the phoenix

flawless.

sun ra - saga of resistance (theo parrish remix)

sun ra - saga of resistance (theo parrish remix)

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sun ra remix! by theo parrish! 

ra wants to make love in this club: nerds rejoice. 

seriously though, if only more dance music was this hip-shaking but gloriously eccentric at the same time. wonky, out of tune horn loops, frog-voiced guttural mutterisms. I like tracks that sound like the Tattoine bar scene in "Star Wars." 

so deep. unfortunately there's no one singing "space is the place!!! outttter spaaacce..." and no upside-down laser organ solos. don't let that dissuade you from riding the smoothed-out afro-groove submarine all the way to the deep-house ocean floor. 

Astro-Tropicalia

Magma - Udu Wudu




It would not be any kind of exaggeration to say that a decent line of critical inquiry can always be opened up by asking a stupid question, a question any fifth grader would know. Critical thinking is, to invoke Jeff Foxworthy's popular show, not smarter than a fifth grader.
For example, it doesn't know the difference between an old thing and a new thing. So it asks again, and when it asks, it's possible for it to find there another understanding than the one commonly shared.
There's at least one another way that historical time, marked by a difference between old and new, can be understood. In a way, we can say that historical time is born in a moment that is not just one moment. This kind is actually several moments at once, it's actually past, present and future, occurring alongside each other in a densely compacted burst. In the history of music, it's an old song that sounds new and fresh now, and in a such a way that it seems to open up new artistic possibilities - that it seems to point towards a particular new space for exploration.

For example, I will say that 'Udu Wudu' by Magma is a great new old song.

Magma definitely counts as a band so weird that there's a good chance a lot of its work hasn't really arrived yet, as they say, a lot of it remains like a destinal arrow that has been arc'ed for a long one into the future. Masterminded by drummer Christian Vander, Magma's music centers around a complex sci-fi narrative about colonizing another planet, and is sung in an alien argot of Vander's devising.

One work by Magma whose arrow has yet to land is clearly present in this clip, from TV 1978. Not joking, you should probably not watch this whole thing. It's just too bugged. Watch like, two minutes of it. You will get the idea and will avoid the chance of getting sucked into a furious French prog vortex. Such is the nature of the future - you shouldn't look headlong into it any longer than you should stare at the sun, no matter that lingering urge you have, deriving from that nerve twitch you have in the back of your skull, where neck meets spine, which would love nothing more than to one day look right at the solar orb until your pupils melt.

Magma "Hhai"




As a clip, it's bugged-out enough that the kind of disorienting or confusing effect it has induces a reflection on those categories that one unconsciously deploys all the time in order to make sense of some strange new thing. One starts to reflect because these categories have stopped working. Because reflection is spawned in the breakdown.

Reflection hides when things run smoothly. That's not reflection's job, to dissect a working organism, anymore than an autopsy is designed to take someone apart in order to figure out why they're still alive. Reflection is the guy on the outside, the outcast, the wallflower, the doctor, the analyst, the researcher, the jilted lover.

Now a song by Magma whose time is now, in the sense that W. Benjamin would say now, whose time has come to heard for the first time, is Udu Wudu, the title track from their 1976 album. Ricardo Villalobos' track Enfants is the first insight into what I want to call Saturnalia, in other words, outer-space tropicalia, and it's accomplished by sampling Magma. Not only is it a totally weird French 70s prog group, the record in particular is a 25th anniversary concert for the band where all the songs are sung by children. The track is infectiously, naively joyous, but also in a curiously rhythmic and so-lightly otherworldly way.

Enfants was recorded the day before R. Villalobos' son was born. So a track for a newborn son with kids singing marks at the same time a being-born anew of the original composition. So Udu Wudu follows very much in the wake of what RV calls attention to by singling out this track. When a DJ revisits the catalog of an older artist in such a way, the effect is often that of saying "look, go back through the discography, now only listen to the tracks that sound like this one". He awakens a curatorial urge in the sleepless nerds that hold infinite vigil in the digital commons.
The strongest effect of singing in an alien tongue is that it keeps the listener permanently at bay, permanently on some level always hearing an inner echo of 'what the hell am I listening to?', but such an echo that's been filtered in such a way that it doesn't interfere with the frequencies of pleasure and jouissance.

AC Radio April Edition: Notes on Saturnalia
1. Ricardo Villalobos "Enfants"
2. Magma "Udu Wudu"
3. Roberto di Simone "Secondo Coro Delle Lavandale"
4. Lula Cortes e Ze Ramalho "Trilha de Sume"
5. Brian Eno and David Byrne - "New Feet"
6. Babla - "Kabhi Hota Nahin"
7. Mogallar - "Katip Arzvhalim Yaz Yare Boyle"

Hypnotic Brass Ensemble

Hypnotic Brass Ensemble - Jupiter

The Hypnotic Blog

In the past week, during my commute, which as of late has finally reached, in spite of the near ten years I have called New York home, the kind of frequency and psychological intensity commonly associated with bustling metropolitan life, I have several times passed the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble in the midst of a performance in, or around, the Union Square subway system. When I saw that they had re-surfaced, I recalled that I had picked up a CD of theirs during their last subway residency, the 2nd of a series of now 3 CDs. The track 'Jupiter' is the title track from their second album Jupiter. Although it is somewhat atypical of their sound, its impassioned, controlled beauty alone is enough to warrant its being shared. There is a tidal swell of horns, whose modular repetition recalls Riley-style big-band minimalism. There is a wild singer, who intones psychedelic-spiritual invocations not dissimilar to those of June Tyson, who sang with the Sun Ra Arkestra. This would seem highly appropriate, given that of the ensemble's nine members, eight are sons of Phil Cohran, who played trumpet with Sun Ra from 1959-1961.

The track resonates in my ears as they are tuned into 60-70s ensemble jazz, not only the Ra, but Eddie Gale as well, another Arkestra adept. Hypnotic Brass in general however seem to steer less towards interstellar expanses than the no-less far-out dark corners and alleys of an urban cosmos -> which is to say that head-nodding, neck-snapping hip-hop funk and soul are their central cause, if still all the while fueled by the beautiful energy of the big-band jazz ensemble that undoubtedly father Cohran had a hand in cultivating.

Here's a youtube clip of a new track, "War", where you get another dose of precise jazz horn figures with bricklayer beats. Other youtube clips of HBE feature cover versions of stuff like, that one Outkast song with the sick-ass horn section, and 'Moments in Love' by Art of Noise. At least, I believe it to be the AON track, as less-than-ideal recording circumstances seem to have compromised the audio quality.




Hypnotic Brass Ensemble's first two CDs are now available on itunes. As far as I know, they are currently maintaining their Union Square live residency. Check their blog for more tour dates. PS the lead image is from an issue of the German music magazine Loop, the cover of which announces Eine musikalische Familienbande! See Hypnotic blog for the full photo spread, which is kind of sick.
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FROM THE HYPNOTIC BLOG:

"THAT NETHERLANDS FRESHNESS: if you get out there, Amsterdam has some raw barbers, y'all."