From Cuneiform - the last CD listed looks intriguing


AHLEUCHATISTAS – EVEN IN THE MIDST…  (Rune 261)
GENRE: ROCK / AVANT-PUNK
An all-instrumental guitar/bass/drums trio whose music “resides at the
 meteoric end of the tempo spectrum” [Splendid], Ahleuchatistas is in
 the front ranks of a youthful musical movement fusing the energy and
 attitude of punk, the power of metal, and the fractured, angular
 compositions and irregular, shard-like meters of avant rock to create music
 perhaps best-described as avant-punk. Favoring a clean, stripped-down sound
 and a delivery devoid of pretension, and possessing super-human chops,
 the trio plays short, compressed and complex polyrhythmic compositions
 with unrelenting speed, unrestrained joy, and near-telepathic
 precision; what Organ calls “dazzling, stripped-down yet mega-complex sonic
 acrobatics.” The trio’s interplay in “controlled chaos” leaves listeners
 awestruck: “…they’re astonishingly together even on passages where it
 seems downright impossible to stay in sync,” [Pitchfork]. Critics have
 described their music as “spiritually overseen by the likes of Robert
 Fripp, Damon Che and John Zorn… recalling the restless avant-punk zeal of
 End Hits-era Fugazi and the pulsingly organic hyperactivity of early
 King Crimson” [Splendid], while comparing it to bands like Ruins, Massacre
 (Laswell/Frith/Hayward), Lightening Bolt, Dysrhythmia, Don Caballero,
 Hella, Sonna, Shellac and Upsilon Acrux. Critics variously define it as
 math-rock, technical metal, speed-rock, avant-punk or
 avant-progressive, while invariably recognizing Ahleuchatistas’ music as the best of
 its kind. On Even In the Midst…, the band’s fourth release and second CD
 on Cuneiform Records, Ahleuchatistas have further honed its unique
 version of avant-punk, distilling stylistic extremes into multifaceted
 sonic mosaics that assume organic form.
 
VINNY GOLIA, AURORA JOSEPHSON, HENRY KAISER, MIKE KENEALLY, JOE MORRIS,
 DAMON SMITH, WEASEL WALTER – HEALING FORCE: THE SONGS OF ALBERT AYLER
  (Rune 255)
GENRE: JAZZ / FREE JAZZ
Healing Force: The Songs of Albert Ayler is a heartfelt and joyous
 tribute to, and exploration of, the vocally oriented music that saxophonist
 and free jazz innovator Albert Ayler created in the last three years
 of his life. Believing that Ayler’s late works were ripe with ideas that
 were not fully realized at the time, nor appreciated up to the
 present, world-renown improviser Henry Kaiser, a guitarist and producer with a
 well-documented history of exploring sonic and geographic extremes,
 put together a special project to revisit and re-explore Ayler’s songs.
 He assembled an all-star septet of players from the art-punk,
 brutal-prog, free-jazz, improvisational and modern jazz world, in keeping with
 Ayler’s propensity to use, in his late works, larger lineups that
 included established musicians from both within the jazz world as well as
 outside (Blues, rock, R&B, soul). The lineup for the Healing Force project
 included Vinny Golia (reeds), Aurora Josephson (voice), Henry Kaiser
 (guitar), Mike Keneally (piano, guitar, voice), Joe Morris (guitar,
 bass), Damon Smith (bass) and Weasel Walter (drums). These seven musicians
 chose a representative sample of Ayler’s late songs: “Universal Indians”
 from Love Cry; “Message from Albert,” “Thank God for Women,”  “Heart
 Love,” “New Generation” and “New Ghosts” from New Grass; and “Music is
 the Healing Force of the Universe,” “A Man is Like a Tree” and “Oh! Love
 of Life” from Music is the Healing Force of the Universe. Sharing a
 desire “to send the people of earth a message of love, peace, and
 spiritual understanding,” Kaiser mentioned that the group held brief
 “discussions of what we might try to do with each tune” and then “essentially
 let it [the music] play through us.” The result was Healing Force: The
 Songs of Albert Ayler, released here by Cuneiform. It is hoped that the
 performances on Healing Force: The Songs of Albert Ayler will encourage
 new appreciation of this music.
 
RICHARD LEO JOHNSON & GREGG BENDIAN – WHO KNEW CHARLIE SHOE?  (Rune
 258)
GENRE: ROCK / ACOUSTIC GUITAR
“Legends aren’t often freshly minted,” said Jazz Times in its review of
 guitarist Richard Leo Johnson’s last release, The Legend of Vernon
 McAlister, “but Vernon McAlister may be one of them.” Indeed, since it
 emerged from the hollow steel body of Johnson’s National Duolian guitar,
 Johnson’s “Legend” has taken on a life of its own. Enchanted by the
 sounds that emanated from the guitar’s rusted hollow, he wove a fictional
 tale of its owner, sequestered himself in his attic and brought the
 antique instrument to life, unleashing the sonic wonderland hidden within
 the instrument, recording a solo album with only the guitar and some old
 mics. The result was Johnson’s 2006 Cuneiform release, The Legend of
 Vernon McAlister, an astonishing, hauntingly beautiful work of new
 acoustic Americana, which served as a soundtrack, or “aural” history, to a
 written “legend” of Vernon McAlister, posted on www.vernonmcalister.com.
 As the legend continues, when a new fictional character, Charlie Shoe,
 encounters Vernon’s guitar, “it still had the wild animals living in
 it, and the trains, and the fires, and the angels, and the love, and the
 trouble.” In Who Knew Charlie Shoe?, Johnson expands on the lessons,
 legend and instrumentation of Vernon, working with percussionist Gregg
 Bendian to reveal that music and magic reside in the everyday – in
 commonplace objects and even in trash – and do not reside solely in one very
 special, mysteriously inscribed, metal guitar. The new CD’s liner
 notes feature the story of Charlie Shoe, Vernon’s protégé, which is
 elaborated online at www.charlie-shoe.com. With Johnson adopting the persona
 of Charlie Shoe and playing dime-a-dozen acoustic guitars bought off
 eBay, and Bendian, aka Junk Fish, aka Jaden Barrel, playing percussion on
 “stuff” ranging from lard cans, brooms, pots, washboards, attic stairs,
 water and more, the duo expand on Johnson’s singular, acoustic
 Americana hybrid. Together, Johnson and Bendian create music that is
 simultaneously traditional and experimental, merging past with present and
 avant-garde found object with folksy “swap-meet” discard.
 
RADIO MASSACRE INTERNATIONAL – RAIN FALLS IN GREY  (Rune 256)
GENRE: ELECTRONIC / ROCK / SPACE ROCK
Rain Falls in Grey, the newest release by England’s prolific electronic
 wizards, Radio Massacre International (RMI), is dedicated to the late
 guitarist Syd Barrett, who died in 2006. His death “forced us to
 consider what an enormous influence he was,” says RMI. Barrett made numerous
 musical innovations that permanently impacted British rock during his
 intense, brief musical career (1965-72), cut short when he became rock’s
 first “acid casualty”. Barrett opened London’s doors to psychedelia
 and progressive rock as the co-founder, lead guitarist, composer and
 driving force behind Pink Floyd, England’s most popular psychedelic band,
 which released multiple singles and an album under his watch. His
 compositions imploded pop’s song structure – as did those of his Soft Machine
 friends, who shared Pink Floyd’s stage and recorded on Barrett’s 1970
 solo albums – in songs like  “Interstellar Overdrive,” a “wildly
 unpredictable, chemically-inspired instrumental of indeterminate length”
 [Mojo] which devolved into lengthy, improvised jams influenced by free
 jazz. Barrett introduced a ‘dark side’ into pop music, using edgy lyrics
 and subject matter, experimenting with new, sometimes unpleasant sonic
 effects, including noise, distortion, and feedback; and inventing
 “glissando” guitar effects by “sliding a Zippo lighter up and down the
 fret-board through an old echo box to create mysterious, otherworldly sounds.”
 He popularized the use of electronic equipment alongside standard rock
 instrumentation, causing Paul McCartney to praise Pink Floyd’s
 integration of electronic instruments, studio techniques and rock music as the
 wave of the future. Said RMI, “For those of us engaged in experimental
 or space rock, the debt is enormous.” Engrossed in recording a new
 album of improvised electronic music at the time of Barrett’s death, RMI
 recorded several tracks as a spontaneous tribute. Later that year, while
 performing at Amsterdam’s Gong Unconvention, RMI asked artist and
 musician Daevid Allen – the co-founder of Soft Machine and leader of
 psychedelic Gong, who acquired his own glissando guitar technique from
 Barrett – to create special art work for the CD. As released here by
 Cuneiform and featuring Allen’s artwork, RMI’s new CD is titled Rain Falls in
 Grey after a quote from Barrett’s “Baby Lemonade”, a song RMI felt
 “summed up the elegiac mood when we first reflected on his passing.” A
 collection of space rock that boldly departs from RMI’s customary
 all-electronic space improvisations by expanding the group’s sound with more
 conventional rock instrumentation and guest musicians on reeds and electric
 violin, Rain Falls in Grey serves as a “celebration of the eternal
 life and energy that pioneers such as Syd Barrett give through their
 music…and the sadness when they lose their way like he did.”
 
TIME OF ORCHIDS – NAMESAKE CAUTION  (Rune 257)
GENRE: ROCK / AVANT-ROCK
The visionary, New York City-based avant-rock band Time of Orchids
 creates songs that are darkly beautiful, pop-drenched sonic maelstroms,
 steeped in psychedelia and infused with lush vocals. Plundering the ruins
 of pop culture, the band’s music is informed as much by modern rock
 (metal, industrial, post-rock, avant-progressive, new wave/no wave, pop)
 as by 1960s Italian film scores and a touch of classical music. The band
 members cite influences as wide-ranging as John Barry/Ennio Morricone,
 Mr. Bungle, Cheer-Accident, Nirvana, Thinking Plague, The Magic Band,
 Cocteau Twins, Yes, Madonna, The Spice Girls, The B-52’s, Gorecki,
 Shostakovich, Shudder to Think, Primus, Police, Olivier Messiaen, Igor
 Stravinsky, Dystopa, Gorguts, Kayo Dot, Swans, the spirit of Frank Zappa,
 “tons of adventurous rock,” choirs, “stuff with soul and real
 desperation” and much, much more… While the resulting sound is unique, Time of
 Orchids share an aesthetic and approach with such other early 21st
 century genre-defying avant-rock bands as Radiohead, Sleepytime Guerilla
 Museum, Cheer-Accident, and the Cuneiform band Alec K. Redfearn & the
 Eyesores, all of whom defy musical convention by processing multiple
 subgenres of popular music to create a unique sound. On Namesake Caution, the
 newest (fifth!) release and first recording for Cuneiform Records, Time
 of Orchids continue to transcend the limits of genre and form by
 distilling a unique sonic brew into their most stylistically mature,
 cohesive, and aesthetically and emotionally potent work to date. A wedding of
 dark musical imagery, sweeping sonics, angular and intricately
 staggered composition, and evocative, elliptical poetry, all richly interlaced
 with dream-pop vocal harmonies that meld the Beach Boys and Yes,
 Namesake Caution is emotionally breathtaking and aurally intoxicating.