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Albums, music, a dip into the bag of albums that are piling up and demanding our attention. Here, om this cold wet November morning, are some we thought worth covering or mentioning in some fractured way or other as we wade through it all….
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Pere Ubu – We Do What We Do – “This was the first year of touring Europe in 1978 and people came along even though, mostly, they’d never heard of the band. This gig was a game-changer. The whole 17 songs were rediscovered and remastered, and you can hear the audience get into it – maniacally. That’s quite a feat considering it was taken from the sound desk but they were so loud, it was there. Mr Thomas actually edited our much of the applause before the (TWO) encores as ‘it was crazy. They went on forever.’”
As the band themselves, or whoever it was speaking on behalf of the band, said up there, this is a live bootleg, it is a shame most of the audience noise and the atmosphere has been removed but this is a damn good recording, not your usual flat dry lifeless mixing desk recording, these early songs are wonderfully alive, and not as raw as you might expect the then still rather new band to be. These songs are performed in such a fluidly urgent way, of course you have those distinctive vocals, that pecking at your head, that relentless thing that has always made Pere Ubu so demandingly vital… Find this on Bandcamp
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Baker Gurvitz Army – Live 1975 (Cherry Red) – What we have here is a newly remastered and expanded version of a live recording from the rather underrated Baker GurVitz Army. Formed in 1974 by former Gun and Three Man Army members Adrian Gurvitz (guitar, vocals), Paul Gurvitz (bass, vocals) and virtuoso drummer Ginger Baker, formerly with Cream, Blind Faith and his own magnificently ground breaking Airforce. “The trio was soon augmented by the arrival of vocalist Mr. Snips (Steve Parsons) and keyboard player Peter Lemer. The band recorded three albums of some of the finest British rock music of the mid-1970s and were a highly regarded live act” so it says here on this press release. “This archive release was recorded on the band’s first UK tour as a five piece band in 1975 and features outstanding versions of tracks such as ‘People’, ‘Memory Lane’, ‘Wotever It Is’ and ‘Freedom’ (written by Jimi Hendrix)”.
Now we are talking the mid 70’s here, we are talking blues-based hard rock players so yes of course there’s plenty of solos, hell, you’ve got one of the greatest drummers ever in Ginger Baker, of course you’ve got an extra long self indulgent drum solo. It is when Mr Baker is playing in that committed way he does within the actual songs that he is at his best though, anything with Ginger Baker powering it is surely worth a listen? Actually once you get into the body of the performance, the real guts of it all with that really electric version of People then this is a brilliant live album, that is one hell of a version of People! Don’t know if we need a second drum solo as one of the bonus tracks, it is worth hanging on until the end for a seriously nailed version of Sunshine Of my Day introduced by Ginger in a way only he could, Surely no one ever called Jimi Jim and only Ginger Baker could get away with it. Excellent album, classic mid 70’s British rock, shame about the rather throwaway cover art and, even if it is Ginger Baker, there is one drum solo too many, besides that, a fine fine pieces of very 70’s blues based hard rock and a great live album
More info via Cherry Red
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Gabriel Birnbaum – Nightwater | All the Dead Do is Dream – It might just be that this album landed here on the morning of the hottest day of the hottest week of the year here in London, a day when no one wanted to move anywhere much. Nightwater | All the Dead Do is Dream is an album that doesn’t really need or want to go anywhere much, an instrumental album that feels like it has all the time in the world to just not need to do much and right now that feels just about right.
Apparently the ideas for these solo pieces recorded on a simple four track began during the pandemic as a way to sooth nerves and be musically creative, apparently Gabriel “fell in love with the Tascam 4 track cassette recorder and it’s been a constant part of my music practice since then” Something to do with having “the ability to make music entirely off the computer is something that has hit many people like a revelation, and I’m now among them”. The results are refreshing, the flow almost un… And that really is as far as this review got back there in the heat. And now here we are at the start of a rainy wet November being battered by the latest named storm and trying to tidy up a loose end or two and the album actually came out yesterday and I can’t even remember what the hottest week of the year sounded like now, maybe it sounded like this? And can we hear rainy weather under the surface of this piece of music, something called Into The Dark I Throw His Pint Of Beer, His Car Keys, His Glasses This is a gentle album, a warm album, an easy album, at times a sweet album, quiet, refined, uncluttered, beguiling, maybe not quite so engaging on a cold wet cynical November Saturday as it was during the last throws of late late Summer but hey, still a delight and you don’t need all these words, there’s some of his own just there and the whole album is on Bandcamp so go find out for yourselves…
“April 2020 was a good time for directness and sincerity – we were all raw and shaken up. But I’m not sure we’re any less so now. I rely on music (and printmaking) to keep me intact just as much today as I did then. There is a lot of beauty in my day to day life and I’m very grateful for that, but the world remains just as much of a terrifying place beyond the sanctuary of my chosen family and the art I get to make. I still need this practice and I still need to share this work with you. I still put it on for myself when I can’t sleep, and I have fallen asleep mid-overdub while making it at least once. I hope it remains a peaceful place for anyone who wants to visit. If anyone’s curious about my musical past or what else I’ve been up to – I’m the frontman/songwriter of Wilder Maker, I grew up playing saxophone and was a member of Debo Band for a decade, I just co-produced the new Mutual Benefit record, and I wrote the string arrangements and played saxes on the new Katie Von Schleicher L
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District 97 – Stay For The End (Spirit Of Unicorn) – “Chicago prog rockers District 97 have announced that they will release their brand new studio album Stay For The Ending through Spirit Of Unicorn Records on October 20th” and as we’re now in November I guess that means the album already out. Hey look, massive backlog here and as we do keep saying, after three score years and a little bit more, the (mostly) thankless task of writing about music is not such a priority as it once was (been there, done that, it was rather taken for granted). None of this is District 97’s fault or problem, all they did was add another album to the mountain of albums demanding our time, of course they want their art out there and talked about, we all do…
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This rather dynamic, some might say bombastic new album is the follow-up to 2019’s Screens – “After 15 years of leading District 97 I’m thrilled that we continue to push ourselves to new heights in every realm of music making,” says drummer Jonathan Schang of the new album. “This is the strongest collection of sings we’ve ever assembled.”
What we have here is a very modern very clean cut take on Prog Rock, although what this so called Prog Rock thing actually is here in 2023 is rather up for debate. Were talking a more-is-more thing, an album from a rather accomplished technically complicated band, a complex album that you could maybe point (accusing) Neo-Prog fingers at. How truly progressive so called Prog Rock is these days is not that clear, is it just a glossy magazine driven marketable genre rather than a declaration of intent now? We have heard most of what District 97 are doing before, that said, once you let Stay for the Ending really flow then the rather powerful female fronted band’s personality, along with the details within their songs do start to emerge in a rather positive manner. The calm within their storm if you like? Certainly enough light and shade, definitely an album that deserves to be unpacked properly, an album that doesn’t need to be rushed. A very clean cut album, a technically proficient easy-on-the-ear album and while clean-cut modern Neo Prog really is not our thing, there is something here. If clean-cut so called modern Prog Rock is something that excites you, if the later output of bands like Rush or Porcupine Tree excite you more than it tends to excite us then here you go, a rather good new album from Chicago’s District 97. (sw) Bandcamp
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Car Crash Weather – Terra Nostra – A post something or other band from Zurich, Switzerland, post metal, post rock, whatever you want it to be. A big bombastic thing, a more is more kind of thing, full bodied, probably a little too full bodied for my tastes but hey, they do have a bit of light and shade in there as well, that post rock we’ll-be-back-to-touching-the-sky in a moment kind of light and shade. Some spoken word, actually they’re rather good at what they do, the nine and a half minutes of Magna Mater I: Disgrace is a particular stand out… bandcamp
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Is that enough? We do have a backlog, dozens and dozens of e.mails and links and soundfiles and press releases, humdreds of albums, hundreds of ambient albums, hundted of minumalsit piano albums, jazz albums, insipid indie albums like the one I’m listening to right now, we do listen to them all, or try to, we are very picky though, and please, no more piano albums, they’re all melding into one big brown blob like plastercene did back there
Seems we featured this back in April 2014, I don’t recall it, do you?
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THE ORGAN 
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