Matta Gawa's Avant Shred on "bA"

Engine Records is one of those small NYC boutique labels that provide alternative music seekers with some excellent avant jazz-improv. They use two-color offset printing onto sturdy brown stock for an underground looking no-frills all-music package. (Shades of the graphic arts classes of my youth! Lunch tickets!)

I've reviewed a number of their releases on my blogs and always look forward to a new installment. The arrival of Matta Gawa's bA
(Engine 035) defied my expectations (since after a while the unexpected becomes a kind of "expected"). This is a potent duo of Edward Ricart on a very electric guitar and Sam Lohman on freetime drums. Edward cranks out of a vintage Fender tube amp. He relies on loops as underlying ostinatos or sonic backwashes much of the time.

What surprised me (and not unpleasantly) was the uncompromising avant-shred ambiance of the recording. There are moments that sound like an extension of the more outside moments on the early Hendrix albums, only Matta Gawa develop their feedback and high intensity line-chord assaults in ways that (pardon the unintentional pun) sustain interest in the longer-form expositions and give musical utterance to a wider melodic-sound color palette.

It's full-steam ahead all the way, a flat-out blast off into the spacier realms of aggressive psychedelics. Now I happen to like that approach (as I do many others as well) and I must say this scores quite high on the freak-out meter. If you appreciate Sonny Sharrock at his more extreme and have a soft spot in your heart for the spacey jams that were sometimes a part of the Dead's stage show (especially in the early incarnations) this will certainly appeal to you.

Matta Gawa go their own way with the subgenre and they do it very well. Ricart and Lohman score a weirdo coup here. Listen and get zoned with these sounds. Encore!

Radio Massacre International: Space Rock & Soundscapes

There are musicians and bands that I don't get the chance to hear until someone is kind enough to send me one of their recordings. Such was the case with Radio Massacre International, a guitar-bass-drums-electronics unit that has a new 2-CD release, Time & Motion (Cuneiform). In many cases, such as this one, I am grateful for having the chance to be exposed to what they are doing. This is an aurally advanced unit that alternates between beatless and highly evocative electronic soundscapes and a sort of space rock jamming that is equally evocative.

The two-disk format gives the group plenty of room to stretch out and they do that exceedingly well. It enables them to wind out long tapestries of sound that end only when the statement they are trying to make has been fully articulated.

I like the band in the forward moving, pulsating mode but the entire presentation is about loosening the bonds to timefullness and then framing that with its grooved opposite. All three musicians play thoughtfully. They do not overplay but trust in their mutual musical objectives and the evocation at hand. The result is not a "wow, these guys have super chops," but instead, "hey, what interesting music they make!"

Guitarist Gary Houghton really gets off some nice sound sculpture sorts of solos. At times the band forms the current equivalent of middle-period Pink Floyd in the jamming, instrumental mode. Not in terms of a direct influence but rather in their epic approach to narrative space rocking.

It's not the sort of music you should be in a rush to grasp. They take their time and you must surrender to their presence to get on their wave length. Once you do that you are in for some very interesting and exhilarating sounds.

Based on this recording I would put Radio Massacre International in the top handful of current bands playing in this mode. In their own way, they belong up there with groups like Ozric Tentacles, and Robert Fripp and some of the offshoot Crimson related units, to mention only a few.

Good show!

ArpLine Self-Releases "Travel Book"

With artists taking on (often initially) the promotion and distribution of their releases over the net, listeners get the chance to hear good music that might not otherwise get a start in the whirlwind of today's information overload. That is certainly the case with the band ArpLine and their album Travel Book (No Label).

You can log onto their site www.arpline.com and "pay whatever you want" for this music. There are some bands out there where this strategy would be no help, since after all mediocre music whether $1 or $100 isn't worth anyone's trouble. That's not true with Travel Book. It's a memorable collation of good melodies and singing with interesting and unusual musical tracks. There's a modern industrial aspect to it, as there is an update on psychedelic sounds. But those are only labels. Listen to the pulsating motor machine underpinning on "Fold Up Like A Piece of Paper" and its contrasting vocal line and you may well become an ArpLine believer. The album is filled with such interesting goodies. They take chances to get a sound that stands out over the many others out there. Sam Tyndall writes the songs and sings the lead vocals. He also shares the programming of altered and electronic sounds with drummer Michael Chap Resnick. It's the overall matrix of tones and colors that most impresses me.

ArpLine deserves your support. Download this album and you'll find an original take on what can be done these days, well put-together.