NOMO is a band that's been on my radar for some time. I've seen them live on several occasions, and they always put on an energetic, inspired performance. Most notably, I saw them play the 2005 Chicago World Music Festival with special guests Fred Anderson and Nicole Mitchell, forging a transcebdant alliance of funk and AACM inspired improvisation.
While I enjoyed both of their first two albums (a close look at their discography reveals that two of their albums have overlapping content, one as a 12" re-release), Ghost Rock fulfills the promise of their live show and points to new directions for the band's creative vision.
While afro-beat always factored heavily in the band's sound and aesthetic in the past, Ghost Rock presents music that has a wider range of influence. While the rhythmically propulsive grooves of afro-beat remain, this record isn't as easily pinned down as a star in the Fela Kuti constellation, and it works to their advantage.
The electronic likembe excursions of Konono No. 1 factor as heavily into the album's sound as any other readily identifiable predecessor, with Eliot Bergman's electric mbira and kalimba providing a lot of sonic and rhythmic contrast throughout. While there are certainly notable roots to their music, this is the first album NOMO has released that to my ears also points forward and really sounds like a modern, forward looking recording.
In a recent interview, Bergman explained: "Warn [Defever] and I have built over a hundred mbira-like instruments in the past few years, and some of those end up on the record...[which] uses even more of these homemade instruments. We also have constructed a bunch of metallic percussion objects, that we then amplify, such as the electric saw-blade gamelan."
In addition to the core lineup of Elliot Bergman, Dan Bennett, Ingrid Racine, Justin Walter, Erik Hall, Jamie Register, Dan Piccolo and Quin Kirchner, the band is joined on various tracks by Hamid Drake, Adam Rudolph, Josh Abrams, Jason Murdy, Joey Dosik, Chilali Hugo, and Warn Defever, who also produced the record.
Ghost Rock has a pronounced arc of intensity and vision, building, cresting, and returning to its equilibrium by album's end. In its flow and sound it really feels like a unified album, with a great sense of continuity. Highlight tracks for me include the psychedelic opening excursion Brainwave, the miles deep groove of Rings that features three of the all star guests on the album, Hamid Drake, Adam Rudolph, and Josh Abrams, and the positively infectious funk of Last Beat.
A great album from a great band. With the release of Ghost Rock and I can truly say that I'm excited to see what the future holds for NOMO.
You can check out some tracks from the new disc on their MySpace page, and be sure to check their tourdates as they are in the midst of a national tour in support of the new album.
DiggEvery once in a while an album comes along that so thoroughly satiates my musical interests and desires at that given period of my life that I develop a special connection to the album and its music. It's a symbiotic relationship where the album doesn't just define a season of listening, but my life also seems to lend the musical contents particular meaning and context.
Party Intellectuals has been that kind of album for me over the course of the last few months. Its ebullient, irreverent spirit is refreshing and liberating, and I haven't heard a modern album that embodies the ethos of rock and/or roll so well in ages.
I always knew that Marc Ribot was an incredibly talented musician through his wide array of musical activities, but when I first put on this album with no preconception of what kind of record it was, I was pleasantly surprised to say the least.
First, the basics: a classic power trio format consisting of Marc Ribot, bassist Shahzad Ismaily, and drummer Ches Smith. In addition to playing guitar, Ribot is featured as a highly effective vocalist. A mix of vocal and instrumental tracks, loud rock and roll, noise, punk-funk, and spacious ambient explorations. Ribot's lyrics are sharp, funny, and poignant, and his delivery as a vocalist fit the aesthetic and feel of the writing even if his voice isn't necessarily the strongest.
I don't want to belabor any predecessors or comparisons, but think Mr. Bungle and Last Exit's illegitimate bastard love child, raised by wolves. Really culturally refined wolves with exquisite taste in music.
The production and mix on the album is fantastic, and they achieved the huge drum and guitar sound necessary to make this brand of music really work.
Another great release from Pi Recordings, a label whose track record continues to impress me. They've cultivated a level of trust in their activities that I would not hesitate to purchase any album in their catalog.
A great summer album: fun, blasphemous, occasionally indulgent, and most of all, it rocks.
"As for consciousness, it has neither past nor future and knows only present moments; it is the continuum of a present moment being transformed into another present moment, whereas with external objects the present disappears in favour of notions of past and future. But further pursuit of this logic will lead to absurdity, because to situate past and future we need a frame of reference which, in this case, is the present, and we have just lost its trace in fractions of milliseconds." - Dalai Lama
Music as a frame of reference that allows us to experience a continuity and continuum of the present moment.
Meta explorations of a title:
Time consciousness and listening experience as organizational principles of counterpoint: a processual approach to the sixteenth-century Venetian imitative ricercar.
Other planes of there:
Music lists from Tape + Vijay Iyer
Sun Ra: I think of myself as a complete mystery. To myself.
Vijay Iyer’s Tragicomic opens with an invocation entitled The Weight of Things, an evocative title and opening to the album to my mind and ears. There’s a series of titles about things amongst musicians I admire: Evidence of Things Unseen by Don Pullen, The Flow of Things by Roscoe Mitchell, Things to Come From Those Now Gone by Muhal Richard Abrams, to name a few. Maybe I’m reading too much into these things, but I see a connected interest in the ineffable amongst all these artists, and a similar view of expressing these things through music.
Now that I’ve already gone and described the opening track as evocative, I’ll go ahead and apply the label to the whole album. Isn’t all good music evocative in some sense? Perhaps, but this music falls into a category of evocation that I deem particularly noteworthy. Tragicomic finds Vijay Iyer splitting time between his established quartet and a more stripped down setting of the trio, and there is even one track treating the listener to a solo piano excursion that is so enjoyable that I hope Vijay will consider recording an album of solo piano at some point.
I did something with Tragicomic that I like to do if I’m afforded the luxury of time - listen to the artist’s recordings leading up to the newest (this is just his music under his own name as a leader, not including collaborative efforts such as Fieldwork). Following the progression of Mr. Iyer’s work throughout his career, I am definitely hearing a honing of process and compositional voice. It’s difficult to describe, but amounts to an identifying of some kind of essential string of musical voice that you can easily hear throughout that becomes more prominent in improvisations and composition as time goes on.
There is an aesthetic in Vijay Iyer’s music that I’d described as eclectic unity, the incorporation of seemingly disparate elements rhythmically, melodically or harmonically that make sense in the context of the whole. We hear hints of reggae in Comin’ Up both in feel and in a subtle delay (a production technique that recurs a few times on the album with great success to my ears) on the snare drum at a dub like break, a confident sense of swing in his solo piano excursion, and a whole lot more that isn’t easily labeled.
An accepted fact to my ears when listening to and parsing Vijay Iyer’s music is that rhythm is always a centrally propulsive element in the music. Propulsive not always in the sense of frenetic or pushed, but more in a sense of centrality in its role in the music as a whole. Even in Mehndi, the brooding meditative piece that places the listener awash in the ceremonial dye of its namesake, the rhythmic feel and pulse is very precise and most of all purposeful. In this realm of rhythmic prowess, no genre is off limits, and new genres are formed through rhythmic alchemy.
Tragicomic is a great album. Vijay Iyer has continued to hone his musical vision and it is fully formed on this release. To speculate a bit, I hear a point of inflection with this album that I think is going to lead to new and different things in future releases with this or other bands. The concept and vision is there and now the question is what will he do with it next?
Some nice press for the Vision Festival in the NY Times.
I was impressed to see that they even included some media so you could sample some of the offerings on tap. Imagine my surprise when they obviously selected the wrong, clarinet playing, George Lewis to sample!
How embarrassing.
Now, if the Vision Festival could bring that George Lewis back to life, to do a duet with the other George Lewis - we would have some awfully interesting music on our hands.
Apparently someone at the Times didn't do their homework - it would be awfully difficult for George Lewis the clarinetist to play the festival, given the fact that he's been dead for 40 years.
