrne's lyrical views about American pop culture and industrial advancement have long been in his work, but where urban sprawl was once counterbalanced by a future of "everything coming up flowers," he now laments "it's lousy science-fiction" ("Dance on Vaseline"). In continuance he sniffles about club kids hiding from daylight on "Burnt by the Sun," freeloading on nocturnal hedonism and copulating like canines.

At his center, Byrne has a deeply rooted love for America's multiculturalism, as evidenced in "Miss America" - a sloppy, generous kiss on lady liberty's taught face. Despite "fleecing" the many, Byrne offers valiant defense against her detractors (Oklahoma City bombing) in the likeness of Dirty Harry.

"You Don't Know Me," one of the best included, finds Byrne dancing a Zen-like tango with the sharp hips and poisonous heart of his inner "I." Pulling the skeletal frame closer in the moonlight, his bony partner punctures the flesh, Byrne grinds his teeth, and they dance in unison "till the pain is gone."

Despite Byrne's social and personal blues, he can still pen some of the best and most bizarre pop arrangements around. Byrne denies premeditated eclecticism in the making of Feelings, and describes it as a "subconscious cut and paste" creative process from his global travels. "It's the way we live now. It's what things look like, and increasingly what they sound like."

Feelings is a far more satisfying record than anything he's released in the 90's, thanks in part to the wide array of musicians like newcomer Paula Cole on "Miss America," members of Devo on "Wicked Little Doll," and indispensable production by trip-hop group Morcheeba. Feelings embodies an edgier, more aggressive tone lacking in Byrne's recent work, and revitalizes his lengthy career for the next century. - - W. Todd Dominey

Nonesuch continues its search for new Americana (the art, not the charts!) with two distinctly different recordings. Last Forever is composer Dick Connette and singer Sonya Cohen (heir to the Seeger and Cohen folk families). Together they explore American roots from a decidedly urban viewpoint, taking a bit from the New York avant garde, but pushing deep into the rural roots. Not a new idea (heck, Carl Sandberg was doing it half a century ago), but a new twist on an old theme.

Bill Frisell has been looking to various American musical roots for most of the 90s, and in Nashville he turns to the commercial mecca of American music for his inspiration and musicians. While a lot of Nashville is not as exciting as past efforts by this guitarist, he strikes some memorable moments with songs sung by Robin Holcomb. - CF

KRONOS QUARTET AND WU MAN Tan Dun: Ghost Opera
Nonesuch

Kronos have teamed up with a remarkable composer and a talented instrumentalist in their latest collaborative effort, Ghost Opera. Chinese composer Tan Dun is known for his spacial, ambient work and this piece is as spacial as it can get. The piece is composed for string quartet, pipa (the Chinese lute played by Wu Man), water, stones, paper and metal (often in the guise of bells, bowls and cymbals) and human voices. A "ghost opera" is a conversation with the past and the future lives of the performer, an eerie concept conveyed through the collective work of the performers, who are just as often rattling sheets of paper, clicking rocks together and making utterances as they are bowing and plucking strings. When they are doing their more traditional instruments, it is as likely they are playing bach as the original compositions or the ancient Chinese folks songs that are their root.

This is a complex, complicated and subtle work, one that will require attention and energy to appreciate and really comprehend. Unlike much of Kronos work, this vcan't be cut into small segments and listened to as songs. It's all or nothing, and well worth it.- CF

Rootless Cosmopolitans There are those musicians who have always travelled outside of their own culture, gathered the music of the world into their bag and made something unique of it. This is fission, not fusion, and it can result in the same release of energy. FOREST FANG has been one of those rootless cosmopolitans, an artist who has stayed on the fringe. The Blind Messenger (Cuneiform) is perhaps one of his most musical adventures yet. Which is not to imply this music is in any way "easy" or lighter than his previous works, just that he explores pattern and melody a little more deeply than some of his efforts. His use of electronics is creative, avoiding the repetitive nature of techno while finding a lot of the same potent trance effects. But it's his use of acoustic instruments that makes this recording stand way out front. From devotional Indian drums to toy instruments like the Marxolin (a spring-hammered zither), Fang has a sonic depth (and a note of whimsy) that makes what could be ponderous introspection into a human aural experience. This makes KENNETH NEWBY's Sirens (City of Tribes) stand out in high contrast. Newby was the electronic component of Lights In a Fat City and Trance Mission, and tempered by the acoustic strengths of his band members he helped create some potent trance music for the new age. By himself, though, Newby has a tendency to continually reiterate his themes and quote others' ideas. Occasionally he hits the mark on Sirens, finding a depth of sound that harkens to his ensemble work, but to a greater extent, this album drones on to nowhere. ROBERT MARCEL LEPAGE is a noted member of the Montréal "new" music scene, best known for his work as a composer of music for dance. On Le Plante Humaine (Ambiances Magnétiques, CP263, Succ. 'E', Montréal, Quebec H2T 3A7 fax: 514.281.1884) he presents what he calls a "cine-photographic passage," a record of a film score expanded. His palette is amazingly broad, moving from gentle cinematic landscapes to electric urban chaos, using electric and acoustic passages that are held together by aural scotch tape and binding wire. The music is precariously perched on the edge of loveliness, full of lush strings and ethereal electronics that tumble over into a battery of drums and horns. It's no easy trip for Lepage, who is described as "le passuer," a ferryman, as he carries his ideas beyond the film and into the broader screen of the listener's mind. Perhaps an alternate definition of passuer better serves to describe him; he is a smuggler, carrying contraband ideas into your head. - Cliff Furnald

Free and Freer

Listening to the World Mankeri Orchestra's new recording Eké these last few months has really gotten me back into a jazz and free music mode, and luckily, there's a lot happening around the world on this front.

CLUSONE 3 are as "free" as it gets. This Dutch trio of winds, cello and percussion was recorded live in 1996's German Jazz Festival in Frankfurt in all their crazed and confused glory and captured to disc for Love Henry (Gramavision/Rykodisc). They wheeze, they groan, they make sounds you have never heard into what occasionally resembles music but just as often defies even that simple categorization. They have some melodic moments, though, like the stunning "In The Company Of Angels," but don't expect it to hang on to a groove too long. They tackle Brecht and Weill (Bilbao Song"), play laughingly with Paulo Mouro's Brazilian classic "Ao Velho Pedro," and annihilate a medley of Irving Berlin that includes "White Christmas." Not a coherent rhythm to be found; not a melody left unmarred; not a dull moment in the set.

Coleman and AfroCuba leader Francisco Zamora Chirino have found some unique yet common ground to work on here. Starting with the traditional Cuban sacred songs in praise to the spiritual orishas (Coleman uses the translation "Selected Heads" in his notes), they bring their two bands together to make a music that is neither purely jazz nor Yoruban. AfroCuba's incessant rhythms and chanting vocals are the bedrock of this recording, with Coleman and company (Ravi Coltrane, tenor; Ralph Alessi, trumpet; Andy Milne, piano; Anthony Tidd, bass and Oliver gene Lake on drums) finding a way inside on some tracks, or remaining well outside, almost like a separate commentary, on others.

The Sign And The Seal is an exploration into the human side of music that is well worth making, a look at how musicians who barely know each other can quickly find that deeper thread that ties them together, no matter what their culture.

For a more mainstream Latin jazz sound, turn to ALFREDO RODRÍGUEZ and his impromptu band on Cuba Linda (Hannibal). Pianist Rodriquez went to Cuba with the specific intent of building a recording from the musicians he knew or went looking for when he got there. Notable names like Tata Güines and Jesus Alemañy are joined by locals who may have been making their first studio sessions. The end product is a solid blend of Rodriquez often fluid piano and the edgy rhythms of the drums and voices as they explore the rumba, guaguanco, danzon and descarga of Cuba as they evolved into 20th century jazz. While this is primarily a piano and rhythm album, don't overlook some brilliant horn work by Alemañy throughout the record, or the strange, lush/raw violin section on "Cuando Vuelvo A Tu Lado."

THE NEW YORK SKA-JAZZ ENSEMBLE spins out its second set with Low Blow (Moon Ska). Ska is not known for its cerebral qualities or its thoughtful arrangements, but this band (comprised of members of various ska bands on holiday) has taken the raw energy of ska and merged it with the spirit of jazz and is developing into one of the better studio bands in New York. Volume 2 has us visiting Cannonball Adderly and Otis Redding, but is heavily tilted towards original pieces by the band's members. Low Blow proves that the ska-jazz experience is not just a one-off trick, but a growing concern that promises much and delivers.

You have to wade through some all too typical "fusion" (the jazz term) to get to the great tracks here, but they are here in abundance. After the Ellington intro, the Syndicate wades into their cover of Keita's "Waraya" (with Zawinal doing the vocals!) and it is raw and funky. Strange then that they follow it with another Keita tune, this time with himself on the vocals, and it turns smooth and poppy. Highlights: Sanchez gets a rootsy, drum driven base on "Mi Gente," Siberian string and throat get excellent acoustics and synth treatment on the live track "Ochy-Bala," and the Broadlahn collaboration "Potato Blues."

What makes Zawinal's music important is not the number of successes or failures each album contains, it's his continued drive to experiment, to try new ideas and old, to seek out the talent the world has to offer and rather than exploit it, display it. My People displays that talent and all its possibilities. - CF

Forget that Mary Margaret O'Hara contributes two vocals to the record, adding some hip credibility to an unknown band. What's really going on here is folk music a la Ry Copoder, David Lindley, with a nod to Ray Kane. Hawai'ian weirdo party music might best describe it if it didn't get so sweet and romantic from time to time. Dobros, drums, accordions, bass, occasional horns and vocals all play to carry the kona, a slide guitar made for Hawaiian music in the 20s. It's a nice record, nothing that will blow your socks off, but something that will stick with you, gently nagging you like the memory of a cool breeze in a place you can't quite remember. - CF

In 1984 Heiner Goebbels and Alfred 23 Harth released their Pekinese Opera, an acoustic piece of madness that pushed many an envelope. Now comes Ground Zero, the band formed by guitarist/mix-master Otomo Yoshihide, with their revolutionary 90's twist on the original, a patchwork of samples, additions and deletions that pushes it the rest of the way out. Karate movie soundtracks, old records, commercials and random noise are woven into the orchestral hits, overlaid by a band of electric guitars, bass and drums, and corrupted by the likes of Christian Marclay's turntables, Japanese brass band Compostela and more samples than could possibly have been logged in and credited. The result is sheer madness, a humorous lunacy with a frosting of broken glass. No describing this "music." Just listen.

JOANE HÉTU
Castor et Compagnie
Ambiances Magnétiques On this side of the Atlantic, the experiments continue in a more agressive fashion in Montéal. JOANE HÉTU, wonduer-brasser and composer has released another jarring adventure, Castor et Compagnie. This is her first "solo" recording, although she is joined by AM regulars Diane Labrosse (keys and accordion), Jean Derome (brass, woodwinds, percussion and effects), Pierre Tanguay (percussion) and some bass tracks from Luc Bonin. The beauty of all the music Hétu makes is its refusal to be described by genre or comparison: jazz, new classical, punk-funk, experimental noise; Stockhausen, Glass, Beefheart and Zappa all seem vaguely appropriate until you really listen. Castor et Compagnie adds another element, one of erotic romance. The texts that inspire these pieces come from Hindi love recipes, Arabic sex-play games and old ribald folk songs, and the music created around them is a rich mix of lush and lustful, one moment a Brazilian cliché, the next a raw revel or a scream. Her edgy, acidic voice plays hard against all of this, and she takes the most obvious themes and makes them her own in surprising ways.

Here's one that leaves you groping for adjectives and synonyms, and the thesaurus fails you. Simply, Dutz is a percussionist who has taken a road so untravelled he has to occasionally cut through the vines and weeds to continue. Somehwere in here you wil find moments where you will say "free jazz," "Max Roach's heir," "another Mother" or "like a gamelan." But the phrases escape as quickly as they come. Krin is so much it's own creature. Dutz has gathered together an impressive ensemble of horns, flute, bass and guitars to complement his arsenal of metal, wood, skin and bone; drum, cymbal and balafon. the music runs from austere to downright nutty, and you never know what's coming next, a jazz improv, an African tirade or a tribute to the cartoons. File under: all/none of the above.

The label Ambiances Magnétique is the Montréal home to some very inventive and daring artists. This collection of musicians, composers and arrangers collaborate and cooperate, and bring together jazz, "new" music, sound sculpture and ambient electronics in unique musical collectives. Bruire is one of the ensembles to grow from this group. Led by composer/percussionist Michel Coté, L'ame de l'objet (Ambiances Magnétique) offers an interesting amalgam of live jazz, agressive noise and sampled cacaphony. Synths, turntables spinning old French records, horns, voices and guitars blend into a remarkably melodic, arhythmic wash of musical sounds that sometimes actually drift into music. Recorded live in the studio in three days, it is proof of the power of real musicians utilizing all the new ideas, electronic and acoustic, without sacrificing any of the human interaction.

Robert Marcel Lepage is best know on the Montéal scene as a clarinetist, working with a number of the A.M. ensembles. But his newest work finds him in the composer's role, writing a work for the double string quartet Quatour Caméléon (with some electronic additions by the author). Les Choses Dernières (Ambiances Magnetique) is a setting for a ballet based on the Paul Auster novel "In The Country Of Last Things," but even as a stand-alone piece of music it is powerfully visual. Lepage is is known for his shreiks and wails on the reeds and his violent, choppy rhythmic attacks, and he has found a wild reinvention of those sounds for the strings, particularly the basses. But there is also a strong sense of melody here, a cinematic pacing that has no strong, familiar theme but nonetheless carries you through the emotional paces of the unseen dance with grace, beauty, passion and surprise.

Over a decade ago there was a remarkable new acoustic music outfit called Trapezoid. They mixed together unearthly songs with earthy sounds and came up with a new type of folk music. It's been a long time, but an heir to their special style has appeared under the name Beasts Of Paradise . Centered around the lyrics and vocals of Eda Maxym, this quintet blends strings, harp, marimba percussion and didgeridoo (Stephen Kent) with dreamy, subtle ambience in Gathered On The Edge (City Of Tribes).

STEPHEN SCOTT AND THE BOWED PIANO ENSEMBLE
Vikings Of The Sunrise
New Albion (ergo@newalbion.com)

If it's true that the harder music is to describe the better it may be, then the music of Stephen Scott certainly defines the axiom. Scott is an explorer. His chosen terrain is the interior of the piano, which he has found new ways to play and compose upon. Using resin sticks, bows and other plucking devices, he has created his own original vocabulary, one that can be stark and bizarre, and yet often familiar and comfortable.

Scott is also a compositional explorer, and it seems fitting that he has chosen the themes of historical exploration as the starting point for his latest works. Vikings of the Sunrise refers to the early navigators who left the safety of Indonesia and Europe and sailed into the sunrise or sunset to find and settle the islands of the Pacific. Scott uses their voyages and the ocean they made them on as a starting point for his own musical journey, taking the rhythms of the sea, both the steady succession of the waves and the slow, long swells that carry them and using them as his base. It is not a literal chronicle, but it does convey the feeling. The music moves from slow, ambient drones of the long strings to sharp, almost electronic-sounding staccato, and finds some powerful percussive tones throughout. But, to return to the opening cliche, it's ultimately fruitless to try to "describe" this journey. Vikings of the Sunrise offers an adventure. One needs to take it.

PETER APFELBAUM
Luminous Charms
Grammavision/Rykodisc

Having made is name as the leader of a big band with diverse international influences, Peter Apfelbaum's ensemble returns his third time out as a streamlined sextet on Luminous Charms. They come with an impressive set of credentials, having played with mainstream jazz and Latin greats like Tito Puente, Santana, Steve Murray, Toshiko Akayashi and Don Cherry, or with artists like outside-edge clarinetist Beth Custer or R&B man Charles Brown. And they incorporate it all into a harder edged, more expansive music than anything they did with the larger Hieroglyphics Ensemble. For the first time Apfelbaum allows himself to really be at the forefront of the band as a musician, taking every opportunity to remind you of his creative skills on the saxophone, and giving every member of his formidable band the same chance to blow the lid off. While his earlier work tended towards the precious at times, Luminous Charms goes right for the gut.

My only other contact with Bruce Arnold's work was as a member of the group Act Of Finding (O.O. Discs), an improvisational experiment with composer Tom Hamilton. On Blue Eleven he is joined by singer Thomas Buckner and bassist Ratzo B. Harris from that group on an unusual attempt to merge that outside sensibility with a more pop-jazz sound. It almost works. Arnold is a remarkable guitarist, with a powerful intellectual approach and a strong sense of possibility much in the same vein as Bill Frisell. The guitar solo versions of his "Variations" exemplify his minimalist approach to beauty, but too much of the ensemble work drips with easy fusion cliches. Blue Eleven has some solid moments that make watching this guitarist's future a worthwhile endeavor.

A New Americana

Two distinctive composer/performers have spent a large part of the last decade looking for a "new Americana." Both ROBIN HOLCOMB and BILL FRISELL have moved through jazz and experimental circles for many years, and always they have injected into their work, and the work of the musicians they associate with, a sense of history, of folkiness, almost, that has defined their work. In the last few years especially, they have gone head long towards finding a new American music that isn't just a revival or assimilation, but a continuance of a trend that has included Copeland, Ives and many of the masters of jazz in the 40s and 50s.

Robin Holcomb's third Elektra release is Little Three, a moving, quiet companion to her more pop and rock orientations of the two previous song albums. Here she is alone, just her piano and sometimes her voice, telling starker tales that have an edge of melancholy and nostalgia tangled with a strange sort of new-west optimism. Shamelessly derivative, as all folk processors are, Holcomb nearly quotes from every verse of the American canon, without ever actually playing a tune you know. Her song/stories evoke obvious ties to things American, classics like "Our Town" and "Rodeo," yet seem to move into a contemporary America ill-equipped to look back on its own history. Of the seven songs on the album, two alone feature lyrics, the moving "Graveyard Song" and the brief and romantic "The Window." The other songs are piano solos. New-found Holcomb fans may be surprised by this, but since her career is primarily that of composer/pianist, it is really an obvious path for her. The piano pieces still carry a lot of lyrical weight, and her playing and singing share a lot of the same faltering, breathy qualities. Little Three should be taken as a whole, a short novel about persons unseen and unnameable.

The BILL FRISELL QUARTET (Nonesuch) moves on a parallel course to Little Three, seeking some of the same inspirations, but moving them along in a far more aggressive fashion. If Holcomb plays the part of The Stage Manager, Frisell and his band play the roles of Kane and Kong, manipulating here, stomping there, taking their personal history of the American movement and hammering it like so many spikes into a rail siding passing ominous trash can fires and shady characters. Eyvind Kang provides a folky violin and a throbbing tuba. Ron Miles and Curtis Folkes play the bandstand with trumpets and trombone, and Frisell's by now unmistakable guitar twanging provides the southern flavor needed, it seems, in every great American novella of the twentieth century. Jazz? Folk? The beauty of both Holcomb and Frisell is their inability to fit any of the general descriptions.

MARY ELLEN CHILDS Kilter
Experimental Intermedia, 224 Centre Street, New York, NY 10013

Another indefinable and wonderful piece of work comes out of XI this spring. Mary Ellen Childs' work has been performed by a number of America's "alternative-alternative" crowd, musicians like Guy Klucevsek, Anthony DeMare and Kronos Quartet. On Kilter we get a short history of her recent work, six unique pieces that while they can't define a composer, certainly indicate where she might have been and might be going. She has a rhythmic sense that particularly appeals to me, an assertive use of instruments and musicians (I think "use" of the musicians is a good term here!) that clearly shapes her music and casts harsh shadows on the ear. Kilter shows her ability to make new music out of her own work by this use of musician and sound. The artist line-up is impressive: accordionist Klucevsek, pianists DeMare and Katheleen Supové, The Soho String Quartet, the reeds of Relâche and the voice of Dora Orhenstein. What they collaborate on and create with the composer is what defines "kilter," an interesting word for a state of being that we are never in and always looking to be out of. No descriptions of the music here (a near impossible task), only a recommendation. Listen.

Considerably more aggressive is Die Noodle! (RecRec-Europe/Koch-US) by Austrian big-string-horn-band DIE KNÖDEL. At the core of this group are various percussive devices, hammer dulcimers in particular, that replace the more traditional drums in the roll of rhythm. Over this comes a layer of reeds, brass and guitars electric and acoustic that punctuate the whole thing with broad exclamation points as in some musical comic strip. They steal ruthlessly from jazz and pop, traditional fiddle-folk and gypsy music, but what comes out is some kind of eastern European film noir, a dark soundtrack masquerades as comedy. Since their previous album they have also added a vocal emphasis that is so strangely out of place that it again adds to the mystery and pathos of their music in surprising ways. Die Knödel is an accident waiting to happen at every turn, and they never seem to take the turns you anticipate. It makes for an excellent ride, even if it's not where you expected to go. Celebration On The Planet Mars (Koch) is by the Dutch reconstructionist, THE Beau Hunks. Their loving revival of the film music of Raymond Scott is meticulous, almost eerie in its perfection, but gives you a real taste of the music in isolation from the many films it comes from. Scott's work was quirky, innovative and sometimes as bizarre as anything to follow in the American music scene.

It can be done! In spite of all I have said in recent weeks about pop music, pop crossovers and such (and in spite of the grief I have taken for my views on the recent Angelique Kidjo album), it can be done. Here's the proof.

Los Lobos has gone from just another band in East L.A. through the barrio folk-pop of their mid-years an on to become one of the country's most unpretentiously creative and artistically unhampered pop bands. The moody Kiko and then the peculiar Latin Playboys side-gig both laid out a new track for the band, one that both absorbed and eschewed jazz, Mexi-Cal folk, garage and 60s progressive rock. Colossal Head continues down that unmarked path. They mix it up with every genre they meet, mugging the blues on "This Bird's Gonna Fly," and "Everybody Loves A Train," murdering their Latin heritage on the seemingly romantic "Marciela," which on closer listenings reveals all kinds of distorted attitudes and strange twists. The production throughout is arty, sitting very close to the border of Pretension, occasionally slipping over for a romp and then returning to the roots of home. The album runs cool and easy one minute, then sizzles the next, unpredictably delicious in it flourish and simplicity. We critics can have a field day describing the stylistic tricks, the clever production tools, the ingenious mix of ideas, but at the heart of it, Los Lobos are still just another band from East L.A. A damn good one.

A rock band, pure and simple, rarely piques my interest enough to dedicate space on this page to them, especially one that's just another crew of bass, guitars and drums (with requisite hip touches of mandolin and keyboards). Well, the exception makes the rule, and this band breaks all the rules to be the exception. Behind the wildly exploratory vocals of Emily Bezar and Ben Guy roars a band of sliding guitars, twisted rhythms and hard bass lines. Vague comparisons abound, with Richard Thompson following a pack of Glass Eye, Bill Frisell and dozen 60s "progressive" bands, none of which act as a parallel so much as a simple genre-based guide. Rough edged beauty and sparkling guitars merge together, finding bits of folk, jazz and hard rock along the way that they toss about with carefree abandon. Top all this off with the fact that this (first?) record was recorded live in concert, and you have a band to watch out for in the coming years.

JIN HI KIM
Living Tones
O.O. Discs (email: CelliOO5@aol.com)

Kim and label mate Joseph Celli sometimes refer to this as "no world" music, but there is a tradition deep in Jin Hi Kim's music that makes it at home in this column. She usually plays her compositions on the Korean komungo, a large zither with a heavy, gut-string sound. While the instrument is ancient, Kim's use of it is exploratory and challenging, leaving no approach untouched, from scraping the strings to pounding the body. Living Tones is an intersection of both cultures and ideologies, and while the music is "Korean" in the sense that no one can shed their culture, it is far broader than that.

Kim's compositions investigate musical worlds untravelled, in close collaboration with the musicians she writes for and performs with. The four pieces here represent only themselves. "Nong Rock," a work originally commissioned by Kronos Quartet, is here played brilliantly by Kim and the Sirius String Quartet. It's aggressive rhythms and far-reaching sounds find both common ground and conflict in the traditions of the east and the classical structures of the west. "Tchong" is a duet for flautist Robert Dick and the daegum (a Korean transverse flute) of Hong Jong-Jin. Again, Kim encourages the musicians to reach into each other's milieu to find new sounds, new rhythms and new melodies, and again there is the clash and harmony that is at the root of her compositions.

Perhaps the most unique work here is "Yoeum." Scored for two voices, it brings together the kagok ("courtly") singer Whang Kyu-Nam and baritone William Buckner. The texts come from ancient Korea and e.e. cummings. The resulting work is both highly formal and yet improvisational in feel, as two very different singers seek commonality in the simplicity and richness of the voice.

The final work is a "Piri Quartet." The three piri on this track are centuries old double reed instruments, cousins of the oboe that makes the fourth member of the quartet. Joseph Celli plays the oboe, Chung Jae-Guk, Park Jung-Sol and Yang Myung-Sok the piris, each instrument forced to extremes of style and sound production by the composer. (Just as a side note: Chung is one of Korea's more honored musicians, having been named "Korean National Living Treasure #46.")

Jin Hi Kim's sorcery is in her ability to bring together not only cultures, but individuals, to allow them the freedom to expand their own ideas, and the guidance to find commonality in their traditions and training.

ZGA
Sub Luna Morrior
ReR Megacorp/UK, Cuneiform/US

If you have seen films like "Brazil," "Delicatessen" or "City Of Lost Children," you might have some idea of what I am going to describe here. This album sounds like those films look, a dark ambiance that is somehow archaic and futuristic at the same time. This Latvian group attacks acoustic instruments with a fury usually reserved for stacks of amps and miles of cable. Even their own descriptions of instruments fall to things like "string objects" and "percussion objects," further confusing the lines between industrial reality and childishness. Their heavily metallicized sound is nonetheless romantic at times, accented by reeds, accordions and toy pianos. One moment the feeling is one of edgy ambiance, the next finds a clarinet waltzing through an empty European cityscape. Musique concrete slams into the brick wall of ethereal fantasy on Sub Luna Morrior.

Eugene Chadbourne and Jimmy Carl Black
The Jack and Jim Show Present Pachuco Cadaver
Fire Ant Records

Banjo meets Beefheart... Zippy the Pinhead meets Zappa... Live and in person, Jack and Jim flay a minus-two-baker's-dozen of mostly Van Vliet songs, with the rest renderings of Zappa and Chadbourne songs inspired by same. Raw, unadulterated weirdness, good times and lunacy. Approach with caution... subjects may be unarmed but extremely dangerous. (CF)

Words just sprang to mind as I was listening to "Folk Songs (Set # 11B) for String Quartet)"; sorrowful, visceral, jarring, immediate. Composer Reza Vali's work is new to me, but he ranks with Hossein Alizadeh and maybe even Bártok as an interpreter of folk songs in new contemporary music. Less centered on the strict modes of Persian music that Alizadeh uses as his base, Vali pursues a unique vision of his people's music, one that incorporates, distorts and never emulates the old folk songs.

The performances here (three pieces ranging 8 to 35 minutes) are given life by the Cuarteto Latinamericano, joined by the Mellon Philharmonic and a few soloists, flautist Alberto Almarza from Chile, and Chilean born, Mexican cellist Alvaro Bitrán. Cuarteto Latinamericano is one of the leading groups interpreting new work today, and their performances of two of these three works is perfect in tone for the music. Don't let the title deceive you. This is not folk music... yet.

Hector Zazou is one of Europe's most unique artists. Instrumentalist, composer and producer, he never makes "his own" recordings, but rather makes unusual collaborations with individual artists and entire cultures that he encounters. He has made dance music with Africans, amazing, heavy ambient music in Corsica, and two years ago completed his most fully realized project yet with singers from the regions near the Arctic Circle. Songs From The Cold Seas is a roots/ambient journey around the frozen waters of the north, visiting the singers and joikers of Finland, the dancers of Ainu, the voices of the Inuit, and the voices of other Americans and Europeans who share these roots. These are not field recordings of dying cultures, but modern, honest celebrations of living music with musicians who are excited by the prospect of making their music live within the broad confines of modern technology.

Where to start describing an album of 11 marvelous experiments? Björk's slow rolling dirge against a choir and a clarinet? Värttinä (the singers, not the band) against a subtly techno beat and some jazzy horns? Lena Willemark's sheer vocal against Åle Moller's mandola, B.J. Cole's pedal steel guitar and Zazou's omni-present electronics? Joiker Wimme against a distinctly industrial backdrop? Each track on Songs From The Cold Seas offers both a vision of silence and a look at the mood enhancing effects of six month days and six month nights in a clime that is both beautiful and challenging. Zazou is to be noted for his ability to assume a position in these ancient songs that is neither intrusive nor invisible. As a producer he is a master of his craft, a sharer rather than a taker or giver. He seems to nurture his cast of singers and musicians, gives them their own space and time, and as a small theatrical company would, they present themselves as collaborators, growing and creating their own version of his vision. DIANE LABROSSE logs in with her first solo effort on Ambiances Magnétiqes (Monteal). There are no "musical instruments" here, only an assemblege of tapes and samples; sampled voices, noises, animal screams and sonic passers-by. The final effect is a gloomier version of Anitas Livs, perhaps, darker and aimless. Labrosse rattles the aural cavities and shakes the nerves, with both daring adventure and a strangely sullen wit.

I was a little worried when these wild worldly women charged into their opening track here, an easy cover of Jagger/Richards "No Expectations." But scant minutes later they were roaring through another set of Indo-Afro-Scando percussion and synths that made their last album a winner. It's incredible what these women have assembled under the moniker of "percussion trio." Bells, gongs, drums, logs are enhanced by notes from synths (even these are played on electonic pads instead of keyboards, supplementing percussive groove). Add to that voices that seem to intuitively understand folk, funk, jazz and ancient Sapmi tongues and this is one unusual band.

It is, of course, this mix of ancient and contemporary that is at the heart of every record I find to be "great," and they have it in abundance. Primitive percussion rattles around songs made famous by Sam Cooke, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, while strange ambient synthetic sounds swirl around old Sanskrit, Tibetan and Scandinavian themes. They even take an Italian "Saltarello" and transform it into something that cuts clos to the bone. Second time out and Anitas Livs have proven that what they have is not clever ephemera, but an ever expanding web of wonder.

JOANE HÉTU Castor et Compagnie
Ambiances Magnétiques On this side of the Atlantic, the experiments continue in a more agressive fashion in Montéal. JOANE HÉTU, wonduer-brasser and composer has released another jarring adventure, Castor et Compagnie. This is her first "solo" recording, although she is joined by AM regulars Diane Labrosse (keys and accordion), Jean Derome (brass, woodwinds, percussion and effects), Pierre Tanguay (percussion) and some bass tracks from Luc Bonin. The beauty of all the music Hétu makes is its refusal to be described by genre or comparison: jazz, new classical, punk-funk, experimental noise; Stockhausen, Glass, Beefheart and Zappa all seem vaguely appropriate until you really listen. Castor et Compagnie adds another element, one of erotic romance. The texts that inspire these pieces come from Hindi love recipes, Arabic sex-play games and old ribald folk songs, and the music created around them is a rich mix of lush and lustful, one moment a Brazilian cliché, the next a raw revel or a scream. Her edgy, acidic voice plays hard against all of this, and she takes the most obvious themes and makes them her own in surprising ways. - CF