North of Blanco, Jaap Blonk, Sandy Ewen, Damon Smith, Chris Cogburn

From the rich cache of recent albums steered into musical port by eminently capable helmsman, bassist Damon Smith, I put forward yet another interesting offering for your consideration, North of Blanco (bpa 016). It is a free, extended timbred improvisational quartet that strikes musical gold with six shorter to more extended segments.

In this foursome are Jaap Blonk on vocals and electronics, Sandy Ewen on guitar and objects, Chris Cogburn on percussion and Damon on prepared double bass.

The emphasis with this outing is to realize advanced sonic sculpting, to create textures and ambiant universes that rely on the creative instincts of all four participants to create extra-musical sounds from, if you will pardon the overused phrase, "outside the box."

That means that Jaap Blonk lets loose with considered vocalizations from within the realms of human capabilities, not just "singing" as such but phonemic percussives, unpitched and pitched utterances and otherwise choosing from the full gamut of soundings available to him as human exponent.

Damon's prepared bass, whether bowed, plucked, scraped or sounded in whatever way necessary, creates an extended universe of textures and timbres that complement Jaap and his effusions.

The same can be said of the distinctive soundings of guitarist Sandy Ewen (who we covered recently with a duet album with Henry Kaiser) and percussionist Chris Cogburn.

The result is an iconoclastic mix of noise-pitch freedom that all who like the outer realms will no doubt readily respond to as I have. Beautiful sounds of deep listening and measured utterance!

Magic Sam Blues Band, Black Magic, Deluxe Edition

Chicago's Magic Sam was one of the most original voices and guitarists in the soul blues revolution that hit fully by the late '60s. He recorded two albums on Delmark and captured the loyalty of local audiences in the clubs. He was on the verge of national popularity when the Black Magic album hit the streets. He had a Stax record contract in hand and all was about to fall in place when he died unexpectedly at age 32 on December 1, 1969. That finished it all but his legend lives on today, principally via the two glorious studio albums he recorded for Delmark.

The second and last record, Black Magic (Delmark DE 620) is now available in a new Deluxe Edition with eight additional tracks and alternatives (two totally unreleased until now, five appearing originally on The Magic Sam Legacy). The edition includes a new 16-page booklet with additional liner notes and photos from the studio.

The ultimate package is an essential item in anyone's blues collection. It has all the hallmarks of Magic Sam's inimitable vocal style, his guitar rootedness seconded by Mighty Joe Young, and a crack Magic Sam Blues Band that is out to capture your soul.

The original album is all there, of course, Sam's timeless vocals and west side Chicago electricity. The full edition gives you nearly 70 minutes of music, the legend at a peak. The sound is all at Delmark standards and in the end, the promise of Sam's brilliance is all there to hear, fulfilled!

A terrific one to have! A blues must!

Albert Collins & The Icebreakers, Live at Rockpalast - Dortmund 1980, DVD-CD Set

Albert Collins was a blues guitarist of originality and stature, a vocalist with plenty of soul, an artist with a vibrant blues totality that marked him as one of the finest bluesmen of his generation. He may be gone but he lives on in his music. A fine live 90 minute appearance with a solid band greets and moves us on the recent 2-CD/1-DVD set Albert Collins & The Icebreakers Live at Rockpalast - Dortmund 1980 (MIG 90632).

It's a strong backing quartet centered around tenor and singer A. C. Reed, and Albert in fine form with his electrifying vocals, the signature neck-position humbucker Telecaster, the capo, and Albert weaving his pickless blues spells as only he could do. It is instructive and fun seeing his playing in full visual glory. The body language of his live show reminds you how much his vocal and guitar style were GESTURAL, leaving space and heightening tension almost conversationally. He is on it instrumentally and vocally for this German TV live series and we feel like we are there with very decent sound and crisp visuals.

They run through a long set and we get the full aura of Albert live. This one is a boon for blues guitar fans! Check it out by all means!

Sandy Ewen & Henry Kaiser, Lake Monsters

The helter-skelter, considered mayhem of avant electric guitar noise-sound color improvisation is at a premium on the recent album Lake Monsters (Balance Point Acoustics BPALTD 606), a collaboration between Sandy Ewen and Henry Kaiser. Sandy Ewen is a visual artist as well as a guitarist. Henry Kaiser should need no introduction as one of the avant world's and advanced jazz-rock's acclaimed exponents.

Lake Monster gives us a veritable smorgasbord of amplified guitar textures, extended techniques, smears and blots, points and masses of new guitar dueting.

This is music on the edge, the edge as art, art as spontaneous effusions of un-pedestrian or ultra-pedestrian (meaning related to everyday sonic urban space) emanations. It is less of a thing for the totally avant uninitiated as it is for those already immersed in sound art improv, but I imagine a first-comer to this sort of thing might get something out of it with repetition and focused patience. What's nice is the gamut of electric outside stances it takes and its artistic handling of them. Feedback, scronk, swipe and wipe, muted percussive clanks, there are lots of creative ways of sounding, virtually an encyclopedia in sound, and they come off with a two-way fascination and interactive verve.

It goes to many different aural-mood spaces and keeps you interested. All avant guitar fans should hear it, I'd say.

Kevin Kastning, Mark Wingfield, Eleven Rooms

The days when you could say to yourself, "oh, I think I know what this sounds like" may still be with us, but it seems to me less and less so. I get a fair amount of music that I cannot say I have any intuitions about, and then others where I know the artists well enough to have a good idea. The latest album by Kevin Kastning and Mark Wingfield, Eleven Rooms (Greydisc 3528) was one of those "huh?" albums. But then when I put it on something wonderful, I mean pretty darned wonderful came out of the speakers.

It is an introspected, open-formed series of duets with Kevin Kastning on 36-string double contraguitar(!), 30-string contra-alto guitar, classical guitar and mandolin plus Mark Wingfield on electric guitar.

The combination is pretty unearthly. The 30- and 36-string guitars sound incredible, almost harp-like and Mark's electric guitar has a wonderful electric tone and noting way about it that makes him a standout player.

This is their fifth album, and it is a winner. The multi-string guitars (which Kastning invented) lay a luminous, musically distinctive backdrop (as does the classical guitar and mandolin) overtop which Wingfield crafts some wonderful ambient electric guitar lines, which are in the tradition of the ambient guitarists we know and love, yet there is a special tone he gets that distinguishes him and what he plays is marvelously musical and original.

The two together make a magic blend that takes you elsewhere in a sort of post-ECM neo-psychedelic space, but not in a predictable way. Each has a musical vision that when combined make for music you've never heard quite like this before.

It is a beautiful experience and a set of musical inventions that intrigue and keep your attention fixed at the foreground. It may be "mellow" at times, but never without real musical content. Very recommended!

Scorpions, Forever And A Day, A Documentary by Katja Von Garnier, DVD

Rock and roll is here to stay? It certainly seemed so when I was young. Nowadays rock as the common denominator pop music of the world is perhaps something that is fading. But then the "Top 40" itself is no longer what it once was, a set of songs, most of which the entire community had in their ears and would recognize as a big part of being alive then. Top 40 now appeals to a smaller and smaller margin of people, and there is no universal recognition out there, no one set of songs the world is singing along to. The burgeoning of all kinds of alternatives, musical or otherwise, has eroded into the once dominant form of music dissemination that top 40 AM stations enjoyed. There is less and less rock on those playlists, but then there is less people listening to and buying those songs, for better or worse.

All this a prelude to a documentary on the Scorpions, Germany's long-lived heavy metal-hard rock-power pop group that has existed from 1965 until now, selling multi-millions of albums/singles and at their peak one of the most ubiquitous of the arena rock stars. Katja von Garnier's film Forever and A Day (MVD Visual 7956D) tells that story, currently out as a DVD in German with English and French subtitles.

Now I must say that the subtitles are not the best. My partner and I had trouble reading them--they are small, and our eyesight is far from perfect these days, but the typeface and color of the subtitles in any event make them hard to read, especially if the color of the images underneath them is lighter, close to that of the typeface. Since 90% or so of the dialogs are in German it made the comprehension a little rough. If you have one of those big-ass widescreen TVs (we don't) and you have 20-20 vision this may not be a big deal, or of course if you are fluent in German.

That being said, the premise of the documentary is that the band, after all these years, decides it is time to retire. They go on an extensive farewell tour throughout the world and as they do the band members look back at their career. The footage of early live tours and early interviews, etc., spice up the narrative along with a good deal of their own home video-movies.

The beauty of the band at their peak, the guitar work, and the love between audiences and band all make for a moving experience. Many music videos and stagey live appearance footage you see often today attempt to imitate the arena rock vibe that the Scorpions really did have and perhaps still do. But the rapture of the youth rock world at encountering a band and music they fully love is really there to see on this documentary, and I can only say that it captures something very special and does it dramatically. Now this all was big business of course but that does not guarantee that audience and musicians would commune together to the extent that is clear on this documentary.

Scorpion fans will love this. Whether the more casually acquainted music aficionado will or not depends on how much of the subtitles you can read. There is the drama of the aging musicians and their sadness at the eventual end of the road, the end of something that they clearly love, that is the all-in-all of their lives, something they are fully loved in turn for. Sad but moving. What are they saying? I missed a lot of that....

Richard Pinhas, Chronolyse, 1978, Vinyl Reissue

What we have on hand today is the first vinyl reissue of Richard Pinhas's Chronolyse (Cuneiform). The analog synthesizer music based on "Dune" and its companion side of the 30-minute drone panorama of mellotron, guitar, bass and drums first came out in 1978 and though it shows all the elements of the advanced music of the era, it remains distinct, exciting and contemporary to my ears.

The Riley-Reich minimalist cosmos reflects itself in the hands of Pinhas, especially on the first part of the album. Yet there is an avant rock heft to it as well and an original feel to it all with its well-staged, elaborately conceived space-futurist presence.

The electric band of Pinhas on guitar, Didier Batard on bass and Francois Auger on drums deftly expand the music on side two with a cosmic jam overtop electronic drone tracks. It is an advanced music with lots of room for Pinhas on nicely post-Frippian guitar and an eventful cosmology of admirable spaciness.

I missed this one when It came out but I am very happy to make its acquaintance now. It shows us a Pinhas fully on the road he has traveled so productively, a major way-station in his musical development that compares favorably with any of the incipient psyche-trance music that was made at the time.