Month: March 2021

Starting this month The Necessary Blues will be posting every other week! Mid month you can expect our deep dive into a classic performance from the history of progressive music. Check out our last post about Magma’s strange and wonderful “Last Seven Minutes”. Up next you can expect another post about a classic and overlooked progressive rock/jazz album. Quick teaser – what’s the only album that has Annette Peacock, Kenny Wheeler and a titan of mid 70s rock drumming . . . find out in two weeks!

But now our new feature at The Necessary Blue is monthly album reviews! At the end of each month we’re going to post short reviews and links to our favorite new and recent albums in progressive, experimental and jazz music. We’ll also put together a Spotify playlist of highlights from these records so that you can dive right in – (see the bottom of this post).

So without further ado, here is The Necessary Blues March 2021 record round up!

TNB Album Pick!
Patricia Brennan – Maquishti
(Valley of Search, Released 1/15/2021)

Patricia Brennan, Vibaphone and Marimba

Brennan’s album has all the qualities that make a great solo recital: an engaging program, an original and distinctive sound, and a sense of mystery that keeps the listener moving forward. Most amazing is the wonder at sound itself – a communion of listener and performer over the ringing tones hanging in the air. Brennan’s patience and rigor are singular. My favorite album of the year so far!

TNB Album Pick!
Zeena Parkins, Mette Rasmussen, Ryan Sawyer – Glass Triangle
(Relative Pitch Records, released 2/26/2021)

At almost two minutes into the fabulously named “Begiunners, begges, beattle, belt, believers”, Zeena Parkins’ electrified harp announces itself, sounding like a massive foghorn from the depths of hell. Later in the same piece, she plays repeating patterns reminiscent of laser beams from a science fiction movie. The saxophone playing and drumming here are kinetic and amazing, but what really makes this album singular are the amazing sounds that Parkins dreams app. The flow of the album is also very canny, with each composition skillfully segueing into the next so that it creates a continuous set of music. Bracing and fantastic, the best “out” release of 2021 (so far).

Tamil Rogeon – Son of Nyx
(Soul Bank, released 2/5/2021)

Tamil Rogeon, viola; Sam Keevers, keyboards; Daniel Mougerman, keyboards; Sam Anning, bass; Danny Fischer, drums; Javier Fredes, percussion.

This whole album is pretty terrific, but best in the spirited lead track, “House No Wheels.” Jazz violin (here, viola) is so great. I imagine playing this on a sunny weekend morning while drinking a cup of coffee and enjoying the cool breeze.

Alban Darche – Le Gros Cube #2
(Yolk Records, released 3/5/2021)

Jon Irabagon, alto saxophone; Loren Stillman, alto saxophone; Alban Darche, tenor saxophone; Matthieu Donarier, tenor saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet; Rémi Sciuto, baritone saxophone, flute; Joël Chausse, trumpet; Geoffroy Tamisier, trumpet; Jean-Paul Estiévenart, trumpet; Olivier Laisney, trumpet; John Fedchock, trombone; Jean-Louis Pommier, trombone; Samuel Blaser, trombone; Matthias Quilbault, tuba; Marie Krüttli, piano; Gilles Coronado, guitar; Sébastien Boisseau, double bass; Christophe Lavergne, drums

There’s a moment on the opening tune “A la bougie” when the alto sax solo hits a crescendo while Darche’s intricate big band chart swells – at that moment the incredible potential of the big band is fully realized. Darche says he conceived this project as a meeting between American musicians (Irabagon, Stillman) and Europeans where they use his tunes to confront and modernize traditional big band music. The playing is terrific and the charts are stirring. I’ll have to listen to more of Darche’s music. Darche says he aims to go from “the familiar to the confusing, offering the disconcerting that sounds “classic.” Offer very personal colors in a familiar landscape, or build a complex landscape with colors that are nevertheless obvious.” Mission accomplished!

Thumbscrew – Never is Enough
(Cuneiform Records, release 2/26/2021)

Tomas Fujiwara, Drums; Mary Halvorson, Guitar; Michael Formanek, Double Bass and Electric Bass

The trio of Halvorson, Formanek and Fujiwara have been making records for years as Thumbscrew. I need to dig more into their back catalogue, but this one is dark, mysterious and feels like it’s own immersive sound world. A highlight is the title track, where Formanek’s electric bass allows the band to suddenly morph into a twisted new wave band. Awesome! Elsewhere, the band feels right at home exploring all types of bent harmony. It’s an accomplishment to make music thus immediately identifiable and distinctive.

Matty Stecks & Dead Cat Bounce – Lucky & Live in STL
(Matty Stacks Music, released 12/30/2020)

Matt Steckler, Jared Sims, Felipe Salles, Charlie Kohlhase – saxes, Gary Wicks – bass, Bill Carbone – drums

I fell in love with the sound of a saxophone choir with the first chord of the World Saxophone Quartet’s Live from BAM, so you know I’m a sucker for this stuff. Here the sax quartet is supplemented with bass and drums in live performances from 2003, but released at the very end of 2020. Stecks plays tenor sax, and gets the expected dense harmonies with his fellow sax players on soprano, alto and baritone. Full of energy and ear catching sax harmony.

Cortex – Legal Tender
(Clean Feed, Released 10/30/2020)

Thomas Johansson trumpet, percussion, Kristoffer Berre Alberts saxophones, percussion, Ola Høyer double bass, percussion, Gard Nilssen drums, percussion

Cortex calls itself “avant garde party music“, and this album delivers spirited and energetic music in spades. The music reminds me of Ornette Coleman’s 50’s quartet, with plenary of fire but also melody to keep you tapping along. The tunes give all the band members a chance to shine – from an intense sax solo on “Standby”, lithe drumming on “GTM” and fiery trumpet playing on “I-95.” Don’t miss the “trick ending” on the last tune “Loose Blues.” Yes, avant grade music can be FUN. Also: classic record cover!

Hedvig Mollestad Trio – Ding Dong. You´re Dead
(Rune Grammofon, released 3/19/2021)

Hedvig Mollestad, Guitar, Ellen Brekken, bass, Ivar Loe Bjørnstad, drums

Right out of the gate this sounds like an outtake from King Crimson’s Red (not a bad thing), and the tunes progress from one vein of guitar riffing to another. Also reminds me of Chris Haskell’s side project when he played guitar with Henry Rollins. I bet this would sound great live.

Binker and Moses – Escape the Flames
(Gearbox Records, released 12/12/2020)

Binker Golding – tenor saxophone, Moses Boyd – drums

Brits Golding and Boyd have been a big deal for years, but this is their first album I’ve listened to. It like Coltrane’s Interstellar Space for the people. You can hear the energy of the musicians, and also a refreshing enthusiasm from the audience. The community of listeners on display here is one way forward for this music.

Gretchen Parlato – Flor
(Edition Records, released 3/5/2021)

Gretchen Parlato, vocals; Marcel Camargo, Guitar and Musical Direction; Artyom Manukyan, Cello; Léo Costa, drums and percussion; Mark Guiliana, Drums; Gerald Clayton, Piano; Airto Moreira, Voice and Percussion

In this wildly varied program, Parlato presents songs that range from the expected Brazilian rhythms of the opener, to a cover of the Anita Baker song “Sweet Love”, and to Parlato doing a wordless vocal to 5th movement of Bach’s 1st cello suite. The album’s range may stop some listeners from digging in, but surprises abound, and it makes me look forward to the next one.

Archie Shepp & Jason Moran – Let My People Go
(Archieball, released 2/5/21)

Archie Shepp, tenor sax, soprano sax, voice Jason Moran, piano

Duets between Shepp and Moran playing a mix of gospel songs and reverential covers of Duke, Strayhorn and Monk – sounds too good to be true! The playing is sincere and the album is solemn at times but loosens up as it goes along. Don’t skip the bonus tracks! They include live performances with memorable piano and tenor sax. Moran really lets loose on this version of “Jitterbug Waltz” – excellent!

Here’s the Spotify playlist, enjoy:

The Last Seven Minutes
Attahk (1978, Eurodisc)

Personnel:
Christian Vander (Dëhrstün) – lead vocals, drums, percussion, grand piano, Rhodes piano, Chamberlin
Klaus Blasquiz (Klotz) – vocals
Rene Garber (Stundehr) – vocals
Stella Vander (Thaud) – vocals
Lisa Bois (Sïhnn) – vocals
Tony Russo – trumpet
Jacques Bolognesi – trombone
Benoit Widemann (Kahal) – grand piano, Rhodes piano, Minimoog, Oberheim polyphonic synthesizer
Guy Delacroix – “Earth” bass (Ürgon), “Air” bass (Gorgo)

The title of this post is a phrase that to most, maybe even its own creator, has no meaning – but when shortened to the phrase “Magma”, it references an iconoclastic French band who created a musical movement, their own language, and a vision of the future.

Magma was founded by Christian Vander in 1969, and birthed from the unprecedented musical discovery that year. The seminal sounds of In the Court of the Crimson King, the electrifying Led Zeppelin II, Miles Davis’ sonic expeditions on In a Silent Way, and Trout Mask Replica’s insanity, all in equal parts catalyzed the sound of Magma; an eclectic stew band founder Vander calls “Zeuhl.” Translating to “celestial” in Kobaïan, the constructed language created by the band, the genre is a cosmic soup of breakbeat rhythm, scatsinging in tenor, and choral chanting. These disparate elements are glued together in patchwork surrounding a (usually very cheesy) concept album.

Beside musical aspirations, the band was chiefly spawned of Vander’s dystopic vision of the future. Precipitated by political and ecological ruin, he predicted that Earth would come under the rule of a demagogy, with Earthlings needing to escape and found the planet Kobaïa to ensure humanity’s survival. Naturally, the only place to share this premonition with the world would be in 1970’s debut, the self-titled concept album Magma.

Meeting middling album sales and little critical acclaim, 1971’s sophomore 1001° Centigrades was a broad step from the band’s original style. Less emphasis was placed on melody, and more on the rhythmic nature of military drumming and march songs that would come to inspire the band’s next album, Mekanik Destruktiw Kommandoh. Commonly abbreviated to MDK, this record managed to break into international sales beyond the French avant-garde and fared very well critically. The album cover would come to be the band’s symbol. MDK, by all accounts, looked to be the Magma’s defining work. But when have creatives on the edge of their craft ever stuck to the same sound, especially one bringing breakout success? Later albums brought a sharp movement away from the genre they created, and into a separate niche centered around funk and rhythm tracks. Gospel influence was, of course, pulled as well, leading to the haphazardly named Spiritual (Negro Song). This track is one badly named blemish on Attahk, one of Magma’s lattermost albums, and a personal favorite.

Every track on Attahk fulfills its own role – the elegiac Dondai rounds out the album with its slow balladry, an interesting change of pace in Magma’s repertoire. Maanht, conversely, depicts the clash between a sorcerer and Satan as a James Brown track thrown in a blender, warped in the most enjoyable way. Klaus Blasquiz makes the track his own with demonic groaning over a fat, driving bass rhythm. Synthesizer, trumpets, and harmonizing vocals, come together over a marching drum beat occasionally. I imagine it lends the sorcerer’s demonic battle a sense of grandeur.

Of course, these tracks that form the backend of the album are gems – but none so much as the standout track of Attahk, the ironically named opener The Last Seven Minutes. The song begins in media res, immediately dropping listeners into the thick of its complexity. Two interweaving bass layers and an odd drum timing immediately leave the rest of the instrumentation to catch up. What initially sounds odd coalesces upon the introduction to Christian Vander’s tenor, just odd enough to tie together the frenzied Kraut-inspired beat that has thus far led the song.

If nothing else, the track is always changing; from one minute’s half-time harmonic explosions, to frenetic scat movements, building steam for a sudden change halfway – a funky half-time breakdown into the track’s climax. No musical idea is fully expanded upon, instead used and just as quickly discarded. It’s certainly an acquired taste. Progressive contemporaries like Led Zeppelin released similar epics, such as Kashmir, which took a simple chord and pushed it to its musical limit; Vander was never content to stay in the same place. While nothing fully matures except for the sweeping chorus towards the song’s end, nothing ever grows old either, creating an engaging listening experience.

It is easy to place the jazz influence on Vander. He foregoes classical composition for a structure that evolves as the track ticks forward; it’s a musical equivalent to the winding stream-of-consciousness paragraphs of Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway or Joyce’s Ulysses, which were written as their authors wandered the labyrinthine streets of London and Dublin. In Vander’s case, it was Paris.

A building choral coda leads us out of the track, providing a grandeur to the track that evokes previous Magma projects. It’s distinctly less dissonant, a different shade of enjoyable that’s less derived from the surprise of listening and more from the sonic pleasure of the riding on top of the chorus and instrumentation is Vander’s bizarre vocal performance, which can only be described as dolphin sounds? Hilarious, but that hilarity fits the uptempo groove of this section, exuding optimism and an infectious cheesiness. It’s hard not to be charmed – oh, it’s over?

Without finding a conclusive place to end, the track cuts to the sound of flailing percussion, stopping unceremoniously in its building momentum. Just enough for the listener to enjoy both the funky dissonance and melodic swing-timing, while not tiring of either. In this single track, Magma evokes the mortal experience; The Last Seven Minutes haplessly places its listener into the middle of a chaos and only plucks them out when that chaos finally makes sense of itself. Were this any other band, that’d be reaching, but with Magma it’s a possibility.

Jesse Koblin