#joel futterman

Bitchin Bajas — Rebajas (Drag City)

Bitchin Bajas are a band made for deep exploration. Their hallucinatory, drone-based excursions are like an old couch — sink in, stretch out and stay a while. Rebajas, released this fall by Drag City, makes that task simple. The seven CD set features most everything the band has released since their debut in 2010: eight full albums and their contribution to various split albums. If you’re dipped into Bitchin Bajas previously, you’ll know what you’re getting. (And if you haven’t there’s little chance this package, or this review of it, is where you’d start.) That said, for those with a long drive, or a monk-like attention span, settling in and tracking the territory of the band’s evolution is rewarding. While the themes — of drone, calm, repeating bass and synth figures — remain constant, the band isn’t a one trick (or one note?) pony. Deep listening uncovers the variety between shorter, bloop-and-hum pieces from Tones/Zones (Disc 1) and the meditative, cycling layers of “2303” from last year’s Bajas Fresh (Disc 7). And there are moments that peek up from the soup: “Bajas Ragas” adds hand percussion and a loping bass line for one of their most engaging concoctions—fit for a slow-motion dance floor in a submerged city of the future. Missing, unfortunately, is their 2016 collaborative album with Bonnie “Prince” Billy, the excellently-titled Epic Jammers And Fortunate Little Ditties. As is this intriguing gem of Rolling Stones covers. Yet, with just shy of seven hours of music, I doubt many will sweat their absence. There’s more than enough to disappear into. And, if this review hasn’t spelled it simply enough, this is quite possibly the trippiest music out there. So, set your intentions and bon voyage.  

Ethan Covey

 Nathan Bowles—Plainly Mistaken (Paradise of Bachelors)

Plainly Mistaken by Nathan Bowles

Nathan Bowles, banjoist, percussionist and citizen of New Weird America, departs from his plain-spoken directness in this fourth album and makes a welcome detour into open-ended psychedelia. Right from the dreamy, drifty “Now If You Remember,” you sense a soft-focus open-ness to otherworldly experience. The cut, written by the seven-year-old Jessica Constable and included on Julie Tippett’s 1976 Sunset Glow, shifts and shimmers in ways that Bowles percussive banjo ditties have rarely done. Yet the album’s transcendental heart comes in “The Road Reversed,” where a pounding, dancing rhythm kicks among long, velvety bowed tones, and banjo notes bend into raga-like half-tones. Folk Americana frolics amid deep-toned Eastern meditation, and where one begins and the other ends is hard to say and, also, beside the point. There are, for sure, some traditional touchpoints—“Elk River Blues” (a tune by Ernie Carpenter that Bowles revisits here), “Fresh and Fairly So” and “Stump Sprout” will all satisfy fans of the twang and the twitch. Yet what lingers, for me, are the ones that stray from past experience, the slow, solo ambiguities of “Umbra,” the shadowy flurries and shifting dissonances of “Girih Tiles.” What Bowles’ well-turned work has lacked till now is mystery, and here it is at last.

Jennifer Kelly

 Mike Farris — Silver & Stone (Compass)

Mike Farris's long, strange career flamed briefly with the alt-rockers Screamin' Cheetah Wheelies in the 1990s. After that, Farris rejected his rock 'n' roll lifestyle and grungy sound in a move toward gospel and soul. The surprise of the transition wasn't the partier-to-Christian story but the discovery of how strong Farris's vocals are. On Silver & Stone, he has less of a gospel focus, but down in some swampy soul music (with bits of brighter pop), he shows off that voice. He's willing to take on Bill Withers (“Hope She'll Be Happier”) and Sam Cooke (“I'll Coming Running Back to You”) — not tasks usually recommended — and he comes out of it just fine.

The album fits a sort of arc for his solo career. It lacks the new-convert punch and joy of Salvation in Lights, but it shifts into more thoughtful reflection. Where he had been celebrating, now he's considering how to live. The explicit religion has mostly disappeared, but Farris's songs still run on hope and a big heart. The sorts of ideas at work on Silver & Stone synthesize on “When Mavis Sings,” a tribute to Mavis Staples and serves as a sort of musical and personal model. Farris, whether in rock or soul, the church or the club, presents a focused vision with enough groove to carry it through.

Justin Cober-Lake

 Tim Feeney — Burrow (Marginal Frequency)

MFCS K | Tim Feeney - Burrow by Marginal Frequency

Burrow can be read as both an explanation and an instruction. Percussionist Tim Feeney begins each of this tape’s four pieces (two per side, and if you purchase a download you’ll get a file of each side, not each piece) in similar fashion, beating out a pattern with minimal variation. As the performance progresses monotony gives way to fascination as Feeney slowly reveals a beat’s potential variations. At a certain point things change. Are you hearing more because he threw something on the drum skin, or because your concentration is unlocking that drum-strike’s secrets, or maybe both? Treat this tape like a meditation guide, one that helps you to dig into the sound and see what treasures you find.

Bill Meyer 

 Forever House — Eaves (Infrequent Seams)

Eaves by Forever House

Forever House makes wildly complicated songs whose improvisatory flights and furies are held together, barely, by Meaghan Burke’s keening, swooping melodies. A lurid aura hangs over these difficult, jarring compositions, witchy incantations invoking freaks, body doubles and spiders. Burke’s voice is velvety dark, draping over odd-shaped rhythms, jutting stabs of violent sound. The drumming is particularly good in an off-putting, against-expectations manner; along with throbs of cello and throes of feedbacked dissonance, it constructs a weird fun house architecture where everything tips and distorts and unsettles.

Forever House’s oddities work because they’re powered by formidable skills – this is a band with a serious NY downtown pedigree. Burke, a cellist and composer, commutes between classical orchestra work and solo material that skitters along the boundary between archaic pop and free-wheeling art song. Both guitarist James Moore and bassist James Illgenfritz have played with John Zorn, as well as other downtown luminaries (in Illgenfritz’s case Anthony Braxton, John Zorn, Elliott Sharp and Pauline Oliveros and others, in Moore’s with the electric guitar quartet Dither). Drummer Pete Wise has left less of an internet trail but seems to have Bang on a Can connections. You get the sense that Forever House is their spooky busman’s holiday, a chance to play against type and raise some unruly ghosts. Boo!

Jennifer Kelly  

 German Army — Kowloon Walled City = (Null Zone)

Kowloon Walled City by German Army

German Army is neither an established military entity nor some reenactment clique, but a low-flying, California-based combo that (according to their Facebook page) “uses art to document disappearing cultures and wildlife while critiquing imperialism in all forms.” Kowloon Walled City certainly qualifies as a disappearing culture, since most of the semi-autonomous, mob-run neighborhood that sat at the edge of Hong Kong’s airport has been cleaned up or knocked down. Since there’s nothing particularly Chinese-sounding about this tape’s perky synth/drum jams and the rare spoken vocals are in distinctly American-accented English, the proclaimed mission may be a failure or just a red herring. But if you need some catchy tunes limned with coded mystery to jam in your old jalopy (if you have tried to get a car stereo with a tape deck in the last ten years, you know what I’m talking about), German Army is at your service.

Bill Meyer

  Gong Gong Gong—Siren (Wharf Cat)

Siren 追逐劇 by Gong Gong Gong 工工工

Two songs from the duo of Joshua Frank and Tom Ng make a case for an intriguing Beijing punk-noise underground. The a-side, “Siren” abstracts the electric blues into a single clattering guitar riff, a zooming, looming roar of bass and a searing call (no response) vocal from Ng, in sing-song-y Chinese. “Something’s Happening” is meatier and more conventionally rock, still built on sharp, stinging guitar clamor, but buzzing with Hendrix-y solo-ry (if Hendrix played the bass). Both tracks employ the minimum number of parts to maximal impact, the construction loose enough for friction, sparks and gnashing aggression.

Jennifer Kelly

 Gerrit Hatcher / Peter Maunu / Julian Kirschner — The Raven and the Dove (JAKI)

The Raven and the Dove by Hatcher/Maunu/Kirshner

Chicago’s built on drained swampland, so when the next wave of free jazz rolls up, it can travel. Certainly this trio, which comprises two younger musicians and one more who seems to be doing exactly what he wants with his retirement, covers a lot of ground. Gerrit Hatcher is an extroverted tenor saxophonist with a raw tone and a willingness to depart from his default setting of muscular tune-grinding into passages of tentative flutter and delicate counterpoint. Good drummers never lack for work, so it’s saying something that you can find Julian Kirschner on a Chicago stage pretty much every week of the year. He comes from a post-free jazz conception of his instrument that favors color, space and movement over pulse or swing. Joining these youngsters is Peter Maunu, whose past life playing fusion and new age music seems quite irrelevant to the unpredictable stream of savage scraping, subliminal humming, and acidic rocking that issues from his guitar, violin and mandolin. This group is brand new, but it won’t be for long; they’ve been touring around the Midwest this fall, so you can expect them to add seasoned rapport to band new promises before long. Catch them if you can, and catch this promising debut if you can’t.

Bill Meyer

 Kidd Jordan / Alvin Fielder / Joel Futterman / Steve Swell — Masters of Improvisation (Valid Records)

Masters of Improvisation by Kidd Jordan, Alvin Fielder, Joel Futterman & Steve Swell

It takes a particular orneriness to be a musician in a musical city and stake your claim to a style that the city has never embraced. You can say a lot of things about New Orleans, but it’s never really been a free jazz town. But that hasn’t stopped tenor saxophonist Kidd Jordan, who has made his crust playing and teaching every style that a jobbing musician must play, from playing a particularly uncompromising variety of free jazz. Two of his accompanists here are long-time partners. Drummer Alvin Fielder, who like Jordan is in his 80s, has likewise carried the free jazz torch in southern environs where the muggy air of indifference would douse a fainter spirit. Pianist Joel Futterman is a decade younger and his darting technique and forays inside the piano imply that his roots are sunk in different turf than his mates, but he’s been playing with them long enough to be able to bring empathy as well as energy to the table. New York-based trombonist Steve Swell is the newcomer, and his ability to shift effortlessly between sere exhalations and brash attacks allows him to complicate the combo’s late-Coltrane vibe without betraying it, and then be equally persuasive when they turn around and wring the last blue drops out of Doc Pomus’ “Lonely Avenue.” This concert recording lingers long on the stormy side; go on, stick your face into the wind, you won’t be sorry.

Bill Meyer

 No Love — Choke on It (Sorry State)

Choke On It by No Love

No Love, from Raleigh, NC, play punk rock that conjures the ragged toughness of the mid-1970s NYC downtown scene and the pace of early-1980s Southern Cali hardcore. It’s a potent mix, and when guitarists Seth Beard and Daniel Lupton make a bit of space for vocalist Elizabeth Lynch, the record really kills it. The record’s title track and “Dogs//Wolves” — released back in 2015 as the A-side of a terrific single — are frantic punk burners that scrap and sizzle, teetering on the brink of perilous chaos. The band manages to channel the energy without disciplining it, like the Heartbreakers in those magical months in 1975. “Back Taxes & Anaphylaxis” is even better, mostly because Lynch takes an aggressive lead on the song, showing what she can do. On “Drama Fever,” she manages to keep pace with the guitars’ slashing intensity, but on some of the other tracks, she’s drowned out by all the frenzied riffage. The raw sound of the record gives it a low-grade charm, but the noise sometimes obscures the tunes, which are pretty great. Still, the band’s vigor and verve are undeniable. More, please.  

Jonathan Shaw

 One Tail, One Head — Worlds Open, Worlds Collide (Terratur Possessions) 

Worlds Open, Worlds Collide by One Tail, One Head

Norway’s One Tail, One Head have been playing black metal since 2006, but this year’s Worlds Open, Worlds Collide is the first full-length record the band has ever released. They’ve made a career on their reputation as a live act, pairing their orthodox blackened sound and songs with a stage show only slightly less theatrical than Watain’s (that’s all stage blood, right guys?). It seems that this first LP will be their last, as One Tail, One Head have announced their intent to call it quits after a tour supporting the record. That sense of finality may have prompted the band to round the stylistic bases, pairing truculent, muscular songs reminiscent of the early demos (“Firebirds” is a good example) with more chaotic, swirling work typical of the recent EPs. Songs in the former mode are more successful here, especially the record’s title track, which thunders and crackles with convincing menace. But One Tail, One Head could have given themselves a better sendoff. Few of these tunes feel fully realized, and none is near the equal of the band’s intense performing presence. It’s too bad — but a wise (or wise-ass) kid from Chicago once observed that “breaking up is an idea that has occurred to far too few groups, sometimes the wrong ones.” Via con Satàn, fellas.  

Jonathan Shaw

 Vanessa Peters — Foxhole Prayers (Idol)

Foxhole Prayers by Vanessa Peters

Singer-songwriter Vanessa Peters could have settled for the smart folk-rock she’s been doing for almost two decades, but on Foxhole Prayers she stretches herself, looking at the cultural landscape without relinquishing her personal lyrics. “Carnival Barker” offers her most direct political track, but “Trolls” is more effective, capturing the patience and perseverance needed to defeat the title characters. The song has personal and political resonances, and it's that dual thinking that drives much of the album. “Fight” takes on extra meaning in the context of the album. Peters unveils her own fears and her own need to press on, but with enough space in the lyrics that she could be speaking to herself, a young artist, or someone afraid of venturing into the public eye in any sense; calls to bravery aren't limited to those on stage and Peters situates her song as someone who knows that.  

As her view expands, so does her music, particularly as she incorporates electronic elements into her sound. The dance-pop influences of “Before it Falls Apart” surprise, but Peters' tasteful use of the new sounds allows everything to fit in naturally with what she does. The album, inspired in part by comparing the world of The Greaty Gatsby with today's political climate, has its roots in crisis, hence the title track, and Peters uses her art to search for something better. 

Justin Cober-Lake

 Shells—Shells 2 (Gingko)

Shells 2 by Shells

The evidence suggests that Shelley Salant is not a loner. She’s been booking shows in Southeast Michigan for a decade. She’s the sort of record store clerk who greets you with a recommendation that you’d best consider. She’s played guitar in Tyvek and Swimsuit. She’s the sort of person who makes communities happen by doing what she does.

But she also has pretty strong instincts about what makes a guitar worth hearing — liquid tone, phrases that are concise unless they need to wander, pithy hooks, gritty noise and reverb for days. She’s got some things to say on her own, and that’s where Shells comes in. Shells 2 contains 14 tracks, each a brief and lucid lesson about one or more of the aforementioned virtues. Some of them comprise layers of loops, some follow a single snaking line, and a couple have been overdubbed into an approximation of a band. Similarity spotters may point out the bits that sound like Link Wray or Roy Montgomery or the Feelies, but that would require looking past all the bits that sound like Shelley Salant rocking essentially.

Bill Meyer

 Various Artists — Chebran Volume 2: French Boogie 1979-1982 (Born Bad)

This superlative collection of funk, disco and proto-rap documents the cross-hybridization of bootleg tapes of Grandmaster Flash, Eurovision-style dance music and sounds from the African and Arabic colonies that bubbled up in working class neighborhoods at the dawn of the 1980s all over France. Here on cuts like Ethnie’s “De Chagrin En Chagrin” synths take up the serpentine non-western melodies, while Bootsy-style funksters slap and pop out the boogie. Likewise, the ponderous stomp of bass and percussion anchors Ganawa’s “Yamna” in present day disco, but its wheeling woodwinds and haunting call and response transport you to sand swept deserts in North Africa. Ettika, both the track name and the artist name for a one-hitter from the early 1980s, nudges a disco synth into twisty arabesques and flits from French to Arabic in its emphatic, female-powered raps. Forget the melting pot, these cuts bubble like sour dough starter, when errant spores of yeast find a home in a dull white flour soup and create something marvelous.

Jennifer Kelly

 Otomo Yoshihide / Paal Nilssen-Love — 19th of May 2016 (PNL)

19th of May 2016 by Otomo Yoshihide & Paal Nilssen-Love

Conventional wisdom holds that when Paal Nilssen-Love gets on stage with an electric guitarist, fillings will loosen. That certainly holds true when he pairs up with Terrie Ex, his preferred six-string slinger of recent years, and there are parts of this encounter with Japanese guitarist Otomo Yoshihide that could be cited as supporting evidence. Otomo brings plenty of volume, distortion and ferocity; there are passages where it sounds like he’s demolishing some metallic structure while Nilssen-Love erects an impregnable surrounding whirlwind. But neither man stays in one gear, and some of the most involving moments come when they drop to a scrape and a shimmer.

Hal Russell and Joel Futterman set up this two-night gig at Southend Music Works, a venue located at the southern end of downtown, before the flood took place. They did not originally plan to memorialize an underwhelming catastrophe when they booked themselves into. But Russell had showbiz in his blood and both men nurtured improvisation in their souls, so they wasn’t about to blow an opportunity. When they convened on April 24 and 25, Russell read some Philip Egert poems about the Chicago River and life in the city, which framed the shows as comments upon the catastrophe. The Chicago River is an archival release that contains recordings of both nights, spread across three CDs, presented in the order it was performed. This all-in presentation, as much as the surging performances themselves, presents a work more epic than the event after which it was named. 

Futterman, who is still active with William Parker and Chad Fowler, among others, is best known as a pianist, but he also plays curved soprano sax, Indian flute, and percussion. Russell, who had a road to Damascus experience with the music of Albert Ayler in mid-life after decades of playing jazz, dinner theater, and anything else that paid the bills, played tenor and soprano saxophones, trumpet, and drums. Both players bring distinct voices to their various instruments, and their multi-instrumentalism ensures variety and dynamics. The music’s density changes drastically when Futterman switches from piano, which he plays with a full-on virtuosity that blasts keyboard-spanning cascades through spontaneously conceived structures, to sax, which he plays with the bluntly pitch of a striking worker’s protest sign. Russell is a bit of a free jazz fundamentalist. On tenor, his broad vibrato and coarse tone recalls Albert Ayler, and his punchy, skittering trumpeting recalls Albert’s brother Don. His drumming, while steeped in jazz fundamentals, is as loose and freewheeling as Sunny Murray’s. His reading has a sardonic quality that mixes film noir voice-over with old-fashioned stagecraft. The duo’s energy easily bridges any gaps presented by indifferent recording quality. Each disc is divided into two parts, which range in length from 13 to 48 minutes, which serves notice that this is not casual music, and that the listener music agree to immersion. But be careful when you jump in; those old freight tunnels are not that deep. 

“Opening” has the carbonated fizz of a palate cleanser with the three players finding shared footing on a snaking ecstatic riff from Jordan and Fielder’s forceful, but nuanced mallets. “Serenity” is absent drummer, leaving tenor and piano to a dialogue populated with cerulean-shaded shapes and structures. Even at this comparatively early stage of their partnership, Futterman and Jordan are synched to a shared syntax acquired from, but not beholden to, the argot of first generation fire music. “Double Strike” brings Fielder back into the fold and the trio sparks conflagrating comet trails over a quarter-hour. Futterman trades stomping, cascading key clusters and cavernously resonant chords for avian Indian flute late in the game, joining Jordan’s altissimo peals in a spate of spiraling aerial jousts. 

A solo piano feature, “Ripples” feels slightly rote in comparison to the earlier conversations as bright and frenetic display of impressive, but also obvious digital dexterity. “Start-Stop” is the first of three concluding pieces differentiated on paper by paired directives. It’s Futterman’s turn to take a breather as Jordan limns the sort of eruptive vamp he used to revel in with kindred horn players like the late Fred Anderson, over a choppy sea of cross-rhythms churned up by Fielder’s commanding sticks. “Run-Drop” pairing Futterman’s soprano with more diffusive percussion minus Jordan fares less well, but the fourteen-minute “Start-Continue” takes the program out with the trio reengaged at full, ebullient muster translating the album title into reverent concerted sound. 

The trio ceased when Fielder passed away last year. Fortunately, a modest catalog survives for posterity on Silkheart and several other labels. Dilatory to the tune of a quarter-century, this disc still augments that esteemed company.