I Know You Well Miss Clara, Chapter One

What's in a name? The band name I Know You Well Miss Clara must have meaning to the band members. And possibly Miss Clara. But in the end a name is a name and what counts is the music. In the case of I Know You Well Miss Clara and their inaugural Chapter One (MoonJune 057), the music says it all. This is a crack fusion-prog outfit out of Indonesia. It's a quartet with Reza Ryan wizardizing the guitar, Adi Wijaya on keys, Enriko Gultom on bass, and Alfiah Akbar on drums.

The songs, instrumental in form, written by Ryan with a few co-written with Wijaya and one by all the above and Gultom, have tensile strength and plenty of substance and power. They are not at all in a fusion cliche mode, which is a delight.

There are plenty of exploratory moments where keys, bass and guitar set up interesting moods. And then there are the sections when the band cranks it. Reza Ryan is a heck of a guitarist and he has technique in abundance but also his own ideas about line-weaving. So he stands out. But the whole band, here with their first album, has a pretty fully formed identity already too. And I suppose part of that is the rich musical culture of Indonesia but mostly I think it's because they've found a way and a direction of their own.

Listening to this album, given all the above, is a total gas! This is very together music. Do not pass this one by if you want to hear something new that both thinks and rocks!

Dump, I Can Hear Music, Reissue

Dump is the alter-ego solo identity of James McNew of Yo La Tengo. His first album, from 1993, is a very long set of indie punkster-prankster DIY covers, originals and general mayhem. It has been reissued recently as a deluxe two-CD or three-LP set on Morr Music (MORR 114). I Can Hear Music strikes a kind of nerve with totally unpretentious festerings, psych garage to simple guitar and vocal posturings. And everything goes here, which you can grab only if you listen to the whole set a few times.

Who would expect Johnny Cash, old pop-rock cronie singles, and some catchy alt things to mesh together in ways that extend into what now is a many-years-later future and still sound authentic? It's not that such things are a big surprise, it IS what some music should be able to do. It does it not via extraordinary musicianship or vocal prowess. It does so by honestly making garage communications out of it all.

I am digging this. Almost in spite of my current oh-so-knowing and oh-so-showing self!

Marc Edwards & Slipstream Time Travel, Planet X Just Blew Up!

Today, as promised a few days ago, we take a look at the second part of Marc Edwards's virtual double-album release. This one is with his Slipstream Time Travel ensemble, a slightly larger group than the three guitars and drums quartet Sonos Gravis, the ensemble responsible for the other part of this double-dip into a cosmic ice cream multi-electric flavoring. This second foray is humorously titled Planet X Just Blew Up! (APCD-R4A/Dog and Panda 7).

For this outing we once again have Ernest Anderson III and Takuma Kanaiwa on very electric guitars, joined this time by Tor Snyder. Then there is Gene Janas on bass and Lawry Zilmrah on "bicycle wheel electronics." Of course Marc is on drums throughout and wrote the compositions that launch the band into space.

The guitars and bass open the set with an atmospheric, expanded free-flowing electricity on "Dark Space." All hell, so to speak, breaks loose on the title cut, with Marc charging forward with hugely kinetic energetic barrages, the full band giving you psychedelic free jazz-rock density and intensity. The guitars get a furious head of steam that Marc pushes forward with an insistence that especially works with his all-over sense of sound and full-out virtuosity. This is psycho-bashing at its finest.

For the finale we have "Suspended Animation," a Latin-Afro-out groove that hits on all cylinders with rhythmic heat and some very fine guitar work.

Marc has been experimenting for a number of years around the city in an electric free rock context. It all comes to an exhilarating, bracing fruition on these two new albums. If you had to choose, Planet X is probably the one to get. But why choose? They are both parts of a whole and make sense against each other. So grab them both for the maximum impact. Heavy business!

Tony Adamo, Miles of Blu

Tony Adamo is all about THE FUNK. The Funk in the widest sense, from the Miles of "Walkin'" to Horace Silver, Jimmie Smith and the B-3 tradition and on to James Brown, Tower of Power, Parliament, and all of that a springboard for what goes on in the album Miles of Blu (Random Act 1012).

Start with drummer Mike Clark, rhythmical pivot point of Herbie Hancock's Headhunters band in their classic incarnation. He is still going strong. He produces the album, plays the drums on it, and presumably has much to do with assembling the excellent funk band that underpins and hips up the whole recording. They are on it! On it with some great horn riffs, hip guitar, grits and gravy B-3 and Mike laying it down.

And on top of it all is Tony Adamo, who has soul and lets it loose. He has his own brand of rap that channels the beat poets, so we get a series of word-poems that extols funk, sets the street vibe hipster thing winding out. He does a bit of singing in the blue-eyed soul mode in between recited-rapped lines, too. James Brown he isn't but he is nakedly himself here, and I appreciate the sincerity there. When it works, it works. And the band carries it throughout. Hey, and my wife digs it, which means something to me, because she has "people's ears," maybe more so than I do.

Tony has the right vision and gives it to us. Is this the greatest thing I've ever heard in the funk zone? No. But the hipness of the full band and Tony's exuberant hipster vibe give you something that makes you smile and tap your foot. Tappin' hard, brothers and sisters!

Trance Lucid, Palace of Ether

Trance Lucid plays a lively rocking trio music on their Palace of Ether (AM 01313). Dave Halverson has much to do with the outcome, coming through with some very hip rock guitar and writing the music, doubling on bass and synthesizers; Terry Lee plays some respectably rocking drums; Richard Bugbee mans the keyboards in an appropriate way.

It's fusionoid without settling squarely into what one expects from that style these days. It's jazz-rock without landing hard and consistently on a head-solos-head format.

What drives all this is some nice compositional, chordal, rifforal catchiness. Dave can rip out with a very decent, tasteful rock solo per se and he does in the midst of all this, but it's the musical guitar-compositional sequences and their variations that get your attention and stay in the memory. And all three play the right things to go with that.

Call it what you like, instrumentally progressive rock, whatever. It just lays down nicely and puts a good imprint on your listening mind.

Yeah, now that's good to hear!

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!