PAULINE OLIVEROS - Accordion & Voice / The Wanderer

Important Records just dropped two very nice remaster / reissues of Pauline Oliveros LPs on disc. If essential document of early American minimalism are your thing, then scoop these up quick.

Glass Organ - Our - Students Of Decay 022

If by chance you haven’t checked the awesomeness of the Students Of Decay label…get it together. And if by chance you didn’t pick up either of the tapes Glass Organ dropped in 05 & 06, or the subsequent LP combining them (titled, you guessed it, Two Tapes) then this new CD is your entry point into the higher planes of their burning vistas. A duo of guitar and tapes, they’ve perfected a world of soft focus six string atmospheres that burn up into cataracts of molten skree. Sorta like what one would imagine the sound of staring at the sun to be. Only more damaged and less cosmic. These three pieces (all at a clever 11min, 11sec) sway between the open ended guitar explosion that sound off in deep caverns of reverb and hiss, to the burnt crunch of overdrive textures vibrating your skull. This has all the seductiveness of Andrew Chalks long form guitar poems, just huffed up on wet paint and circuit bent to hell. Fortunately in a run of 500 copies, so hopefully this will be around a little longer than their previous outings. Comes in a sweet letter pressed white on white folded pack. Killer.
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Christina Carter - Lace Heart

Issued in a painfully small run of 300 copies on her own Many Breaths label, Christina Carters ‘Lace Heart’ is her best yet. Spectral waves of vocal tone atop softly seductive guitar loops overdubbed 'till midnight. Dips into the deep soul and leaves the body completely burned up. Dream long indeed. Each one hand done by the artist. Volcanic Tongue has copies, so don’t sleep on this one…
Listen: Dream Long

Jim Haynes -Telegraphy By The Sea

Clocking in with a single track just under an hour in length, Jim Haynes’ ‘Telegraphy By The Sea’ is a beautifully massive affair, perfectly suited for the onset of winter. Although it’s not so much a heavy snow downpour... it’s more of a scrapping of the ocean floor while a hurricane rages at the surface. Not at all dissimilar from the cryptic rusted art objects that Mr. Haynes produces, this CD is dense with layers of dark blue static and the flakey detritus of small sound objects rubbed softly together. Their rubbing creates a slow burning friction that eventually builds to a whit hot glow, burning out all the sounds around them. In these moments his sense of spacing is keen, and the foreground drops away into reverberated fields of mechanical hum. The last 10min of ‘Telegraphy By The Sea’ may be some of the best work Mr. Haynes as ever produced. A short wave radio transmission adrift in tendrils of oscillating feedback and cinematic bass throb create a sort of deep sea melancholia. It’s somewhere between watching the earth rise from the surface of the moon and the luminous sound of radioactive decay. Totally stunning. And, as with all things Helen Scarsdale, awesome hand done letterpress/silkscreened packaging. Get it here. Listen to:
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Privacy - Without Mercy

I had the good fortune of playing a show with Laurel Knapp, aka Privacy, earlier this year here in SF. Having only met her a couple of hours before the show I really had no Idea what to expect. Probably why I was totally surprised to find my mouth wide open once she got about two minutes into her set. Her gentle singing, which is really more akin to breathing softly and talking at the same time, was, and is on this recording, something to behold. Laurel’s dreamy loom may lack the histrionics so fawned over by the kids the days, but I say drama ain’t everything. ‘Without Mercy’ is a captivating collection of monochromatic love-blues, tenderly propelled along by smokey acoustic guitar strum and a husky vocal drone. A great testament to minimal space, emotional inversion, and the resonance that a style lacking in so called technique can produce from simple charisma. A bummer that it’s only 20 minutes long, but a great release nonetheless. Head over to Marriage Records to hear a track and pick up a copy.

Music of Idris Ackamoor 1971-2004

So who the fuck is Idris Ackamoor? Short answer: he’s the founding member and sax player of obscure-o out-jazz units The Pyramids & The Collective. Doesn’t strike a bell? Well, unless you were part of the scene at Antioch College in Yellow Springs Ohio around the mid to late 70’s I wouldn’t be surprised. But, hopefully with the reissue earlier this year of The Pyramids first LP and now this double CD retrospective, Ackamoor’s name might now be spoken with the same hushed reverence afforded such other cosmic travelers as Alice Coltrane, Don Cherry & Pharaoh Sanders. Yea, It’s that good. Disc one covers the periods from ‘71 to ‘74, with one cut by The Collective and seven tracks by The Pyramids. Loads of orchestrated wind / brass hollers, heavy-duty drum thump and spirited eastern dipped soul searching. Massive group mind afro-jams implode into duets of percussive shimmer and pastoral flute trips. One’s left to seriously ponder where the heck this stuff has been for the last 30+ years. A trip to Africa in 1972 on Antioch’s Abroad Program led to among other things a ferocious jam session with The Kings Drummers of Ghana, documented well on track four of the second disc. Africa’s influence must have been heavy, as the cover of The Pyramids ‘Lallibela’ from ’73 shows the group clad in traditional garb with an assortment of non-western instruments. Elsewhere on disc two “Black Man Of The Nile” from ’72 (recorded in Amsterdam at the legendary VPRO Radio) channels cathartic acid baked blues into ecstatic cluster explosions of hot lava and drool that’s more skull damage than free jazz, with Ackamoor ripping to shreds the homemade bamboo instrument he calls “The Ope”. Easily on par with the best moments of the Art Ensemble. ‘Birth/Speed/Merging’ from ‘76 may be the loveliest track in the whole set. With nods to Japanese Shakuhachi music, the intro of descending funeral precession flute and soft gong/bell/cymbal rattle pave the way for a universal funk trip. Killer. Unfortunately the last couple of tracks on disc two from the late 90’s & early 2000’s suffer a bit from bad production and maneuver a little too much into straight Jazz territory that lacks the adventurousness of the early work. Nevertheless an essential collection and well worth the price for those of you cosmically inclined. Pick it up here.
Listen to: Birth/Speed/Merging