Concetta Abbate and Charlie Rauh, Deletion Sky Tires, EP

Nothing is fixed forever on this earth or in the heavens. That may be an important lesson we have learned in our lifetime, or perhaps it's just a commonplace and everybody has held on to the notion from time immemorable. I sure feel that nowadays, though. Just look at the "serious" music scene. No release is necessarily the obvious, because the obvious is no longer set in stone. So anything can and does go.

The EP by Concetta Abbate and Charlie Rauh, Deletion Sky Tires (Brainplanrecords), is a good example. Unless you already know what Concetta and Charlie have been up to (and we have discussed them previously here) you would have no idea what to expect. But what you do get has an unexpected quality, which I suppose is what you SHOULD expect!

At any rate Concetta plays the violin and sings now and again. Charlie is on the electric guitar. This is chamber jazz/new music that has a definite sound and style all its own. It's two-part composition/improvisation of a carefully thought-out sort. More tonal and sequential than anarchic, improvisation and composition meld together seamlessly; the arrangements have spontaneity and deliberation in equal amounts.

Each of the eight pretty short pieces has its own particularity. Charlie plays some very interesting guitar, schooled but also immediate; Concetta has creative directness and her own way on the violin. Her vocals are of the "band" variety, in that they make no pretentions of themselves other than expressing the line and lyrics clearly and musically.

So there it is, 20-something minutes of something well put together and different. This is not what you might expect. It is straightforwardly and captivatingly a music of today, though, so trash the expectations and experience it. Go to brainplanrecords.blogspot.com for more info. This is a limited quantity release so get over there ASAP if you are interested.

Marc Edwards & Sonos Gravis, Holographic Projection Holograms

Marc Edwards has always been a drummer of great power, drive, full technique and imagination. You can hear that on the sides he made as a member of Cecil Taylor's outfits and as a leader in his own right. But his music has been evolving over the years, taking a turn into the more electric outside free rock zones, in bands with and without the tag-teaming of Weasel Walter.

We now get a close-up panorama of what he has been up to with two interrelated releases. I tackle one today, the other soon. Up for consideration is Marc and his band Sonos Gravis and their album Holographic Projection Holograms (APCD-R4/Dog and Panda 6).

What we have here is a very invigorated live set recorded at New York's Local 269. Marc holds forth at the drums, then there are the very kinetic, amped guitars of Ernest Anderson III, Takuma Kanaiwa, and Alex Lozupone, the latter sometimes rigging up his guitar for bass tones.

For those who like the freely anarchic, high-decibel sort of out rock improvising, this has it on a high plane. Marc plays a whole lot of drums in his indefatigable way, in freetime and sometimes with pulse. The guitarists get a three-way frothy head of psychedelic steam going for them. Together all four make an exhilaratingly noisy tumult that carries plenty of notefulness and full-out fire. Marc's head compositions (two, the third number a collective improv) are very appropriate launching vehicles for this space trip.

The set is strong. Everybody hits in on all cylinders. It is freely fused out rock that takes "free jazz" and cranks it. Now you may not like that but if you say to yourself, "that sounds good," you will not be disappointed!

Body/Head, Coming Apart, Kim Gordon and Bill Nace

Now that Sonic Youth is no more (for now, anyway) we have the proliferation of albums by ex-Sonics that carry on. The latest is by Kim Gordon and her friend Bill Nace, a duo known as Body/Head. Their album Coming Apart (Matador) has just been released, and it's an adventure.

The Sonics sometimes had their weirder moments when Kim might go into outside vocalisms while guitars fed back and skronked out. Coming Apart is a full album extension of such things, Kim sounding like a cross between Patty Waters and a female Lou Reed at his more bizarre, only it's Kim Gordon and so instantly recognizable as such.

Bill and Kim man the guitars, Kim the vocals. It's like Sonics/Velvets at their weirdest, and carves out further that territory in its very own way. The guitar playing is psychedelic outness that has its definite charms, provided you open your ears and take in the out abstract-artiness of it all. And Kim is her irreducible self as the vocalist-performance artist. Not always on key, purposefully, but always artistically expressive.

I like it. You might hate it. But not if you like the outside realms of the Sonics in their heyday. It takes things from there. Don't expect to hear any of this on top-40 radio!

Billy Cardine, Six String Swing

One of the beautiful things about doing these reviews is how you get to know the music of some great cats you would not otherwise know about. Today's example is one of those happenstances. Slide guitarist extraordinaire Billy Cardine sent me a short clip of him playing with a somewhat self-effacing "maybe this is the sort of thing you would like to cover in your blogs?" I listened for about 30 seconds and I thought, "holy living cow! This guy is terrific!" or something to that effect.

End result: Billy sent me three CDs of his music, each a killer! Today we devote to his Django-Gypsy Swing set, Six String Swing (Little King). It's Billy Cardine on slide guitar with a string band of players including mandolin, some of whom do some very nice soloing here. But it's Billy who completely blows you away.

I surely have never heard a slide guitarist with such abilities--he manages to get Django's essence across while showing you the sort of artist he (Billy) is: tasteful, technically incredible and musically profound.

I'll be covering in a short while the other two albums Billy sent--and each is very different--so I wont go into all the details of his playing here. Instead, I'll just say that this album floors me. It has everything going for it. It manages to catch the Gypsy Swing style and take it to slide heaven. Do not hesitate! Get this one!

The Avengers, On A Mission

Beledo is a Uruguyan guitarist of both power and finesse. He and his jazz-rocking outfit The Avengers carry on in fine fashion in the CD release On A Mission (Gudari). The music is in the elaborate modern fusion mode and Beledo is well served by the keys (Adam Holzman), bass (Lincoln Goines) and drums (Kim Plainfield) lineup that comprises the band.

Beledo wrote all the tunes save one (by Marcus Miller), and they are nicely crafted and as note-y as typical of this style today.

Beledo has been solidly influenced by Allan Holdsworth in his group concept and personal sound. But within those confines he excels. He can dazzle you with a blur of notes, then dig in with the sheer sensual properties of his guitar sound. He and Holzman, understandably, are the principal soloists and they work well together, complementing and returning thought with counter-musical thought.

One gets the feeling that this band is working towards its very own way and sound. There is enough there already to suggest it. I look forward to that evolution in sides to come. Meanwhile this one satisfies. Beledo is a true artist of the guitar!

Bernie Mora & Tangent, Dandelion

Really nice jazz-rock today from guitarist Bernie Mora and his group Tangent. The album is Dandelion (Rhombus 7117). It's a pretty large outfit out of El Paso and Los Angeles. Mora plays a nice fusion-amped guitar and wrote all the material, then there's a group of six others and a couple of guests, bass, drums, keys, saxes, horns, percussion. Everybody sounds well-versed and together, tight, the arrangements-compositions have fused-prog-rock clout and Bernie cranks it to good effect.

They cover quite a bit of ground with a varied program of pleasing extroversion. I am reminded of the classic horn jazz-rock bands only updated for today, with maybe a hint of Zappa in there somewhere. They get the toe tapping and can hit it pretty hard.

Hey, I like this one. It may not set the world ablaze but Mora can crank and the whole thing is very solid.

Going Underground: Paul McCartney, the Beatles and the UK Counter-Culture, DVD

There was a period in the Beatles' existence when the band had stopped touring. Three of the four lads began spending time in their London-suburb-based houses, but Paul McCartney lived for a while in an attic space with his then-girlfriend in London proper. Proximity, time and a open exploratory attitude meant that Paul got involved in that period in the burgeoning London avant bohemia in ways that influenced his attitudes and some of the more pioneering music the Beatles made in the mid-to-later sixties.

The fascinating story is covered in a new video DVD Going Underground: Paul McCartney, the Beatles and the UK Counter-Culture (Pride DVD161). It follows both the development of the alternative culture and Paul's involvement chronologically with a narrative that incorporates archival footage and personal interviews with some of the figures that were a part of the scene, for an in-depth 153 minutes.

There's so much covered here that I can't begin to inventory it all, but it tracks the underground press and its sponsoring of/involvement with an extension of beat culture, identity politics and the avant and psychedelic music scenes. In essence Paul got turned on to the avant improv band AMM and various new sounds as he absorbed some of the underground ethos. He also attended and helped support the opening of the first of the psychedelic clubs, where Pink Floyd and Soft Machine got their starts.

There are sections of the DVD that talk about how all this influenced some of the pioneering Beatles cuts such as "Tomorrow Never Knows," "A Day in the Life" and "Strawberry Fields."

It's something anyone interested in the psychedelic musical movement, the classic Beatles art-music period, and the counter-culture in general will profit by seeing. I found it pretty riveting. Worth it alone just for the interview with Robert Wyatt, the Soft Machine's seminal first drummer!