Grachan Moncur III - New Africa

Grachan Moncur III, Roscoe Mitchell, Dave Burrell, Alan Silva, Andrew Cyrille (plus Archie Shepp on one track). Recorded August 11, 1969 in Paris.

For whatever reason, trombonist Moncur's discography has remained sparse, and, though he played sporadically through the '80s (with Cassandra Wilson and others) and has recorded a couple of albums since the turn of the millennium, one feels a sense of loss at the fact that a unique compositional voice was never given the space to develop into further areas. As a sideman, he lent his talents to a number of late-60s free jazz albums (in particular, those of Archie Shepp), but, fine as his contributions are, his is not the dominant voice that it was on his own recordings, and those of Jackie McLean. And that's because Moncur as improviser is only part of the story - his writing is not a mere adjunct to the business of getting down and `blowing free', but a crucial part of his entire aesthetic (something one also senses about his sometime collaborator Alan Shorter). In terms of his own music, then, what we have are the eerie, superbly atmospheric Blue Note dates (the quartet of `Evolution' and `Some Other Stuff' under his own leadership, `One Step Beyond' and `Destination....Out!' under that of Jackie McLean), and the often attractive, but more formulaic modal/African-inspired dates (the two albums he cut for BYG in 1969, and `Echoes of a Prayer', a collaboration with the Jazz Composers' Orchestra recorded five years down the line).

`New Africa' is the first of the BYGs, and the seventeen-minute titular track gets things under way. It's listed as a suite in four movements (a bit like 'Echoes of a Prayer'); in that case, the first 'movement' is the opening, slowly pulsing ostinato figure sounded in unison by Dave Burrell's left hand and Alan Silva's bass, with Burrell plucking out grave, mid-register chords on top. The entrance of Moncur's trombone two minutes in signals the second movement, and the two main melodies of the piece (which serve as more traditional `heads' in Archie Shepp's rendition, with Moncur, released on 'Kwanza'). The tempo quickens, Cyrille laying out sparkling, regular time on his cymbals, as the trombonist takes his solo. Given the propensity for slow, moody compositions he'd displayed on his mid-60s collaborations with Jackie McLean, it's no surprise that he relishes the space afforded by the steady rhythm-section foundation; with Burrell's on-the-beat chords and Cyrille's cymbals, he's able to tease out and develop phrases in an almost leisurely fashion - often, simple melodies that might have come from folk-songs (and indeed, he went on to record traditional Brazilian tunes on 'One Morning I Waked Up Very Early', ten days after the sessions for this album.) The problem with such a regular and reliable back-drop is that it's easy for the attention to wander; and, whereas Mal Waldron's trio recordings from the same period (such as `Free at Last' and `Spanish Bitch') take the approach to its logical conclusion, everything put at the service of the riff, dark and drawn-out, deliberate and packed with tension, with soloing as such taking more of a back-seat, here, the ostinato approach threatens to overwhelm the solos - in particular, those of Moncur, but also those of Roscoe Mitchell (who plays here in a much more `inside' fashion that one might expect from his work elsewhere, with a smooth yet piquant tone). Even in Burrell's spot, where the repeated chords momentarily let up for more linear melodic playing, things are hampered by the deliberately limited harmonic framework, which spurs the development (or lack of) of some rather aimless and, frankly dull material, with the pianist seeming to simply plonk his way up and down the instrument according to pre-set formula, rather than expressive need. The locked-in nature of the repetitive material means that it's very easy for things to meander, to drift, a problem I also find with some of Shepp's work from this period (`Coral Rock' being a prime example, as Alan Shorter's harmonically-distinctive composition and solo is bludgeoned by relentlessly hammering piano work); one senses, most of all, that it restrains Burrell, one of the most diverse and capable of free jazz players, into an unrewarding supporting role. And, while in some ways it opens up space for the horn players, it also closes down any possibility of silences or pauses in the music as a whole.

That said, there are benefits to the approach, as demonstrated on the next track, which, at under half the length of `New Africa', doesn't risk becoming too loose or baggy. Hard, concise, lapidary, `Space Spy' conveys an impression of relentlessness, seriousness, a brooding and oppressive atmosphere in which repetition is the spur of tension and uncertainty rather than familiarity and comfort. Burrell stabs out a two-note motif, like rumbling morse code, freeing up Cyrille to play more colouristically, while Moncur explores gnomic, almost fragmentary dissonances that share harmonic territory with, of all people, the film composer Jerry Fielding, who scored a number of Sam Peckinpah films in the '70s. `Exploration', as its title implies, is the `freest' track on the record; another menacing low-end melody gives way to a period of collective soloing that finds Moncur and Mitchell initially, elusively, suggesting the clock-tower chimes best known to those from the UK as the `Play Up Pompey' chant sung by fans of Portsmouth City, FC. The horns and Burrell then proceed to riff off each other, picking up, varying, developing and discarding each other's melodic figures in a sometimes sprightly, sometimes deliberately lugubrious fashion.

Another unison melody opens `When', this time more simple, song-like and hopeful, the sort of material that could easily be turned into a collective chant, perhaps at a civil-rights rally. Archie Shepp joins the band on tenor sax, and one remembers just how much spark and fizz his playing had during the 60s: the extension of pauses to create tension and uncertainty; the sudden re-entrances in a blurring, blarting blast (what Ekkerhard Jost called `staccatoed legato'); the use of particular forms of tonguing, slurring, notes trailing away after that initial fortissimo impact; the combination of languor and passion, romanticism and fury, sometimes within the same phrase; the timbral reminiscences of Ben Webster or Jonny Hodges tied to the multiphonic innovations of Johns Gilmore and Coltrane, sliding between smoothness and acidic sharpness. Moncur, for his part, blows some delicious, voice-like high notes that seem to pre-echo Mitchell's bleats, trills, and smooth melodicism, and Shepp ends the piece with some beautiful supporting harmonics that make his tenor sound almost like a flute.

In sum, though the occasional longuers mean that `New Africa' lacks the cutting-edge possessed by Moncur's work on Blue Note, and if there's a sense of opportunity missed (imagine a record that explored the collective improvised territory of `Exploration' throughout), it nonetheless remains an attractive and worthwhile album overall: certainly, an important stop-off point for those who wish to understand the trajectory of Moncur's career, and the late 60s free/modal scene in general.

Dawn of Midi - First (2010)

[Dawn of Midi are Amino Belyamani: piano; Aakaash Israni: contrabass; Qasim Naqvi: drums and toys. See http://www.dawnofmidi.com]

It’s unusual to see such a new band receiving what seems to be almost universally high praise from the critics, indicating that, while Dawn of Midi may not be receiving the jazz press hype they perhaps deserve, there is definitely something rather special going on here. There’s no point in worrying whether to call this ‘jazz’ or ‘free improvisation’ (though all the pieces are improvised, the vocabulary often has a distinct jazz edge to it). Rather, this group has come about at a time when such worries seem irrelevant, when statements of intent can be made through music rather than ideological or theoretical proscriptions; what matters most of all is the creation of serious and engaging sound.

The record opens with quiet but purposeful bass and drums from Aakaash Israni and Qasim Naqvi, soon joined by the piano of Amino Belyamani. There’s no real sense of anyone ‘soloing’ as such; rather, the three musicians collaborate to create music that contains both the melodic/harmonic legacy of jazz and the textural approach of free improv, but prioritises neither. As they write on their website, “In the global art music setting, one can sense a paradigm shift that veers towards an appreciation of timbre, color, and the silences that frame a musical offering…In this age of modern improvisation where the distinctions between musical normatives are blurred, DOM’s thematic and timbral approach is reminiscent of many genres bound in one simultaneous moment.” Without the strictures of chord changes or the ‘theme-solos-theme’ template, the improvisations are nevertheless full of memories, fragments, wisps of genre, of music heard and absorbed by the players. But this never degenerates into a merely banal quoting of genre; instead, the kinship between different musics is recognized as the background to the creation of new sounds and discoveries. It’s a way of ‘making it new’ without trying too hard to do so: innovation by stealth, if you like, or innovation by degrees, with the traditions of the past as a rich well to draw on rather than a burden or hindrance.

There’s nothing flashy or self-consciously dramatic here; the tracks rise and fall, dip and sway, moving away before you can pin them down. Part-way through ‘Laura Lee’, the piano suddenly introduces a meltingly affective, melancholic chord which feels perfectly appropriate, though it doesn’t obviously arise from the territory the trio has just been exploring – and then, even before the sustain-pedall’d echoes of that chord have faded away, Belyamani starts repeating a note, not quite hammering, not quite feathering it. What follows is the most exquisitely judged use of space, bass and drums working in perfect tandem with Belyamani’s odd pauses, which are longer than the momentum of the music might lead one to expect, but shorter than a fully-fledged ‘silence’. It’s as if something really lyrical, flowing, song-like is about to emerge, but is dampened, broken up, forced back underground. This suggestion of what might have been – an allusion to what has not yet come to pass – imparts a wonderful sense of openness. This is a world of possibility in which choices are made at every turn; you can hear the players thinking this music through as they are playing it. Which shouldn’t lead to the usual accusations of ‘cerebral’ and ‘intellectual’ music, as opposed to music from the heart, from the gut – what Dawn of Midi exemplify is that that supreme control goes hand in hand with the creation of emotional states. This is music tied to the motions of the body and the motions of the mind.

I may not have been very specific in what I’ve said so far, and it’s perhaps best to discover the various techniques and variations DOM spin through real time listening rather than after-the-fact criticism. That said, I will note something that happens quite a lot on the record: an emphasis on detail, one note or minute phrase being returned to again and again, all the development occurring in variations of touch. Mid-way through track five, ‘Tale of Two Worlds’, there appears a minimal repeated figure, sounded with a cross between bluesy insouciance and something almost despairing, punctuated by the dampened dabs of a note sounded while the finger clamps down the vibrations from the string. One is drawn into this, forced to examine the implications of a musical phrase that one might have overlooked in the general development of the piece; it’s as if the players have suddenly decide to zoom in, to focus very closely and specifically for a couple of moments, and one realizes that this could happen at any time, one realizes the trio’s great awareness of the myriad of possible implications in everything that they play.

For the ultimate example, listen to the last track, ‘In Between’, where a single piano note (and then a small number of alternating notes) sounds out again and again, for minutes at a time, bass and drums gradually boiling and bubbling underneath, a chord in the other hand supporting but never fully developing the scant material, all creating a kind of momentum through stasis; and, finally, a meditative quality, the piano reminiscent of tolling bells, the bass plucking understated counter-melody, drums with the faintest taps and splashes, a trance with off-centre rhythmic accompaniment. Once this lengthy section finally finishes, and the CD ends, something still seems to hang in the air – the silence itself turned into music by what preceded it. How the music will restart on DOM’s next release only time will tell, but no doubt it will flow as naturally from the silence as it flowed into it. This is an extremely fine debut recording, one which I have no hesitation in recommending.

Saul Williams - Amethyst Rock Star (2001)

I’ve been listening to a lot of hip-hop lately – which has been tying in with some of my thoughts surrounding the role of the oral and aural in poetry – and Saul Williams has been one of those who has most interested me. His use of contemporary rock elements, particularly on his more recent albums, isn’t always to my taste, but, lyrically, he’s someone I can very much admire as a true poet –as someone who bends and twists language like it was a physical thing, to make it mean to turn the head and spin the mind. Below are some extended notes on his first album, ‘Amethyst Rock Star’.

As might be apparent from the title of this, his debut record, Williams is not your easily categorisable artist. While what he does has some affinities with ‘conscious hip-hop’ in the vein of Common or Mos Def, its musical setting is often quite different, and, lyrically, it tends more towards the ‘spoken-word poetry’ with which he made his name than to the tropes of rap, which are included as part of a word-play centred commentary (“While you rhyme about being hardcore, be heartcore”), as objects of reflection rather than as carriers of the message. Such a refusal of category conventions arguably originates from hip-hop’s own use of sampling to provide a wide range of generic backdrops to the vocals – including not just music but snippets of film dialogue and ‘slice-of-life’-style conversational interplay as part of a line-blurring performance act – but, given hip-hop’s emergence as a much more marketable, solidified, and less fluid thing than it was in the past, Williams’ category-dodging is fraught with both entwined musical and racial tensions that complicate the critical position taken on his work. On ‘Amethyst Rock Star’, Williams is working with (a) politically-conscious aural poetry (b) such poetry as it shades into ‘hip-hop’ (c) rock music inflections. Thus he announces himself not as a ‘rapper’ (though from comments he’s made in interviews, it seems that producer Rick Rubin was trying to get him to make a ‘hip-hop’ record), not as a ‘hip-hop artist’, but as a rock star – and not as just another rock star either – rather, as one restoring to the word what it has lost in terms of its stellar potential, its light-filled metaphoric power (Williams as a poet is much into outer space (as Sun Ra): the use of space as a fantastic realm which, rather than just providing escapism, liberates into a new understanding of the world away from hackneyed modes of perception, racial social cultural models leading to a slow dying which extends to the way life is lived as much as it does to the preponderance of death). At the same time, the notion of the ‘amethyst rock’ succeeds in bringing things back down to earth – to the first line of poetry that Williams ever wrote (see the Introduction to ‘The Dead Emcee Scrolls) – “I stand on the corner of the block slinging amethyst rocks” – which is at once the (generalized) nonchalance of the man ‘just hanging out’, watching, observing, waiting, and (given the story surrounding the creation of this poem) the very personal experience of the poet discovering himself in a moment of inspiration that seems hardly explicable by means of ‘rationality’, but as part of the same kind of logic as dreams, as the surreal. This process of transportation is prompted by a physical object – the piece of amethyst Williams carried around with him in his pocket – valued at once for its material qualities and for the spiritual awakening that somehow surrounds it, becomes associated with it. I’m sure that what also appeals to Williams is the notion of the rock star as an individual set apart from the crowd, though very much an embodiment of a collective will – as a voice channeling and having an impact on the thoughts and feelings of (sometimes) a whole generation, as vehicle for the people (and the spirits) to speak through.

As this star like a precious stone, Williams also plays off the ‘bling’ culture of contemporary hip-hop, suggesting a spiritual power rather than the mere glitter of baubles – an insistence on the divinity of the human (a la William Blake) which extends into what many might see as an excessive egotism (in itself another familiar hip-hop trait – bigging oneself up at the expense of others, the bragging song – though Williams isn’t about cursing out his rivals as the mere trading of insults; rather, he castigates those in power or those pretending to a ‘gangster’ cool, to ‘keeping it real’). This reaches its apogee on the final track where the poet shouts out the words: “So never question who I am, God knows/ And I know God personally/ In fact he lets me call him me / In fact he lets me call him me” – which he follows up with a hint at the matriarchal, eastern-oriented God of his book, ‘Said the Shotgun to the Head’ (as opposed to the phallic, male, western model, its apogee found in the shotgun pointed to the head, the suicide of civilisation): “And I know God personally/ In fact she lets me call her me/ In fact she lets her call her me.” It’s a suitably overblown climax (and really quite exhilarating – though more so when he digs into his chanted rhythmix than when he bellows out the sung chorus), bringing things full-circle from the record’s Wu-Tang-style opening: “Nigga you better drink half a gallon of Shaolin before they play on the strings of my violin.” That opening is typical of Williams in its word-play twists, as a colourful boast moves into the more complex notions suggested by “my life is orchestrated” – at once a kind of tight-wired organisation (against the forces of oppression), and something weighted against by the deadening organisations of routines and category-placements – as well as a claim to equal legitimacy with the bastions of white culture (“london symphony, concentrated”), and a move out beyond America (to be taken up on the Greek and Egyptian references later in the song).

And overblown boasts or aspirations to the divine within are not the records’ only lyrical themes, with the debts owed to others figure just as strongly. The most noticeable example of this is the massive shout-out list mid-way through ‘Coded Language’, where the chanted names take on the quality of a ritualistic utterance, an incantation, magic syllables – it’s as if Williams thinks he can actually channel the spirits of these predecessors the louder and more forcefully he yells out their names, and, listening to it, you might almost come to believe that yourself. As throughout the record, this wouldn’t have the same impact translated onto paper – it lives and breathes as sound, language as larynx, as breath and lung, as tongue and teeth. The best approximation I can think of this effect, beyond listening to the album itself, is provided by the computer’s sadly inadequate caps lock-key: “in the name of: ROBESON, GOD'S SON, HURSTON, AHKENATON, HATHSHEPUT, BLACKFOOT, HELEN, LENNON, KHALO, KALI, THE THREE MARIAS, TARA, LILITHE, LOURDE, WHITMAN, BALDWIN, GINSBERG, KAUFMAN, LUMUMBA, GHANDI, GIBRAN, SHABAZZ, SIDDHARTHA, MEDUSA, GUEVARA, GUARDSIEFF, RAND, WRIGHT, BANNEKER, TUBMAN, HAMER, HOLIDAY, DAVIS, COLTRANE, MORRISON, JOPLIN, DUBOIS, CLARKE, SHAKESPEARE, RACHMNINOV, ELLINGTON, CARTER, GAYE, HATHOWAY, HENDRIX, KUTL, DICKERSON, RIPPERTON, MARY, ISIS, THERESA, PLATH, RUMI, FELLINI, MICHAUX, NOSTRADAMUS, NEFERTITI, LA ROCK, SHIVA, GANESHA, YEMAJA, OSHUN, OBATALA, OGUN, KENNEDY, KING, FOUR LITTLE GIRLS, HIROSHIMA, NAGASAKI, KELLER, BIKO, PERONE, MARLEY, COSBY, SHAKUR, THOSE STILL AFLAMED, AND THE COUNTLESS UNNAMED.” Of course, this isn’t quite as simple as it seems – it’s not just another list of African-Americans of note, for it incorporates Hiroshima and Nagaski, and blends said African-Americans with white poets, South American revolutionaries, English playwrights, Russian pianist-composers, and Indian Gods. “In the name of” – that opening phrase, which takes on something of the quality of an intake of breath before the great exhalation of words, echoes the ‘exorcism’ conducted at the end of ‘Penny for a Thought’; Williams takes on the language and tonal gravitas/fever pitch of religion and translates it into his own idiosyncratic cry for a new way of seeing. This new path incorporates diverse and esoteric religions, political figures, and reconfigured attitudes to sexuality, class and race – “we enlist / every so-called race, gender, and sexual preference”; reconfigured relations between humans and, ultimately between humans and the world – “Climb waterfalls and trees, commune with nature, snakes and bees.” The aim is not to draw up a simple “list of demands” that can be ticked off some bureaucrat’s checklist as if that erased the stains of past guilt and continuing injustice – the aim is (and Williams seems to mean this literally), to “uplift the consciousness of the entire fucking world.” And this is not merely a utopian dream content to remain simply as a dream, the goal stated so as, in effect, to maintain its difference; it is a battle-cry designed to be implemented, for such uplifting is a responsibility: “Every per-son as beings of sound to acknowledge their responsibility to uplift the consciousness of the entire fucking World.” These are aims that other hip-hop artists – even the most conscious and ‘right-on’ of the lot – don’t even come close to approaching, and it’s these aims which make Williams’ poetry so refreshing, so invigorating, so necessary.

On the more subdued moments – for they do exist as well! – there is just as much to admire. ‘Robeson’ has its ostensible subject and atmosphere the surrealism of a dream in which the human and animal disconcertingly entwine through the distortions of a marriage ceremony, overseen (and burdened) by the ghosts of oppressed ancestors and those (like Robeson) who spoke out against that oppression; but ends up as Williams’ earnest plea for his daughter to forgive him for his neglect – though no coincidence here that her name is Saturn, thus connecting the responsibilities and emotional niceties of the domestic with the longings and the upward reaches of the cosmic, the necessary entwining of ‘real life’ and imagination (because the two are one): “How could I ever neglect to hug you? You are a planet hugged by a rainbow”. Williams is acutely aware of the dangers of having one’s head filled with dreams of the cosmos and of total liberation – political, social, cultural, sexual, spiritual – which might lead one to neglect relationships with the very human beings for whose benefit and in whose name this revolution is supposed to exist. It’s characteristic that he chooses to address this through a fusion of the two modes – the elevated poetry and the simplicity of his care for his daughter (“God’s will be done. I love you.”) I’m not sure that we’ve heard such penetrating honesty since Michael Franti’s ‘Music and Politics’ (“If ever I would stop thinking about music and politics, I would tell you that sometimes it’s easier to desire and pursue the attention and admiration of 100 strangers than it is to accept the love and loyalty of those closest to me….If ever I would stop thinking about music and politics, I would tell you that the personal revolution is far more difficult, and is the first step in any revolution”).

In terms of the music, this is a rap record with a rock band – rock would manifest itself even more explicitly in Williams’ following releases: ‘Saul Williams’, where he ditched the band for backgrounds which he mostly produced himself (though, rather than sounding home-made in any lo-fi way, they tend to come across as rather standardised, Rage Against the Machine-style rap-rock – repeated hooks blared loud with the focus moved away from the words and the pell-mell or reflective delivery they generate, which is where the subtlety and interest is really at), and ‘The Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust’, where he covers U2 (nice to hear a contemporary American rapper talking about injustices outside the usual remits – in this case, Northern Ireland) & whose title responds to shape-shifter white rockstar David Bowie. Mind you, ‘Amethyst Rock Star’ doesn’t really feature a typical ‘rock band’ as such – primarily because it includes cello and viola alongside the bass, drums and guitar. In fact, the cello appears to be electric and is often used to double or complement the guitar, to play guitar-type riffs – which can be rather effective, as on the storming 11-minute concluding track, ‘Wine’, or the urgent propulsion with which it begins ‘La La La’. What we don’t have here is the sampling culture of hip-hop; but then again, one might argue that, in Williams’ case, the sampling is in the words, which, seemingly carried along on the weight of their own propulsion, bring in whole cultures and frames of references that you could all too easily miss if you switched off for a few seconds. And, as I’ve said before, Williams isn’t exactly a hip-hop artist, in a strict sense, anyway – and neither he is ‘just’ a slam poet – he is not ‘just’ anything. And thus, on his debut ‘hip-hop’ record, he operates over a drum n’ bass hook (the title cut of DJ Krust’s ‘Coded Language’, reprised on this album), his voice switching to lilts of half-sung Rasta (“seven mountains higher than the valley of death”), his words full of metres and rhymes that spill over the standard couplets of rap, his interests (as I’ve been stressing, and as he’s admitted in interviews) very much embracing rock (this embracement of a piece with his strategy to dare and to defy – to reclaim rock, a whitened version of black music, and in doing so to connect with the neglected the work of the Black Rock Coalition as well as with all those blues forebears). And finally, given his criticism of the trend towards “realness” in much modern rap – “keeping it real” as promoting an ersatz sense of how things are, when the necessity is to change them – it’s entirely appropriate that his reconfiguration of the racial stereotyping of the black man and woman is also part of his quasi-mystical philosophy: “The role of darkness is not to be seen as, or equated with, Ignorance, but with the unknown, and the mysteries of the unseen.” From where we are to where we could be and back again with that changed perspective: Williams is nothing if not ambitious, and ‘Amethyst Rock Star’ remains a clarion-call whose vibrations continue to ripple the air nearly a decade after its release.

Gil Scott-Heron: I'm New Here (XL Recordings, 2010)

Let’s not talk about the release of this new album as an ‘event’, if we can help it. Yes, Gil Scott-Heron, ‘godfather of rap’, a hugely important voice in bringing socially-conscious messages to both black and white youth, has not recorded an album since 1994’s ‘Spirits’. Yes, he has been in and out of prison, has had plans for recordings and for books planned and then postponed, has made intermittent public appearances but been generally been shrouded in rumours of ill-health and personal breakdown. Yes, all this has happened – and the record’s title suggests a very specific engagement with the notion that Heron is a quote-unquote major artist who must add to his legacy, must teach us all once again, must justify his absence with another classic. Might it suggest that Heron is a new man, reborn, coming out of hard times with his head held high once more? And would that mean a return to the Heron of the old days, or would it mean a re-invented, re-invigorated artist, starting over just as strong but in a different place?

These are all questions that Heron does not need to answer: he has done enough, whatever the critics may say about missed opportunities, not to have to make another statement if he does not wish to; his position is assured. But, as listeners, as critics, we cannot help but make them – we cannot pretend to listen in a vacuum. And so the comparisons begin almost as soon as we press play.

First off, after we get past the spoken-word of the opening track, we’ll notice that Heron sounds less comfortable singing now (perhaps explaining the choice of Smog’s neo-folk acoustic number ‘I’m New Here’ to cover; in the original, Bill Callahan’s sung voice was always on the brink of shading over into laconic, spoken reflection, and here, Heron speaks most of the words, singing only the short, recurring chorus). His voice is now partially possessed of the ‘lived-in’ croak that characterises latter-day Dylan and Tom Waits. Though that has always been part of Waits' cigarettes-and-alcohol mystique, and seems to have become an accentuation of Dylan’s famously less than smooth vocal stylings (albeit one so extreme that its burden must be borne by his status as a ‘living legend’ fondly canonised by both a generation of fading hippies and Professor Christopher Ricks), in Heron’s case, as his voice was quite mellifluous before, this may have necessitated a stylistic change, as it can’t quite carry the righteous soul style. (It will be interesting to hear what material Heron tackles in his upcoming live shows – one would have thought that a record like this wouldn’t really be feasible as a stage show, and a return to the jazz/soul instrumental styling would seem likely.)

But, given all this, one must remember that spoken word is how Heron started off in the first place – his debut record announced him as ‘A New Black Poet’, and it is as poet as much as singer that he appears here. Despite the apparently low-key title of that record (‘Small-Talk at 125th and Lenox’), the wide-ranging subject matter and the urgent desire to speak political realities meant that he was soon aligned with the poet-teachers of the 1970s African-American urban experience: June Jordan, Jayne Cortez, Larry Neal, Amiri Baraka, Father Amde Hamilton, Otis O’Solomon, Richard Dedeaux, Jalal Mansur Nuriddin, Abiodun Oyewole, Umar Bin Hassan. Of course, such a reduction – to a list of names – would mitigate the approach that all these artists shared, one that was about ‘the revolution of everyday life’, rather than about soapbox sermonising or political platitudinising divorced from the thoughts and feelings, the insults and injuries, the imposed or unwitting failures, and, yes too, the joys that occupied every minute of every day for vast numbers of ordinary people. Thus, while all the reviews will focus on the fact that ‘I’m New Here’ is a ‘personal’ record, a chastened Heron’s reaction to years of silence through addiction and imprisonment, it’s worth noting that the material which made his name was precisely defined by its absence of sloganeering (this is the narrative of ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’ – moving revolution, as a movement, away from the simplicity of oft-repeated clichés, catchphrases, and images), and by its focus on the inseparability of the personal and the political (think of the way the narrative of black poverty and institutional callousness in ‘Pieces of a Man’ is filtered through a sentiment of personal and private grief). Nonetheless, while Heron, particularly as time went on, did take on the position of spokesman (shouting out against the Reagan era, then advising the hip-hop artists who followed in his wake to take more account of their social responsibility, as potential teachers of, and voices for their generation), his absence from the scene perhaps mitigates against his effectiveness as the wise elder – having passed on the mantle, he can self-reflect, in a manner of course still tied to the forces that shaped him, but with the specifics of political concern not voiced explicitly.

Instead, what seems a more imaginatively exaggerated world emerges. This may result as much as anything from the ominous sound of the music: its samples and murmurs, its hisses and whirrs are a world away from the soul-drenched piano chords and jazz bass of the more familiar work, though the references to Charon and to Satan, and the flickering, high speed urban ghosts of the video to ‘Me and the Devil’ certainly have their say in the matter too. Given further reflection, however, one realises that the words frequently turn on themes familiar enough to count as archetypal. The personal demons of alcohol-fuelled sleeplessness and the drudge of routine (‘Where Did the Night Go’) form a quieter, more intimate variation on ‘The Bottle’, while, elsewhere, it is the classic themes of the blues that are returned to: the old theme of urban decay as contrasted against the simplicity of a poor, but perhaps more ‘honest’, rural past (‘New York is Killing Me’), the attractive yet unsettling force of the supernatural (‘Me and the Devil’) – where the supernatural becomes a potent force, not so much structured into simple moral schemes but as figured as part of the complexity of human behaviour, and – crucially – part of the complexity of the traditions formed over centuries by African-Americans reacting to their transplantation and subsequent isolation in ‘the land of the free’.

Transformation is a major part of this experience – the practice of ‘signifying’ – jazz’s transformation of white instruments through black music – Sun Ra’s transformation of a multitude of subjects, from spirituals to space travel – Ray Charles’ transformation of gospel styles from the sacred to the profane – Heron’s non-televised transformation of the slogans of consumer culture into their negation. And ‘I’m New Here’, too, is about transformation – two of the stand-out tracks are covers, back to the roots with Robert Johnson’s ‘Me and the Devil’, and, more surprisingly, turning to acoustic guitar and the (musically) lilting, (lyrically) self-interrogating ‘I’m New Here’ by Bill Calahan (a.k.a. Smog). Connecting the subdued, whimsical delicacy of white folk-tradition in the latter, with the blues’ more extrovert, dramatically strident position doesn’t so much seal their differences as emphasise the common thread of vulnerability and personal honesty underlining both – as well as the fact that such apparent straightforwardness is always an assuming of a role, a self-dramatisation that stands, often ambiguously, for a truth, rather than presenting that truth direct in itself. This is a balance between frailty and strutting confidence that the record treats as central. It doesn’t shy away from the increased weakness of Heron’s voice; rather, the production takes account of it, even foregrounds it – rather than compensating with a thicker background texture, it keeps things sparse and stripped-down, to emphasize rather than to hide.

This turns out to mean that we have here a striking generic difference to previous Scott-Heron albums. The aforementioned production is decidedly lo-fi (with tape hiss and sparing use of murky samples), and its sparse, semi-industrial sound owes much to the spaciousness, to the minimal, almost empty ghost-traces of dub-step, where samples drift in and out almost un-noticed, where tracks float along on skeletal beats that pound with mechanical precision but that never feel fast or driving. There are no saxophone, flute or piano solos to add more complex improvised variations over the song’s basic structures; instead, there are the pauses between phrases, the tension hanging on each word, the wait for each weighted-syllable.

And, given that the fifteen-track record lasts for only 28-minutes (including a number of ‘interludes’ – 10-second, reverb’d snippets of Heron in conversation), each syllable is most definitely weighted. Such brevity makes it important to experience the whole thing as one, continuous, flowing entity: the recurring Kanye West sample which opens and closes the record, giving it an element of circularity; the transference of mood from tales of spirits and the threat of damnation (‘Me and the Devil’, ‘Your Soul and Mine’) to personal ruminations hung-over with depression and unease (‘Where Did the Night Go’, ‘Running’), to warmer reminiscences and reflections on a life – the way it was lived, the influences that shaped it (the short spoken-word snippets). Though the songs themselves generally have a clear and simple structure, the predominance of spoken word and the sparseness of the background mean that tracks don’t split as easily into single entities as they do on, say, ‘Pieces of a Man’. Because of this, some might slant this as a record of half-started (or half-finished) demos and sketches, spliced together and put out there before it’s reached the stage of a rounded, completed artistic statement. Indeed, the quick-fix critic in me suggested that very angle when I first heard these tracks, but, in trying to actually listen to and experience the album with an open attitude, I realised that trying to impose such a structure would not be to take this record on its own terms – which is the only way it is going to make sense. Forget pre-conditioned ideas about how an album ‘should’ be constituted – as much as you can – and, allowing that the distance of time may allow a more finely-balanced judgement once a few years have passed, I think one can say that this is a good piece of work: sincere, not bombastic, not expected; unsentimental but frank, not directed towards melody as on the classic albums but with enough melodic aftertaste to satisfy. And in that sense, assessment as to whether it is a ‘major album’ or an ‘important comeback’, and attempts to place it into a particular model of ‘late recordings by former legends’ (all the Johnny Cash comparisons we’ve been hearing), come to seem rather unnecessary, rather out of place. You can hear it for what it is, and you should.

Bill Dixon: Tapestries for Small Orchestra (Firehouse 12, 2009)

As Stephen Haynes notes in his online journal/blog on the recording sessions for this project, one of the challenges involved was providing enough distinction in the sound mix between five trumpeters/cornet players with similarly dark sounds. But Dixon does, after all, favour a dark palette, as amply demonstrated by his previous orchestral release, ‘17 Musicians In Search of a Sound: Darfur’, where the slightly larger ensemble produced slowly emerging chord-clouds and slowly shifting unison passages in which the ensemble mesh was produced by individual instruments in near, but not quite, total alignment. The effect is a kind of blurring, produced by a very careful manipulation of individual detail; a more horizontal than vertical approach, with solos emerging as parts of the texture – like a colour highlighted in a particular portion of a canvas – rather than as monologues supported by an ensemble background. This has always been the case with Dixon’s own playing, particularly given his use of electronics, and the fact that the other trumpeters also deploy electronics, in some cases seeming to mimic his approach – muted growls, breathy whispers, repeated mid-register notes, high-pitched flurries cascading into silence – adds to the collaborative feel. That’s not to say that there aren’t solo spots, though – for instance, ‘Motorcycle ‘66’ starts with melodic material for unaccompanied bass which succeeds in forcing an initial concentration, in ushering the listener in to a music which needs to be heard with open ears. In any case, neither ensemble nor solo passages contain a wasted note; as Dixon puts it: “Listen to the space in the room. If you can't do something more beautiful than that, shut the fuck up.” The result is a kind of substantial minimalism – very slow, seeming to lack any overtly linear development, predominantly atmospheric, almost trance-like. And yet even this apparent lack of activity – most pronounced on the sustained hush of ‘Adagio: Slow Mauve Scribblings’ – reveals itself upon closer inspection to consist of complex structural balances and connections. Low, slowly-shifting drones, shimmering vibraphone, occasional electronic tweaks, overlapping melodic lines, repeated upward flurries all combine to create a sound field that is unique in modern music. Inexorable yet fragile, ‘Tapestries for Small Orchestra’ is slow-moving, meditative, and deeply affecting.