King Crimson, Live in Vienna: Rick’s Quick Takes

On By kruekuttIn progressive rock1 Comment

What a surprise: another high-quality, take-no-prisoners live album from the current King Crimson.  Recorded at Vienna’s Museumsquartier Halle E on December 1, 2016, it’s a worthy successor to 2015’s Live in Toronto and Radical Action to Unseat the Hold of Monkey Mind.  In fact, it pales only in comparison to 2017’s brilliant Official Bootleg: Live in Chicago (although I’m definitely biased in favor of that show).  Which is the main reason its release was postponed from last fall until now.

The biggest change for Crimson 2016 was adding British studio whiz Jeremy Stacey on drums and keyboards, temporarily replacing Bill Rieflin.  Stacey (with credits including Squackett, Steven Wilson, and Roger Daltrey’s upcoming album) fit in so well that Crimson became an eight-headed beast in 2017, as Rieflin returned to play full-time keyboards.  Stacey is inspired here, providing plenty of meaty thwack to complement Gavin Harrison’s stylish elegance and Pat Mastelotto’s anarchic onslaught, all immediately evident in the opening “Hell Hounds of Krim” and consistently displayed throughout the evening.

As a result, this version of Crimson rocks, loose, limber and hard.  The band opener “Pictures of A City” is riveting; the drumline and Tony Levin lay down a loping, patient groove that the rest of the group rides with grace and power.  Jakko Jakszyk punches out the vocals, Robert Fripp launches face-melting, angular guitar lines, and Mel Collins sketches a steamy, curvaceous sax solo.  When the whole thing shudders to a halt, you realize that breathing would be a good idea — it’s that immersive.

Newer originals like “Suitable Grounds for the Blues” and “Meltdown” prowl and pounce; chunks of 1980s and 1990s Crimson (including a stab at “Indiscipline,” with Jakszyk tentatively scatting Adrian Belew’s lyrics) are stripped down for maximum impact.  But the heart of Live in Vienna is unquestionably the band’s 1970s repertoire; the septet throws everything they’ve got into stately versions of “Dawn Song” and “Epitaph”, sprawling takes on “The Letters” and “Sailors Tale”, an “Easy Money” that nearly disintegrates before it gathers itself and roars back to life, a “Larks Tongues’ in Aspic Part Two” set afire by Collins’ incandescent playing, and of course “Starless”– lyrical, elegaic, edgy and irresistible as ever.

With the encores on a separate disc, David Bowie’s “Heroes” and “21st Century Schizoid Man” (in which Collins quotes Duke Ellington’s “Take the ‘A’ Train”!) are supplemented with a rare take on Starless and Bible Black’s “Fracture.” Recorded in Copenhagen, the 2016 version reimagines Fripp’s original guitar showcase as an ensemble piece — more controlled, but still heady and gutsy.  The album even provides a post-concert comedown, with Fripp’s pre-show Soundscapes enhanced by Collins & Levin solos, a potent chaser to previous sound and fury.

Even at two years’ remove, Live in Vienna ably stakes out where King Crimson is now — committed, in Fripp’s words, to the proposition that “all the music is new, whenever it was written.”  Be ready — the music may not go where you (and sometimes I) think it could, but it definitely goes somewhere special.

— Rick Krueger

 

FIREPOWER by Judas Priest (Heavy Metal Overload)

On By bradbirzerIn progressive rockLeave a comment

With Black Sabbath calling it a day in 2017, Judas Priest are now one of the oldest metal bands still on the go. They’re one of the genre’s most definitive, influential and original acts. But they’ve also been dogged by consistency problems for decades, making any new release equal parts exciting and fraught. While dodgy […]

via Judas Priest – Firepower (Review) — HEAVY METAL OVERLOAD

soundstreamsunday #112: “The Poet and the Witch” by Mellow Candle (1972) and Stephen Malkmus (2003)

On By Craig BreadenIn folk rock, progressive rockLeave a comment

Mellow-Candle1The CD reissue spree of the early 1990s benefited those lonely, cobwebbed corner obsessives who thought the longhairs of 70s British Isles folk rock had something good going.  Those of us who scuttled after the bones the sinister Shanachie label threw to the U.S. through the ’80s were conditioned to nonexistent liner notes and brainwashed into believing the trad arr groups of the previous decade could be described by creative English anachronism on the one hand and Irish rebel songs on the other.  Also-rans, like Mr. Fox or Mellow Candle or Trees, who were allowed to make records in the wake of Fairport’s and Steeleye’s success, and were good for an album or two before promptly dropping off the map, were roundly ignored in the States, to the extent that first, and typically only, pressings of their albums fetched exorbitant sums.  So when the CD stamping plants got their head of steam and allowed for an economical digital reissue of Mellow Candle’s lone album release, Swaddling Songs (1972), listeners rejoiced and collectors, who’d dropped multiple benjamins for dog-eared decades-old vinyl, grumbled a bit but bought their infinitely copy-able copy so they could listen to the damn thing.

The album was rare but it was also more than just okay, meriting the whispered celebrations of the pre-internet folky cognoscenti.  Swaddling Songs is a folk-inspired progressive rock gem, the brainchild of Clodagh Simonds and Alison Williams, whose Irish roots inform the record but never sink it beneath the weight of Heritage.  And in this sense the album has more in common with Aqualung or Tubular Bells (Simonds, appropriately enough, would go on to work with Mike Oldfield) than The Tain or Morris On, as original, mostly keyboard-led tunes organically hang together around Simonds’ and Williams’ winding, commanding vocals, seamless, with contemporary touchstones like Joni Mitchell making themselves felt but also casting into the future toward Sinead O’Connor, Cranberries, Heidi Berry, Helium, Florence + the Machine.  Framed by solid songwriting, unfussy arrangements and production, and outstanding musicianship, there’s a comfortable cosmic warmth to the album’s entirety.  Of many prescient moments on Swaddling Songs, a favorite is “The Poet and the Witch,” the album’s rave-up palate-cleansing show-stopper, adding fierceness to the beauty.

Pity the poet who suffers to give
Sailing his friendship on oceans of love
Strange harbour soundwaves break out of his reach
Love is a foreigner to the Queen of the Beach
Queen of the Beach

Moonfilled and thunderful star-staggered eyes
She broke away to be one with the skies
She feeds his love to the nightmare she rides
Suffers her hunger to inherit the prize
Queen of the Skies

Thunder-stricken tempest strikes fire in the sky
Beacons of flame for the Queen as she flies
Blind to his ocean and deaf to his cries
She’s blind and she’s deaf but she’s Queen of the Skies
Queen of the Skies

King of the Seabed he sleeps on his own
The fishes have found him, the seaweed has grown
He slipped through the waves and he sank like a stone
Queens who have nightmares must be Queens on their own
Queens on their own

I’d picked up my CD copy of Swaddling Songs sometime in the mid 90s, and it was on heavy rotation for a while, in and out and around Can and the Incredible String Band, Amon Duul and Lal Waterson.  Even as these pieces fit together in their way, Swaddling Songs seemed miles distant from anything approaching musical with-it-ness at century’s eclectic end, and yet as I stood at the back of the crowd at the Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro, North Carolina in 2001 and watched a muscular set by indie-rock cover boy Stephen Malkmus, late of Pavement, there was a deep, jaw-dropping sensibility to his cover of “The Poet and the Witch.”  It was a surprise and a gift.  Malkmus’s work is never less than genre-bending — he may be his own genre — and his sympathy for progressive rock is plain in both word (name-checking Geddy Lee in Pavement’s “Stereo”) and deed.  He thought enough of his jaggedly jumbled, charming Mellow Candle cover to release it as a live bonus track on 2003’s Pig Lib.  Leave it to Malkmus, and to a worldview acknowledging the fundamental interconnectedness of all things.

soundstreamsunday presents one song or live set by an artist each week, and in theory wants to be an infinite linear mix tape where the songs relate and progress as a whole. For the complete playlist, go here: soundstreamsunday archive and playlist, or check related articles by clicking on”soundstreamsunday” in the tags section.

Miles Davis’ A Tribute to Jack Johnson

On By kruekuttIn jazz, jazz rock1 Comment

In honor of Miles Davis’ birthday and boxer Jack Johnson’s posthumous pardon:

 

The Conductor’s Departure

On By Mahesh SreekandathIn Heavy metal1 Comment

Heavy and incessantly shifting contours — ‘The Conductor’s Departure’ is simply riveting. That constant progression here can leave anyone speechless. Like any technical death sound, these textures are tangled and layered. But when combined with that relentless melodic progression, it only becomes more captivating. This level of sophistication in braiding tech death with complex drawn-out song structures is rare.

Anata is meticulous, but their compositions still project an offhand feel, as if the record was composed on-the-go. In other words, they tread a demanding terrain of understated refinement, tortuously rugged, yet dazzling display of spontaneity. Adds refreshing aspects to an otherwise grinding framework of measured technical progression. This blend of old school with modern technical death is melodic and yet dissonant — a cross-over act of the most demanding kind.

Image Attribution : https://anata-earache.bandcamp.com/

Looking East: Gazpacho’s Soviet Saga

On By bradbirzerIn art rock, electronic, post-rock, progressive rock, psychedelic rock3 Comments
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Gazpacho’s 10th Album, SOYUZ.

Gazpacho, SOYUZ (Kscope 2018).  Tracks: Soyuz One; Hypomania; Exit Suite; Emperor Bespoke; Sky Burial; Fleeting Things; Soyuz Out; and Rappaccini.

To be sure, every release from the Norwegian art rockers extraordinaire, Gazpacho, is not just another moment in a progger’s life, but an actual event—filled with meaning and significance, marked by the awareness and heighten-ness of all five senses.

For those of us in the United States, we wait that extra week for the package from Burning Shed to arrive. Then, we carefully remove the rectangular sticker from Kscope (this one, Kscope607) and, then, the cellophane.  I have the strange habit of collecting every one of these cellophane stickers, placing each within the front or back cover of whatever book I’m reading at the time.  Today, when the mail came, I was re-reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s Book of Lost Tales, Part I.  Hence, the Kscope607 sticker sits nicely behind the front cover.

Opening the booklet releases a smell every bit as satisfying as that of a brand new car.  It’s a bit sweet and a bit pulpy.  And, then, we dive into the pictures and, most importantly, the lyrics.

The only disappointing thing about a Gazpacho release is knowing that the next one is most likely at least two years out. Real art takes time, especially in the northern parts of the world.  I’ve now gone through this ritual exactly 13 times (counting studio, live, and re-releases) since I first purchased NIGHT in 2007.  It’s always healthy, and it’s always inspiring. As much a release as it is an inspiration.

Continue reading “Looking East: Gazpacho’s Soviet Saga” →

In Concert: On the Road with Utopia

On By kruekuttIn pop, progressive rock, Rock and Roll5 Comments

Todd Rundgren’s Utopia, 20 Monroe Live, Grand Rapids, Michigan, May 15, 2018.

Thirty minutes into their opening set, Utopia had played just three songs — the entirety of the sprawling “Utopia Theme”, a five-minute instrumental chunk of the half-hour epic “The Ikon” and the extended progressive soul workout “Another Life.”  Todd Rundgren seared and soared on guitar; Kasim Sulton dexterously laid down the thunder on bass; Willie Wilcox channeled the jazz drumming greats he grew up on; and tour keyboardist Gil Assayas adeptly covered piano, horn and synth parts originally done by three people.  All that, plus pin-sharp four-part harmonies.  No wonder that Rundgren’s first words to the audience were, “we call that ‘The Blizzard,’” before Utopia stepped “out of the notestream” with a hard-rocking take on The Move’s “Do Ya.”

Surprisingly for a tour marketed to fans of classic pop-rock (their first in 33 years), the first half of Utopia’s show leaned on proggier repertoire; the precision-tooled flurries of notes kept coming, whether packed into tight unison licks or splattered across plentiful solo slots.  There were lots of stellar vocal moments too: Rundgren traveled effortlessly across his multi-octave range on “Freedom Fighters” and “The Wheel”; Sulton played a genial McCartney to Todd’s acerbic Lennon on the gritty “Back on the Street” and the yearning “Monument”; and the choral build of “Communion with the Sun” fit perfectly with the giant pyramid & sphinx projected on the back screen.  All in all, impressive, well-wrought stuff, performed with enthusiasm and landing with maximum impact.

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Continue reading “In Concert: On the Road with Utopia” →

3.2, The Rules Have Changed

On By kruekuttIn progressive rockLeave a comment

After Emerson Lake & Palmer’s late-1970s collapse, the separate members of the trio didn’t stop making music, releasing solo projects, launching new bands — and often working with one (but never both!) of their former colleagues.

The last such project before ELP’s 1990’s reunion was 3, a Geffen Records brainstorm to bring together the post-Lake & Powell Keith Emerson, the post-Asia Carl Palmer and guitarist/vocalist Robert Berry, a hot young gun from Los Angeles in the Trevor Rabin mold.  Aiming for another 90125 (or at least another GTR), the 1988 album To the Power of Three had some solid, intriguing moments — but it wasn’t pop enough to yield a substantial hit, or prog enough to reactivate ELP’s fanbase.  When Geffen cut off tour support and ordered 3 back into the studio for another album, Emerson pulled the plug on the band.

Fast forward to March 2016.   With an archive live release from 3’s US tour stirring fresh interest, Berry and Emerson planned to collaborate on a duo album, updating and re-energizing their sound for an environment where prog of all stripes had found an audience again.  Then, succumbing to depression on the eve of a Japanese solo tour, Emerson killed himself.

Nevertheless, using co-written songs and musical ideas Keith Emerson left behind, Robert Berry (also a classically trained pianist) persisted, playing all the instruments himself for the now-solo project 3.2.  The result is The Rules Have Changed, due for release on August 10 from Frontiers Records.  No less of a progressive music authority than Innerviews editor Anil Prasad calls it “an expertly-executed and performed album that takes the spirit of the first 3 release and propels it into edgier and more adventurous territory, while retaining the melodic qualities of its predecessor.”

I got to meet Robert Berry a couple years back, when his charity band December People (playing Christmas songs in the styles of classic rock and prog artists) toured Michigan for the holidays.  Our brief conversation revealed him as a down to earth guy, with fond memories of his time in 3 and deep respect for Keith Emerson.  Based on the sample track “Somebody’s Watching,” which absolutely captures the sound of the original band at their most daring and delightful, I’m definitely looking forward to The Rules Have Changed, and I wish Berry’s 3.2 project all the success in the world.

— Rick Krueger