Friday, October 19th, 2007 ... 3:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. ... KZSU, 90.1 FM

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Format:
ARTIST -- "TRACK TITLE" -- ALBUM TITLE (LABEL, YEAR)
Horizontal lines denote microphone breaks.

My trip to New York went well. I did get to throw money at Downtown Music Gallery and visit The Stone, John Zorn's bare-bones music venue on the Lower East Side.

It's a surprisingly elegant place, a small room with lots of cheap but new chairs, and elegant inset light fixtures in the black ceiling. No photography allowed. I had only one night to visit there, so I went down to see Brooklyn guitarist Matt Munisteri in what turned out to be the second most "square" show ever at The Stone. (His words; he said he'd also played on the most square show.) [If the Munisteri link is broken, check this out.]

Munisteri favors old-time jazz -- you know, the jaunty, banjo-driven 1920s stuff, including some "hot club" songs and some backwoods country/folk numbers. And for this show, he trotted out songs from forgotten old-time jazzster Willard Robison -- a man who apparently wrote some hits for Bing Crosby and the like, but never had his own music or bands committed to LP records. NEVER. Munisteri, after developing an obsession with Robison's work, had to dig up the original music on 78s.

Great set, overall. Munisteri performed with Brock Mumford, his regular band featuring trumpet and accordion.

Robison's lyrics were often deep and heartbreaking, sometimes fun, almost always with religious tones. What was interesting was the music -- old-timey, yes, but Robison tossed in some touches that I don't recall hearing from that era. Unexpected twists in the bassline, or the outright weird chord in the title line of "The Devil Is Afraid of Music." Biggest surprise was the song "Tain't so," an oft-recorded classic that ends with a three-chord dirge that Yes stumbled onto for the end of "Starship Trooper!" It goes B major / G major / E major, at least in the key I know, and it's played slowly as a backdrop for some great soloing. According to Munisteri, Robison would have his big band play that section with multiple basses bowing the notes for a deep, powerful sound that must have been quite unusual for its time.

Munisteri writes and records his own stuff, but he's been taking the Robison songbook on the road, and you figure there's got to be a chance that a studio date could happen someday. Some of these songs apparently never made it to LP, let alone CD -- they're only on old 78s.

I did manage to track down a Robison song, one of the more famous ones, for this program. (It's easy, using the "Find It!" link in our database. Other than that, I might have to look up Munisteri's own CD and wait for the day that Robison project hits the studio.

(To contact me: c t m at sonic dot net.)

Previously noted here.

* Jon Raskin Quartet -- "African Tulip" -- Jon Raskin Quartet (Rastascan, 2007)

A nice collection of improvisations and small composition-based pieces, with Liz Allbee (trumpet), George Cremaschi (bass), Gino Robair (drums), and Raskin on sax. Each "composed" piece has a score based on graphical elements and -- quoting from the liner notes -- "plant material gathered from walks in my neighborhood." As Raskin is a member of ROVA, which has been experimenting with graphical scores for years, this all kind of makes sense.

Previously noted here.

Previously noted here.

Michel Doneda, Urs Leimbruger, Keith Rowe -- "The Third Part" [excerpt] -- The Difference Between a Fish (Potlatch, 2002)

Quiet stuff in that AMM vein you'd expect from Rowe. Doneda, on saxophone, is also an acolyte of this style of improv, having put out a couple of Potlatch discs involving very quiet work, lots of tiny squeaks and long blank spaces. The band, two saxophones and Rowe's guitar and electronics, does two pieces of about 25 minutes each ("the second part" is apparently the blank space between the pieces, or maybe it's even more imaginary than that.) Tough to integrate into radio airplay, but well worth a concentrated listen.

Previously noted here. The "B" is there because this is part of a suite that stared with the piece "solo." This track isn't really solo; it's the band, playing off a really nice, pretty bassline.

Previously noted here. This track's not exactly slow, but it has a heavy feel/rhythm to it, creating a slower mood.

* Otomo Yoshihide's New Jazz Orchestra -- "Hat and Beard" -- Out to Lunch (Doubt, 2007)

An amazing reworking of the classic Eric Dolphy album, blow by blow, track for track, with Yoshihide tossing in a variety of modern, noisy, and Japanese twists while keeping the basic original elements (horns, vibraphone) mostly intact. Amazing from start to finish:

"Hat and Beard" keeps its bold '60s horn sound but adds glitchy electronics and turntable noises.

"Something Sweet, Something Tender" gets a little less sweet and tender, with a burning, romping feel and a cavalcade of wailing horms

"Gazzelloni," alreeady fast and upbeat on the original, becomes a madcap Japanoise punk attack. Really rocks out.

"Out to Lunch" is played resonably straight, with more horns than the original for lots of little solos alongside those chiming vibes. Lots of LONG pauses thrown in, just to mess with you.

"Straight Up and Down" keeps its big bold horns sound, then dissolves into a mystical electronics drone that stretches the song into a 27-minute landscape. "Will Be Back" is apparently the title of the electronics part.

*! Ovipositor -- "'...We're Hermits...'" -- Pirate Flag at Half-Mast (Arbeit Macht Dinge, 2007)

Noisy punky out-rock trio from Oakland returns, hooray! They've got weird angular guitar parts, high-strung nonsensical lyrics, and enough gumption to do an Ornette Coleman cover. Previously noted here and here and especially here.

Latin-based jazz that one reviewer likens to World Saxophone Quartet plus congas. Pretty accurate, plus Hamiet Bluiett is one of the players. There's plenty of adventure in the two "free" tracks (this one and Son De Patato) to keep my interest.

? Enten Eller and Tim Berne -- "13/7" -- Auto da Fe (Splasch(H), 2001)

Finally picked up this one, part of my DTMGallery haul mentioned up top. It's great. Enten Eller -- which I guess is Danish for "either/or" -- is an Italian, non-Danish, band led by trumpet and electric guitar. They added Berne on saxophone for this disc, and he fits in so well with the complex, episodic writing (reminiscent of Berne's own stuff, as the liner notes note), and guitar that occasionally gets all buzzy and noisy, the way Marc Ducret does in Berne's band.

I don't mean to say it all sounds like a Tim Berne project. There's that distinctive European feel in the writing; you do get the sense of a different personality. Most tracks go for some kind of adventuring, but a couple stay melodic, letting Berne show off his lyrical side, much as he did on Nels Cline's Angelica.

Made for a great contrast with the technocentric Prezens, which also features Berne alongside a guitar.

Previously noted here.

Recordings made on wax cylinders circa 1910-1915. They think the violinist on here was Wilhelm Kleinbach. Wacky! Apparently, Gunter II, prince of Schwatzburg-Rudolstadt-Sonderhausen, commissioned an unusually long dictaphone from Thomas Edison's company. The length -- these are wax cylinders, remember -- meant the dictaphone could record 12 minutes, an unheard-of length for its time. After World War I, the machine ended up with the .Guild of Funerary Violinists. It all sounds like a Pythonesque joke, but it would have to be a very elaborate one.

The music itself doesn't seem funeral-like. It's more like typical classical recitals of the time, with a strong pace, bright colors, occasional flurries of notes to show off talent. But "funerary" does mean what you think it means -- this is music meant for the time when a body is laid to rest. And there's a guild of musicians for this and it's existed since 1586! That's not a typo, it's FIFTEEN eighty-six!

By the way, the music appears to be taken directly from the wax cylinders. It's full of snaps and that crisping sound that, I have to admit, has always sounded relaxing to me.

Previously noted here.

* Bruce Eisenbeil Sextet -- "Triple Astral Texture" -- Inner Constellation, Volume One (Nemu, 2007)

Previously noted here. Acutally I played five tracks, about 12 minutes' worth, starting with track 11, which is "Triple Astral Texture."

Previously noted here.

? Fausto Romitelli [composer] -- "Professor Bad Trip, Lesson 3" -- Professor Bad Trip (Cypres, 2003)

Concluding the triology I've conducted during the past two weeks. The third movement has more of a drone quality to it, although you do get the sense of fast foward motion; elements like a recurring piano trickle act as propulsion. It's quite enjoyable, even more so than I'd remembered, but still the weakest of the three movements. It does set up a soft landing of a conclusion, so for that purpose, it's quite effective.

A rushing wave of sound, kicking off a small set of noise.

Previously noted here. This quick track includes a dramatic monologue spoken over the sound of heels quickly pacing the sidewalk.

Cellist from the Montreal area, doing a variety of avant-garde snippets with a large cast of players: some tracks are acoustic, some with electronics, some jazz-like, some classical-like, some noisy. This is a quieter piece with lots of percussive cello sounds. Elsewhere there are some electric-guitar tracks and a trio with oboe and guitar that's nice.

Tete Montoliu -- "Old Folks" -- The Music I Like To Play, Vol. 1 (Soul Note, 1987)

A warm, homey piano solo, done slowly and with care. This is the Willard Robison piece mentioned up top. Can't recall if Munistieri played it the other night.

Collective 4Tet -- "For Emmanuel" [excerpt] -- Live at Crescent (Leo Records, 1998)

A stunning free-jazz quartet that performs long improvised pieces. Mark Hennen on piano produces a sparkling, jazzy sound -- some of the all- group playing could be the solo section of a club piano date. You've also got Heinz Geisser (drums), William Parker (bass), and Jeff Hoye (trombone). These guys have a few discs out on Leo, although the ascent of Parker's career has probably kept them from getting together too often. They've got a nice twist on the European jazz/improv idea.

Previously noted here. A big, rolling sound from the big band on this one.

* = Item in KZSU rotation
! = Pop anomaly
? = Item not in KZSU library

-- Go back to Memory Select playlists.
-- Bay Area free/improv music calendar: http://www.bayimproviser.com.