M'Lumbo, Popular Science

The past never disappears from the horizon. Sure, some aspects are cloaked, forgotten, still exercising indirect influence. Others are part of the present and future in the active sense....transformed in various ways, part of the discourse and common property of peoples in the course of their lives.

The group M'Lumbo makes excellent creative use of the past in their mid-sized outfit. Their latest, Popular Science (Pursuance 05) is a double CD, one disk made in the studio, one live at Joe's Pub in NYC. The studio disk presents Space Age remakes of popular culture masterpieces like "Beat It," "Theme from Hawaii Five-O," "The Peter Gunn Theme," "Rock Around the Clock," and so forth. M'Lumbo combine a small big-band-ish jazz-rock unit that is tight and driving with a wall of psychedelia--crazily mixed samples of pop-culture past--cartoon dialog, training films, commercials, radio broadcasts, anything and everything to put in the mix with an eye to incongruity and the sense of the unfamiliar-familiar as past, the transformation of the deadpan and the comic to one great oriental rug of meaningless meaning.

And the total matrix ends up being a comment on how the past invades the present, seemingly alien yet also familiar. It's in the end a noir psychedelia contrasting with hard hitting jazz rock. The title Popular Science is apt, referencing a magazine of the '50s-'60s that disseminated a street-level fascination with the technical aspects of modernity. And this is all about how modernity as lived inside in the '50s through today has taken on impossibly archaic qualities, of nostalgia, yes, but as a promised future that has passed, that has left us with a future-in-the-past.

So you get wall-of-sound collages, as in previous albums, and you get some serious music too. Saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom and guitarist Gary Lucas are the special guests for both the studio and live sets, and Page Hamilton of Helmet on guitar for the studio set, and they all emerge from the mix from time-to-time with brilliance.

The live set, hard as it no doubt was, manages to replicate in person the complex sample and band tapestry. Robert Jordan Ray Flateau, a driving force behind the band's approach, keyboardist and sample master, divides his duties in the live setting, giving some of the sample manipulation to another auxiliary member. And it works. Understandably the live set returns to some of the music from the previous two albums with a new matrix or immediacy and some new material as well.

This is sometimes hilarious in its juxtapositions, always evocative in the end totality, and a very new take on how a band can blend freedom with tight arrangements, anarchy of means, and some excellent soloing. Page Hamilton, Gary Lucas and Jane Ira Bloom get to shine with brilliance, but the total gestalt is entirely M'Lumbo's and they are one-of-a-kind.

M'Lumbo have done it again. You may hate it, you may love it, but it is not recommended that you ignore it--or them. They are sound arteests of the impossible combinations, avant behinds that jump ahead by making past pastiche a new futurism. And they are funny-serious, good god are they funny-serious!

Jeff Buckley, Gary Lucas, Songs to No One, 1991-1992

Rehearsal tapes, live soundboard captures, live broadcast tapes... these with any other musicians might be second thoughts, "also did this," leftovers. With artists the caliber of Jeff Buckley and Gary Lucas, Songs to No One, 1991-1992 (Evolver-Knitting Factory Records EVL 2008-2) that is so much not the case. Some are duets with the two, some involve the entire Gods and Monsters band, all are supercharged evidence of an incredibly fruitful union that we can now only appreciate on tape with Jeff's tragic passing. While it lasted though it was the best sort of collaboration, each bringing to the music something that completed what the other put forward. Jeff's rangy, dramatic, lucidly moody vocals and compositional elements; Gary's orchestral psychedelics, inimitable guitar sounds and musico-structural wisdom.

I hesitate to wax hyperbolic unless it is warranted. In this case it is. This is a classic, folks. It has all the makings of it. Instrumental profundity, vocal perfection, songs that don't go away but haunt you long after every listen. Jeff was a haunting, haunted cat. Gary was his best foil, grounding and spacing the song format with keen ears and eminently appropriate guitaristic counterpoint that equally haunts. The combination is rather uncanny. But do not take my word for it.

Singers, guitarists, avid listeners take note. THIS is an album you need to absorb. I will leave it at that.

Guitarist Gary Lucas & Gods and Monsters, The Ordeal of Civility

In the musical world there are artisans and there are artists. The pure artisan has phenomenal technique but does not harness that technique much to make music that is more than a fireworks display of finger, hand, lip, tongue or vocal-chord twisting exercises designed to wow. The artist on the other hand puts music at the center of the picture, but may not be technically advanced. Gary Lucas manages to be a superior artisan AND an artist of first rank.

This is well-shown in his new album with his band Gods and Monsters, The Ordeal of Civility (Knitting Factory Records 1111). He is joined by a very solid grouping of bass, drums, sax, and trombone-keyboards. The Talking Head's Jerry Harrison produced the album. He gets a tightly staged rock production that fits the overall arch of the music. That is, the music is centered on the song form.

The Ordeal of Civility title is taken from a book by the same name, Cuddihy's 1974 opus looking at the Jewish triumvirate Marx, Freud and Levi-Strauss and their profound impact on the Gentile world. At least, that's what the liner notes tell us. I have not have the pleasure of reading the book myself. (But the originals I have read of deeply. Graduate school, OK? They HAVE profoundly shaped the way we think. Trust me on that if you have not delved much into their work.)

Anyway this is rock band-original song material, which is what Gods and Monsters is about. Gary's songs have rock universality on the veneered surface. But then get inside them and they begin to become singular. They breathe, expand, contract, give you pause and play themselves in your head at night. They go from the very catchy opening "Luvsoldsweetsong," the psychedelic-folk Stones-reminisced "Lady of Shalott," to the hauntingly somber "Jedwabne," a song about an anti-semitic, genocidic pogram taking place in a European city years back and the remaining nightmare of its memory. This is moving music.

Gary sings in an effectively serviceable way--he can sound a little later Iggy Pop-like, a Bowie-ish semi-baritone; and then he can go elsewhere and get into his upper range with a different sound.

The brilliant guitar work is there, harnessed to the needs of the songs themselves. You'll hear Gary's blossomed acoustic work in all its finery and brilliance. And you'll hear some of the electric psychedelic tone balancing that helped put him among the ranks of the very best from the beginning of his solo career on.

The balance of song, style, content and musical prowess brings a high level of elements together in equal proportions. This is music to dwell in, reflect upon, and get down with too.

It shows that Gary Lucas remains vital, whatever direction he seeks to move within and towards.

So don't hesitate.

New Gary Lucas Single "Music for the Eden Project"

There is more than one side to Gary Lucas, guitarist extraordinaire. There's the Beefheartian avant electric bluesman, the shredding bandleader, the explorer of interesting "world music" syntheses, the soundscape artist and the acoustic picking and sliding master. No doubt one could split out these different areas into further subdivisions, but that's for another day.

What is important at the moment though is that there's a new single 7" vinyl Gary Lucas solo recording Music for the Eden Project (Snakefork), and it gives you two rather delightful miniatures, both composed and performed for use in a psychedelic environmental installation put together by UK artist Paul McGowan.

Each side is devoted to one of Gary's stylistic pursuits. One side is a masterful example of the acoustic picking style Gary has so well developed, and it is melifluous while having a forward-moving, finger-picking motor thrust (try saying that fast 10 times before your bowl of Wheaties tomorrow morning). The other side is a mini-soundscape with the patented Lucas psychedelic guitar solo aided and abetted by various effects to enable Gary to do the whole piece in one shot live. Lucas music lovers will know from the various excellent releases what those two musical territories entail. The single gives you more and does not disappoint. My only quibble is that there isn't enough. I want more of this "more." But hey, it IS a single, isn't it? The limited edition release is in colored vinyl too (my copy is in green), so you get something cool to have as well as to listen to. You can grab the disk at Gary's website or go the the Snakefork Facebook page.

So who is complaining?

Gary Lucas, Jeff Buckley, Gods and Monsters, 1992

You Tube has in a relatively short time accumulated a large cache of music holdings, some with video visual, some not. If you are not familiar with an artist or a particular period, it is a great place to go to stream relevant examples.

And so it is with the Gods and Monsters lineup that had Jeff Buckley on vocals (and second guitar?), Gary Lucas, guitars, and Anton Fier on drums. There is a wonderfully evocative posting on You Tube of the band in action, live at St. Ann's Church, NYC, 1992. This is audio only, but an entire show. The sound is decent, though Fier's drumming when present is under-recorded.

What strikes one about the set is the energizing contrast between Buckley's incredibly ranging and expressive voice with the inimitable psychedelic uniqueness of Gary Lucas in the electric mode. Adaptations of folk songs ("Satisfied Mind"), altered blues and singular originals are equally stunning. Gary sets up really interesting, orchestral soundscapes based on guitar overlaying onto temporally expanded digital delay and repetition devices, or nails it directly with more straightforward live on-spot playing one-to-one into his amp, while Buckley enthralls with some incredibly interesting vocal stylings. This is one of those collaborations made somewhere in the clouds. Some eighteen years later it sounds not in the least dated.

Gary Lucas was and still is the complete guitarist with a style all his own; the same of course was true of Jeff Buckley and his vocals. Go to www.youtube.com and search for Gods and Monsters (G & M), Gary Lucas, or Jeff Buckley and you should soon find the thread of the concert. Don't miss it. Then go and track down the official recordings! Lucas is the monster here, Buckley the god! It is a superb experience, a musico-cultural artifact that should be treasured as a masterwork of the so-called modern era. That's how it hits me, anyway.

Najma Akhtar & Gary Lucas Create A New Sort of Fusion

Stylistic meldings of South Asian and "Western" musical styles have led to some extraordinary sounds over the years and anyone who has listened deeply to the adventurous side of music since the '60s will surely need no prompting on my part as to the various breakthrough performances and recordings.

When guitarist Gary Lucas involves himself with such a project, one approaches the results with high expectations. And happily one is not disappointed.

Vocalist Najma Akhtar grew up in England but is of South Asian ancestry. She is a vocalist of nuance and great musicality. For this album Ms. Akhtar composed and adapted vocal lines while Mr. Lucas created guitar universes to compliment those vocals. Tablas, and sometimes classical Indian violin are the additional musical voices. The album is called Rishte (World Village).

With Gary Lucas of course, you can get wonderfully lively acoustic guitar music or the more electric and sometimes more orchestral guitar playing for which he is known. Here you get both.

If jazz is, as the famous quote goes, "the sound of surprise," Rishte is more like the sound of astonishment, or can be if you make some exclamation in the midst of the first listen.

There's the blues-rock riff electricity with contrasting Akhtar on "Woh Dhin." There's the lovely acoustic guitar blues of "Special Rider" and some truly different vocal approaches from Najma; and there's my favorite, the psychedelic orchestral shredding with memorable vocal line on "Soul Taker."

In other words the collaboration is a total success. There is a most definite melding of two (actually more than two) stylistic universes: South Asian classical, pop, devotional sounds with blues-rock-folk of American tradition (and as always with Gary, there's "something else" always going on there that does not easily classify).

If I said this was a "triumph" I don't believe I would be exaggerating on the side of hype. It is. A triumph, that is. As the late Lester Bowie once said, "it depends on what you know." It does.

Lucas, Johnston & Fast 'N' Bulbous Do Beefheart

Gary Lucas, a guitarist's guitarist, whether adapting an unlikely tune to a Delta blues slide or in a full-tilt electric shred zone....Phillip Johnston, piquant alto saxist and another bold iconoclast, the founder of the acclaimed Microscopic Septet....Fast 'N' Bulbous, the band Gary and Phillip put together to do some new arrangements of the music of Captain Beefheart. This is a potent combo, not the least because Gary did an important stint in Beefheart's band, but also because Beefheart's considerable music lends itself to open-ended interpretations. And that's what you get. Freshly minted Beefheart, so to say.

The latest album, Waxed OOP (Cuneiform) is a lively, rocking, exciting blend of very hip Lucas, excellent mid-sized band arrangements and some gems of the Beefheart repertoire, and not just the well-known songs either.

Beefheart was and is a complex, multifaceted artist. He extended the blues into zones no one would have expected them to go, he was a prolifically bizarre wordsmith magician, and he wrote some amazing music for his various bands, stretching the envelop as to how a typical rock-blues aggregation (or not so typical, sometimes) could take on complex and unprecedented interactions. Listen to a little Trout Mask Replica, for example, and you'll hear guitars, bass and drums do things that nobody thought they were supposed to do back then. And we're not even beginning to talk about his vocals! That's for another time.

Waxed OOP gives you another look at Beefheart the composer, the forthright and worthy arrangements of Johnston and others, and some great Lucas guitar, unaccompanied here and there and in full-bloom in the ensemble.

"Well," originally a vocal solo, bursts into a flowering full-band sound. "Blabber'n' Smoke" reminds you how many great songs Beefheart could toss off almost casually in his peak years and how good they still sound, especially with some fresh arrangements. "Woe-is-uh-Me-Bop" is another gem, from the extraordinarily innovative album Lick My Decals Off Baby and it has new life in this rendition.

If you love Gary's playing, Johnston's concepts and arranging and/or Beefheart and his music, or you just wonder about any or all three, you cannot go wrong with Waxed OOP.

Gary Lucas & Dean Bowman Do Blues, Gospel, Spirituals and More

One thing about Gary Lucas that I admire is that he is unpredictable. Chinese pop, Beefheart, movie music, world music collaborations, one can never be sure what will be next. What is a constant is his consummate artistry.

And so with his latest, Chase the Devil (Knitting Factory Records), a series of duets with vocalist Dean Bowman. It's a moving collection of roots music of a gospel-blues sort. There are traditional spirituals, classic Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Gary Davis, Blind Willie Johnson, a Judaic hymn, and some rooted originals, among other surprises.

What makes it here is the convincing blend of soulful vocals, classic material and Gary Lucas's wide-ranging acoustic and electric guitar artistry. Gary's wonderful fingerpicking is on display but so is his blazing electric work. Superficially one might think this is leagues away from his work with Captain Beefheart in the years past. But no, the Captain was in most respects an avant blues artist and this album carries on the idea that the blues is what you can imagine it to be. Gary and Dean imagine a different spin on it all. They succeed superbly.

Gary Lucas: Solo Acoustic Guitar

Anyone who hasn't experienced the solo acoustic guitar work of Gary Lucas, or who would like to immerse the ears in the many facets of that work, would do well to head over to Gary's site and its solo acoustic page (http://garylucas.com/www/soloac/). There you'll find You Tube links to many hours of solo video footage.

Gary has incredible fingerpicking prowess but can use the slide, or combo strum and pick his way through all kinds of material. He's absorbed a wide spectrum of roots music, especially the old country blues styles, and made them his own. There's a version of the Stone's classic "Last Time," Skip James' "I'm So Glad," "Bali Hai," 1930s Chinese pop, and originals drenched in the heritage of the acoustic and its modes and techniques. But he surely extends those techniques and such, transforming them into major stylistic statements about the Lucas way to play.

He gets a sound that is almost uncanny--listen and you'll understand what I mean. He plays a 1940s Gibson and coaxes from it all kinds of tones, and his playing on a very old, all-metal National Steel Resonator almost sounds banjo-like.

Gary Lucas is the consummate artist, surely one of the major acousticians out there today. That is to put his electric work aside for the moment, but we'll return to him and some recent releases in the coming weeks. In the meantime, spend a little time at his site and I think you will be amazed and pleased.

Guitarist Gary Lucas: His 2001 Chinese Pop Album Re-Released

There are some artists out there who not only transcend category, they transcend themselves on a regular basis. Guitarist Gary Lucas is a great example. From his early days with Captain Beefheart through to today, one never knows what Mr. Lucas will do next, what musical traditions he will tap into and rework to his own needs and aesthetic. As with the best of those we should consider our consummate artists, the entire WORLD of music is the raw material with which he works.

The Edge of Heaven (Knitting Factory) shows this worthy trait in microcosm. Gary took a group of 1930s Chinese pop songs and rearranged them in a number of ways.

The album has just been reissued. It came out on an obscure label in 2001 and it is very good to have it with us again.

Gary shows both his guitar and arranging prowess in good light through the set (which includes some extra cuts not originally on the initial release). He gets into a little of his cascades of sound approach on the electric, plays a regular acoustic or resonator in finger picking or chordal styles, wields a slide guitar with raw bluesyness or in a more straightforwardly melodic way, sometimes sounds more like a Chinese Pipa in solo and duet with a Chinese instrumentalist, and plays as part of an ensemble that performs with a traditional Chinese vocalist. Western harmonies and sensibilities join with Chinese musical form in ways that keep the ears delighted.

Gary's guitar playing is out front through the entire proceedings and it is amazing and unique. He has developed a sound. . . a number of sounds that are unmistakably his at the same time as they up the bar on the expressive potentials of the instrument.

Gary Lucus turns in some moving performances and arrangements here. The music deftly combines impressive Lucas guitar stylings with some wonderful songs. It is like nothing you've heard before, I imagine. You do not want to miss it. It's available at Amazon (download or disk) as well as, I am sure, i tunes and other outlets.