Buried Treasure: Ki-Oku

[Today: Beyond turntablism...]

Before there was mushroom jazz, there was Tokyo-born DJ Hideaki Ishi, aka DJ Krush. Inspired by an early-80′s viewing of the seminal hip-hop film Wild Style, Krush tracked down a mixer (not an easy feat in pre-hip-hop Tokyo) and became the first DJ in Japan. Asked about his influences in a 1995 interview, he responded “You know, rock, jazz… but what seems to connect with me the most is his-hop. So primarily my influences are what people now call the old style or Old School… artists like Kurtis Blow. Those were my first influences. In terms of DJs, there’s Grandmaster Flash and DST. Also my father listened to a great deal of James Brown and Miles Davis, so I’d been exposed to them from a very early age.”

Krush has spent his career coaxing extended hip-hop/jazz suites from his turntables, but Miles Davis’ influence on his music shows through most clearly on Ki-Oku, his 1996 collaboration with avant-garde trumpeter Toshinori Kondo. While Krush spins out languid atmospherics, Kondo blows pithy, elegant trumpet lines that wrap gracefully around Krush’s expert turntablism and recall nothing so much as fusion-era Miles (say Bitches Brew or On The Corner). That’s some pretty heavy company to put these cats into, but Miles was always flirting with what became the mushroom jazz sound, and if he’d lived long enough, it’s easy to imagine him making an album like this himself (the compilation Panthalassa creates just such music by grafting Miles’ trumpet licks to contemporary beats).

But even the great Miles Davis would have had trouble matching the seamless jazz/hip-hop fusion of tracks like ‘Toh-Sui’ and ‘Mu-Getsu’. Elsewhere, Krush and Kondo take Bob Marley’s ‘Sun Is Shining’ into downtempo mode, creating a completely different mood from the original and syncing it up with the liquid, luxurious tone of the rest of this album. You might not have Ki-Oku in your record collection, but it’d be a lot cooler if you did.

Listen: Toh-Sui

Listen: Mu-Getsu

Masterpiece: Blue Lines

[Today: Steaming up the windows...]

Not quite electronica, but not exactly hip-hop, Massive Attack split the difference and spawned an entirely new genre – Trip-Hop. Blending the smooth, stylish beats of post-rave chill out music with shades of soul, hip-hop, dub reggae and even gospel, this Bristol (UK) group charted new musical territory that was urban yet spacious, sophisticated yet street. Full-time group members Grant “Daddy G” Marshall, Andrew “Mushroom” Vowles and Robert “3-D” del Naja evolved into Massive Attack from the sound system collective Wild Bunch, and carried the collective spirit forward by surrounding themselves with interesting collaborators.

Reggae great Horace Andy’s low grumble, Tricky’s smooth cockney rhymes, and Shara Nelson’s soul siren workouts were just three of the guest textures that set Massive Attack’s 1991 debut album Blue Lines miles apart from everything else. As Daddy G told Melody Maker in 1992, “When we were the Wild Bunch we got our reputation as a sound system from the fact that we played all kinds of music — punk, funk, reggae. For us to try and make an album that’s all one sound just wouldn’t be natural.”

Blue Lines feels chill, but it doesn’t sit still, musically shape-shifting from the pure soul of ‘Be Thankful For What You’ve Got’ to the narcoleptic hip-hop of ‘Daydreaming’ to the near-gospel ‘Hymn Of The Big Wheel’. On album opener ‘Safe From Harm’ Nelson threatens all the “Midnight ronkers/City slickers/Gunmen and maniacs” who might harm her baby, promising in the sweetest possible voice that “If you hurt what’s mine/I’ll sure as hell retaliate.” Like a cross-section of the average urban hipster, this album projects outward cool, while inwardly processing a jumble of emotional and philosophical dilemmas.

Fashion is fickle and tastes change, but nearly 20 years after its release, this kaleidoscope of cool beats, sweet voices and lush sounds still has the power to set the mood and steam up the windows.

Listen: Safe From Harm

Listen: Daydreaming

Listen: Be Thankful For What You Got

Listen: Blue Lines

Bad Apple: Radio K.A.O.S

[Today: A befuddling shot of artistic hubris...]

If Pink Floyd didn’t invent the concept album, they sure perfected the recipe. Albums like Dark Side Of The Moon, Wish You Were Here and The Wall worked because they explored universal themes such as humanity, sanity, and war. In other words, they weren’t about a 23-year old Welsh “vegetable” named Billy who receives radio waves through his skull and ends up saving the world from nuclear annihilation. That’s just part of the diffuse concept behind Roger Waters’ 1987 album Radio K.A.O.S, a pretentious turdbomb that makes The Final Cut sound epic.

This album plays out like a bad movie – way too much time is spent explaining pointless background and introducing new characters, while the main plot goes nowhere and none of it gets tied up satisfactorily. The songs here are connected by nothing more than blips and bleeps and Waters’ theatrical screams, although if you paid attention like a perky college student in the front row of class, taking detailed notes about everything going on, you might be able to figure out how Uncle David and the Manhattan Project fit into the story. Good luck with that.

Musically this is a grim bastardization of the Pink Floyd sound. Some of the trademark tidbits are here (radio spinning the dial to pick up different voices, those screams, etc), but they’re plunked randomly within lightweight songs awash in synthesizers that can be carbon-dated to the Max Headroom era. While most of this is merely pedestrian and befuddling, ‘The Powers That Be’ is an outright embarrassment. Waters has never been a great singer – at his best he’s a yeller and screamer – but here he fancies himself a Dean Martin-style crooner, with predictably awful results.

In the wake of his acrimonious split with Pink Floyd, Waters let his former bandmates take the group name because he didn’t think they could possibly carry on without him. “I’m not at all sure how they’re going to manage,” he sneered through the press, “considering I was the only one who [did] anything for about the last 15 years.” The reconstituted Floyd released the just-above-tepid Momentary Lapse Of Reason in 1987 as well, so Waters was locked in an artistic showdown with David Gilmour and company – and coughed up this jumbled mess. Radio K.A.O.S is the sound of warmed-over artistic hubris, and no hands clapping.

Sleepless With Aphex Twin

“When I was little, I decided sleep was a waste of your life. If you lived to be 100, but you didn’t sleep, it’d be like living to 200. But originally, it wasn’t for more time to make music, it was just that I thought sleep was a bit of a con. I’d always been able to get away with four hours a night, but I tried to narrow it down to two. And you do get used to it. I reckon it’d take you three weeks to whittle down from eight hours to two. You should try it, it’s wicked.” – Aphex Twin (aka Richard D. James) in a 1993 interview with Melody Maker

Listen: Acrid Avid Jam Shred

Doubleshot Tuesday: C’est Si Bon/Funkify Your Life

[Today: The Saints go marching...]

Congratulations to the New Orleans Saints. By defeating Brett Favre and the Minnesota Vikings in overtime on Sunday, the Saints advanced to the first Super Bowl in the 43-year history of the team. This is a franchise that has practically defined the word awful during its lifespan, losing with a dreary regularity that inspired its fans to put paper bags over their heads. But these Saints are a different breed. Coach Sean Payton and quarterback Drew Brees have installed a high-octane offense that made the onetime ‘Aints perhaps the most exciting and watchable team in the NFL this year.

But the Saints’ rebound is nothing compared to what the city of New Orleans has been through. To see the Superdome awash in a blizzard of confetti and packed with cheering people was a stark contrast to the images beamed from that building during Hurricane Katrina. Then, it looked like the last refuge against the apocalypse – people huddled in small groups as fires burned throughout the building and gaping holes showed through the roof. On Sunday night it was host to a joyous party, and I can’t think of a more deserving city…

Listen: When The Saints Go Marching In [Louis Armstrong]

Listen: Funky Miracle [The Meters]

Weekend Playlist

“Townes van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world and I’ll stand on Bob Dylan’s coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that.” ~ Steve Earle

Steve Earle | Townes

Bob Dylan | Together Through Life

Air | Pocket Symphony

Guns N’ Roses | Chinese Democracy

AC/DC | Black Ice

Jimi Hendrix | Live At Woodstock

Cat Stevens | Catch Bull At Four

U2 | Achtung Baby

M. Ward | Hold Time

Dave Alvin And The Guilty Women | Dave Alvin And The Guilty Women

The Allman Brothers Band | The Road Goes On Forever

Aerosmith | Rocks

Yo La Tengo | I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One

Led Zeppelin | Led Zeppelin II

The Hold Steady | Boys And Girls In America

INXS | The Swing

New Order | Substance

The Staple Singers | Be Altitude: Respect Yourself

Velvet Underground | White Light/White Heat

Red Hot Chili Peppers | Blood Sugar Sex Magik

The Mighty Imperials | Thunder Chicken

Buried Treasure: Metro Area

[Today: If robots made disco...]

As Metro Area, the Brooklyn duo Morgan Geist and Darshan Jesrani create space age dance music that sounds like disco stripped down to its barest beats. Their influences span a number of underground groovemakers from the mid-70′s to the mid-80′s, including Salsoul disco, Detroit techno, New Wave, and early hip-hop and house music. Metro Area samples vintage music, but instead of swiping large passages of beats, they select a single drumbeat and then rebuild a new song out of it. This is truly disco re-imagined. As Geist told the New York Times in 2002, ”We consider ourselves to be making dubs of old tracks that never really existed.”

One of disco’s structural weak points was its tendency towards overproduction. Not just syrupy strings, but lots of them. Not just a single flute, but an entire orchestra. Mainstream disco’s pile-it-on approach to production finally led to the backlash that turned the genre back underground. Metro Area peels all of those elements away, leaving just the DNA grooves of a really good night at Studio 54. Sure, the strings and flutes and back up singers are still in the mix, but they’re used in such delicate moderation that they actually enhance the beats, rather than drown them out.

Metro Area’s self-titled 2002 debut sounds less like the by-product of King Tubby and Lee Perry disciples than the work of futuristic beat robots. It lacks the herky jerky rhythms and spacey vibe of true dub music, even if it follows dub’s down-to-the-chassis ethos. Instead, this is fluid, sleek music that locks in on business-making beats and just goes. I’ve heard that in the distant future there will only be two kinds of dances – the robot and the robo-boogie. Metro Area makes music that is ideal for both…

Listen: Dance Reaction

Listen: Atmosphrique

Masterpiece: Substance

[Today: Don't call it a comeback...]

Joy Division were due to embark on their first tour of the United States – and release their would-be breakthrough album Closer – when lead singer Ian Curtis committed suicide in May of 1980. Remaining band members Bernard Sumner (guitar), Peter Hook (bass) and Stephen Morris (drums) rechristened themselves New Order and spent some time in New York City soaking up the sounds of its dance scene before re-emerging with a programmed, emotionally austere, but hook-laden sound that was two dozen subway stops from the post-punk darkness of their previous group.

In one of the most remarkable transformations in the history of modern music, New Order proceeded to knock out some of the best dance music of the 80′s – much of it in the form of 12-inch singles that were solely intended for club play. The best A and B-sides from those singles are compiled together on Substance, which happened to be the 200th release on Factory Records. Like many Factory releases, the music was paired with stylish, spare cover art that perfectly conveyed the sounds within.

‘Ceremony’ (a holdover from their Joy Division days) and ‘Temptation’ were re-recorded in 1987 for this album, but only serious fans will care enough to notice the difference. ‘True Faith’ (a new single recorded specifically for this album) ‘Blue Monday’ and ‘Bizarre Love Triangle’ were artful previews of the sound that would come to dominate UK music in the early 90′s. There are no throwaways here, and even if some of the song titles seem unfamiliar, the beats are all memorable and have aged beautifully. This is an album of the 80′s that still sounds cutting edge and different.

That may be because New Order is one of the rare few bands who can be considered a true punk/disco hybrid. Their approach to self-promotion – few interviews, obscure photographs, and a flat refusal to lip-sync for the British TV show Top Of The Pops – was pure punk, while Bernard Sumner’s flat, emotionless vocals and psychologically complex lyrics seemed a nod to former bandmate Curtis. But their music is full of programmed beats, looped drums, funky bass and euro-disco shimmer. The result was some of the very best underground music of the ’80s and a vital link between the punk and disco of the 70′s and the rave and electronica of the 90′s.

Listen: True Faith

Listen: Bizarre Love Triangle

Listen: Blue Monday

Magic Moment: Pants On The Ground

I’ve never watched more than a few seconds of American Idol, but after reading about General Larry Pratt’s audition of his original song ‘Pants On The Ground’ for the show, I had to track down the clip. Credit is due to Simon Cowell, who had the foresight to declare, “I have a horrible feeling that song could be a hit.” I don’t know if it’s a hit, but when the General pops into the splits, this becomes excellent television…

Doubleshot Tuesday: The Clash/Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack

[Today: Searching for an authentic beat...]

Punk and disco. Disco and punk. Have there ever been two more diametrically opposed forms of music that sprung up in the same place at exactly the same time? I think not. These two genres were polar opposite reactions to the same conclusion about the world – mainly that it’s nothing but a big bucket of shit. Disco’s answer was an offer to dance the night away, while punk was audio lighter fluid to help burn down the house. Disco has gained a reputation as a plastic, vapid music made for the oblivious, coked-up whirling dervishes at Studio 54 – artistically frivolous and creatively barren.

Punk meanwhile is serious music for serious people. At the dinner table of music, punk is the sneering, know-it-all kid who still lives with his parents and can’t wait to tell everyone how they’re screwing things up. Punk is full of slogans about the word’s ills, but never offered much in the way of solutions – its sum was little more than hit-and-run posturing. Punk often presented itself as a musical revolution, but political sloganeering was for punks what facepaint was for KISS or tight pants were for Whitesnake – an angle to help sell the goods.

Joe Strummer was indisputably sincere about his politics, but so what? As soon as The Clash started painting political slogans on their clothing, they blurred the line between style and substance in a way that seemed awfully vacuous. Strummer’s greatest achievement wasn’t moving the needle politically, it was (as is) his band’s ability to make you tap your toes and have a good time. The Clash’s schtick was political, but confusing that with real politics (what I affectionately call The Bono Effect) does a disservice to real politicians who slither into the capitol every day and give each other hand jobs to get things done. Politics is politics and music is music, and neither will meet Mark Twain.

In this respect, disco is some of the most honest music out there. It’s often regarded as synthetic, inauthentic fluff, but it was designed for nothing more than making people shake their tails and forget their cares, and never sold itself as anything but. Call me crazy, but claiming to be about revolution when you’re really about commerce seems 100 times more inauthentic than using a synthesizer or programmed beats. For fake music, disco has spawned a pretty impressive musical family tree, playing a major role in the birth of both hip-hop and electronica. During the same span, punk has diffused into an attitude that can be found in decidedly non-punk artists like Steve Earle and Tori Amos. A few punk true-believers like Henry Rollins and Ian MacKaye carry on, and truly walk it like they talk it, but they’re the exceptions that expose how much of punk comes down to practiced poses and intentionally bad haircuts. Don’t get me wrong, I love punk music in general and The Clash in particular, but it amuses me that punk enjoys a free pass as “authentic” music, while its sincerely fun-loving cousin gets painted as phony…

Listen: I’m So Bored With The U.S.A. [The Clash]

Listen: Stayin’ Alive [Bee Gees]

Listen: I Fought The Law [The Clash]

Listen: Jive Talkin’ [Bee Gees]