1. Gene Clark – No Other LP (4AD)




So I know it feels all kinds of wrong to accord the 1 spot on this list to a hoary old canonical classic which by my reckoning has been widely and affordably available for years, but – this is Gene Clark’s ‘No Other’, fergodsake. They could re-issue the damned thing every other week so far as I’m concerned, and if a few more sorry souls tune in each time around, none of the plastic n’ cardboard will have gone to waste.

Readers who remain unfamiliar with this one will just have to believe me when I try to reassure them that, in this instance, the Mojo writers got it right. If you’ve ever found yourself enticed by Gram Parsons’ promise of Cosmic American Music but disappointed by the fact that his stuff (good tho it is) basically sounds like straight up country… I believe this may have been the record you were actually looking for.

There has been an unedifying trend in the early 21st century for every solo artist or indie band who made a few quid to immediately hue toward The Epic, recording precious and bombastic personal song-cycles in readiness for the end-of-year lists and the invitation to recreate them at the Albert Hall with a twenty-piece band and so on. Naturally, these records have almost always been godawful, forgettable guff, but their sickly memory can be instantly eradicated by dropping the needle on ‘No Other’ and hearing Gene Clark, one day in the mid-70s, rousing himself from a sundazed stupor of substance abuse and chronic self-sabotage, making a few phonecalls, booking some studio time, and proceeding to swim fucking laps around the rim of the cloud-capped musical grail which has so consistently eluded the well-scrubbed contenders of our own era.

Naturally I didn’t shell out the £100+ required for the big, box set version of this reissue with sleeve notes and documentaries and so forth (what do you think I am, someone’s dad or something?), so I remain ignorant of ‘No Other’s exact production circumstances, but basically it sounds as if Gene and credited producer Thomas Jefferson Kaye assembled a small army of the most gifted, consummate session players the world had to offer and drilled them until they were all playing exactly what they needed to play at any given moment across these eight colossally poignant, multi-faceted compositions.

Within these songs, gravelly nuggets of mordant, hard-won wisdom casually arise, delivered to us upon tendrils of tangled and baroque poetic sprawl, fragmentary images glimmering, withering and reviving once more upon each repeat play as the guitars and harpsichords fray and yearn, the backing singers swoon and the funk-savvy rhythm section kicks in like a double-shot of espresso. Gene’s voice itself meanwhile sounds like some distraught cowboy spirit guide, intercepted through those Webb/Campbell wires as he unfurls his scrolls of revelation and gives ol’ Percy Shelley a run for his money.

To my amateur ears, the new remaster of the album sounds a bit quieter than my old CD rip, with greater dynamic range seeming to give instrumental line more space once the volume is suitably adjusted, and dropping the compression which used to render the album’s relentless cosmic bombast rather tiring when played through in its entirety. A definite improvement, if I’m any judge.

Taken individually, each song on ‘No Other’ basically sounds like the kind of staggering masterpiece most artists could spend their entire career working up to. Together, they form like Voltron to make an uber-masterpiece of fearsome majesty, solid and palpable enough to eat up all this damn hyperbole and come back for more; one of those cultural artifacts which it is pretty much impossible to rate too highly.


2. David Behrman – On The Other Ocean LP  
(Lovely Music)





From February:

“Regardless of the processes that brought these recordings about, the results are serene, oceanic and absolutely delightful, veering away from academic, pure tone minimalism toward what I suppose may have been seen as the more cerebral end of the ‘new age’ spectrum. Drawing on my own listening experience, they certainly put me in mind of Emerald Web’s Silicon Valley laser show conjurations, Arthur Russell’s neo-classical ‘First Thought, Best Thought’ recordings, and some sort of perfect, shimmering dream of driving down through the hills to San Francisco harbour in a silent, pastel-coloured Cadillac powered by sunbeams. Rare and mirage-like 20th Century American Utopian vibes can be found here in abundance – an impossibly precious dream of compassionate, technologically-mediated progress, shining forever on black wax.”

(I’ve also subsequently been very much enjoying David Behrman’s Music With Memory album, recorded in collaboration with violinist Takehisa Kosugi and saxophonist Werner Durand, and reissued on the Alga Marghen label in 2017 – highly recommended.)


3. John Coltrane – Blue World LP  
(Impulse!/UMG)





So, yeah, I know the recent trend in “new, unheard album from legendary, god-like artist” releases has the potential to become teeth-grindingly tedious pretty quickly now that the major labels seem to have cottoned on to it as a good earner, and I’d demurred on these ‘new’ Coltrane albums in particular, on the basis that there are still a fair few old Coltrane albums I need to catch up with, but…. I happened to hear the take on ‘Blue World’ that gives this collection it’s name on the radio one day, and that was that - Universal Music Group got my dough (filtered through a friendly, independant local record shop, of course).

The sole ‘new’ composition uncovered on this session of alternate takes recorded by the classic Tyner/Garrison/Jones quartet in 1964 for use on the soundtrack to an otherwise obscure French-Canadian film (Gilles Groulx’s ‘Le Chat dans le Sac’), ‘Blue World’ itself is, indisputably, a keeper – a proto-cosmic nugget of blissed out grace, with Garrison’s lolloping, head-noddin’ bass line – initially doubled by Tyner on piano, before he begins twisting the groove in some characteristically interesting directions - pre-empting not only the rhythmic backbone of ‘A Love Supreme’ (recorded a few months later), but even Cecil McBee’s work on Alice’s psychedelic masterpiece ‘Journey in Satchidinanda’.

Elsewhere, quartet remain in a mellow, reflective kinda mood (presumably in keeping with the feel requested by director Groulx). The exquisitely tender ‘Naima’ has always been one of my favourite Coltrane numbers, so it’s great to be able to take in two alternate versions of it here (the second one particularly superb, with Trane throwing a few scale-shifting question marks into the central melody), and three takes of ‘Village Blues’ – originally from the 1961 ‘Coltrane Jazz’ album – are not to be sniffed at either, with the final one briefly evolving into a slightly more aggressive, though still light touch, modal work-out, Jones’ strident crash cymbal leading the way. Beginning with lengthy solos spots from both Garrison and Tyner before the boss eventually steps in to breath fire, the take on ‘Traneing In’ on side two stays pretty trad, dad, but is still totally sweet too.

As you’ll no doubt be aware, hearing these four guys playing together is basically the musical equivalent of watching the sun and moon rise simultaneously, so getting a bit more of it in ANY context is to be welcomed, irrespective of major label vinyl revival machinations, and these recordings do have a unique vibe to them that makes this album an invaluable addition to the Trane catalogue – a kind of low key, beautific kick-about, setting the scene and sing-posting new directions, before the boys began striding forward in earnest, cracking the next few big eggs of their leader’s hallowed discography.


4. Masayuki Takayanagi New Direction Unit – April is the Cruellest Month LP (Blank Forms)





I’d long been aware of this one’s status as a storied landmark of Japanese guitar extremity, but Blank Forms’ 2019 reissue has definitely helped me achieve a new appreciation for the album, having previously only experienced it through some extremely low-res mp3s downloaded from god-knows-where.

The two cuts on side A keep it low key, axe-wise, with Takayanagi’s growly wah-wah scrapes looming in the background like some nocturnal hunting beast as the rest of the group (flautist/woodwind guy Kengi Mori, bassist/cellist Nobuyoshi Ino and percussionist Hiroshi Yamazaki) instead come to the fore, building a mordant, rain-soaked sprawl of kaidan-ish avant gloom and “bad night in the saw mill” free improv. But, it’s for the side long ‘My Friend, Blood Shaking My Heart’ on the flip that this disc will really be remembered.

Therein, we hear one of the world’s most uncompromising guitarists going absolutely fucking postal across twenty plus minutes of howling, unrelenting chaos, pushing the physical limitations of flesh on strings on wood about as far as they’ll go before reaching a state of complete collapse.

It’s breath-taking, overwhelming stuff – Too Much on every level, as Takayanagi’s frothing, unhinged attack often makes it sound as he’s consumed the then non-existent rulebook for grind/death metal soloing and vomited that weak-ass shit back into the black heart of his own personal fury, whilst his equally hyped up collaborators follow suit, with Mori in particular going absolutely bat-shit on alto sax. (Even sounds as if someone’s twisting knobs on a analogue synth across the last five minutes or so – what gives?)

Somehow though, spread out across the track’s extended duration, this full bore, constantly climaxing sonic violence actually becomes a strangely meditative, cleansing experience – like sitting impassively at the calm centre of a city-totalling hurricane. It also, you’ll note, sounds almost exactly like Guttersnipe – no small boast for what is ostensibly a straight-to-tape 1975 jazz session, given the extended chains of magic, flashing LED covered boxes that band use to realise their sound.

5. Berto Pisano - Death Smiles on a Murderer OST 2xLP 
(Arrow)





‘Death Smiles on a Murderer’ is a quintessentially narcotic and incoherent Italian horror film from 1973 (I reviewed it here at my Other Place if anyone’s interested), but composer Berto Pisano arguably went above and beyond the call of duty when it came to composing the movie’s main theme – an epic, baroque fantasia which and which sounds like the accompaniment to a ballerina suffering from tuberculosis expiring during her final dance and witnessing the dust of her bones reforming itself into the shape of a gliding, celestial swan.

This remarkable melody – channelled in some instances through the inimitable vocal cords of Edda Dell’Orso - tunnels its way into the viewer’s brain across the course of the film like a flower-bearing, funereally-garbed earworm, and indeed, Arrow’s double LP soundtrack release features what feels like about a thousand variations on it, all equally wonderful.

Pisano continues to deliver elsewhere across these four sides of morbid delirium however, providing sinister stabs of exquisite fuzz guitar, abstract, percussion-led creep-outs, limpid orchestral atmospherics and even some ‘On The Corner’-style FX-filtered trumpet jams. Just about everything you could wish for in one of these things in other words – highly recommend for those who are in the mood (or wish to be).

Of course, there are inevitably also several clod-hopping, buzz-killing jaunty harpsichord waltz numbers provided to accompany the film’s ballroom scenes – very much the gothic horror equivalent of those god-awful ‘saloon piano’ tracks that tend to stink up Spaghetti Western soundtracks, guaranteed to send me leaping toward the turntable as if intercepting a thrown hand grenade… but that’s all part of the fun really, isn’t it?

Labels: Berto Pisano, best of 2019, comps & reissues, David Behrman, Gene Clark, John Coltrane, Masayuki Takayanagi New Direction Unit