Negu Technic

 

NEGU GORRIAK – GURE JARRERA (Esan Ozenki ,1991)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8SUNJIB6vU&t=1457s

If you only listen to one industrial hip-hop punk collage album in a language you can’t place this fortnight, make it this one.  
 
Or, I don’t know, a different one, I have no frame of reference.  But, regardless of a complete lack of context, this record is pretty much the distillation of energy in music, and as such is a wonderful ride. The opening is a one minute car crash of block-rocking beats, clunky samples and what might be a keening Armenian duduk.  There are a few of these little interludes in the album, and they’re surprisingly the most enjoyable parts.  Some of the edits are so cleaver-clumsy I often couldn’t tell whether I was listening to the album or whether a YouTube advert had cut in unceremoniously.
 
The proper songs (for a given value of “proper”) are huge chunky rockers with a post-electro beatbox framework, which fall somewhere between Big Audio Dynamite and Ministry with a manic punk gurn.  There are moments when I’m reminded of acts as disparate as early Beastie Boys, Rage Against The Machine, Aerosmith and EMF, but Negu Gorriak will never be mistaken for any of them, as they bundle frenetically into each track as if thjey have to get the record done before dinner burns.  Like many foundational punk and rap artists, it feels as though the itching desire to say something has over-ridden any concerns as musically bourgeois as second takes or edits.  Of course, I don’t know what it actually is they are saying, but we figure it’s mostly pointed, and someone or -thing is doubtless the target of the (admittedly blunt) sonic weaponry.  
 
There are times when the sloppiness is frustrating – bringing in the robo-vox from “O, Superman” for all of 3 seconds before abandoning it is particularly mystifying – and times when the songs are such dumbass rock generica it’s only the sonic rawness differentiating them from the soundtrack to any beery frat party, but the experience as a whole is galvanising, which is what so much popular music is ultimately all about.
 
Final track “Euskal Herri Nerea” is a surprisingly tight piece of rubber-bassed ska rock, as if to prove that they can do it by the book if they choose, they just have other things on their minds most of the time.  Well, fair enough, mark us down as convinced: Up the revolution!  Or down!  Or whatever it is we’re supposed to think!  

Walton, on the Nose

This is the second Album of the Fortnight bit of reviewing fun (see the last post for an explanation...although it's pretty obvious).  I chose this one, and it's fair to say that nobody liked it.  To be fair, I did pick it to test them, but I honestly think this is well worth your effort.  If you want to play along at home, the video cam be found at https://youtu.be/0zpyNKhiXWQ.

 

WILLIAM WALTON - FACADE: AN ENTERTAINMENT, Ludwig, under the leadership of Barbara Hannigan, Ojai Music Festival 2019

Walton's Facade is subtitled "An Entertainment".  I suspect some listeners would take issue with this.  Still, the mixture of Walton's distorted early twentieth century popular song (music hall, barrack room singalongs, polite village fete folk, etc) with Edith Sitwell's chewy tongue-twister poems has always been a winner for me,  I especially like the fact that the original performance had the orator hidden behind a curtain barking through a megaphone (lo-fi rolled up paper type), and that the instructions dictate that the words must not be sung: maybe it's always reminded me of MES.  

I think I partly like the because it reminds me of my days in secondary school - which was a state school, but 450 years old, and rather odd in some ways - where the dying embers of the British Empire were puffed by gruff, gone-to-seed sergeant majors, while being snidely eyed by louche ironic aesthetes, who nevertheless put up with the pretence so long as the sherry kept coming.

I like this performance, it has a brightness and tightness in the playing, and the barely possible lyrics are taken at such a canter all you can do is doff your cap.  Of course the yanks don't *quite* get it, and I think play it bold and camp without the melancholy that underpins cheap entertainment in the UK (I'm thinking Punch & Judy, panto or even mystery plays).

Barbara Hannigan keeps it all excellently under control though, and all in all I'd say that this is a highly recommended version of the piece - especially for a first listen.  I'm quite a fan of Hannigan, her vocals are fantastic, and she is also quite a stage presence.  Here she is performing some Ligeti, which must be preposterously difficult to do: https://youtu.be/_pYb8eQIYfU

The Attack on Congress

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.