Mark Dresser Seven's "Ain't Nothing But A Cyber Coup and You"

In the past couple of weeks, I've read online Rolling Stone articles (penned by Hank Shteamer, possibly the last jazz critic left in America) on Andrew Cyrille (Vision Festival recognition) and Anthony Braxton (new improv 4CD on Firehouse 12 with a quartet that includes Nels Cline), causing me to wonder, "Is 'free jazz' become mainstream, at long last?"

Coincidentally, this occurred at a moment when I'm re-reading Graham Lock's 1988 Braxton tome Forces In Motion and awaiting the arrival of a copy of Brax's 2007 improv 4CD on Clean Feed with Joe Morris. Exploring Braxton and Morris' catalogs is a daunting endeavor, as both cats release so many records. But that, I suppose, is what a prolific artist does who has the means, and desires to document their compositions, collaborations, and evolution. I've seen Clean Feed take it on the chin from online comment-posters over the ostensible lack of quality control in their burgeoning catalog, but unless one objects to the idea of artists being able to publish their work, I would consider it a service and listen to something else if I'm not interested.

Then the USPS dropped a new Clean Feed release, including this disc, at my door -- a further synchronicity, for Mark Dresser was the bassist in Braxton's longest-lived (and, many would argue, best) quartet, whose 1985 tour of the UK forms the centerpiece of Lock's book. The curiously-titled Ain't Nothing But A Cyber Coup and You is the follow-up to 2016's Sedimental You, also produced by David Breskin (whose work with Ronald Shannon Jackson, Nels Cline, and Kris Davis I've cherished), and is as politically-themed as its predecessor. I take the taut, tense title track as a reference to the 2016 US presidential election, the circuitously shifting "Let Them Eat Paper Towels" as an expression of outrage at our government's malign neglect of Puerto Rico post-Hurricane Maria, and the somber "Embodied in Seoul" (besides the Johnny Green allusion) as a comment on our president's dalliance with the despot across the DMZ.

Those tracks are introduced by solo bass interludes by the composer, heavy on extended techniques, and bookended by two tributes to a couple of Dresser's late SoCal homies: "Black Arthur's Bounce" in honor of altoist Arthur Blythe (buoyed by Jim Black's loose-limbed fatback groove, with multi-reedist Marty Ehrlich invoking Blythe's wide range and vibrato), and the elegiac "Butch's Balm" for pianist-arranger/ex-Sarah Vaughan accompanist Butch Lacy. The ensemble's basically the same as last time, with the exception of new violinist Keir Gogwilt. These virtuosi -- including ex-AACM president Nicole Mitchell on flute (dig her on the luxuriously melodic "Gloaming"), Michael Dessen on trombone, and Thelonious Monk competition finalist Joshua White on piano -- all make beautifully expressive contributions to Dresser's pieces. It's a testament to the continuing vitality of this music, and gives me hope that more than a select handful of its creators will receive the wider recognition their creativity richly deserves.

Pinkish Black's "Concept Unification"/Magma's "Zess"

As happy accident would have it, new albums by Pinkish Black (Fort Worth's very own heavy progressive experimental duo) and Magma (the French operatic prog outfit who were a formative influence on Pinkish Black's drummer-synthesist Jon Teague back when he was in Yeti, 20-odd years ago) dropped on the same date this year, allowing your humble chronicler o' events to listen to and contemplate both records side-by-side. (Teague says he was mortified to learn that Magma drummer-mastermind Christian Vander heard a Pinkish Black track and pronounced the music "too dark.")

In the run-up to recording Concept Unification -- Pinkish Black's fourth album in their nine-year existence and their second for Relapse Records -- both of the band's members had been focused on composition: singer-keyboardist Daron Beck via his work on the soundtrack for the documentary The Orange Years: The Nickelodeon Story, Teague through developing material for his solo synth project Zeitmorder. As part of their pre-production process, they set about updating and completing a couple of song ideas that had been around since their previous incarnation as The Great Tyrant. During the sessions, they actively collaborated with ace engineer Britt Robisheaux to capture the details and nuances of their sound.

The result is the strongest set of material they've written yet, electronics that are integrated more musically than ever before, and a recording that better approximates the precisely controlled and channeled force of a live show. Indeed, "Until" is the most bone-crushing rock we've heard to date from a band that often gets characterized, not entirely accurately, as "doom metal." The first single from the album, "Dialtone" -- a comment on the extinction of familiar technology -- is surprisingly engaging to the ear, a pop song veiled in dark menace (or perhaps anomie has just become more commonplace in the last couple of years).

Turning the record over, "Inanimatronic" sounds unusually ethereal, while the 12-minute album-closing opus "Next Solution" is a masterpiece, and possibly the best thing these guys have done.  It starts out with a simple piano theme that gets developed with mounting intensity and choral grandeur, building tension that's released by a pummeling riff that recalls the one from Magma's "De Futura," until the theme returns for a triumphal closing restatement. Teague's fills on the track are worth the price of admission by themselves.

While the best way to hear Concept Unification is on sweet, sweet vinyl, be sure to use that download card, which will give you two additional, synth-only songs that don't appear on the LP. "Away Again" surrounds Beck's voice with shimmering waves of crystalline texture, while "We Wait" drives so relentlessly that it's easy to forget there are no drums on the track. Here Beck's voice -- this band's most underappreciated element, operating as it does in a register most Americans have forgotten exists -- rides higher than usual in the mix, where it belongs.

It's not hard to see how Magma's celestial jams -- a blend of jazz-rock and 20th century classical influences, featuring choral vocals, with lyrics depicting a sci-fi mythos and sung in a Germanic-sounding invented language -- would appeal to musos like Pinkish Black's Beck and Teague, obscurantist connoisseurs with their own strong aesthetic. Indeed, as The Great Tyrant, they recorded a cover of Magma's "Weidorje."

Zess has been a long time coming: originally composed in 1977, performed live from 1979 to 1983, revived in 2005 in a version that's DVD-available on Mythes et Legendes, Volume IV and viewable online here. But Vander always held off on recording the piece -- his vision of the end of existence -- because he felt it was incomplete. Until now.

The studio version of Zess was recorded in four sessions toward the end of last year by a stripped-down lineup of guitar, keyboards, bass, and drums (the latter played by ex-Zappa acolyte Morgan Agren, leaving Vander free to concentrate on singing), a seven-voice chorus (including Stella Vander, Christian's wife, who also sings solo), and the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. All told, the piece (divided into seven movements that flow seamlessly together) runs around the same length as A Love Supreme and What's Going On, which is appropriate, because that's the league it belongs in. For beneath the Magma mystique, the apocalyptic visions, and the harsh, guttural sound of the Kobaian language, this is Gallic soul music.

The invocation ("Da Zeuhl Wortz Dehm Wrennt") that Vander sings in French following the orchestral-choral introduction is nothing less than a hymn of gratitude to the "master of the forces of the universe." The unifying motif that underpins the piece is a two-chord vamp straight out of Coltrane (Vander's musical deity). Vander's rhythmic Kobaian vocalismo on "Di Woohr Spraser" has an ecstatic quality, halfway between scat singing and speaking in tongues. Variations on the theme follow, alternating between the orchestra, the solo singers, and the chorus, who wind up singing "Sanctus, sanctus" as the climax approaches, while Vander testifies like a Kobaian Holiness preacher. "Dumgehl Blao" provides a soul-cleansing valediction, with choral interjections echoing on high. Oblivion never sounded so inviting.

Now, will someone please play Monsieur Vander "Next Solution?"

Oak Cliff, 6.2.2019

I go back a long way with Nils Lofgren, whose career spans 50 years -- since he set out from his native DC for California with his band, aged 17 -- and by whom I was inspahrd to pick up a guitar  48 years ago, when I saw him exploding out of my mother's TV (a few months after I'd witnessed the Stooges' iconic Cincinnati appearance via the same medium). It was a PBS special about Nils' mentor, the late, tormented guitar genius Roy Buchanan, and in the show's closing ten minutes, 19-year-old Nils took the stage to jam on Junior Walker's "Shotgun" and proceeded to blow his august elder away with the cockiness of a hot youngster just beginning to find his power, overplaying with the adrenaline-driven urge to be exciting. The memory of it remains burned into my synapses, so when I heard he was bringing a full band to The Kessler -- my favorite listening room -- I knew I was going to have to be there.

By the time the Buchanan TV show aired, Nils had already played piano on Neil Young's After the Gold Rush (turns out the secret ingredient in "Southern Man" was a polka beat injected by former accordion nerd Lofgren, a story he told with great relish at the Kess); he'd also add crucial piano and guitar damage (dig his Djangoesque solo on "Speakin' Out") to Neil's blasted masterwork Tonight's the Night. (And you must see the 1982 video -- Youtube available, I do believe -- of Nils with Neil in Berlin during the Trans era, where he functions as much as a dancer as a musician.) More recently, he's filled out the Crazy Horse lineup when Poncho Sampedro was unable to play.

With his early '70s trio Grin, Nils showed he had the goods as a singer-songwriter, whether rockin' ("White Lies," "Moontears") or mellow ("Lost A Number"). He then had the misfortune to be signed to A&M as a solo artist at the same time as the more marketable Peter Frampton was doing the same gig. (My buddy Geoff from Philly, who Knows, swears that if they'd released Nils' 1975 "authorized bootleg" Back It Up!! instead of 1977's less stellar Night After Night, it might have been a different story. He once sent me a VHS tape I still treasure, with the '71 "Shotgun" along with two mid-'70s Old Grey Whistle Test sets that show off solo-era Nils to his best advantage.) Lofgren went on to spend 30 years as third guitarist in Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, after playing the best guitar solo ever to appear on a Springsteen record on "Tunnel of Love" back in '87. Like his longtime employer, he's a hell of a raconteur, a talent which served him well through 15 years of solo acoustic gigs that culminated in this year's band tour.

The occasion for said tour is the release of Blue With Lou, a set of Lofgren originals, half of which were co-written with the late Lou Reed back in '79, when Bob Ezrin was co-producing the album Nils for Lofgren and suggested that he contact former Ezrin client Reed for lyric-writing assistance. The result was 13 Lofgren-Reed songs, three of which appeared on Nils, two on Reed's The Bells, and three on subsequent Lofgren projects. Nils' current touring band -- journeyman drummer Andy Newmark, bassist Kevin McCormick, and E Street Band singer Cindy Mizelle -- is the same one that appears on the record, augmented by his brother Tom Lofgren on keys and second guitar. They're all stupendous.

The new songs they played work off percussive, Stones-y blues riffs that Lofgren cranks out on a customized Strat (only two knobs!) he wields at an unconventional angle to accommodate his idiosyncratic picking technique -- he uses a thumbpick and damps the strings with his index finger to create chiming harmonics -- employing a clean tone which he dirties up with effects for his solos. At times he sounds like he's using a slide, but it's all in his hands (and no vibrato arm, either). Or he'll use the volume control on his guitar to mask his pick attack (a trick he picked up from Buchanan). At this point, Lofgren's become a Zen master like Jeff Beck, but he still gets a laugh with a story about him and his high school guitar buddies trying to figure out what fuzzbox Keith Richards and Hendrix used, buying the pedal, "and it still didn't sound right."

Lou's lyrics ranged from altruistic ("Give") to hard-nosed ("Don't Let Your Guard Down"), while Lofgren demonstrated he's no slouch with "Too Blue To Play" (the tale of a traumatized war veteran who'd be at home in the darkness on the edge of Springsteen's town) and "Rock Or Not" (which casts a sardonic eye on the times we're living in). The rest of the set drew from the length and breadth of Lofgren's catalog, from the very first Grin LP ("Like Rain") to 1991's Silver Lining (the ebullient "Walking Nerve" that opened the set, and the tender "Girl In Motion," which Lofgren preceded with a story about his own sobriety and 20-years-and-counting marriage). "Big Tears Fall" from 1985's Flip provided a strong feature for Mizelle, after which Lofgren -- on piano -- essayed the version of Carole King's "Goin' Back" that was a highlight of his eponymous debut LP. And my ears perked up when the '77 FM radio staple "I Came To Dance" emerged from a singalong jam on the Temptations' "Papa Was A Rolling Stone."

After an hour and 45 minutes, Lofgren and band vacated the stage, only to return momentarily for the de rigueur encore "Shine Silently" (co-written for Nils with Ezrin studio mainstay/Detroit guitar legend Dick Wagner); my buddy and I figured that after playing decades of three-and-a-half hour shows with Springsteen, this was Nils' light work. Then we had to bounce back to Fort Worth, but it was an evening well spent with Mr. Lofgren. Maturity -- and the humility it can bring -- becomes him.