It's been a while since my last update, hasn't it? Obvious reason: my publication has not been released for coming up to a year - no gigs to review, no venues to pay the advertising.
But, a little group of friends has just started an Album of the Fortnight project, where someone suggests an LP, and we all review it, so I thought I'd share my reviews, to stop this page being a complete desert. The first is below, and we'll see how long the project lasts (this may end up being the only one, you know how big concepts often fall apart as soon as someone stops feeding the furnace).
Bear in mind these are brief, light-hearted thoughts for a private chat, not structured reviews for a critical publication, but I think this is kind of fun; I'll admit to being smugly proud of the last line.
If you want to hear the album, you may do so at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsJZpvEOleFoNj_6VKvlx8AezxZhLqAWR
UNIVERSAL CONGRESS OF - PROSPEROUS & QUALIFIED (SST)
Interesting to see track 3 is credited to a "J Ulmer" [the person who suggested this record in the group posted a picture of one of the vinyl labels]. I’m expecting that to be James Blood Ulmer, whose work veers between Ornette ecstasy and leaden muso blues clomping, and, pressing play on track one gives us a bit of both. The slap bass is flat-footed and uninspiring, and could be chuntering away at the back of any number of functional bar room combos this minute (or, rather, this minute 2 years ago, when bar rooms were a thing), and the vocals are uninteresting, but the horns offer a stately circling motif at the start, big on the baritone, and some sprightly soloing later. This could go either way.
Track two moves in the right direction, an itchy, wild-eyed punk funk with a walking bassline that couldn’t walk if its life depended on it, keeping up a paranoid jog for the duration. This is the musical equivalent of the A Scanner Darkly character scrabbling around for imaginary insects. What I like about it is the way it’s built on pretty generic material, but transforms into a psychotic sonic episode: loving the snare fills like cutlery avalanches, and the guitar like a kitchen knife stabbing randomly at a fantasised attacker.
“Hightime”, as well as being, frankly, a compound noun too far, is simply a jam. There is a decent little horn part which pops up occasionally, but the pedal-seesawing guitar is a little charmless. I do like the hollow production, especially the drum sound, which gives it a real loft jazz session air.
And, in these three tracks we have the whole LP encapsulated. There are trudges through Sunday session blues workouts without much merit, there are longeurs where the improv drifts off the boil, but there are enough lightning spasms of near-free jazz spiralling or spare, other-worldly Eric Dolphy type heads to stop it getting entirely boring.
A pretty straight cover of “Mellow Down Easy”, with rusty razor harp blowing and beery backing vocals of the sort indulged in by late Fall, is surprisingly pleasing, if ultimately inessential. No track is fully satisfying, they all have a jarring element: for example, the otherwise enticing merengue no wave spy noir freefall that is “Igor’s Blues” is marred by some charmless popping bass, and the boho travelogue of “Love Camp” really needs a swivel-pupilled Screamin’ Jay or a laconic Tom Waits on the vocals, not the hampered, self-conscious Philip Marlowe voiceover we get.
Whether these guys are prosperous, I couldn’t say, but they’re certainly qualified, with enough chops to make a vegan blanche, and they could really make an impact in an act with a strong creative hand at the tiller, whether that be straight gruff rocking or outré improvising, but as it is this LP is diverting and enjoyable without being particularly memorable or exciting. Universal Congress? Just an ornate way of saying fuck all.
