Robert Scott Thompson - Pale Blue Dot (excerpts) (Anodize < Bandcamp; due Fall 2015)
The Gurdjieff Folk Instruments Ensemble - Komitas (ECM New Series; due Oct. 2)
James Moore & Andie Springer - Gertrudes: music for violin and resonator guitar (New World) > Larry Polansky - 10 Strings (9 Events); Paula Matthusen - in absentia; James Moore - Suspicions; Look Like; A Wish; Ken Thomson - Deafening Irrelevance; Lainie Fefferman - Fiddly Tune; Robert Ashley - For Andie Spring Showing the Form of a Melody, "Standing In the Shadows," by Robert Ashley; For Andie Springer ... (Encore)
Loadbang - Lungpowered (New Focus Recordings) > Alexandre Lunsqui - Guttural 1-3; Scott Worthington - Infinitive; Alex Mincek - Number May Be Defined; David Brynjar Franzson - Longitudinal Study #1; Reiko Füting - Land of Silence; William Lang - There Might Be One More
Cathedral - In Memoriam (Rise Above)
Cathedral - Forest of Equilibrium (Earache)
Electric Wizard - Electric Wizard (Rise Above/Metal Blade)
Cathedral - The Carnival Bizarre (Earache)
Electric Wizard - Dopethrone (Rise Above/Metal Blade)
With the Dead - With the Dead (Rise Above; out Oct. 16)
Deafheaven - New Bermuda (Anti-; out Oct. 2)
YOB - The Illusion of Motion (Metal Blade)
YOB - The Unreal Never Lived (Metal Blade)
Ben Monder - Amorphae (ECM; out Oct. 30)
Kim Kashkashian, Sarah Rothenberg, Steven Schick, Houston Chamber Choir, Robert Simpson - Rothko Chapel (ECM New Series; out Oct. 23) > Morton Feldman - Rothko Chapel; Erik Satie - Gnossienne No. 4; John Cage - Four2; Erik Satie - Ogive No. 1; John Cage - ear for EAR (Antiphonies); Erik Satie - Ogive No. 2; Gnossienne No. 1; John Cage - Five; Erik Satie - Gnossienne No. 3; John Cage - In a Landscape
Lucifer - Lucifer I (Rise Above)
Witchfinder General - Death Penalty (Heavy Metal Records)
Uncle Acid & the deadbeats, by Ben Stas/Noise Floor Photography
When I posted my Boston Globereview of a concert by Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats here last week, I suggested that interested readers watch out for a subsequent post by photographer Ben Stas on Invisible Oranges. Turns out I was half-right: Ben's posted more images of Uncle Acid, Ruby the Hatchet, and Ecstatic Vision, but on his own blog, Noise Floor, a smartly designed site chock full of Ben's words and visions. Well worth visiting and bookmarking -- and by all means be sure to check out his photos from the Scorpions show at Blue Hills Bank Pavilion earlier this month, too.
Yarn/Wire and Pete Swanson - Eliminated Artist (Distributed Objects)
Louth Contemporary Music Society - Song of Songs (Louth Contemporary Music Society) > David Lang - Just (after Song of Songs) - Trio Mediaeval, Garth Knox, Agnès Vesterman, Sylvain Lemêtre; Luciano Berio - Naturale - Garth Knox, Sylvain Lemêtre; Betty Olivero - En la mar hai una torre - Trio Mediaeval, Garth Knox, Agnès Vesterman, Sylvain Lemêtre, Cliona Doris
Roger Sessions - Music for Violin & Piano - David Bowlin, David Holzman (Bridge) > Duo; Adagio; Waltz for Brenda; Sonata for Violin; Second Sonata
Mats Gustafsson - Piano Mating (X-Ray Records < Bandcamp)
Max Richter - From Sleep - Grace Davidson, Max Richter, American Contemporary Music Ensemble (Deutsche Grammophon)
King Crimson - Massey Hall, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, June 24, 1974 (The Road to Red 11/12) (DGM)
Ecstatic Vision - Sonic Praise (Relapse)
Uncle Acid & the deadbeats - The Night Creeper (Rise Above)
Fall and all attendant memories Crowd the day with unrelated histories Each year leaves its unresolving fantasies To hang around each corner Hang around each street.
Thick with ghosts, the wind whips round in circuitries Carrying words as strangers exchange pleasantries Do they intrude upon your private reveries As they meet you on each corner Meet you on each street.
Watch for daily braveries Notice newfound courtesies Finger sudden legacies As they clean up every corner Wash down every street.
Mark the month and all its anniversaries Put away the draft of all your eulogies Clear the way for all your private memories As they meet you on each corner Meet you on each street.
Make the time for all your possibilities They live on every street.
Suzanne Vega, "Anniversary," from Beauty & Crime (Blue Note, 2007)
King Crimson - Civic Auditorium, El Paso, TX, June 8, 1974 (The Road to Red 7) (DGM)
Keller Quartett - Cantante e tranquillo (ECM New Series) > Ludwig van Beethoven - String Quartet No. 16 in F, Op. 135 - Lento Assai,Cantante e tranquillo; György Ligeti - String Quartet No. 2 - Allegro Con Delicatezza – Stets Sehr Mild; Johann Sebastian Bach - The Art of Fugue, BWV 1080 - Contrapunctus I; György Kurtág - Aus Der Ferne V; Alfred Schnittke - Piano Quintet - Moderato Pastorale [Alexei Lubimov]; Alexander Knaifel - In Air Clean and Unseen - An Autumn Evening; Johann Sebastian Bach - The Art of Fugue, BWV 1080 - Contrapunctus XIV; György Kurtág - Officium Breve in Memoriam Andreæ Szervánsky, Op. 28 - Arioso Interrotto (Di Endre Svervánsky), Larghetto; Ludwig van Beethoven - String Quartet No. 13 in B-flat, Op. 130 - Cavatina. Adagio Molto Espressivo; György Kurtág - Flowers We Are – For Miyako; Hommage À Bach; Ligatura Y; Ligatura for Two Violins; Ludwig van Beethoven - String Quartet No. 16 in F, Op. 135 - Lento Assai,Cantante e tranquillo
Ludwig van Beethoven - Piano Sonata No. 29 in B-flat, Op. 106 ("Hammerklavier"); Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Op. 27, No. 2 ("Moonlight"); The Ruins of Athens - Chorus of the Whirling Dervishes, Turkish March (arr. Bax) - Alessio Bax (Signum)
Iron Maiden - Rock in Rio (Sanctuary DVD)
21st Century Schizoid Band - Live in Japan (Iceni DVD)
David Sylvian - Approaching Silence (Virgin)
King Crimson - Denver Coliseum, Denver, CO, June 16, 1974 (The Road to Red 8) (DGM)
Iron Maiden - The Book of Souls (BMG)
Bruno Mantovani - Voices - Sonia Weider-Atherton, Pascal Contet, Accentus/Pieter-Jelle de Boer, Laurence Equilbey (Naïve) > Cinq poèmes de János Pilinszky; Vier geistliche Gedichte; Monde évanoui (Fragments pour Babylone); Cantate No. 4 "Komm, Jusu, Komm"
Album review: Iron Maiden, The Book of Souls Boston Globe September 4, 2015
Another one from last Friday…this actually shared a page with my Scorpions feature story, which made for a rather interesting impression on folks who mostly knew me for my work in The New York Times, which was about 99.99999995 percent about classical/concert music.
Which tells me something that I already knew about the sub-optimal circulation achieved by the Time Out New York website during the decade-plus that I wrote about metal there on a regular basis. Interviews with Tony Iommi (Black Sabbath), Scott Ian (Anthrax), Barney Greenway (Napalm Death), Frank Mullen (Suffocation), Randy Blythe (Lamb of God), Carley Coma (Candiria), and plenty more… it's as if they never happened.
Penetration makes all the difference. What a metal-worthy observation.
Anyway, at roughly 195 words my review of the amazing new Iron Maiden double set – a deluxe-edition copy of which I allowed myself the pleasure of purchasing with cash currency at a brick-and-mortar store today – really only scratches the surface. At that length, all you really hope to do is attract attention and pique interest enough to encourage a reader to investigate further.
If I'd had a few more lines, I like to think I would have written that the album sort of feels like two regular-length albums; that it's superbly paced and agreeably produced; that certain motifs here quite strongly recall specific songs from the initial albums Iron Maiden made with Bruce Dickinson and Adrian Smith back on board, Brave New World and Dance of Death; and that The Book of Souls, for its girth, is a more consistently strong album than its two worthy studio predecessors, A Matter of Life and Death and The Final Frontier.
Did you know that the venerable German metal band Scorpions turns 50 this month? Neither did I… and according to this interview (and others I've read), neither did founding guitarist Rudolf Schenker until he went looking for an old tape containing a song the group had abandoned some time before, and instead found a book that his mother had given him in September of 1965: a ledger enumerating the loans that Schenker's father had provided in order to establish and equip the new band.
True, the Scorpions that most people know is the incarnation that topped the charts during the 1980s, polished by producer Dieter Dierks into a sleek vehicle known for big tunes, catchy riffs, and polished veneer. The band's pop-hit prime neatly coincided with MTV's early glory years, which meant that songs from Blackout, Love at First Sting, Savage Amusement, and Crazy World were everywhere.
If those albums still resonate, you might want to check out Return to Forever, which comes out this Friday, since it started out as a collection of unrecorded tunes from the years spanned by those releases, and then got fattened up with some new tunes intentionally tapping the glory-years sound.
The current Scorpions set list, devised for the summer festival circuit, will be maintained for the coming U.S. trek. It includes a hefty slab of the new album, as well as most of the big hits you'd anticipate. But it also digs deep for a handful of vintage cuts from the band's rougher, heavier '70s phase with guitarist Uli Jon Roth; if you've been missing "Top of the Bill" or "Speedy's Coming," this one's for you. I've been listening to an audience recording of one of those shows – specifically, Graspop Metal Meeting 2015, in Belgium on June 21 – for a few weeks now, and I can promise that it's a solid show. (If you're so inclined, you can check out a complete set list at setlist.fm.)
Also worth looking forward to is Forever and a Day, a very fine new Deutsche Welle documentary that spans the entire Scorpions saga, from a music video for the Black Sabbath-redolent "I'm Goin' Mad" (from the band's 1972 debut LP, Lonesome Crow) to footage from what was billed as the group's farewell tour, which ended in 2012. There's a one-day cinematic screening in the works for October 14, but presumably this is bound for home video soon.
So, yeah, there is an end in sight, again: In our interview, Schenker said that Scorpions will call it a day at the end of 2016… and I'm inclined to believe him. I'm not sure whether I'll be available to take him up on his offer to share a drink backstage at Blue Hills Bank Pavilion on Thursday night, when the U.S. leg of the 50th-anniversary tour commences, but I absolutely will be there in spirit – the interview was tremendous fun, and provided at least three times as much material as I could use even in a reasonably generous article. And perhaps I'll be able to catch the Saturday night show at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, which Yahoo will be streaming live.
Billy Sherwood, by Leslie dela Vega for Rolling Stone
Yes + Toto Foxwoods Resort Casino, Mashantucket, MA, Aug. 7, 2015 RollingStone.com August 8, 2015
My second piece of music writing for Rolling Stone, and a review I ought to have posted a long time ago… the very first show by Yes following the untimely death of founding bassist-vocalist Chris Squire on June 27. A deeply melancholy event, which started with a tribute that couldn't have been better.
Weeks before the show, emailing among a select group of longtime prog-inclined friends, I suggested that the best and most tasteful tribute Yes could offer would be a photo montage projected during a performance of Squire's most beautiful song, the ballad "Onward," from the otherwise largely lamentable LP Tormato.
What we got instead was the Tormato recording of "Onward" (which meant Jon Anderson's voice and Rick Wakeman's keyboards heard during a Yes concert for the first time since 2004), a photo montage with images of Squire through the years, aswirl in rainbows and constellations – and, maybe the crowning touch, Squire's signature white Rickenbacker bass guitar, alone in a spotlight just off center stage.
It was, in a word, breathtaking. This iPhone photo I snapped isn't great, but you get the idea.
Having predicted that gesture more or less correctly, I have to add that my guess at the evening's set list – first emailed among the aforementioned friends, and then posted to Facebook – couldn't have been much more wrong. Presuming that the band would opt for caution, based on sets played in past casino shows and co-headlining spots, I'd ventured this guess:
Intro: Firebird Suite Siberian Khatru I've Seen All Good People And You and I Onward [tribute to Chris Squire] Long Distance Runaround > The Fish (Schindleria Praematurus) Starship Trooper
Encore: Owner of a Lonely Heart Roundabout
Instead, Yes showed a bit more range and flair for adventure than I'd anticipated:
Onward (recording) [tribute to Chris Squire] Intro: Firebird Suite Don't Kill the Whale Tempus Fugit America (Simon & Garfunkel cover) Going for the One Time and a Word Clap I've Seen All Good People Siberian Khatru Owner of a Lonely Heart Roundabout
Encore: Starship Trooper
It didn't surprise me at all that Billy Sherwood could be a worthy stand-in for his friend and comrade. Not only had he served a previous stint in Yes during the 1990s (albeit on keyboards in the studio, and on second guitar onstage) and helped to engineer, mix, and/or produce several latter-day Yes albums (including the most recent, Heaven & Earth), but Sherwood also briefly ran a rock-solid West Coast band called Circa, whose other members were Yes drummer Alan White (initially), original Yes keyboardist Tony Kaye, and guitarist Jimmy Haun, whose extensive studio credits include work on that most contentious of all Yes albums, Union. (Wikipedia also reveals that Haun was responsible for the Yahoo yodeling theme and the Expedia dot commmm musical tag.)
Here's Circa in 2007 playing its Yes medley, which packs portions of 28 Yes songs into just under 40 minutes.
It will be interesting to see what comes next, beyond an already planned 2016 European tour on which the band will be playing the Fragile and Drama albums in their entirety. Most interviews with band members after the release of Heaven & Earth indicated that there was more music available; some even referred to an "epic-length" selection by Jon Davison and Geoff Downes.
Might Yes pursue any of this material, augmented with input from the quite capable Sherwood? Or will the band opt for an lengthy stint on the oldies circuit, likely to diminishing returns? Clearly it's too soon to say – but speaking as a fan, rather than as a professional music journalist, I do hope that the group considers taking the first path, hard as it might seem to imagine.
I feel like I've been been decrying and lamenting my lack of genuine blogging (as opposed to endless playlists) here for some years now. But frankly, I've been an especially miserable blogger this past year or so. I've rarely even managed the bare-minimum gesture of posting links to my professional writing.
I'm not altogether certain why I continue to think that this matters, but to me, at least, it does.
Naturally, there have been reasons. Five I can think of, easily.
One is professional: It's hard enough to be an editor overseeing three separate cultural categories (pop music, classical music, and visual art) at a major metropolitan daily paper – and trying one's best to participate as a writer, too – in just those hours of the week that are explicitly devoted to doing so.
One is partnership: I've got a brilliant wife who deserves my complete attention and full engagement when I am not at the office, or at one of the increasingly infrequent performances I attend.
One is paternal: I've got a fabulous kid, whose care and maintenance are higher priorities than any extraneous workload could be.
One is preventative: Overwork has always been a condition to which I fall prey easily and naturally. The results are not pretty, or comfortable, or satisfying.
And one is personal, verging on private: My transition from New York City writer-editor to Boston editor-writer has been protracted, complicated, and at times uncomfortable – more so than I'd anticipated.