Tornup & BLKrKRT's "Hologram Zoo Vol. 1: The Crypt"

"I wanted change so bad."

It takes a big person to admit that you tried and failed. It takes a bigger one to get up and try again.

Back in 2016, multi-racial rapper Tornup's unremittingly optimistic (and Fort Worth-centric) opus Utopian Vanguard (Heart of the Funk) dropped on Election Day -- a postcard from the ass-end of the Obama era that got swept away in the torrent of stochastic terror that followed. His 2019 release, You Will Never Understand (The State of the Soul), took on nothing less than the prison industrial complex, and won "Album of the Year" honors from FW Weekly, for what it's worth. 

But last year's killings by police of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and, closer to home, Atatiana Jefferson -- just three names in a litany that's long and ongoing -- jarred the consciousness of a nation locked down by a pandemic that too many still deny. It was as clear as the sting of tear gas and the report of a flash bang that Black Americans remain the unwanted reminder of this country's unfulfilled promise. Art can catalyze, but it takes action, sustained for generations, to bring about lasting change.

Hip-hop's a social music, but denied the outlet of a live audience, Tornup went back to the well, dug deep, and came up with his most developed concept yet. The Crypt is the first volume of a projected trilogy, with a story line that revolves around a trio of venture capitalists who create an app that brings dead Black artists back to virtual life. Their scheme brings them into conflict with a deceased rapper whose last will and testament called for the erasure of his digital footprint. It's a virtual radio play that requires deep listening, so you'll want to sit down and tune out distractions for the first few spins.

Things we like: John Stevens, Darrin Kobetich

Back when I was freelancing for the FW Weekly, my editor once told me, "You can't just write about your friends." The occasion was a review I submitted of a CD by the late Mick Farren and the Deviants. My immediate response: "I can't help it if I make friends easily." Farren's response when I told him: "Every movement in art since the beginning of time has been fueled by people writing about their friends." 

Every creative endeavor is a way of shouting at the Universe, "I'm alive!" This is more challenging than usual when live performance becomes an opportunity to infect and be infected. Thus, the pandemic year has brought forth a plethora of live streams and recording projects. (Thank Ceiling Cat for Bandcamp Fridays.) These two, by local performers whose careers I've been following for a couple of decades now, have special merit.

I first encountered John Stevens when he was 19 and working in a music store where I used to trade. While I was on DUI probation, there was a circle of cats who used to come out to my divorced dad duplex in Benbrook to jam, and one Sunday, John came out and impressed everyone with his gift for mad fluid blues guitar invention. He was playing in a Stevie Ray bag then, and had every move from the Live at the El Mocambo vid down. Later on, he'd levitate the old Black Dog Tavern downtown with Confusatron during their regular Thursday night exorcisms, and go on to play with local eminences like Sally Majestic and Carey Wolff and the Morning After. The association that paid off the most for Mr. Stevens, however, was with Lannie Flowers, who once fronted local power poppers the Pengwins and coached John in songwriting while utilizing his talents for numerous tours and recordings that included Lannie's 2019 album Home. 

I was pleasantly surprised a few weeks ago to hear John's first solo recording, Living Room, which he just released digitally, with limited edition vinyl to follow. While I knew him for years as a fiery, groovin' guitarist, I'd only heard him sing a couple of times before, with the eclectic jam band Nuthin' Special. But on Living Room -- recorded with multi-instrumentalist Taylor Tatsch at Taylor's studio outside Austin -- John sings his own songs like "Heart On My Sleeve," "If I Sing," and "American Dream" (the last of which got him an "explicit lyrics" tag from Amazon) with great assurance and expression, in a country/Americana vein. Properly promoted, he could be another Vince Gill. And his instrumentals, which comprise about half the album, have a cinematic sweep that makes him a good candidate for filmmakers seeking an atmospheric composer. If there's a non-snazz aspect to the record, it's John's drumming, which is functional but doesn't lift the songs the way some of the drummers John knows might have. We'll call it a pandemic thing.

In my area code, the king of guitar-based instrumental music is Darrin Kobetich, my fellow Long Island expat who's continued touring his acoustic solo thing through the pandemic, and whose records always represent whatever he's been working on during a particular window of time. The Yucca Tapes has particular resonance for me because I got to observe, from the periphery, the circumstances of its creation. One of the last live shows I attended, pre-Covid, was one of the Rage Out Arkestra's rare Shipping and Receiving stands, in which Darrin served as the rock wildcard in the band's jazz-fueled improvisational stew. Last year, I was one of a handful of cats who'd occasionally jam at the house on Yucca Ave., across I-35 from downtown, where Darrin lived for a couple of years. Sometimes, when the regular drummer didn't show, he'd sit behind the traps and demonstrate a good sense of dynamics (no surprise from someone who grew up listening to Bonham and Peart).

You can hear that on "1977," the centerpiece of The Yucca Tapes, which started out as a Rush-inspired acoustic solo piece but developed into a multi-layered homage to some of the players who inspired Darrin in his formative years (Roth, Schenker, Page, Beck -- have fun playing "Spot the influences!"), including an oud solo. The album also includes three pieces from Hip Pocket Theater's production of Edward Abbey's The Monkey Wrench Gang. Darrin's a big Abbey fan, and it was a gas seeing him perform a live soundtrack to the play. Writing for theater has really opened up Darrin's compositions since percussionist extraordinaire Eddie Dunlap first called him for the gig. Overall, the album makes me realize how far Darrin's progressed from the days when he used to hold down a Friday happy hour gig at the Wreck Room (RIP). One of the things I love about live music is being able to watch artists grow and develop over time -- something we'll hopefully be able to get back to by the end of this year. At least John and Darrin's releases give me something to listen to and cogitate on while I'm waiting for the call from Tarrant County Public Health to come get the vaccine.

Eris 136199's "Peculiar Velocities"

Woke up today and looked on social media. Was surprised to see photos of sleeping National Guard soldiers sprawled al over the floors of the US Capitol building. I shouldn't have been surprised: GIs can sleep anywhere. While I'm hoping that this batch don't have to use their weapons, I'm glad they are where they are. 

It's been a week now since a lynch mob incited by the electorally defeated president of the United States -- now the second holder of that office in history to be impeached twice -- invaded the Capitol during a joint session of Congress in an attempt to overturn the results of that election. They attacked with murderous intent, killing a police officer and injuring dozens more. Several members of the mob also died, one shot by police. The members of Congress barely escaped, but were back in session hours later, fulfilling their Constitutional duty to certify the election result. It was, among other things, the largest incidence of racist voter  suppression ever carried out in a nation that has a long history of such. There is much still to be learned about this, but 160 people have already been charged for their part in the riot.

It's been hard to focus lately. Besides the political turbulence, Covid-19 is still with us. (I'm hoping to get the call to come take my first vaccination soon.) At a time like this, writing about music seems silly. Everything's online now for people to listen to and decide for themselves whether it's worth their lucre. I've barely read anybody else's music scrawl for years. (Current exceptions: Alex Ross, whose Wagner book I need to get, and Ethan Iverson.) But I write about stuff reflexively, like a nervous tic, as a way of trying to understand it. And if I dig it, and I can pull your coat to it, why not share the enjoyment? And then, surprise, a slim cardboard mailer with this CD in it arrived from distant shores. After this lengthy throat-clearing, I'll try and describe it.

To my earlier point about everything being available digitally, I'll add the caveat that I'm a 20th century guy: I'm still infatuated with the Romance of the Artifact -- inasmuch as a record collector friend of mine shared that he's been thinking about how acquisitiveness and colonialism are related; are we more introspective because of the pandemic, or just because we're old? I like looking at artwork on a three dimensional package, not a screen. I like reading liner notes in a format where I don't have to squint and pump up the magnification -- and as it happens, Peculiar Velocities has notes that are laid out in a way that reflects the creative process of the music contained in the 1's and 0's on this shiny silver disc. So when the opportunity arose to contribute to the Kickstarter that Eris 136199 prime mover Han-earl Park had set up to fund the production of this CD, I jumped on it.

Park and Nick Didkovsky share a fascination with the sonic possibilities of both electric guitars and technology -- Park as builder of cyborg musicians, Didkovsky as creator of music software -- but their approaches couldn't be more different. Park's playing is about the physicality of the instrument. He uses a heavy attack to strike, pluck, and scrape the strings, damping and muting to maximize the guitar's percussive potential, occasionally eliciting chiming harmonics, then using electronics to distort and distend the sounds so they slither and spatter like radio interference, shimmer like molten silver, or ring like a cymbal's decay. At times it seems as though under his touch, the spirit of electricity becomes a living thing. 

Like all great rock guitarists, Didkovsky is concerned with tone and texture as well as note production, and he and saxophonist Catherine Sikora -- the melodic wildcard here -- do an exemplary job of listening to each other and playing in complementary sound fields. In fact, all three musicians sound like they are continually listening to and interpreting each other's statements before responding -- the best type of musical conversation, abstract and oblique as it might be at times. Sikora's tenor has a warm, dark, earthy quality that grounds the guitars lest they take off into the cosmos. I've listened to this thing a half dozen times since I started writing yesterday, and am happy to have its company to help me get through what looks like it's going to be a very tough winter...and the hopeful spring to follow.