Following up on my hopelessly naive post from earlier this week, you’ll probably already be aware that Bandcamp have announced that they will be waiving their revenue share on all sales made this Friday, allowing all revenue to go straight to the artists and/or labels.

Now, Bandcamp ain’t perfect (I know some people have issues), but it’s probably about as ethical a way to buy/enjoy music as exists when face-to-face interaction is no longer an option, especially during the window when they’re kindly not grabbing their own cut off the top, and if there is one rallying cry that can surely unite us in these dark, working-from-homey times, it’s “fuck Spotify”, right?

As such then, here is a swift list of a few things new and (slightly) old I will buying on Friday.

Mako Sita / Hamid Drake – Ronda



I just today discovered this 2018 collaboration between ubiquitous avant-jazz luminary Hamid Drake and “Chicago’s premier free-rock trio” Mako Sita (whom I confess have passed me by until now), and my freaking god, it’s exquisite. Sounds like Ennio Morricone, Charles Mingus and Alessandro Alessandroni recording a soundtrack to a moody, post-apocalyptic spy thriller set in the Near East. Kind of fits the current mood quite nicely, if you want to go there. Partially recorded at Electrical Audio (tho not with Albini), the sheer SOUND of this thing is incredible…. just a hugely evocative mess of all-points brilliance. [The same line-up of players have a follow up album currently on pre-order from the Astral Spirits label, and the sample track is equally inspired.]

Slum of Legs – s/t LP



Slight cheat here, because technically I already own this, but I was incredibly happy to discover earlier this month that Slum of Legs, one of the most exciting, idiosyncratic and imaginative bands to have emerged from the UK DIY milieu in recent memory, have returned from a five year hiatus with their first full length LP, and that furthermore it’s pretty brilliant, mixing wildly exuberant renditions of all the great songs I remember them playing back in the day with a bunch of equally inspired new material.

Very much deserving of a full write-up at some point in the future, but for the moment, let’s just say that the six members of Slum of Legs still sound like an unruly gaggle of entirely disparate, equally strong voices, all pulling in different directions whilst still somehow coalescing into some unholy, unified whole that’s almost, well, pop, Jim, but not as we know it. I hate reviews that end with “For Fans of…” lists with a passion, but if you can find me another band somewhere in the world whose hypothetical list might include The Mekons, Broadcast, The Raincoats, Marianne Faithful, Rudimentary Peni and Fad Gadget, I’d probably really like to hear them. Thanks in advance.

Tamikrest – Chatma



Playing some of the best Tuareg rock (can’t quite ring myself to call it ‘desert blues’) I'ver heard this side of the mighty Tinariwen, Tamikrest have been about for at least a decade, but they’re a new discovery to me. They too have a new record on pre-order this month, but further investigation soon led me back to this 2013 release, which rules pretty mightily. The band’s line-up seems to have undergone a fair few changes over the years, but this earlier release is definitely enhanced by the presence of female vocalist Wonou Walet Sidati, whose declamatory, pop-savvy style and defiant presence in the midst of what is still very much a male-dominated sphere adds a real fire to these fret-blazin’, hand-clapping songs of displacement, defiance, struggle and survival.

As ever, bands from this scene/genre represent a strange paradox, in that they are professional touring outfits who enjoy a higher profile, bigger bookings etc than most of the other contemporary groups I’m liable to cover on a blog like this, but at the same time it’s a fair bet that, as members of an embattled and disenfranchised itinerant culture without a homeland to call their own, they still really, really need your effing money right now, more so than, say, some guy in Leeds or Chicago with a day job in IT. Not that that really matters one way or another in view of the fact that their music rocks like an absolute bastard and is assured worth a few dollars of anyone’s pay cheque purely on its own merits, but y’know what I mean.

Headroom – Head in the Clouds



2017 debut LP of fog-shrouded, heavy-lidded fuzz-psych bliss-out from Kryssi Battalene & friends over in New Haven, CT, previously discussed in these pages on several occasions. Nuff said, I should hope.

Bridget Hayden - Pure Touch Only From Now On, They Said So: Outtakes



A late addition to the line-up, Bridget Hayden – who I was looking forwarding to seeing live last week, pre-cancellation – has just uploaded a set of ‘outtakes’ from her exceptionally affecting ‘Pure Touch Only..’ album from 2018 [also available here]. Forlorn, elegiac and beautiful in the sense that that vision of hell at the end of ‘The Beyond’ is beautiful, her quasi-abstract, elemental shut-in blues should provide some appropriately uneasy catharsis for our grim, collective-yet-isolated current predicament.

The Bevis Frond – various records





Meanwhile, I will also be buying some digital albums from The Bevis Frond, because I like The Bevis Frond at the moment. Listening to them makes me feel comfortable and happy, and he/they have more-or-less an entire lifetime’s worth of music up on bandcamp, so this is a good opportunity to fill some of the gaps in my collection. Frankly, if Nick Saloman were to knock on my door and ask for twenty quid, I’d be happy to oblige, so getting about six hours of music into the bargain seems like a good deal all round.

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Away from Bandcamp meanwhile, let it simply be said that if London’s best venue Café Oto closes as a result of all this kerfuffle, I for one will be pissed. Their in-house Otoroku label has a huge archive of releases & live recordings available for download – and they also offer a range of downloads in collaboration with the aforementioned & generally great Astral Spirts label - so please, fill yr boots and empty yr virtual wallets upon their counter.

(Regarding other ‘best venue’ contenders meanwhile, DIY Space For London can always be donated to here; I’m not sure if there’s any remote way to support New River Studios or Pulse Studios in Walthamstow during their inevitable periods of closure, but if you know better please let me know.)

Labels: appeals, Bridget Hayden, disasters & emergencies, Headroom, Mako Sita / Hamid Drake, Slum of Legs, Tamikrest, The Bevis Frond

Given that every single music event or film screening I had pencilled in in my diary for the next few months is now officially cancelled or postponed, it’s difficult to imagine that much of the always precarious world of DIY / non-state sponsored culture will even still exist when we emerge from the other end of this damned thing.

Thus – an idea. A very obvious one, admittedly, so apologies if I’m just reiterating something everyone’s already been talking about elsewhere, but I don’t do social media, so I’ll just throw it out there.

1. If you’re lucky enough to be a music-making person whose work at least some other people know about and like, now is very much the time for home recording. Dust off that long-neglected solo project, play gargantuan improv jams with your co-habitants, wood-shed new songs – whatever.

2. When you’ve made something, put it online to download, for some money. This money should then be donated in its entirety to your nearest decent music venue / community space / pub / rehearsal space / etc, because god knows, those guys are going to need it.

And, that’s it. Creative, fun, can stave off cabin fever and could be genuinely helpful re: ensuring a future in which we can still get together to listen to horrible loud music and drink beer, if enough people were to get going on it.

(And needless to say, if you’re in an existing band/music entity that already sells stuff online, please consider donating proceeds from that too, assuming you don’t desperately need it to recover manufacturing costs and/or pay rent.)

I realise that posting stuff on ye olde weblogs isn’t exactly an A+ way of getting an idea out there in 2020, but if yr reading and you like this idea, please do pass it on via less luddite-ish means.

Labels: bad news, disasters & emergencies, ideas

We interrupt these Frist Quarter Report posts for a few words on pianist McCoy Tyner, whose death was announced earlier this week.

I’m poorly placed to undertake an obit for Tyner, in that his entire (vast) catalogue as a band leader / solo artist remains a blind spot for me, and I know next to nothing of his life and times, personality or beliefs. But, I’ve been on a big John Coltrane kick over the past year or so, and during that time, it’s been McCoy’s contributions to his work through the first half of the ‘60s which have most consistently knocked me out.

Time after time, recordings begin with Trane laying down the law, as is only right and proper, but after that first solo / chorus part / whatever, it’s Tyner’s coveted 2nd solo spot that can really spin yr head around, whether digging baroque new variations out of the architecture of some standard or show tune in the earlier years of their collaboration, or riding serene and siren-like across the broiling sea of chaos once the free/spiritual currents began to take hold. To call his playing “inspired” in this context would be shallow, obvious and unnecessary, but what else can I do with these clumsy, bear-like word-paws?

I know – randomly pick a couple of examples from roughly either end of Tyner’s Trane journey which highlight the singular nature his artistry. That’s what I can do. Here then is ‘Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise’ from ‘Live at the Village Vanguard’ (1961), and ‘Compassion’ from ‘Meditations’ (1965). On the latter in particular, it’s almost impossible to believe that both hands hammering the piano belong to the same human being; just extraordinary, ambidextrous stuff, perfectly controlled whilst simultaneously sailing off in ten completely different directions. Enjoy.

Labels: deathblog, John Coltrane, McCoy Tyner

And, on the reissues front meanwhile…

South African drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo (he added an extra ‘Moholo’ at some point subsequent to this recording, in deference to family/cultural traditions) first came to the UK as a member of pioneering Cape Town jazz group The Blue Notes, who collectively relocated to London in 1964. As recounted in a chapter of Joe Boyd’s memoir ‘White Bicycles’ covering the author’s work with the band, The Blue Notes trod a hard road to put it mildly as they tried to establish a place for themselves within the era’s marginal and diffuse British jazz scene, with hard drugs, bad living and, eventually, premature death putting a significant dent in their stride as the members gradually drifted apart and went their separate ways.

Pianist Chris McGregor of course went on to great things with his Brotherhood of Breath, but Moholo-Moholo has likewise kept the fire burning right up to the present day, first hitting back against adversity with his 1978 debut LP as band leader, ‘Spirits Rejoice!’. Reissued late last year on Café Oto’s Otoroku label, the album showcases the impressively massive-sounding eight-piece ensemble the drummer assembled to play the heavily African-influenced compositions he and his fellow countrymen (including bassist Johnny Dyani, featured here) had collectively knocked up, and the sheer, overwhelming greatness of the results is difficult to overstate.

In addition to the aforementioned players, the octet comprises Keith Tippett on piano, Harry Miller doubling up the bass, and a full quartet of brass players including two trombonists (Radu Malfatti & Nick Evans) alongside free improv luminary Evan Parker on sax and gifted stylistic all-rounder Kenny Wheeler on trumpet -- and right from the outset, this thing is just as much of a joyous riot of incendiary sound as you might have hoped.

Opener ‘Khanya Apho’ finds Parker and Wheeler dropping sloshing puddles of searing post-Ayler skronk across a tempestuous rhythmic work-out, as the declamatory, melodic trombone riffs which open the piece are soon submerged in a writhing sea of happy chaos. Probably the album’s highlight, the following ‘You Ain’t Gonna Know Me Cos You Think You Know Me’ (composed by Blue Notes alumnus Mongezi Feza) is considerably mellower, but even more revelatory in its own way, mustering a swaggering, Elephantine swing from the brass players, whose gentle, insistent melodicism and massed, sinuous groove could part the clouds amid a Pacific tsunami and raise a smile from a death row inmate, I daresay. Play it at some more celebratory occasion, such as a street party or carnival, meanwhile and bliss would swiftly be achieved, guaranteed. It’s just such an unrelentingly generous, happy piece of music, its hard-won, monolithic positivity is difficult to put into words.

Subsequent to that, the similarly blue-skied cosmic/modal workout ‘Ithi-gqi’ proves equally sublime, with dizzying depths of interlocking, twinkle-fingered majesty that could have fitted right in on a late ‘60s Pharaoh or Alice joint – just absolutely stunning. Those declamatory brass riffs ring out again meanwhile on side 2’s ‘Amaxesha Osizi’, sounding like the ceremonial entrance music of some long forgotten, jewel-bedecked Nubian monarch, before the composition slides headfirst across eras and continents to become a slinky, hard-bop workout with Parker very much out in front, his playing as lyrical, compassionate and otherly inspired as ever, holding court until Tippett’s piano spins things off in a different direction entirely with some brain-breaking double-speed repetition, before things slow down again for a euphoric burst of collective ecstasy in the piece’s closing minutes. Whoa! - is about the only verdict I can muster.

And finally, accompanied by live (?!) bird song, the closing ‘Wedding Hymn’ reprises the indelible central riff from ‘You Ain’t Gonna Know Me..’ in appropriately solemn, matrimonial fashion, seguing into a beautiful, melancholic solo from Wheeler, gradually expanding into a lengthy, blissed out honeymoon night reverie from the entire ensemble.

There’s so much going on across the course of ‘Spirits Rejoice!’, so many musical, geographic and historical currents overlapping and intersecting, that picking it all apart would prove a formidable task – and a potentially headache-inducing and unnecessary one, I would suggest. For all the big names and notions involved here, this album is absolutely not the kind of disc you need to be some kind of jazz buff to appreciate.

On the contrary, the music herein is just so massively, overwhelmingly enjoyable, so welcoming and universal in its appeal, that it seems like a better idea to quit analysing it altogether, to quit yakking and instead just to drink it all in, exalting in the fact that it exists and is here with us on whatever’s left of planet earth. It’s a language-killing, thought-stopping, gate-opening, soul-fortifyingly amazing record, in the best possible way. It is aptly named, in short.

(Vinyl copies are still available direct from Café Oto at the time of writing.)

Labels: album reviews, comps & reissues, Louis Moholo Octet