Bestia Excelente

There will be much new stuff up on the blog in the next couple of days or so, but in the meantime, why not enjoy this picture of a capybara with its excellent face.

El Genio De La Cebolla, O, Estoy En Amor Con Tracy Gill

I fucking love The Onion. Although most people seem to view it as America's Private Eye, to me, it's always seemed to be closer in spirit to the early works of Chris Morris, it's combination of utter ludicrousness, bitingly sharp satire, idiotic (but deceptively clever) wordplay and pinpoint piss-taking of (global to local) media tropes giving it the air of a print/online equivalent of The Day Today/On The Hour/Brass Eye*. I've gobbed so many drinks over my computer through reading an Onion headline at the wrong moment I've lost count**

And then they started Onion Radio, which is as good as you'd expect, and The Onion News Network, which is the funniest fucking thing I have seen in a while. News stories so stupid that they could rip spacetime treated with that special American News Reader grave seriousness, played totally and utterly straight, from O-Span's political coverage (Congress To Hide Nations' Porn From Future Generations...) to the sublime Today Now, a pinpoint demolition of daytime TV featuring the astonishingly mental Tracy Gill, who in one fantastic segment, interviews the author of her own biography with seemingly no awareness of the book's subject or content.

Anyways, here's three of my favourite clips. And try not to spit all over yr keyboards...

Denmark Introduces Harrowing New Tourist Ads Directed By Lars Von Trier

Obama Axes Pentagon Plan To Build Billion Dollar Tank In Shape Of Dragon

New BabySafe Ball Makes Shaking Your Infant Guilt And Injury Free

*Although they don't have CM's sheer fucking balls, I mean witness CM and Armando Ianucci's fantastically offensive post-9/11 special which came free with the Observer back in 2002. Can you really see the New York Times or any other big US broadsheet even contemplating printing that for the edification and enjoyment of it's readers? Can't see it myself.

**Note to Mr Jobs: Apple, I love yr computers and the way they don't crash mid-whateverI'mcuntingdoing all the fucking time, but I do feel that yr keyboards leave a little to be desired in the ability to withstand accidentally-sprayed alcoholic beverages. The only good thing I could say about my old PC is that I could throw the keyboard at a brick wall, accidentally use it as an ashtray, spill all sorts on it, and after a few hours drying upside down, the fucker would work. Just a thought.

El Perro De La Cerveza

Go Here immediately and buy their beer, it's fucking wonderful. Particularly the Punk or Hardcore IPAs, the most lip-puckering brilliantly bitter ales it has ever been my good fortune to come across. Punk is 6.8%abv of passionfruity dry-as-Death Valley ultrarefreshment that has knocked my previous favourite hot day ale* off the top of the 'Sun's out, let's make a brown glass bottle pyramid in the kitchen' chart. It even beats a perfect gin'n'tonic**.

Hardcore is to Punk what it name implies; harder, faster, louder***. 9.2%abv of hops, bitterness, hops, some more hops, bitterness and hops. God, it's good. There is bitter, there is IPA, then there's this. 150 (at least) IBUs§ of everything that makes a beer great, with nary a hint of the syrupiness (whether in texture or taste) that is unfortunately so often a feature of higher abv brews. It's so bitter it makes you dribble. And dry? Neat Campari or Manzanilla sherry (mmmm salty wine§§§) can't hold a candle to this fucker. Possibly the finest beer in existence.

*Cooper's Sparkling Ale, proof that, contrary to popular belief, the Aussies can make a decent beer. It's appallingly drinkable, and also has that sharp passionfruit edge that so many good, properly dry pale ales have. Weird thing is, I can't fucking stand passionfruit, never has a flavour/aroma been meant to exist as a backnote, a tint, as much as passionfruit. To me, in a beer, it's like civetone in perfume, in the background, in small quantities, it smells gorgeous, but you wouldn't stick your nose up a civet's arsehole...

**Hot day.

Big glass (3/4s of pint should do you).

Ice, made in the bottom of the freezer, lots of.

One and one half to two parts good gin (Tanqueray, Plymouth, Bombay Sapphire, Gordon's Distillers Cut. No crap. Sloe gin is acceptable.)

One and one half to half a part good tonic water.

Lemon zest, and a slice if y're feeling poncey. Lime is not acceptable in a G'n'T.§§

I'm a fussy fucker, what can I say?

***but unlike it's musical equivalent, not without subtlety.

§International Bitterness Units scale. Info here.

§§Quince might be tho, anyone got a quince tree?

§§§Seriously. Manzanilla is brilliant stuff, I generally don't like sherry, even most Finos taste a bit 'off' to me, but a good Manzanilla is astonishing. Like alcoholic sea.

Tómelo Lento

When it comes to electronic music, much as I adore the abstracted kosmische wibbling of Cluster et al, joyfully prostrate myself before the synthetique altar of Lard Free, Heldon, Spacecraft and other French loons and revel in the clanking otherness of British electronic music from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop through Cabaret Voltaire/TG etc and up to the early days of Acid, nothing electronic quite floats my boat like good fucking Techno.

Now I know Techno is somewhat of a broad church, so I'd better define my terms before the trainspotters come out of their mushroom-scented dens and berate me for not toeing their particular party line. So if you disregard anything where the kick sounds like a distorted rubber ball bouncing off a hollow wall at over 145bpm, mindless euro-gabba shit, anything that smacks of hardcore and sounds like a fucking hoover*, y're getting there. Think Juan and Derrick, Blake Baxter and Eddie Fowlkes. Think m_nus and Perlon. Think Basic Channel and Modern Love and Warp** when it was still a label with a heart, think Tim Wright and Christian Vogel and the funkier end of Tresor. Got it?

I like it funky, I like it subtle and I like it beautiful. I don't mind fast, but it's impossible to make a drum machine groove once you go over a certain speed, witness the artistic dead-end that drum and bass fell into, eventually it had to slow down and mutate into something entirely different to progress. I don't mind hard, but not when that's all it is, unless y're Richie Hawtin or Surgeon, it's extremely difficult to give a gatling gun snare and jackhammer kick any groove whatsoever***.

I am rambling, I know, but there is a point. And it's this. My old mate Ergin, no mean DJ and musician himself, has started a site dedicated to the slower end of our beloved Techno, showcasing tracks new and old, from forgotten (should-be) classics by the likes of Carl Craig and Robert Hood to more obscure beauties that slipped under the radar (there's a killer Purveyors Of Fine Funk tune on there) and recent stuff that you should be listening to. It's a new site, so give it a while to get more content up, but what's there already is mighty fine, so get yrselves over to Slow Techno and enjoy.

*Didn't like it then, really hate it now. Grooveless, joyless shit.

**Don't get me wrong, they still release some glorious records, like Cosmogramma by Flying Lotus, and especially the latest Autechre LP, Oversteps, which is a flat-out masterpiece, but for every piece of electronic wonderment they put out, there's a fucking Maximo Park (why do this band exist?) or Battles§ tipping the goodness scales in the wrong direction. Warp used to have a label identity as strong as Blue Note or (early) Impulse!, but now they're just another big anonymous label and it's a damn shame.

***If I want velocity and heaviness I'll head for the grindcore section of my collection. This is supposed to be dance music, not an exercise in endurance, and if it ain't funky it fails. Mind you, there are very few things that are as funny as watching pilled-up twats trying to dance to really fast D&B or techno, so I suppose it does have some function.

§I know, lots of you like Battles, and while I admit they're a much better band than the aforementioned Maximo Park (not that that's particularly tricky), I can think of much better ways to spend my time than listening to a mechanized Yes featuring guest vocals by Alvin & The Chipmunks.

¡Nos Estamos Hundiendo!

I am utterly speechless in the face of the single most fantastically stupid question ever asked by a politician. I'm not going to even hint at what US congressman Hank Johnson enquires of a senior naval officer at about 1.10 in, just don't be drinking anything around that time, unless you want to spray yr screen with the beverage of yr choice as yr incredulity tendon snaps under the strain.

Go here, and weep as our world slides further and further away from reality...

Una Observación

Having measles as an adult is fucking revolting. I'd give it a miss if I were you.

¡La Máquina Que Va Ping!

Demdike Stare - Forest Of Evil (Modern Love)

Elephant 9 - Walk The Nile (Rune Grammofon)

Coconuts - Coconuts (No Quarter)

Tongues Of Mount Meru - Ocean Of Milk (Important)

Ben Nash & Sophie Cooper - Alchemy (Blackest Rainbow)

Magic Lantern - Platoon (Not Not Fun)

Jailbreak - The Rocker (Family Vineyard)

Mouthus/Bulbs - Split LP (Important)

Burning Star Core - Papercuts Theater (No Quarter)

Vibracathedral Orchestra - Joka Baya/Smoke Song/The Secret Base (VHF)

Ashtray Navigations - The Beak Stuck Out Of The Snow (Memoirs Of An Aesthete)

Arnold Dreyblatt - The Adding Machine (Canteloupe)

Charanjit Singh - Synthesizing: 10 Ragas With A Disco Beat (EMI India)

Elektro Guzzi - Elektro Guzzi (Macro)

Edward Larry Gordon - Celestial Vibration (Universal Sounds)

Yellow Swans - Being There (Type)

Supersilent - 9 (Rune Grammofon)

San Proper - Keep It Raw (Perlon)

Sightings - City Of Straw (Jagjaguwar)

Fiend - Agla (Trendkill)

Cabezas Abajo, No Absurdo, Cójale Lodos

Do you like wallowing in muck? Sonically speaking of course. I know I do. Do your earholes expand with delight when you hear such names as Noothgrush or Facedowninshit, Grief or Charger, Fleshpress or Eyehategod? Mine do. In short, does sludge float yr boat? If so, I suggest you get yr electronic arse over to Hebosagil's myspace where you can download their last two records, Colossal and Cosmic, both titanic slabs of massively distorted mindrot that should slake yr sludge-gland's thirst for filth nicely.

Estupidez De Domingo

Earlier today, if asked, I would have said my favourite song/album title of the moment was Wizards 'n' Shit by Big Swifty*. Then I downloaded this...

Now that is what I fucking call an album title.

It's by mid-90s Japanese maniacs Coa, and I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone into Lightning Bolt, Melt Banana, Altered States, Naked City, Ruins, early Boredoms or who has a severe case of Attention Deficit Disorder.

*Aka Shri Swifty & The Mandali Of Mantra, whose sole album Canals Of The Atlantean Plain is one of the great unacknowledged masterpieces of tonefloating kosmische blug**, criminally ignored by everyone, possibly because they were from Florida, possibly because they had such a fantastically stupid name. If you like electric-era Pelt, or Tony Conrad, or wibbling French and German freaks, or Taj Mahal Travellers then I suggest you go here and download the fucker.

Also, if anyone has a copy of Big Swifty's album Akroasis for sale or download or is willing to burn me copy, I would be eternally grateful...

**Blug: Similar to mung, only with more drooling.

Culpo Tramadol

Teeth Mountain's self titled album (2008 Night People) is a record I've had knocking around on cdr for a while, but hadn't really taken much notice of before. For some reason, I picked up the LP version of it today whilst idly browsing, having completely forgotten that I already owned it, and bought it on a whim. I'm fucking glad I did. Apart from the fact that it sounds a lot fucking better on vinyl than on cd, I haven't got as much sheer fucking joy from a record in ages. It's glorious bouncy mung of the highest order.

Imagine Can and Pelt fighting in a sack. On spacehoppers. Well, it's a big sack. Big enough for Mick Flower and Tony Conrad and Faust to jump inside and join in the fun, whilst Henry Flynt pumps nitrous oxide in from outside and Parson Sound get pissed in the woods nearby. It's got honking great string drones and looping banjos and Liebezeit grooves played by stoned lemurs. Not to mention harmonicas and chord organs and much tape-fuckery. And it looks like this:

That's also what it sounds like. Just like that. Only more Appalachian. And not a little German. Also, note the enormous yellow cat at the bottom of the sleeve. It looks really angry, and not just because it's been dyed yellow and is having it's ear fondled by a huge disembodied red hand. It's angry because you haven't listened to this record. A record which sounds like it was played by giant hillbilly meerkats with a penchant for Krautrock who live in a multicoloured cave and worship idols of Arnold Dreyblatt's Orchestra Of Excited Strings. Probably whilst bouncing up and down on spacehoppers and dribbling a bit. With the cat egging them on. Why wouldn't you want to hear a record that sounds like that? Exactly. So go and get it, and the big yellow cat won't wreak it's horrifying revenge on an unsuspecting world.

Nuevo Alto En Fuego

Oh yes, it's that time again. New High On Fire album time. I am, to say the least, slavering for this, especially now the Hakius is communing with the bears and Al Cisneros has disappeared up his own mystical fundament like a metaphysical ouzelum bird, it's down to Matt Pike, guru of the guitar gurn, and the man who made deck shoes metal, to keep the fucking Sleep flag flying. And does he? Well, in about three quarters of an hour, I'll have the answer. It must be said, the (now traditional) Arik Roper sleeve is truly, fantastically, stupidly metal, and this bodes well.

See what I mean? That is metal. You can't really get more fucking metal than that. None more metal. But is it any good? And more to the point, does it compare to their earlier stuff, given that Mr Pike spent a fair while mucking about with the briefly reformed Sleep?

-------- 45 minutes, a couple of large Ardbegs and spliffs later --------

The answers? Yes. And fuck yes. It's fucking brilliant. For the first time, the whole album is fantastic, it doesn't sag for any of it's 45 minutes. Even Blessed Black Wings, which contains three of my favourite songs ever* and has a similar effect on me to good crystal meth, had it's low points, stodgy lulls that dragged parts of the album down and made it a merely great slab of muck as opposed to the outrageously scabrous earfuck it could have been.

Well ladies and gentlemen, this is that scabrous earfuck. Leaner, meaner, harder, faster, just more fucking savage. This gallops out of the trap and doesn't fucking let up, there's a lot less of the pissing about and interludes that marred Death Is This Communion for me, the first HOF album that just didn't, to these ears anyway, cohere into a whole, didn't flow from beginning to end. No such problem this time.

They've also solved the other problem with DITC, namely Jack Endino's slightly bloated, cumbersome mix**. The fast bits just didn't rampage like they should on the last LP, and Jeff Matz's bass didn't seem to mesh properly (in a sonic, not musical sense) with Des Kensal's battery (somehow the phrase 'drumming' doesn't quite do justice to the polyrhythmic artillery bombardment that DK regularly unleashes), just sounding a bit too flabby to deliver the kick to the solar plexus you expect from HOF. But, here, with Greg Fidelman producing, this is more live sounding than any album they've done with the possible exception of Blessed Black Wings, and, as you might expect from the man who produced Slayer's World Painted Blood, viciously taut. The drums just smack you round the face, and the bass sound, jesus it's good. A focused, growling drill of a sound, with a nice amount of sub that doesn't fuck with the mix, that becomes one with the kit because frequency-wise the two elements compliment each other as opposed to impinging on each others territories, the kit never swamps or rings over the bass, the bass never obscures the kit, and musically, Kensal and Matz are just fucking locked.

And equally one with the rhythm section is Matt Pike. The man is simply (high) on fire (sorry) here. Jaw-dropping, audacious, mental as ever, he ramps up the intensity and the speed to levels only glimpsed on a few tracks on each of the previous LPs and rips out those switchback riffs and loopy, careering solos like a man possessed with Matz and Kensal shadowing and playing off his every fucking move, each musician pushing and lifting the others onto another fucking plane. This just kills. At times they approach (pre Crack The Skye) Mastodon levels of bludgeoning complexity, but without drawing attention to how clever or difficult any of this shit is. Mastodon's overt technicality can often be their downfall, veering into unpleasant prog territory because it's so cleanly done, no matter how nasty they try to be, that you can't help but notice the virtuosity instead of the fucking music, but this never happens here. No other band could alter the time signature of a riff so many times in quick succession without it sounding clever clever, without losing the overall flow, because no other band does it with such simultaneous insouciance and overarching aggression or a sound this damn raw. This is rollercoaster metal, wrongfooting you without you knowing why until you go round again and again until you chuck.

And that brings us to the one thing that some people just can't get over with High On Fire. Matt Pike's vocals. Personally I love 'em, that ludicrous devolved almost incomprehensible proto-Lemmy roar of his just suits the primitive sophistication of this music perfectly, particularly given his lyrical penchant for magnificently stupid tales of demons, amulets and bloody war. I haven't seen the lyric sheet yet, but I could swear that he yells the words 'salty nimbus' at one point, and frankly, that moment alone is worth a few quid of yer hard earned. The track titles are, if anything, even more sublimely stupid than usual, Holy Flames Of The Fire Spitter, Bastard Samurai and (definitely a contender for most foolish track title of the decade) Ghost Neck being just three. What in the name of fuck makes you call a song Ghost Neck? What does it mean? I'm looking forward to getting the lyric sheet with the proper release a whole fucking lot, just so I can find out who wields the Frost Hammer.

So yeah, I quite like it.

*Devilution, Cometh Down Hessian and Silverback. There's way more of that vibe on this record than anything else they've done.

**I know, lots of people loved it, and preferred it to Steve Albini's diamond hard engineering on Blessed Black Wings, and those people are entitled to their opinion. Even if it is wrong.

¡Soy Un Icono De La Manera!*

I do love a random moment, and today provided a rather good one. Whilst ambling through Soho Square, on my way to the Angel to do some heavy calculations**, I was most pleasantly accosted by a fashion writer and her hipster camera monkey and asked if I would mind having a few photos taken and answer some questions on, and I quote, my philosophy of style (yes, I know; I was doing my best to keep a reasonably straight face - I'm good at that shit, I have to deal with architects on a regular basis).

Naturally I agreed***, I mean who wouldn't want to expound on their clothing Weltanschauung when asked to by an extremely attractive woman, especially when y're told that "I saw you walking across the square, and you just looked... sharp". That sort of flattery will probably get you anywhere with me, even when I know it's probably bullshit, because I do care about clothes, the cut, the fabric, the feel, the hang§, (go read 'The Way We Wore' by Robert Elms, he explains this shit way better than I could ever hope for, plus it's a fascinating, and brilliant look at 20th century British culture viewed through a sartorial lens), and it's always nice when someone chimes with yr aesthetic, even on a shallow level (oh yes, I can be a pretentious tit, if it's good enough for Eno, it's good enough for me) - it was the use of the word 'sharp' that did it, sharp tailoring will always fucking be where it's at as far as I'm concerned.

So I posed for some shots (is it ok if we do a closeup? is not a phrase I hear very often), waffled on about classic British cloth cutting and mod(ernists) - i.e. before the parkas, when the severely tailored suit was king and cheap speed meant you could go without food to afford said suit - along with the untouchability of Aviator sunglasses as a design classic and the importance of really good shoes§§. Turns out this was all in aid of an article about unusual winter street style (whatever the fuck that is) for a (rather popular) magazine - I'll tell you which one when the article actually comes out, so you can all go down to the newsagents/stands and have a good fucking giggle.

So, in case anyone else out there wants to attract the attention of random fashionistas, it turns out that mirrored aviators, a shortened SS-style greatcoat, enormous workboots§§§ and pinstripe drainpipes works. Which, frankly, I find surprising. But what the fuck do I know?

Must go now, I've been called to the Bar, but there's going to be a lot more stoned rambling on this blog in the next few weeks as I'm in a much better mood than I have been for a good while, and whereas I used to write more when I was in a pitch black mood, the opposite seems to be the case now, fuck knows why...

*Spanish language geek note: if I'd have titled this entry in English, I'd have used the word style instead of fashion, because I give not a toss for fashion, but pay a great deal of attention to style, but the Spanish for style is estilo, whereas the Spanish for fashion, 'la manera', translates as 'the way', which just sounds... better.

**A lot of science/engineer/maths types like to do heavy brainwork in odd places, Richard Feynmann, (one of my very few genuine heroes, in any field, and the one person who has probably influenced my thinking (such as it is) more than any other single person), used to do a lot of thinking and writing in strip clubs. I discovered many years ago that grotty pubs are most conducive to grinding through the mind-flappingly hard AC theory problems that plague my working life.

***Mainly because I wanted her phone number.

§But most definitely not the label, the price, or Satan preserve us, the hipness.

§§Like I said, I really wanted her phone number. Although I will happily pontificate about this crap if (lightly) pressed, particularly about the shoes and sunglasses.

§§§Really huge. People have laughed at my massive feet all my life. I'm 5'10 and have the feet of a basketball playing freak. I'm never going to fall over in a high wind tho.

Pájaros Con La Guitarra

Found this lovely little film over at the BBC arts blog. It's a short clip of an installation by Celeste Boursier-Mougenot and you should watch it immediately.

Technical Ecstasy? Fuck Off

What is fucking wrong with so many of my fellow guitarists? I've been playing for 25 years, and one thing has consistently puzzled me, namely the obsession so many guitar players have with technique, the desperate need to become a virtuoso without having a fucking clue what to do with all that knowledge and ability, or having any idea how to do something new with their instrument. What is the fucking point of mastering all the traditional techniques of your instrument, absorbing an enormous shitload of music theory when all you then do is exactly what everyone else has been doing for the previous fuck knows how many years, just faster?

It was Steve Lacy, that late genius of the soprano saxophone who said "the instrument, that's the matter - the stuff - your subject", yet for so many guitarists that's just not true, to them technique is all, they have seemingly no interest in how their instrument actually works, why it sounds the way it does. It's a shallow kind of virtuosity underpinned by a linear, horizontal way of thinking and it leads to flat two-dimensional music that goes from A to B in a manner which anyone with ears and a half-working brain will be able to predict pretty damn accurately.

The electric guitar especially is an astonishingly malleable instrument, both sonically and physically, and microscopically sensitive to nuance, yet most guitarists are content to draw from an extremely limited palette of sound, and the toss-merchants are the worst offenders. They compress and/or eq the living shit out of their guitars for an illusory clarity, seemingly believing that removing the frequencies which give a guitar a large amount of it's tonal personality (the midrange) and removing the volume differences from individually played notes will let everyone who listens focus on their 'art'*. The way they set their instruments up aims to do the same thing, the thin strings sound like they look - tinny and harmonically lacking, the stupidly low action** that precludes any serious dynamic range in yr picking - if you play with any balls the strings whack and buzz against the fretboard and sound like shit, these approaches just lead to a polite uniformity of sound devoid of feeling, power or subtlety, robbing the music of any personality or emotional resonance it may have once possessed. A string of notes devoid of variation in dynamic or timbre, of the player's touch, is just that, a string of notes executed by a technician for the edification of a similarly limited audience. You don't judge a writer by how fast they can fucking type without making a mistake do you?

It dismays me that so many guitarists really do think and play like this. If you really want to know what technical virtuosity is actually for, then I suggest you listen to John Coltrane, or Eric Dolphy, or Cecil Taylor. Musicians whose knowledge of the technical and theoretical aspects of music far outstrip any classical musician, living or dead, yet are/were capable of subsuming that knowledge into a greater whole, one which encompasses the physical and acoustic properties of their respective instruments, a drive to push forward what the music they play can encompass, sonically, emotionally and yes, theoretically and structurally, a burning need to discover what music can be and become, not to settle for what's gone before and refine it like a formal mathematical proof.

Music, at it's most basic is sound in a perceptual frame, and the electric guitar is frankly only rivalled by modular analogue or ludicrously complicated digital synthesizers in the spectrum of possibilities it offers. Listen to Albert Ayler, a man who managed to coax a new register from the tenor saxophone just by the way he blew, by altering the contact of a piece of plastic reed with his mouth and breath as he played, and these fuckers can't even manage to sound different from each other with their mounds of technology. There are of course exceptions, Robert Fripp (a virtuoso if ever there was one) and Fred Frith have probably managed to extend the vocabulary of the guitar in a rock context to greater extent than anyone else who springs to mind, yet never does their technicality intrude on the actual music. Sonically, musicians as disparate as Helios Creed, Kevin Shields, Jim Plotkin, Oren Ambarchi, Keith Rowe, Neil Young and Matt Bower (to name but a very few) have taken the guitar into places few others previously suspected the existence of, and none of them would claim (or want) to be thought of as technical wizards, simply because the need to create, to push, to discover far outweighs any concerns of technique. For a real fucking musician, technique is nothing but a means to help bring about not even an end, but a moment.

For a lot of guitarists though, it's everything, and I think it explains the serious lack of good guitarists in the (especially free) jazz world. Think about it for a moment. Go right back to bebop. How many guitarists can you think of in jazz who pushed the music the way that sax, or trumpet, or piano, or double bass players, or drummers did? Not fucking many. Even at the height of free jazz, in the 60s, when musicians were breaking apart the front line/rhythm section divide, it's still easier to list the violinists*** than the guitarists.

Frankly, there's only three that matter from that time, Sonny Sharrock, Keith Rowe and Derek Bailey, all of whom understand/stood the guitar as resonating pieces of wood and metal, as physical object, and as a sound generator as much as a machine to play notes on, and all of whom tore up the rule book as to what guitarists could and couldn't do, Bailey to the extent of renouncing jazz practice as such and forging a new path based on pure, non-idiomatic improvisation§, Sharrock being the only guitarist at the time who thought more like a horn player, and crucially played bottleneck like a motherfucker, something still rare as hen's teeth in jazz circles, lending his playing a vocal quality that no one has come close to (and very fucking few jazz guitarists even dip their toes into the murky waters of slide guitar) not to mention an attitude to echo that had more in common with Syd Barrett than any jazz musican. And Keith Rowe, the man who completely deconstructed the guitar and it's role in the music, creating a whole new way of approaching the instrument single handedly, through his utter disregard for what the instrument was supposed to be for.

And fuck they Listen/ed hard when they play, which is the most important fucking thing you can do, even if (and especially when) y're right up front, but most guitarists seemingly can't (or just won't, I'm not sure which is worse) do this seemingly simple thing, to listen, to allow yrself to just be in the music and play what the moment, the music demands of you. Sun Ra didn't bang on about discipline for nothing you know. When you just play, the technique you use should be the last thing on (or in) yr mind, it's there to serve the music, the sound, the moment, the feeling.

When Coltrane blew fuck knows how many hundreds of notes a minute, does it sound like wank? No, because the sound itself, and the process of the creation of that sound was rooted in a deep knowledge of the sonic possibilities, and limitations, of his instrument, a total awareness of the musicians he was playing with, how his sound, not just the notes he was playing, related to what each and every musician there was playing, and where they were at together and individually. It was part of a whole, the solo an intrinsic part of the ensemble, indivisible, one.

Now I know we can't all be John Coltrane, and I sure as shit ain't, but fuck, isn't that level of playing something to aim for? Better striving for that than Mick Barr.

Technique is totally fucking meaningless when it exists in a void. The lack of knowledge, or even interest in the physical and acoustic properties of your instrument is, as far as I'm concerned, the worst kind of musical ignorance. It shows a fundamental lack of respect for your tools, and for your art, and for the idea that there must be more to be discovered in this infinitely variable abstract world we call music. You might as well just have a wank in the mirror.

*It's 2 o'clock in the morning, the guitarist has attempted to record a solo many, many times: "But dude, I NEED all the notes to be exactly the same volume"

"Well why don't you fucking play it that way then?"

(Long pause, sheepishly looks at floor) "I can't"

"That's why I suggested you play something that you're actually fucking capable of playing an hour and a half ago"

or, "But dude, I NEED all the notes to be exactly the same volume"

"Why?"

"So you can hear how I played every fuckin' note"

"But that's not what you'll hear if I squash it, you'll hear the note, but not the how"

"?"

You have no idea how many times I've had similar exchanges. And it was always a guitarist, every single fucking time...

**height of strings above the fretboard for the uninitiated.

***The violin has never really been that popular an instrument in jazz, despite great players such as Stuff Smith, Stephan Grappelli and Billy Bang.

§Which, I suspect much to his disgust, solidified in the heads of many musicians into a style of it's own with philosophical problems on a par with Gödel's incompleteness theorem and it's implications.

20 Records That Fiddle With Your Cochlea

Pelt - Max Meadows (VHF)

Ramleh - Valediction (Second Layer)

Ramleh - Hole In The Heart (Dirter)

Nackt Insecten - Stairway To Levitation (Sick Head)

Eleh - Retreat & Return (Important)

Ninni Morgia Control Unit - s/t (Ultramarine)

Neokarma Jooklo Experience - Peaceful Messages (Qbico)

Neokarma Jooklo Trio - Memories From The Age Of The Dragon (Qbico)

Jooklo Golden Age & Peaking Lights - s/t (Holidays)

Alice Coltrane - Huntington Ashram Monastery (Impulse!)

John Coltrane - Expression (Impulse!)

Kiruna - Tarasarus (Plastic Strip)

Herbie Hancock - Crossings (Warners)

Matmos - Supreme Balloon (Matador)

Shackleton - Three EPs (Perlon)

Loosers - Logic On It's Head (Not Not Fun)

Steve Reid - Odyssey Of The Oblong Square (Mustevic Sound)

Astral Social Club/Alog - Split (Fat Cat)

Ashtray Navigations - Sgt. Pepper's Four-Twenty Hex Aurora Toilet (Memoirs Of An Aesthete)

Ashtray Navigations - Six Imaginary Scenes From The Life Of Mohammed Al-Aqil (Nashazphone)