Sunday, November 11th, 2007 ... 3:00 a.m. - 6:00 a.m. ... KZSU, 90.1 FM

(Return to playlists.)

Taking advantage of the long weekend, I stayed up late and took the graveyard shift for another all-styles mix. Steven was on from midnight to 3:00 with his "Transmission Overload" show, which was a head-spinning collage of upbeat music: rock, punk, Latin jazz -- wow. I'm impressed and humbled; no way could I do sustain that level of energy with as many styles of music as he juggled.

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

Sparks -- "Dick Around" -- Hello Young Lovers (In the Red, 2006)

Kicking off with this one yet again. Nice follow-up to Steven's show. More about the song here, and more about the band here.

* Lyle Lovett and His Large Band -- "All Downhill" -- It's Not Big, It's Large (Curb/UMG, 2007)

A decade ago -- no, more, actually -- a roommate and I caught Lyle Lovett and His Large Band on Austin City Limits. They opened with "Here I Am," and we were hooked for life. The mix of country, R&B, jazz, and a sly sense of humor -- it's just too much to resist, and if you're not already on the bandwagon for Lyle, I don't know what to say.

A 2-CD set compiled with various bands over the years. Brovold's Larval is somewhere between prog rock and psych jamming, put in a fun, nearly jazz-fusiony atmosphere. Saxophones add some whimsical lines, as on this one, and get some occasional free-jazz growling too. John Zorn's a fan!

From the original album, on glorious vinyl, the one released when the Monkees were becoming a TV hit but the public didn't yet know that they weren't writing their own songs. Never mind that the song credits are clearly spelled out on the record here. This is one of the tracks Mike Nesmith actually wrote, showing off the countryfied style that he'd pursue post-Monkees.

Light, accessible "world" music from guitarist Brozman, overdubbing himself on a variety of exotic stringed instruments. This one's got a kind of gamelan feel (on plucked strings, of course); elsewhere he goes for deep tangoes, Indian ragas, or Polynesian island serenity.

* Kevin Deal -- "Texas and Beer" -- Roll (Piedrero, 2007)

Straight, confident country: cowboy hats and barstools, a touch of bravado, no self-pity -- not even on "Another Drinkin' Song," where the narrator is all sad and, technically, self-pitying, but the tempo keeps an upbeat singalong feel.

Another track from the benefit CD previously mentioned here. This one's the closing track, a thin-voiced, sparse piece. More about At the Crossroads, the organization, here.

A bit of a tough sound from the Japanese pop duo. Relatively speaking, anyway; it's still their bouncy guitar-pop sound. Japanese lyrics, cute title.

* Manu Chao -- "The Bleeding Clown" -- La Radiolina (Nacional, 2007)

Hip world/rock coolness that works. Chao's stuff is commercial and glossy, and yet it's a bit edgy to my ears, not to mention creative and just damn cool. I've been a bit of a fan ever since hearing that "Je Ne T'aime Plus" song (can't recall its exact title, maybe that's even it).

Can you tell this is a metal track? Aggressive stuff out of Rhode Island, with the obligatory menacing black-and-white photos of the band to prove it. The transition worked here, honest to god -- Chao's song, while upbeat in tempo, wasn't that lyrically cheery, and this one, the album's opener, starts with a long tone of guitar feedback that was just skinny enough to slip into the beats of the Chao piece. Then it gets into thundering death metal, with the whole 9000-bpm pedal drums and all.

Funny stuff from the unofficial KZSU sweetheart. No offense intended to the 25 Ta Life guys, but it's about a punk rocker who's going through pretty much every over-40 ailment you can think of.

Catchy but weird little instrumentals. Includes off-kilter accordion, twangy western-style musics, all sots of stuff. Former KZSU DJ Klee described some tracks as would-be soundtracks for crazy-ass movies.

* Big George Brock -- "Bring the Blues Back Home" -- Live at Seventy-Five (Cat Head, 2007)

Big, raucous blues from a legendary player with a booming voice. He opens this one declaring, "Bring the blues back home!" and it nearly tears the speakers apart. Strong stuff.

You know the drill: Hyperkinetic dance beats underneath some rich, organic electric-bass soloing. There's a melodic tinge to Squarepusher's work, which led me to thinking... that new age electronics stuff that Jean-Michel Jarre did? This is that stuff, done right.

A bit cheesy, and playing it was possibly a miscue. This is a CD destined for "deep storage" -- the back room where we keep the stuff that's no longer deemed necessary for the library. The album overall is a dated mix of classic rock, in mellowing "I'm turning 50" mode, with some '80s synth syrup and drum-machine cardboard thrown into the mix. This track isn't so bad, though -- a pleasant, slightly sentimental song.

* Veil Veil Vanish -- "Reproach" -- Into a New Mausoleum (self-released, 2007)

Local band, spirited rock with a bit of a goth feel. Guitars and synths, forceful vocals. Probably lots of fun to see live.

Soft, folky stuff that I set up to be dismantled by the noise track following. Unfair, I know. This album marked the Moodies' comeback in 1981, with the top 10 hit "Gemini Dream," an embarrasingly disco-ized synth track. I'd never heard that song upon buying the album; what had caught my ear was "The Voice," which got the classic-rock-station airplay and remains, somewhat guiltily, one of my favorite songs. Getting back to "In My World" ... I did let it get through a couple of verses and even the sappy middle section before starting up Metalux. They got a fair hearing on-air.

Metalux were noisy to begin with, with ugly chords and oversaturated mics for a menacing, future-evil sound. On this CD, they go all-out with noise -- lots of hissy, staticky stuff with groany vocals on top. It's probably less disturbing if you're listening to it at home, rather than inside a deserted radio station at 4:00 a.m.

Previously noted here. Applebaum is a guest on Monday's Lunch Hour show (12:00 noon, hosted by Byrd of Paradise), as a piece of his is premiering Tuesday at CCRMA here at Stanford. It's a short quintet piece. The program will include nine Stanford composers' composed "reactions" to the piece. Interesting idea.

Compomicro-Dexall -- "Dexall" -- Compomicro-Dexall (self-released, 1998)

Very cool noise duo of electric bass and drums. Their stuff isn't all improvised; it sometimes trickles into some prewritten riffs and curls. Previously noted here.

By the way, one of the guys in the duo is The Bran(Pos).

An album of various languages, with Denio coming across in a kind of world-music mode. This one's lightly Latin, obviously -- not big brash Latin horns, but a light, pecking rhythm. There's another track called "Czechered Pyjamas," so you can guess a bit of what happens there.

Tough-edged rap with political overtones. I'll admit I haven't given this a close listen, lyrically, but I've been impressed with Jedi Mind Tricks stuff before; this wasn't a random pull.

* Novalis -- "Es Farbte Sich Die Wiese Grun" -- Novalis (SPV GmbH, 2004; orig. released 1975)

Krautrock, maybe with a light touch. This track has its mellow moments, anyway, although it does get into a soaring prog guitar solo midway through.

* Alec K. Redfearn and the Eyesores -- "Myra" -- The Blind Spot (Cuneiform, 2007)

Chamber pop. Light and precious, with instruments like violin, bassoon, and glockenspiel. Folky Renaissance-tinged stuff.

How did I not notice this one before? A great assembly of mid-'90s local bands: Splatter Trio, Eskimo, Idiot Flesh ... along with like-minded weirdos including Amy Denio, Primus, Cracker, Frank Pahl, and Snakefinger. Also a lengthy answering-machine apology from Stan Ridgway, poor guy. Interpretations are all over the map: some disturbing and eerie, others (like this one) poppy and pleasant.

In fact, the Mommyheads turned this one into a fun calypso ramble. It's a relatively famous song, one of four (?) from the Commercial Album that got videos -- we're talking pre-1980 videos! I saw them on Videowest on KQED, back before MTV! The vids are mainstays on YouTube now, go check it out.

From Herb Heinz and Marc Briggs, a Negativland-like pop album with catchy melodies and avant-garde bouts of sampling, noise, and other weirdness. Cool pop collages. Heinz and Briggs lately have been working with an improv collective called dud, which I'm hoping to catch sometime soon.

This particular track gets ultra-catchy, with Amy X. Neuburg singing a la-la melody to close it out.

Roger Kleier -- "Put One in His Brain" -- Klangenbang (Rift, 1996)

Electric guitar in a smart-alecky classical mode. Some tracks explore serious soundscapes, while others like this one go for catchy rhythms and visceral, rock-like tones.

The GbV anthem, of course. Could have pulled this off Bee Thousand directly, but I figured I'd give the Greatest Hits CD a spin at least once. The slow, slow Lavette song made for a very nice setup to the proud, simple melody that opens this track. Hopefully someone out there got chills hearing it.

Squeeze -- "Hop Skip and Jump" -- Cool for Cats (A&M, 1979)

A hot little Jules Shear number with an impressivly blazing guitar solo. Man, these guys were good.

A precursor to New Age music, Weber has had a lengthy and presumably successful career on ECM -- enough that when I got curious about him, I could grab a random item (this one) on used vinyl for cheap. Weber had guested on a Gary Burton track (another ECM used vinyl find -- sorry ECM, I do buy the new CDs too!) and he'd been called out on a Kate Bush album, IIRC -- so I gave it a shot.

He specializes in side-long, floaty epics, with lots of pretty, hovering melody and a rich higher-range bass sound (amplified acoustic bass, I think it is). At once lyrically pleasing and contemplative, although not the kind of stuff that necessarily floats my boat.

This album happens to be notable in that Weber includes two female singers, Bonnie Herman and Norma Winstone, to add some charming worldless melody to the picture. Most of his albums don't have vocals. He's also got an American band as opposed to his usual European cohorts, and it's a good one: Gary Burton on vibes and a very young looking Bill Frisell on guitar. That's the kind of company you get to keep when ECM gets on your side.

The latest in Plonsey's series of long-form pieces for his large band, Daniel Popsicle (in this case, 18 players, including horns strings, guitars, and lots of exotic percussion.) The overall sound is like gentle circus music, creating a floating, continuous atmosphere, built atop a pulsing rhythm, 100 bpm, that never changes for most of the full 110 minutes -- a nod to Anthony Braxton's Ghost Trance Music, I think. The piece is divided into 26 segments, each assigned a letter; segment boundaries are where the musical style changes most noticeably. Within sections, things feel hypnotically repetitious but you'll hear the passage change subtly from measure to measure. Kids would probably love dancing to this stuff (they couldn't make it through all 110 minutes, of course).

Plonsey calls this "Music of El Cerrito Volume 2B." A bit on the previous volume here.

Noted here.

* = Item in KZSU rotation
? = Item not in KZSU library

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