MUSIC REVIEWS
Kronos Quartet - Short Stories
Plain Old Joe - The Jazz Passengers
Grotus - Slow Motion Apocalypse
Shoukichi Kina & Champloose -
Elektra/Nonesuch
Access Code: 1208
A fine mesh of brains and guts, Short Stories is an eclectic roller-coaster ride through 20th-century music. Cowell's "Quartet Euphometric" is the classic "repertoire" example, with the cartoony spasms of John Zorn's "Cat O' Nine Tails" and the marvelous roar of John Oswald's "Spectre" pushing the strings envelope ever further. Put on Steven Mackey's guitar-fuelled "Physical Property" early (maybe after Willie Dixon's "Spoonful"), axe the well-meaning but laborious "Soliloquy," and finish venerably with Pandit Pran Nath's "It Is My Turn, Oh Lord."
Rastascan
Access Code: 1206
A turbid dive into new music, this release packs everything from free-form, jazz-like scraw to variations in composition structure and situation, to solo exploration. Works of Henry Kaiser, the Splatter Trio, and the Molecules mesh with those of lesser-known folk in various musical genres. Scot Gresham-Lancaster's "(Raw) Machine with Meat" is a collage of creative editing, resulting in a collision of technology and acoustics. Doug Haire's "Sonic Desert" is a journalesque layer cake of improv, car horns, and field recordings. And Tom Djll's "Dream Band" is a plunderphonic jazz-metal stomp; snipped bits of other musics ciphered into viscera. Essential.
Knitting Factory Works
Access Code: 1204
The Passengers do levity. Comprised of several of the former Lounge Lizards, Plain Old Joe is the musical equivalent of your crazy retired uncle in the 'burbs: As evidence, leader Curtis Fowlkes reels a Ken Nordine-like child-hood story of the local bully who ate Kraft singles on his front porch on the track titled "20792 Peace Talk and Reception." Imagine Philip Glass, Stephan Grapelli, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, and a hot klezmer band stranded together on an orbiting satellite for a year. If you can do that, you're ready to listen to this.
Alternative Tentacles Records
Access Code: 1201
Too heavy for any elevator, Grotus uses two basses, crushing guitar, live drums, and layered samples to create a sound as subtle as colliding trains. Bytes of beauty and humor lie amid Apocalypse's carnage, however - Hindu chants, television-commercial strings-of-pearls, lines of poetic lyric. Though Grotus screams in the dying planet's face, calling them green is too simple: think Mother Earth in steel-toed boots, ready to kick ass. Actually, they're more like Sumo wrestlers - huge, frighteningly likeable, good to know when things get rough.
Vernon Yard Recordings
Access Code: 1205
The mystical muse of this British quartet delivers the images this title conjures; swirling mists of sound transport you to a reverie filled with glittering, twisting clouds and pools of liquid gold. Without the drugs. Verve's second US title is edgey, reflective, suffused with light. It is a musical experience not overly crafted, with just enough distorted guitar, and even gentle turns of flute, sax and synthesizer. There is no "getting used to" this album; read the title and buy the disc - it will take you over immediately, completely, and willingly.
Seeland Records
Access Code: 1203
Negativland is a sample band with a mission: Grab fragments of the mass media to highlight what a perverted culture we swim in. After being saddled with years of lawsuits for releasing a single that made wicked fun of U2, they're back with a scathing indictment of everything that makes America, er, "great": gun worship, religious intolerance, bad ads - the whole nine mass-culture yards. It's not too preachy -the samples do the talking instead of the band. The samples are woven into a song structure that's fun to listen to. Here are some guys with strong political beliefs who aren't afraid to voice them.
Music Power From Okinawa Globestyle
Access Code: 1207
The American occupation of Okinawa ended only twenty years ago, so rock and country have had a big influence on local musicians. Kina plays an electric shamisen (banjo-lute) and calls his band Champloose (gumbo) because he mixes rock, reggae, katcharsee (a popular Okinawan rhythm), and rock-guitar licks played on the shamisen. This live gig from 1977 features many of Kina's early hits, including "Haisai Ojisan," a surprise success in Japan. David Byrne's Luaka Bop logo will release a 1980 Cooder- Kina collaboration soon.
Restless
Access Code: 1202
They've had several respectable hits on Euro dance charts, but these San Fran ravers are one of the city's best-kept secrets. Hans Schiller and Peter Ziegelmeier don't build their tunes on sampling, but once they've come up with a killer rhythm track, they play a sinister game of cut and paste, borrowing from C&W records, obscure B-movies, and altered musical quotes from anything you may have heard in the past 30 years. The voices of Patsy Cline, David Bowie, and Joan Crawford swim through a rich soup of hard-core electronic noise that'll stimulate your engrams as well as your feets.
