#4

Angles, Every Woman is a Tree (Clean Feed)

For a nation of nine million souls, Sweden has placed a proportionally high number of albums on this list – Love is All, Bengt Berger, and the Raveonettes have already achieved the great distinction of being named TiOM top 25ers. Add alto saxophonist Martin Kuchen and his latest project, Angles, to that number. Every Woman is a Tree is a stark and dark, Matthias Stahl's vibraphones darkening the corners of this roiling live collective improvisation. This is free music as Freedom Music; protest and dissent circa now. Thou ancient, thou free rouses Sweden's national anthem; this sextet certainly bears that second part to heart. The performances are tense and tight, the tunes aren't frothy but have enough head to satisfy. All of it adds up to my favourite free/improv/jazz recording of 2008 (that it came from an artist and group I'd never before heard of makes it all the more pleasing). ((And once again, Clean Feed proves itself one of the most interesting labels out there.))

#6

The Raveonettes, Lust Lust Lust (Vice)

I hereby nominate the Raveonettes to score every future David Lynch project, and while they’re at it, why not go back and provide new music for everything he’s already done? Those would be DVDs worth shelling out for. On Lust…, the ‘nettes seem to have clarified their purpose, shedding much of the bloat that troubled their last long player, and rededicating themselves to their role as recombinant masters of American Kitsch (as is so often the case, it takes outsiders to perfect this shit); promoters of trash as high art. With songs that flare up like magnesium, mechano-drums, robo-Swede vocals and fuzzy, tinny guitar, Lust… is perfect homage to the art of rock & roll self-invention. Harmonized vocals lie like bedrock beneath spiky guitars, and Buddy Holly smiles from the great beyond. So might Luxe Interior, if he were dead. Like Mulholland Drive, there’s a chance I’m not understanding everything that’s happening here, but I’m sure as hell enjoying it. Now, how about it: The Raveonettes do Blue Velvet?

#12

Love is All, A Hundred Things Keep Me Up at Night (What’s Your Rupture)

Just like their debut Nine Times That Same Song, this year’s A Hundred Things… plays out like a breathless run-on sentence, a harried and frenzied burst of energy, my two-year old daughter’s sugar rush babblings set to chugga-chugga post-punk guitars, the skronking saxophone, nervous tic drums, bubbly keyboards and Josephine Olausson's amateurish (in a good way) English-as-a-second-language vocals all competing to see who can get to the end of the song first, and even when they do slow it down, like on "When Giants Fall" or “Last Choice,” they make it so damn poppy-sweet, but not too TOO sugary, that you probably dance just as hard as you do to the fast stuff, so the cumulative effect is one of, yes, YES I like this, and after the second or third listen you’re bleating right along with Jansson, doing the freak-spank, playing rhythm guitar on a wooden spoon (or broom or hairbrush), and when, after a scant 32 minutes, the whole thing is over, you think to yourself, well THAT was fun.

Stockholm to Accra (Updated)

Tomorrow (Thursday) night on Now's the Time: a profile of Swedish percussionist Bengt Berger, whose interest in the music of Ghana (and elsewhere) led to some very interesting records circa 1981-1984. The program will primarily focus on the music of his Bitter Funeral Beer Band (pictured above), including appearances by Don Cherry (far right, in suit, freaking out).

As always, listen on 93.1 FM in the Ottawa area, and at ckcufm.com everywhere else, 8:30-10:00 pm EST. Or watch this space for download information after the fact.


UPDATE: For your downloading and listening pleasure:

Now's the Time - May 8, 2008: Bengt Berger and the Bitter Funeral Beer Band

Interplay

The latest episode of Now's the Time went down last Thursday evening, and I must say, modestly speaking, I nailed it. There are nights in the studio when you have to concede that you're weren't quite on. But there are others when everything is falling into place, and there are no technical glitches to derail you, and you spend the long drive home, smiling, thinking: Hell yes, that was good.

The evening began with an interview with Adrian Cho, founder and artistic director of the Impressions in Jazz Orchestra. Adrian's a great guy, and I've interviewed him before. He's a tireless promoter and worker for the music he believes in, and his mission, as artistic director, is to deliver programs that aim squarely at the nexus of education and entertainment. In that sense, his vision dovetails nicely with that of the IMC. Anyway, the show he's currently promoting is the IJO's upcoming Cult Fiction Classics, April 18 at Dominion Chalmers. If you're in Ottawa, go.

Thereafter, I got my hard bop on. John Coltrane, until recently strung out, fired by Miles Davis, and searching for direction (some of which he found while woodshedding with Monk), spent much of the period between 1956-1958 collecting paychecks from Prestige Records. He was a member of a number of different session lineups, many of them billed as the Prestige All-Stars, as well as stints as a sideman, and occasionally he was co-billed (John Coltrane and Kenny Burrell). All of this is documented on the excellent Interplay, the Concord Music Group's recent repackaging of all of this previously available material. It sounds wonderful; warm and full. The package is handsome, and the liners are incredibly detailed. Great stuff.

Have I piqued your interest? Just download the show already:

Now's the Time - April 3, 2008: Impressions in Jazz Orch. / Coltrane's Interplay

I'm in the studio next on May 8, when I'll play music by Bengt Berger and his Bitter Funeral Beer band - worldy, free improv stuff by a large-ish ensemble, sometimes including Don Cherry.

I'll check in here next week with some non-improvised music related stuff.

Lust, Lust, Lust

I'm loving this. Nothing more to say now, except Listen to it, already.

More later, including a rundown of last night's edition of Now's the Time, and full program download link.