December 6, 2015

Playlist Week of 2015-12-04


* Messiaen: Visions de L’Amen (Bon/de Leeuw) (Naïve/Montaigne CD)
* Marti Epstein: Hypnagogia (Ludovico Ensemble CD)
* Elvin Jones: Time Capsule (Vanguard LP)
* Andrew Hill: Smoke Stack (Blue Note CD)
* Abdullah Ibrahim: African Suite (Enja CD)
* Jimmy Giuffre: Tangents In Jazz (Capitol LP)
* Gateway: Homecoming (ECM CD)
* Tim Berne: Sanctified Dreams (Columbia LP)
* Andreas Vollenweider: Behind the Gardens—Behind the Wall—Under the Tree (CBS LP)
* Eric Bikales: Tranquility (Moodtapes LP)
* John Fahey: The Transcendental Waterfall: Guitar Excursions 1962-1967 (Takoma/4MWB 6LP)
* Iverson & Walters: First Collection (Eagle LP)
* Trapezoid: Now & Then (Flying Fish LP)
* Hawkwind: Space Ritual (EMI 2CD)
* Allan Holdsworth with I.O.U.: Metal Fatigue (Enigma LP)
* David Sylvian: Gone To Earth (Virgin CD)
* David Sylvian: Dead Bees On A Cake (Virgin CD)
* Prefab Sprout: Swoon (Kitchenware LP)
* Sleep: Sleep’s Holy Mountain (Earache LP)

=iPod/iTunes
=car


Commentary:

I had the good fortune to have my friend Andrew Dickson over to my studio this week. A fantastic drummer and all-around cool guy, he is a total pro to boot -- as this recent profile on NashvilleThreeSixty reveals. 

Dickson is definitely in-demand, so it's a rare treat to get to jam with him. It had been over a year since the last time we got together so I had some ideas I wanted to try.

"Even gotten into Krautrock? You know, like Tangerine Dream, Can, Amon Duul, that kind of stuff?" I asked him.

"Nope."

I pulled up Can's classic Future Days on iTunes and played "Moonshake" so he could hear Jaki Liebezeit's quintessentially motorik drumming. "Notice how he only uses cymbals for accent and color," I remarked. "The rhythm is mostly happening on the hi-hat, snare and toms."

After listening for a couple minutes he said, "Cool, man. Let's do it!"

We proceeded to jam over a Berlin School style sequencer pattern I'd cooked up -- and damn if he didn't nail it. Seriously, he sounded exactly like Jaki Liebezeit, effortlessly propelling Can through Inner Space. After a rocking ten minutes, we wound it down.

"Dang, my right arm is tired," he said.

"Really? Why?"

"Well, I noticed how that Can dude was totally pushing the beat on the beat on the hi-hat while everything else kind of lags behind. It was exhausting after a while!"

Whoa. 

I had never really noticed that but it makes sense and listening again, I can totally hear it. What makes Liebeziet's machine-like propulsion so compellingly human is that tension, that push/pull, between rushing and lagging the beat. The fact that Dickson could, without having ever heard this music before, key into its essential quality and recreate it on the spot is...well, pretty freaking amazing to an amateur like me. Like I said, the guy is a total pro.

The neat thing is: he digs it and wants to do more, hopefully next month. We might be onto something here...

+++

Next month will be the New Year -- hard to believe! In the meantime, I am hoping to get together again with the one-and-only Sam Byrd over the holidays, where we will continue to refine our personal musical project. Please check out our Bandcamp page to hear what we've been up to. The best is yet to come, of that I am certain! Music is the best.

1 comment:

Sam said...

Can't wait to hear these sessions with Andrew! Glad to hear you had a chance to play with him--it's been a while.

Here are my lists from last week:

Playlist 2015-12-07:

*Rodger Coleman and Sam Byrd: 2015-05-15 Centennial Park Black Box Theater, Nashville (mp3)
*John Coltrane: The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings (discs 1, 2, 3, 4)
*John Coltrane Quintet: 1961-11-18 Paris (1st concert) (CDR)
*Jimmy Ghaphery/Tatsuya Nakatani: 2014-02-20 Richmond VA (wav)
*Globe Unity Orchestra: 1979-01-26 Bad Godesberg, Germany (CDR) (disc 1)
*Ingrid Laubrock’s Ubatuba Quintet: 2015-10-11 Barcelona (CDR)
*New Ting Ting Loft: 2015-11-09 “Order That Number” (wav)
*New Ting Ting Loft: 2015-11-16 “This Day Alone” (wav)
*Evan Parker and Eddie Prévost: Most Materiall (disc 2)
*Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble: Memory/Vision
*Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble: The Eleventh Hour
*Plymouth: Plymouth
*Sun Ra: Monorails and Satellites, Vol. 1 (2014 remaster)
*Various artists: Turtle Humperdink Tender Load (cassette compilation) (side B)
*Area: Crac! (side 1)
*Beatles: Please Please Me (2009 mono remaster)
*Grateful Dead: Europe '72 Vol. 2 (disc 2)
*Jimi Hendrix: Strate Ahead (Outtakes 1968-1970) (boot CDR) (disc 1)
*Henry Cow: Live 1978 (boot CDR)
*Freda Payne: Unhooked Generation: The Complete Invictus Recordings (disc 1)
*Soft Machine: 1969-06-25 Paris (CDR)
*UYA: Live at the Willow, Vol. 1
*UYA: Live at the Willow, Vol. 2
*Various artists: The Sun Records Collection 2 (disc 1: Sun Country)
*Various artists: The Sun Records Collection 2 (disc 2: Sun Blues)
*Various artists: WSAM: Jackie Wilson/Misc. Stuff-ola (cassette compilation) (side A)
*Stevie Wonder: Songs in the Key of Life (disc 1)
*Yes: Time and a Word (selections)

Reading List 2015-12-07:

*Barthelme, Donald. Not Knowing: The Essays and Interviews of Donald Barthelme (started)
*Avery, Ben, et al. George R.R. Martin’s The Hedge Knight (started/finished)
*Gass, William. “In Defense of the Book,” in Harper’s Magazine (1999-11) (started/finished)
*Fletcher, John, and William Shakespeare. The Two Noble Kinsmen (Original-spelling ed.) (reread/finished)
*Gilbert, Elizabeth. Big Magic (finished)
*Smith, Jeff. Bone (reread/in progress)
*Wallace, David Foster. Infinite Jest (reread/in progress)