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Album Reviews
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(166 reviews)
Date: 1977
Release: Captain Oi! #129
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London, 1977. Its year zero of the revolution, hippy-love is out, teenage angst in. A new breed of bands are smashing it up, blasting out a mean racket known as punk rock. Its a violent break from the past—as the kids gets busy kicking in the door, hoping that the whole rotting Establishment comes tumbling down. The Sex Pistols are banned from the radio, and that’s exactly the point. Throwing a brick never felt so damn good.
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Date: 1970
Release: IMPULSE #265
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A passionate recording from the greatest disciple of John Coltrane. The two side-long performances of “Summun, Bukmun, Umyon” and “Let Us Go Into The House Of The Lord” stetch and flow forward in spirited abandon. Pharoah’s passion is sustained and heightened by supportive rhythm section comprised of pianist Lonnie Liston Smith, bassist Cecil McBee, drummer Clifford Jarvis, and two percussionists. Sticking strictly to the soprano sax, Pharoah shows little of the cacaphonous ferocity for which he is so well known. Instead, he builds majestically on an intensely hypnotic rhythm that throbs with a strong African vibe. The vastly underrated Woody Shaw adds his shimmering trumpet to this potent mixture. Deaf Dumb Blind brimms with creative energy and drive, and thus makes it the best place to begin for those unacquainted with this living legend of the saxophone.
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Date: 1972
Release: Impulse #9233 (lp)
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Living up to the promise of its title, Pharoah Sanders‘ Wisdom Through Music delivers just that. Although he made a name for himself as a fiercely expressionistic, almost anarchic tenor saxophonist in John Coltrane’s later bands, the music on this album is guided by gentler passions. More reflective of Pharoah’s Eastern-looking musical collaborations with Coltrane’s widow, Alice, Wisdom Through Music manages to soothe the soul without sacrificing any of the intensity that defined his earlier work as Trane’s apprentice. Much like his previous Impulse! LP, Black Unity, this 1972 offering finds Sanders and his group weaving together cosmic musical mood collages in front of which the occasional solo peaks out. What makes this record so unique is the strong emphasis on song over solo.
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Date: 1971
Release: FLYING DUTCHMAN
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When Richard Nixon became president in 1968, the country was ripping itself apart culturally, politically, racially, generationally. Every aspect of American society was under transformation; the rules and relationships were being rewritten. So with the nation in chaos, Nixon turned his attention abroad and left domestic issues to his administration. Seeking to disempower and discredit the two most politically active, outspoken groups of Americans – blacks and young people – Nixon’s ambitious aides stepped up the criminalization of drugs, turning the law and its enforcers violently against the winds of change. There was one drug, however, that escaped attack: television, opiate of the masses. As the Sixties became the Seventies, the hippie flower wilted, and poverty, racism, violence, and drug addiction were institutionalized, millions of Americans plugged into the alpha beam of primetime TV and drifted off, high as a lost balloon, untethered from reality.
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Date: March 23, 1999
Release: Motel Records #3
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Bombay the Hard Way plays like the soundtrack to some imaginary 1970s B-films with names like Shaft’s Bad-Ass Pilgrimage To India or Ganges Ghetto Payback. Featuring the music of Indian composers (and brothers) Anandji and Kalyanji Shah, who wrote and produced soundtracks for the so-called “Brownsploitation” films made in India’s “Bollywood” during the 60s and 70s, this saffron-funk project is the brain-child of Dan “The Automator” Nakamura, Bay Area producer / remixer of Dr. Octagon fame, with additional beats provided by the immensely talented DJ Shadow. The end product is a potent cross-pollination of Secret-Agent-Man guitar themes, Blaxploitation grooves, jazzy horn and flute riffs, hip-hop beats and loops, and traditional Indian instrumentation.
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Date: 1968 (original release)
Release: Columbia #CK-9296
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East 6th Street in New York City is one of the stranger places in the city. There are about 15 Indian restaurants on one block. Barkers stand out front of the restaurants announcing that their restaurant is the best. The food at all of these restaurants is alarmingly similar; the joke goes that there is really only one kitchen in the back, spanning the length of the street. We usually go to a place called Panna II, which is unrelentingly garish: chili pepper Christmas lights hang from the ceiling in the hundreds so you have to bend down to walk. They play what is called “modern Indian music,” which sounds like old Indian music with a backbeat and electric guitars. It’s a music as garish as the decor. And if I haven’t listened in a while, it always sends me running back to Ravi Shankar.
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Date: 2001
Release: FatCat #A1-2
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Life is a journey. Sigur Ros’ second album, Agaetis Byrjun (“Good Start”), provides the mystical soundtrack for that journey. Having heard about the album but at the time unreleased in the United States, I found Agaetis Byrjun in Edinburgh at the Scottish independent music store, Fopp. The search for the album was well worth the effort. The experience the album provides is complete, whether observed in an ancient cathedral, coaxed as a lullaby, or played on a train ride across the Scottish plains. The sound defies simple classification. Neither rock nor pop, Agaetis Byrjun creates sensation and longing without the usual tools of universal lyrics and chords. The music flows over and around the body, as if simultaneously lifting and pressing its vibrations against the skin. With its Icelandic lyrics (and no current translations) and invented words, Agaetis Byrjun directs the mind into the mind’s own interpretation and emotions, not dictating, but gently guiding with powerful vocals and sounds. The music envelopes. The eerie, unintelligible words may lack in concrete definitions, yet they surge with meaning.
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Date: April 16, 1965 & February 1966
Release: 32 JAZZ #32005
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Rare and essential live recordings that capture the great Horace Silver Quintet in action at New York City’s Half-Note. Always a force to be reckoned with, Silver’s mid-60s band was consistently adventurous, original, and funky, anchored in the steady rhythms of bassist Larry Ridley and drummer Roger Humphries, and steeped in the passion of Joe Henderson’s tenor sax. In many ways, these recordings are defined by Henderson’s inspired playing, as Joe gets many chances to step out, drenching each track with his unique and masterful sound. Henderson and Silver both stretch exuberantly on the band’s signature hit, "Song For My Father," which actually surpasses the studio version in sheer excitement.
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Date: January 16, 1956
Release: Capitol #96226
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A young man growing up in the 1980s on Long Island in a middle-class Jewish family that ignored the wide world of jazz did not often run into Frank Sinatra. If he did encounter him, it was usually in the form of Joe Piscopo (who?) doing an impression on Saturday Night Live of an old, scotch-swilling, mobbed-up tough-guy. Or this particular Long Island boy would hear the song “New York, New York” overplayed, especially at the end of winning Yankee games, which was not a good association, since this Long Island boy hates the Yankees. For the remainder of the ‘80s and into the early ‘90s, Sinatra’s image didn’t improve. He just got older. The media mercilessly showed us sad images of a man past his prime, entrenched in a tired Vegas act, doobie-doobie-dooing his way through lyrics he had sung thousands of times and yet somehow couldn’t remember.
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Date: 1973 (recorded)
Release: Aztec Music #AZTCD1001
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“Now if you check my pulse it beats Skull Snaps.”
—Beastie Boys, “Unite”
Skull Snaps is a legendary funk album that has long been shrouded in obscurity. The band recorded their self-titled debut and a handful of singles in 1973, then vanished without a trace. In recent years, their vinyl has become ubiquitously sampled and highly collectible. The monstrous break that opens up their classic cut, “It’s A New Day,” furnished the beat for countless hip-hop hits of the mid-‘90s. But despite all their widespread influence, there’s been almost no information available anywhere on the Skull Snaps. “It’s become a very mystique thing about us,“ says bassist and singer Samm Culley. “I think everybody who stole our music must have thought that we fell off the face of the earth because they didn’t hear anything from us at all. But we’re here, and ready to be heard.”
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