Kevin Kastning, Skyfields

If you do not know of him already, here is a great way to become familiar with the very original and provocatively beautiful 15- and 36-string guitar work of Kevin Kastning. Skyfields (greydisc GDR 3530) is Kevin in a solo setting, mapping out his extraordinarily way with these fabulous sounding guitars, played in the upright position like a contrabass and tuned in special ways that Kevin exploits with an  intelligence, exploratory will and lyrical sensitivity for a result that is truly one-of-a-kind and musically fascinating, almost like music of another planet it sounds so unique.

The album pans out nicely with five segments of compositional-improvisational interest. The flexibility of the guitars is exploited so that we hear harp-like strains, guitar-centered melodic harmonic inventions and things that almost sound lute-like.

It is an excellent outing that will make a believer of you if you do not know his music and will confirm to the others that do that Kastning makes memorable atmospheric music that puts him in a special place.

Recommended!

The Raptor Trail, New World

Time for a little new alt rock by a good band I have not been exposed to previously, the Raptor Trail. The one I have been liking, the subject of this review, is their second album, New World (MBM Entertainment). It's a power trio of Matt Mayes on guitars and vocals, Johnny Meyer on guitars, keys, bass and vocals, and Gene Bass on drums.

They get a densely vivid sound on the album, with some heaviness and lots of fine guitar/bass routines--and very solid, driving foundational drumming. Their musicality is everywhere evident. The songs have progressions not at all cliche, and the melodic vibrancy reminds me just a bit of early REM, and that to me is a cool thing. Both Matt and Johnny sing well.

And in the end you have an album that stands out as singular and nicely arranged, songs that grow on you little by little and do not tire the ears, ever.

The Raptor Trail are doing good. I hope lots of folks get into them. I do recommend you check this album out if you want something very substantial and worthwhile among the new rock offerings out there now. I am a fan based on this one!

Cuong Vu Trio Meets Pat Metheny

You might think that after all this time Pat Metheny and his guitar playing/music styling have settled into a comfortable niche and will stay there ever more. It turns out that is definitely not the case. Beautiful evidence to the contrary can be heard on the new album Cuong Vu Trio Meets Pat Metheny (Nonesuch). It is Cuong Vu out front of course, a vital trumpeter and bandleader-composer. He was a part of Pat Metheny's group for a long while and now Pat returns the favor by interjecting his nearly always brilliant self into Vu's considerable trio--Vu, the formidable Stomu Takeishi on bass, and the equally formidable Ted Poor on drums. Was Ted at Berklee when I was? Seems vaguely so to me but no matter. The idea is that this is a kick-out-the-jams trio who are avant and tight, who can swing in a rock enhanced, free or jazz pulsating way and make very considerable use of their collective imagination.

The music consists of five lively and musical Vu originals plus one by Andrew d'Angelo and one by Pat. They set the stage for some very considerable playing. Pat adds much to the proceedings, but always as a part of the resultant quartet, so you get plenty of Cuong, Stomu and Ted.

The music varies between a changes directed modern jazz to outness and sometimes some unexpected rock heaviness one finds works very nicely. Pat sounds excellent and transformative. You can hear a little of all "periods" of his playing coming into being here but tempered by time passing (and not in a bad way) and flying upwards to new levels. Stomu plays some exceptional electric bass and is post-Jaco but himself in his considerable presence. Ted blazes forth when he needs to, superbly. Both drive the four-way vehicle to where Cuong and Pat can thrive, soar, be subtle yet fired up too when needed.

I never quite know what to expect from couplings like this. This one is everything one might hope for and more. The sum of the parts make for something very special and it is a wonder to hear it. Bravo!

Guy Buttery

South African acoustic guitarist Guy Buttery astounds with his self-titled recent album Guy Buttery (self-released). For the recording he retreated to a small farmhouse in Zululand where he settled in to make some beautiful music on his acoustic guitar in the company of a nicely varying cast of musical-vocal associates and friends.

The roots of African music and landscapes are never far away as Guy embarks on a series of ever-shifting, beautifully realized numbers with his acoustic and mbira engaging with vocals, mouth bow, concertina, drums, electric piano, organ, cuatro, sarangi, second acoustic or electric guitar, and acoustic bass.

There is a sort of wonderful meshing of African riffs and compositional-arranged blends in a contemporary and sometimes very bluesy, rocking vein, other times a prog-rock-like attention to detail.

Buttery excels at making the most of such combinations with some very fine, original playing. His associates get the spirit as well.

The results are truly invigorating and artful. Any devotee of the new Africa soundings will find this rather incredibly nice. And Buttery is some guitarist, too. Very recommended!

Spiderwebs, In Between the Known and the Unknown, with Sandy Ewen

OK space cadets--here is a vigorous wash of cosmic guitars, the three-member Spiderwebs group and their outward bound album In Between the Known and the Unknown (Chiastic Society >x< 04).

What is it? A three-way avant venture by guitarists Sandy Ewen, Tom Carter and Ryan Edwards. This is a tapestry of feedback, avant skronk guitar soundings and reverberant envelopes of layered ambiance.

Four substantially involved segments appear before us, the first a collaboration of Tom and Ryan, the second Sandy and Ryan, the third Sandy and Tom and the long finale all three in tandem.

It is music that is the logical emergence and evolution of guitar atmospheric trends first set by Hendrix and Sharrock and brought to where we are now via Bailey, Frith, Fripp and etc.

This one succeeds by virtue of a cavernous attention to sonic sculpting, an ensemble-oriented devotion to detailed resonant psychedelics, and the rightness of the individual creative choices made by each member of the threesome.

It has noise elements, drones and overlaying metallic explosiveness, a sensitive openness to the avant possibilities of the electric guitar on the modern fringes of expansion.

I find it beautiful, provocative, musically rich, and cosmically far beyond. Kudos!

Lauren Lee and Charley Sabatino, Velocity Duo, Dichotomies

From the artistic "Downtown" energy force of present-day New York comes the talented Velocity Duo--vocalist Lauren Lee and bassist Charley Sabatino--and their album Dichotomies (self released). Lauren is a very musical, wordless vocal force with a wide vocabulary of intervallic possibilities, timbres and spontaneous line-creating acumen. Charley Sabatino is an upright bass player that matches Lauren in his spontaneous bass-sounding presence and inventiveness.

The two together decided to launch each segment with a word and its opposite, to make that the basis for their utterly free creations. So we get "Tranquility/Cacophony," "Awe/Melancholy," "Apathy/Desire" and "Disappointment and Joy," as a few examples. The idea here was to give the duo springboards to reach a variety of free destinations, and it succeeds well.

There are no moments of running in place, of searching for inspiration. Each is completely attuned to the other and rather confidently embarks on each brief free journey in ultra-musical ways.

Bassists, vocalists and music appreciation hounds will all find this album a fascinating foray into total spontaneity. These two have something to say and they do say it! Very recommended.

Janis, Little Girl Blue, DVD of the Film by Amy J. Berg

I grew up and came of age in the later '60s. Of course there was no way I did not know of the huge talent and big voice of Janis Joplin. I loved her but I also had some misgivings about how she was packaged and presented. "The next Bessie Smith?" Well that helped us get into Bessie Smith's beautiful recordings but no, she was NOT that. What bugged me about her life and death as it was packaged for me, something I could not quite put my finger on at the time, is beautifully clarified in the Amy J. Berg film, Janis, Little Girl Blue, which is now available as a nicely packed DVD with some extras (MVD Visual 8304D).

It has a real handle on, yes, the career-bio track of Janis, but it also delves deeply into the very personal side of her life, who she was, way down inside. So we get extremely relevant footage of recollections by those who knew her well (those still alive anyway), like her sister, bandmates, boyfriends/girlfriends/lovers, etc.

And we get all the dazzle of her meteoric, spectacular rise to world fame at a time when perhaps more people in the world were stoned than ever before or since, and if you were there and remember anything about it, or if you were on the fringes of it and mostly observed, being very stoned did not necessarily give you insight into others around you so much as it heightened a sense of self (-in-putative world). With so many very stoned people surrounding her, her real needs were less understood, maybe. But Amy Berg nails it in terms of what her very sympathetic documentary uncovers on the "real" Janis Joplin.

She was a very intelligent and very musical woman whose youth and early adulthood were not extraordinarily conducive to who she was. She was taunted as a sort of misfit in high school, not at all the center of the universe that she perhaps later became for a very few years. It had lasting effects on her. But when she discovered she could SING, really sing, it changed everything. Suddenly she was not only accepted, but welcomed. The freak scene was opening up in San Francisco. She eventually managed to hook up with Big Brother, a not entirely talented psychedelic band that nonetheless gave her a platform to develop into a rock singer of great power. As a woman then, she was given a role as the showcase vocalist, but in those days especially it was rare for a woman to get involved directly in the creation-composition-bandsmanship and she did not really, happy enough to be idolized for her vocalisms. And perhaps in the end there wasn't enough in the way of co-creators, especially in the end, to help her develop into what she was in potential....

At the same time the over-the-top drug scene found her greatly involved. It was a time for that. And maybe unlike some others (very debatable anyway) that did little to enhance her art. Plus, deep within she had an enormous need to be loved. The stage performances were in many ways a kind of ersatz communal love experience between herself and her audience, but after the show was over, she seemingly felt ever more alone, or so my take on the movie suggests. The very sensitive being she was could be masked in part by dope and she eventually became seriously addicted to junk. NONE of this was good for her musically and the movie points out how her post Big Brother career was in some ways a caricature of her early brilliance, a self-mimicking of her original energy. I do not know. Being a woman then she was not expected and herself demured from really becoming a musical director and in the hands of the major label etc. she was buffeted about in the search for sales and popularity but left a little stranded as the artist she was in abundance.

The movie gives you the fragile, needy, sensitive being thrown into the circus of the rock world and ultimately, becoming another one of its victims. It is tragic but it also lets you know her much better as a person--her letters, interviews, and indirectly or otherwise, her inner feelings, her experience of an enormous lack juxtaposed oddly with enormous acclaim and success.

It is very sad, in the end. It is beautifully done, surely one of the best rock biodocs I have ever seen!