Read entries 80-71 here.

#70

Ravi Shankar – Live At The Monterey International Pop Festival

It is hard for me to pick a favorite Shankar recording.  Over time, many of them have come into my life, impacted me in some way, and then dissipated into the night.  Recently I decided instead of just randomly checking out one of the myriads of his recordings I would trust the internet (bold choice I know) as to which recordings I should scope out.  One item kept coming rather consistently and that is this performance at the Monterey International Pop Festival from 1967.  The best Shankar recordings I have heard come from live performances, where his natural dynamism can permeate into the audience eliciting intense feedback from them.  This performance is no different.  Shankar’s ascent was certainly in part to him being foisted into the eyes and ears of western audiences by western musicians like The Beatles.  There is a sense of culture voyeurism, but for what it is worth it did give non-western music the attention it deserves.  Shankar must have known that his audience could not be taken for granted as this was a very small window to grab their attention.  Without a doubt he seized on this opportunity.   He starts with Raga Bhimpalasi which starts at a simmering heat and slowly heats to white hot over its near thirty-minute run.  Like many Shankar marathons, it has a powerful sinking feeling, starting in a near formless manner before coalescing and taking on a more tangible form that has an undeniable gravity.  His sitar work begins broadly with disparate notes loosely defining the rules to the raga and slowly becoming more punctuated, dynamic, and rapid as the song picks up steam before reaching a trance-like frenzy at the end.  He then takes a break and allows his drummer Alla Rakha to have a 5 minute Tabla solo to howling joy.  It is the right choice and would prep the audience for 30 minute John Bonham solos a few years later.  The closer, Dhun, melds the previously heard musical ideas together, giving initial ethereal vibes before launching into a blistering performance thanks in part to the addition of Ravi’s then partner Kamala Chakravarty on the tambura.  Having next to no expertise in traditional Indian music I struggle to provide apt descriptions, but what I can assure you is Ravi knew, in 1967, how to hook listeners onto these unfamiliar sounds and styles with bombast. That bombast is what helped bring Indiana music and other non-western music into our popular culture even to this day.

#69

Beastie Boys – Ill Communication

Sacrilege!  I hear off in the distance.  Surely, this is a typo and you meant to type Paul’s Boutique.  I am sorry to disappoint, but in fact this was not an accident.  Paul’s Boutique is a masterpiece, no doubt about it, but there is something about the slightly scattershot feeling of Ill Communication that works so well to my unsophisticated ears.  The album shifts from hip-hop to funk, punk, and even central Asian inspired jams; wildly making punctuated changes from track to track.  Take the first two songs where we go from the cool and grooving flute sampling Sure Shot which is about the chillest hip-hop song Beastie Boys could ever conjure into Tough Guy a bodies flying like catapults style punk thrasher.  These are the shifts going on in Ill Communication, and it can cause a bit of whiplash.  Sabotage, the iconic single, is sandwiched between two groovy hip-hop numbers and a few songs later we get my personal favorite song, the all instrumental funk jam Futterman’s Rule.  It is that breadth of ideas, showing what this trio could muster, that makes this album stand above Paul’s in my eyes.  Make no mistake, Paul’s Boutique is a legend on its own, shattering ideas and rules about hip-hop that had been written up until that point.  Ill Communication, however, showed their range, and allowed them to stretch their legs in curious directions.  Unfortunately, in popular culture Beastie Boys are often relegated to shtick rap or frat rock, which is why Ill Communication is so important, as it breaks that misconception in so many ways.  It shows the trio were more than musical comedians, but serious musicians with solid chops.  Typically, in a buffet of music like this there would be a worry that it is spread too thin, that too many ideas are flying around at once and none of them are really honed in and perfected, but that is not the case.  Rather, each of the unique styles are executed soundly, distinct in their feel whether jagged punk riffs, slick verbal play, or Isaac Hayes shaming funk grooves.  It is buffest no doubt, but more of a country club brunch than the Golden Choral.

#68

Boredoms – Vision Creation Newsun

Boredoms has always fallen into its own category of musical curiosity throughout its more than 30 year existence, shifting from no-wave, to noise rock, punk, experimental rock, trance, tribal fusion, and some other styles that humanity has not defined yet. Despite all these changes they have always been distinctively Boredoms.  Vision Creation Newsun is less an album of music and more a force nature, absorbing everything in its path, a tidal wave of shifting sonic frequencies and pulverizing drum work.  It is a curious album, certainly unconventional, certainly abrasive, but not atonal or dissonant.  Boredoms at this point had already shifted out of their more violent years, with previous album Super æ having already began the transformation to trance-inspired meditative grooves instead of frontman EYE throwing himself headfirst into anything he could.  Vision Creation Newsun continues that shift, shedding away the more aggressive tendencies of Super æ, like the erratic pitch and tempo shifts, and instead falls comfortably into a torrent of drums, psychedelic electronic space, and shamanic like chanting.  All but one song is over six minutes, flowing continuous and concentric circles in a monotonous trance-like state.  Nearly each track has the same structure; a torrent of drummers creating a thunderous noise, apparently inspired by EYE’s witnessing of taiko drummers in his youth, with a binding aura of sonic drone that shifts slowly as time progresses, and all the while EYE howls, chants, and screams in the background.  It is aggressive in its enormity, but rarely in its actual tone.  It is suffocating, but comforting, like drowning in a sea of marshmallow.  I do not listen to Vision Creation Newsun too often as it is a serious investment running past the seventy-minute mark.  It is hard to pick one song out of context to enjoy, as this is one long ride you have to commit to, from the stage setting early minutes of opener “◯” (circle), to the truly pulsating power of “♡” (Heart), and the relaxed hand-percussion “ずっと” (“Zutto” (“Forever”)).  Vision Creation Newsun is a reckless ride, but that is how Boredoms has always done it.  The approach may have changed over time, but the end result is always the same, a truly intoxicating musical journey that drowns the listener in its undertow.  Boredoms would continue to venture more into spiritualist grooves in the coming years, endlessly evolving and shifting with invented instruments, carrying its performers on floats, and giant 77 drummer set-pieces, but Vision Creation Newsun is that point where it all clicks perfectly, a head-bobbing marathon of locked grooves and spacious tone unafraid of accidentally drowning a few listeners in the process.

#67

Umm Kulthum – Enta Omri

A voice so powerful it could obliterate microphones and so enchanting it could empty the streets of Cairo when it was broadcast every month.  Umm Kulthum was a legend in Egypt in the early 1900’s, and a worldwide icon having sold over 80 million records.  Umm’s voice was a Contralto, typically the lowest for female singers, pained, emotive, yearning, but always controlled.  It was a force of nature, like a hurriance, an unstoppable force that could destroy everything in its path and suffocate you in emotion.  You could honestly take any of Umm’s recordings and throw them on here, but Enta Omri has stuck with me over the years.  Enta Omri is not an album, but just one song, an hour long.  Themes and motifs repeat as Umm connects with the audience, returning to verses to pull every bit of emotion she can from them.  The cries from the crowd would have repeat lines to roaring cheers.  Imagine the idea of your favorite band repeating a part of a song because the crowd demanded to hear it one more time.  Singing in Arabic I have very little idea what is being sung about outside of looking at some translations and summaries online, but even without knowing the direct story you can infer from the crushing emotive force of her voice.  Her singing has that effect, it is like a siphon of hurt, bringing your heartache to the surface.  It helps that Umm’s backing band is able to change directions at a moment’s notice when Umm decided to return to a prior verse or change direction on a whim.  Her recordings are predominantly live, and you can hear the audience howl in response to her, specific lines like daggers into their hearts.  Enta Omri even has a futuristic feel to it, blending pop, classical, opera, and traditional Egyptian styles.  Clearly, it had an impact on Egypt, the recording I have is interrupted multiple times by the audience going completely ballistic, grinding the song to a halt as they pleaded for more from her.  This also makes sense considering her funeral procession in 1976 was witnessed by at least 4 million Egyptians, with rumors stating it grew a larger audience than the funeral of Egypt’s late president.  If this write-up feels a little static it is because I have a hard time conveying how overwhelming Enta Omri is.  I am listening to it while writing this and I feel my heart pulled away from my keyboard, and my emotional energy being poured into the speaker to power her spirit in the next world.  I surrender to Umm, and I encourage the same for you.

#66

Tera Melos – Patagonian Rats

I mentioned it earlier in the list, but progressive rock has devolved into mostly trash in modern days.  There are glimpses of what could have happened if we had decided to be brave exploring souls like our 1960s and 70s brethren and really challenged our concepts of music instead of accepting “more notes=more progressive”.  Like There’s No 666 In Outer Space, Patagonian Rats is one of those albums of the alternate universe of future prog-rock.  Let me be clear though, no, there are no Hammond organs or mellotrons, or songs about dragons, or 20 minute epics, or capes.  Instead this is a progression of rock music, which was the concept or progressive rock in the first place.  It is rock music turned inside out and throw into a grain thresher, with quirky time signatures, odd drum patterns, and guitar solos that I am not certain are legal in some states.  Nick Reinhart finally opted to fill an album with vocals for the first time and it pays off, giving Tera Melos a more humanistic feel than previous releases, which while impressive, often had a more disconnected and mechanical feel to them.  Tera Melos’ song-writing chops have also significantly improved, accepting and embracing the benefits of pop music. Do not worry though as they also pour some sulfuric acid on their songs as well  Songs like The Skin Surf, are poppy, sure, but they shift wildly into different time signatures, rhythm patterns, and melodic styles bouncing from surfer chord strums to disorienting finger taps or heavy metal riffing blended with strange unnatural sounds.  Despite all this chaos it feels cohesive and there is a logical flow to the madness.  It feels, wow, progressive.  Going back to The Skin Surf, the acidic surf-rock bounces around in a coy manner until about the two minute mark before it explodes into a shape-shifting guitar solo that makes it hard to comprehend that there are only 3 people in this band.  While each song stands on its own two legs there is a connective tissue throughout, with collections of songs sounding like suites.  Even ten years after its release Patagonian Rats feels so ahead of its time, and the indifferent response from the wider listening world is a crying shame, not that Tera Melos needed the reinforcement to replicate this ad-nauseam (their future output is also delightful), but perhaps it could have inspired other acts to try taking some violent and strange turns instead of just cramming in more notes.  Patagonian Rats is the marvel of how much you can do with so little, three extremely talented musicians creating wonderfully complicated music, but mostly avoiding the stink of virtuosity and pretentiousness.  It is a testament to these songs, that the stop/start nature of Party With Gina/Another Surf is out of reach of your local garage band, but somehow Tera Melos make it seem playable to the amateur because there are no blastbeats or dorian scales thrown in the mix.  This is progression, and we as a nerdy rock culture missed our chance.  In the meantime we can enjoy the cacophony of the complete sonic breakdown of Westham United.

#65

Dälek – Absence

Over a decade before Death Grips brought noisy and fitful hip-hop into the mainstream there was Dälek. While I cannot say for certain Dälek are the inventors of atypical sampling in order to create hip-hop songs, they certainly are willing to push it to the extremes.  Instead of sampling funk, gospel, R&B, or any of your typical foundations for hip-hop they sample pure ear-splitting noise.  Dälek songs often take on a pretty similar formula, a formless wave of distorted audio dysphoria blended with a crisp 4/4 drum beat all of which has MC Dälek spouting post-apocalyptic verses about the seedy underworld, racism, and the ills of society.  His vocal performances are stark and haunting, a shell-shocked witness to horror that forces himself to summarize the terrors his eyes have seen.  While the formula may be pretty set in stone, the end result varies wildly from the shrieking horrors of opener Distorted Prose to the grueling head-bobbing nature of Asylum, the far cleaner sounding Eyes To Form Shadows, and the post-rock ethereal feels of Ever Somber.  It is remarkable how Dälek can take its penchant for defying formula, find so many ways of doing so, but also maintain their connection to traditional rap rules.  The undercurrent of traditional hip-hop drumbeats keeps things from melting away into nothingness, putting a cage around the formless beast.  Absence is one of their most intense releases, with more sickly musical shrieks and guttural low-end tones.  It is a perfect late-night drive with the windows down kind of album.  It is a watching the smoke fade away from your cigarette into the moonlit sky kind of album.  It is the musical equivalent of the expression, nothing good happens after midnight.  It is the soundtrack to every night scene in The Wire, it is the grit of society in musical form, and it is oppression bursting at the seams.  I write this as I reflect on the footage of protesting in our streets, and it sounds like Dälek’s Absence.  

#64

Kraftwerk – Autobahn

Summer of 2012 I was working for my dad, I needed some money and something to keep my mind busy after breaking up with my significant other.  Working in landscaping you must be up early to get in as much work as possible to before the high summer heat.  On humid July day I turned my car on, winded down my hand crank windows, pointed east and headed down Illinois Route 14 to Lake Cook road on the way to Northbrook to the work yard.  I hated waking up at 5AM, I hated the job, and I hated the long hour long commute.  Eight years later I still remember putting on Kraftwerk’s Autobahn because nothing else was striking my interest.  I remember the plodding pulse of the 22 minute opener synchronizing with the grooves in the road.  I remember that day the traffic was lighter than usual, and that even though I was completely blinded by the morning sun as I headed eastward, for that brief moment everything was at peace.  I used to think Autobahn was a night album, the prehistoric synthesizers being the perfect pulsations for a night drive, but I was wrong.  The uplifting crescendo of swirling synth tones that ends the gigantic opener is the sound of a sunrise, the milky purple sky being eroded by exploding oranges and reds.  Autobahn is not dour but uplifting with continuously ascending tones and even some heartwarming flute; a welcome triumph considering the static and robotic nature of Kraftwerk themselves.  The opening song is so powerful that it is no wonder you can easily forget there are four other songs on this record; Autobahn, the song, stands on its own two legs perfectly.  Side two of this LP is far more experimental, a polite waving goodbye to old Kraftwerk, which was far more formless and avant-garde.  Kometenmelodie 1 & 2 (Comet Melody), has a stargazing feel to it, staring into the vastness of space waiting for shooting stars.  The first part is relatively spacious and void, but it begins to tighten up and become more fun and enlightening.  Mitternacht  is a nod to the emptiness of the middle of the night, and Morgenspaziergang is the welcoming of the sun with playful flutes and piano.  In essence there are two EPs here, one the celebration of a long drive in the waking hours, and the other a soundtrack of night into day.  They do not really play well together, one being quite structured and rigid despite its hefty run time and the rest non-traditional, but thematically consistent.  You would not be out of line for stating that only one half of this album speaks to you, but this was Kraftwerk transitioning into the next form of their life as they would become increasingly pop-oriented.  Autobahn is the one time you get to play in both worlds and see two sides of one band.  Both paint unique pictures in different ways, and both have a heavy impact on the world around you.  

#63

Sambomaster – Sambomaster wa Kimi ni Katari Kakeru

Featured on our comfort albums episode Sambomaster wa Kimi ni Katari Kakeru is like eating macaroni and cheese in your sweats while watching Parks and Recreation for the 500th time.  Sambomaster is a tight rock trio that swings to the rafters with big emotional outpourings, heroic riffs over thunderous 4/4 rhythms, and passionate sing-along choruses; the kind that has mostly died out in this age of autotune and Ed Sheeran.  Sambomaster will never make you go “I’ve never heard anything like this before”, but they will make you go “I’ve never heard this executed so well”, and that is where Sambomaster wa Kimi ni Katari Kakeru truly shine.  Yes, it is the most boiler plate definition of rock music, especially compared to other bands from the mid-aughts, but this is a damn good boiler plate.  Sambomaster tend to blend just a small dose of funk into their songs, adding some wah-pedal infused guitar riffs that would  make Curtis Mayfield nod in approval.  Other times it is more straight forward like on Kore de Jiyuu ni natta no da where the riffs are fuller and chunkier, and with cymbal crashes abound.  Singer and guitarist Takashi Yamaguchi bleeds passion on every song, howling with an intense fervor like he is removing a demon from his soul.  Even on the slower songs like Shuumatsu Soul he clearly is channeling a spirit from beyond this world.  No, Sambomaster would never have been a paradigm shift if they had been granted western exposure.  They never would have been attributed for breaking the mold or inventing something new, but without a doubt they would have been lauded for their execution, their remarkable talent and their elevation of a style that became progressively lazy as the years rolled on.  The guitar parts are cleverer, the drums more intricate, and the bass more dynamic and all of this in the name of good rock music.  Sambomaster have found their Ikigai and it is rock music.

#62

McCoy Tyner – Inception

I listened to this album once and instantly I knew it was going to have a significant impact on how I listen to music.  I only discovered this album a few months ago so it is still sinking into my system; my mind still not having fully dissected it.  Despite that I am committed to putting it in my top 100.  Inception is Tyner’s first solo outing, free from the confines of John Coltrane’s rule (not the worst ruler to have I suppose). Tyner grabs Art Davis, and Elvin Jones and forms a tight trio of piano, bass, and drums.  Tyner is more expressive here than on Coltrane’s works, taking a lyrical approach to the piano as if it is singing.  There is a playful nature to his work, his fingers dancing along the keys of his piano while Art and Elvin build a clean and supportive structure.  The songs range from this coy style like on There is no Greater Love to far more bombastic like on the title track.  Inception, the song, is blistering, exploding right out of the gates, as much as an early 1960’s jazz trio can, drum solos and all.  I especially enjoy McCoy’s self-engineered call and response that he develops on Blues for Gwen, asking a question on his piano and promptly responding to it himself.  Inception also succeeds due to its simplicity, not that this music is easy to play (I’ll take a hard pass on trying to replicate the bass solo on Effendi), but rather it is approachable.  There is a stark contrast between the ease one can enjoy Inception versus the far more daunting Africa/Bass that Coltrane released the year before.  The concepts are simple, although perfectly performed.  The more lighthearted approach to piano compared to more stern and serious peers like Ahmad Jamal, is far more welcoming and is much easier to indulge in on a whim.  Jazz gets a horrid reputation for its nose being pointed up in the air, perhaps most so from its pretentious listener base, but McCoy Tyner makes that mostly impossible with a cheeky jazz trio that dazzles, but does not exhaust or alienate.

#61

Portishead – Third

Trip hop is a curious genre of hip-hop(ish) style rhythms with a morose layer of dysphoric electronica slapped on top.  Acts like Portishead, Massive Attack, and Tricky helped break it into the mainstream, especially in England, creating a musical smoothie of influences that were blended until the inspiration was completely lost.  Trip hop’s pulsating bass with hurrying breakbeats play in contrast to the often slow swirling electronica and reverb heavy instruments that blankets it , creating a dichotomy of hurried rhythms and formless sonics that weigh it down.  In Portishead’s case this is effect is doubled by the haunting vocals of Beth Gibbons who has one of the most pained voices in modern music.  Third, is a bit more of  deviation from the traditional trip hop formula, keeping the rigid percussion, but allowing it slow down, breathe, and not be so deeply entrenched in classic drum breaks.  Song’s like The Rip and We Carry On have a monotonous pattern with pulsating rhythm, but they have dulled edges compared to earlier Portishead works, the drum hits feel more like a percussive throb, and the instrumentation is a reverb soaked void to fall into.  Gibbons, as always, feels moments away from actually dying from being too sad.  When Third does show its teeth, like on Machine Gun, it comes across as a focused savagery, poignant but razor sharp.  The cutting nature of the drums that slowly shift and become increasingly pointed as the song progresses in its plodding manner is truly gut-wrenching and matches the song title perfectly.  It is this blend of tight on the bottom and loose on the top which has made Portishead a legendary group despite only three releases over a long career.  Third is rarely regarded as their best, but I laud its lack of convention, its variety of sounds and ideas, the more polished production, and of course the perfection of Beth Gibbons harrowing vocal work.

Read entries 60-51 here.