CD Review: Smoothe Moose Summer 09 Mixtape
We’re a little – ok, a lot – behind the eightball with this one, considering that adventurous, innovative Tortoise-esque Brooklyn dub/jazz/new music collective Smoothe Moose are celebrating the release of their latest mixtape (one assumes the Fall 09 edition) tonight at Public Assembly. But this is worth checking out A) because it’s free and B) because their unique blend of chillout instrumentals and jazz-inflected dub is a lot of fun. And also because it’s a cover album that doesn’t suck. It opens with an instrumental of Chopped & Screwed, the T-Pain song, woozy and dubwise. Sax creeps in along with some cello, both of which get expansive and playful. This is about as far from T-Pain as Grover Washington Jr. or Mad Professor – both of who it resembles – and it makes a good psychedelic groove. Timbaland would approve.
The second track reworks Electric Feel by MGMT as fuzzy dub after a rote first verse, synthy layers oscillating into and out of the mix. And as an added bonus it doesn’t have the original’s awful, pretentious off-key vocals. Track three, Bam Bam Bam is the Sister Nancy dancehall hit, tastily beefed up and hypnotic with fluttery sax, pinging guitar and then some stark cello. It’s the closest thing to classic dub here – at least before the sax goes nuts – and it would be the best except for the last track, a dub instro version of Sabbath’s War Pigs. Circuits bubbling like they’re about to short and start a fire, fuzz bass nimbly nailing Tony Iommi’s guitar hooks, it’s laugh-out-loud hilarious. What a pleasant surprise – a group that utilizes electronics that don’t suck the soul out of the music. Technology doesn’t always have to be the enemy. Download the individual tracks or the whole thing here for free here – and if you’re around tonight and in the mood to feed your brain, go see Smoothe Moose at Public Assembly at 9.
CD Review: Quartet Offensive – Carnivore
We need more jazz like this: counterintuitive, surprising, innovative and tuneful as hell. Although capable of a gem like the long lyrical ballad Jelly, the album’s next-to-last track, Quartet Offensive also like their noise. On this new cd, the Baltimore jazz group prove equally adept at an MC5-style amalgam of gritty riff-rock and free jazz, as well as intermingling plenty of effectively haphazard improvisation within the strikingly terse, melodic architecture of their compositions. Much of this compares favorably with the excellent, melodic Boston free jazz outfit Gypsy Schaeffer. John Dierker gets a surprising amount of range out of his bass clarinet, adding unexpected textures in tandem with Eric Trudel’s tenor sax. Matt Frazao‘s often heavily processsed guitar also adds a wealth of shades and frequencies over the often astonishingly minimalist, subtle groove of the rhythm section, Adam Hopkins on bass and Nathan Ellman-Bell on drums. Headphone music, most definitely.
The big riff-rockers are the opening and closing tracks here. The first works a raunchy funk-metal riff down into a guitar-and-horns freakout in the same vein as King Crimson’s 21st Century Schizoid Man, then winds its way back up. The last cut moves deftly from riff-rock to swing, sax and guitar effects bubbling like acid on cinderblock in midsummer until the insistent pulse of the horns brings the track back into focus. The single best track might be the langorous yet fascinating dirge Heavy-Light. An off-kilter conversation between Dierker and Trudel opens it, guitar entering mysteriously over the horns’ repetitive insistence, sax eventually rising overhead. Then a sunbaked guitar solo that morphs into a rippling firestorm as the effects pedals seem to gleefully fry themselves. Meanwhile, the rhythm section maintains the pace of a tortoise. But it’s a funky tortoise: he just moves at about a third of the speed that we do.
Or, the best song here might be the tongue-in-cheek narrative The Sheep Ate the Flowers, kicking off with a staccato guitar riff that works itself into a maelstrom of noise into guitar feedback that fades down until it’s mostly inaudible, then up to a hypnotic, circular, guitar-driven fusionesque vamp. Or it could be the self-explanatory O.D., kicking off with yet more staccato guitar echoed restlessly by the horns, followed by what sounds like a playful rip of the chorus from Steely Dan’s Josie – in 13. Sax and then guitar solos grow increasingly unhinged, to the point where at the end of Frazao’s crazed trip to the emergency room, the horns have to take over and comp and keep the restraints tightly knotted. There’s also a evocatively pensive ballad titled Gooodbye, Cavendish and the straight-up groove Yo Banana Boy with its thoughtful Wes Montgomery-inflected guitar and shapeshifting harmonies between the horns. The liner notes indicate that this album was recorded with help from the Peabody Office of Career Development and the Maryland State Arts Council: money well spent. One can only wonder how many other excellent groups like this are kicking around towns like “Ballmer.” Quartet Offensive’s next gig is a free show on September 12 at 9 PM at Windup Space, 12 W North Ave. in Baltimore with Brooklyn group Afuche.
Song of the Day 9/3/09
Every day, our top 666 songs of alltime countdown gets one step closer to #1. Thursday’s song is #328:
Procol Harum – As Strong As Samson
An unusually caustic world-is-going-to-hell commentary by lyricist Keith Reid (who didn’t play in the legendary British art-rock band but went to all their shows) set to a wrenchingly beautiful organ melody. The studio track from the 1974 Exotic Birds and Fruit album (above) is fine, but the best version is on their Live on the BBC cd, a 1974 recording finally issued in 1999. Frontman Gary Brooker continues to lead a considerably more heavy metal version of the band.