Chewing Pine

Greensleeves 30th Anniversary Mix Tape (1977-2007)

I only missed this one by two years. Thanks to the dudes over at Pathway to Unknown Worlds, who just re-posted this, we can all enjoy it again. Of course, since this mix spans three decades the quality varies. But the end of this thing is made up for by the beginning…

01. hugh mundell – let´s all unite
02. augustus pablo – up warrika hill
03. scientist – below the belt
04. wailing souls – firehouse rock
05. black uhuru – i love king selassie
06. eek-a-mouse – ganja smuggling
07. yellowman – two to six super mix
08. clint eastwood & general saint – stop that train
09. john holt – police in helicopter -
10. barrington levy – under me sensi
11. nitty gritty – legal
12. half pint – mr. landlord -
13. gregory isaacs & dennis brown – big all around
14. shabba ranks – just be good to me -
15. freddie mcgregor – this carry go bring come
16. cocoa tea – love me truly
17. bounty killer – roots, reality & culture
18. garnett silk – zion in a vision
19. anthony b – raid di barn
20. morgan heritage – one bingi man
21. sizzla – no time to gaze
22. elephant man – replacement killer
23. beenie man – 100 dollar bag
24. ward 21- ganja smoke
25. wayne marshall – overcome
26. vybz kartel – sweet to the belly
27. frisco kid – why
28. beenie man – come again
29. busy signal – step out

Download | Stream

Nancy Wilson x the Greyboy All Stars

What Happened to Television? isn’t new any more…but after realizing that “How Glad I Am” was a cover a bit of comparison became necessary. The live Greyboy All Stars version isn’t nearly as funky as the studio version – either kinda beat the original though.

Nancy Wilson will be staring in the dollar bin at your local record store this weekend…

BLOGLOAD: What Happened to Television?

Blueprint’s Sign Language

Another assist from the Beatbox Radio Show. Looks like the new instrumental Blueprint disc. Only 500 were pressed. Cop it HERE.

Blogload: Sign Language

Gabriel Teodros – Lovework (Massline Media, 2007)

Let’s begin with the fact that the track listing is all fucked up on here and I can easily say that after a while I gave up trying to figure out what was going on and just enjoyed the music.

If a consumer was to simply catch an earful of this release from the Seattle emcee, one could easily and justifiably categorize this as “conscious hip hop.” That term has been handed out to basically every rapper who thinks deeply, so it isn’t a slight. And further, Teodros wants to eliminate such categorization, or at-least extricate himself from it.

Lovework goes along way in explaining the rappers background, beliefs, ruminations and fondness’s. What it doesn’t do is remove him from any typical categorization. The production and guests – Moka Only and Common Market/Blue Scholars members – only solidifies the link between Teodros, the jazz, funk and soul that make up the beats and whatever it is about “conscious hip-hop” that he’s attempting to distance himself from.

Instead of examining this as a slab of ‘90s style jazz infused rap (or whatever else it could be lumped together with), it actually serves to better familiarize the world with a newer hip hop scene in Seattle. Not generally thought of when considering musics other than rock, hip hop has been pouring out of this area during the last few years. And while some of the higher profile groups are on display throughout Lovework, they all deserve examination. This release, just as other recent Seattle hip hop ventures, doesn’t go a long way to align itself with the Anticon/Def Jux contingent, but creates something very genuine, adept and true that many could use as a road-map to some sort of Northwestern enlightenment.

dälek – Abandoned Language (Ipecac, 2007)

To begin with Dälek could actually be outer-space mutants comprised of metal objects. Seems’ pretty nasty. But in this world, Dälek is a rap duo that releases albums on a rock/metal label.

Beginning with the brightly colored and seemingly happy album From Filthy Tongue of God and Griots, this group has enamored and confused left-field hip-hoppers. Being matched with Patton’s Ipecac label is actually a sensible concept, much like Sage Francis or Eyedea signing to Epitaph. There is a white audience for this music and every group can take steps towards reaching out.

While the other acts mentioned have a bit more of a palatable sound, Dälek is loud and disturbing both musically and lyrically. On Abandoned Language, dälek (the emcee as opposed to Dälek the group) continues his unique criticism of American culture and the people that have constructed it.

In other critiques of this new disc, some have commented upon the fact that the group has toned down its’ trademark noise-some production. But luckily, the horns on “Starved for Truth” sound as if they have been culled from either Beefheart or Pere Ubu for inclusion on the track. This release seems related to El-P’s last slab in the sense that the commercial concept of music is present; dälek is reaching more people than before, but he seems at odds with it. Once he prods, “Sales are the mark of the illest emcee”.

Even more than all of these tirades on politics and the games we play, the idea of human communication is broached over and over again. The verse of dälek’s on “Bricks Crumble” is looped and played against itself, creating a disquieting form of interruption. He still speaks the same words, with the same meaning, but now there is the possibility of hearing something, a certain intonation perhaps, that escaped the listener before. Again, in “Tarnished,” the verse that dälek expounds is muffled and low in the mix, making music a more prominent and immediate form of communicating. In that same song though, the listener receives the thesis of most underground hip-hop screeds; “the core of man is tarnished.”

Busdriver – RoadKillOverCoat (Epitaph Records, 2007)

Being Busdriver can’t be the easiest job ever. Surely, he’s expected to rapidly answer any and all questions he encounters – whether they’re about music, politics or whatever – in a fast and well verbalized fashion. Perhaps that’s made him stronger seeing as his releases have maintained an intense pace, unique timbre and thoughtful content amid production that makes the masses uncomfortable.

His first full length for punk label turned indie-stalwart, Epitaph, finds the production values in about the same place as previous efforts offered by Mush. The odd warble of Bds’s sung choruses have not been played up per-say, but seem more frequent here on songs like “Secret Skin” and “Pompous Posies”. His curious flow is still intact as well and on “Mr. Mistakes” Bd pauses rarely as words flow seemingly effortlessly; shuffling from his mind to his mouth and to our speakers.

The most amusing, but not most playful track proffered here is “Sunshowers”. The electronic beat is background to Bd talking about art school; how it isn’t all that terrific and how difficult it is to create for a living. A further example of Bd being mischievous comes in the form of a sample on “The Troglodyte Wins,” which features a sample reminiscent of the portion of “Annie” sample in Jay-Z’s “Hard Knock Life”.

As if previous releases from this man haven’t been entertaining, RoadKillOverCoat represents a step forward in visibility for this man, who probably should be rolling in money and big contracts, but may never get to because of his adherence to his own aesthetic.

Tracklisting:
01 – Casting Agents and Cowgirls
02 – Less Yes’s, More No’s
03 – Kill Your Employer (Recreational Paranoia Is The Sport Of Now)
04 – Ethereal Driftwood
05 – Secret Skin
06 – Sun Shower
07 – Go Slow (w/ Bianca Casady)
08 – The Troglodyte Wins
09 – Pompous Posies! Your Party’s No Fun
10 – (Bloody Paw On The) Kill Floor
11 – Mr. Mistakes (Bested By the Whisper Chasm)
12 – Dream Catcher’s Mitt

Aesop Rock – All Day: Nike + Original Run (Nike Sport Music, 2007)

(This originally appeared in Impose)

If you’re horrified by the concept of one of the undergrounds top tier rappers becoming freelance beat-makers for Nike, don’t be.

Most assuredly, Aesop gotta fuck-ton of cash for the project that this global sweat shop manager proposed. The work, while different from Aesop’s main focus, probably proved to be a strenuous one and suggests that his bump into a new tax bracket was warranted.

The requirements Nike foisted upon the hero of this review were slight: a specific b.p.m. count, forty-five minutes in duration. So, to a certain extent, Aesop was supplied with a structure to his project, but creating that long of a continuous string of music must have been daunting. The result, though, actually far surpasses Bazooka Tooth (Def Jux, 2003). Describing the overture that Aesop creates here seems almost un-needed. If you’re familiar with the beats he generally rhymes over, you can guess at the content of All Day: Nike + Original Run. Occasionally, there are lulls during the proceedings, but that’s to be expected. It, however, must be mentioned that from 15:29 through 17:25 Aesop repeatedly says “O.K.” once per bar. That’s a minor complaint when the other forty-three minutes of his work are far superior to most behind-the-boards complacency.

The Wally Shoup Qtet: Drawn Apart

A musician must find his space in the world. Some are satisfied in one spot. Some feel an inclination to move around, to ramble. But these experiences affect their playing. During this tumult, the innate human endeavor to find companionship presents itself as a doubly difficult task for musicians. In addition to finding a mate to live with and not want to fight, a musical mate must also be sought. In some ways this might be a more difficult task than finding love. No, you don’t have to live in close proximity or even in the same city, but communication, interaction and understanding is still tantamount to success. With the various outlets for free music, a strain proffered by Coltrane and his disciples, Seattle services not just Bumbershoot. Seattle Improvised Music, the various ‘burbs and Anacortes Jazz gatherings as well as the Earshot Festival provide release for local and national jazz players. Since 1918 and the Grand Benefit Ball, hosted by the NAACP, featuring Miss Lillian Smith’s Jazz Band, Seattle fosters those who traverse the jazz idiom. Coming from various corners of the country and the state, the Wally Shoup Quartet stands as one of Seattle’s most forward looking ensembles. The European influence of Gust Burns on piano, polyrhythmic infatuations manifesting themselves in the appendages of Greg Campbell, East Coast assuredness come North West self reliance in the round tones of Ruben Radding’s bass and Wally Shoup’s unnerving energy create an unequalled squalling and beautiful mess of sound. Too bad everyone doesn’t call the same place home any longer. The two main rovers of the group, Radding and Shoup have called enough different cities home to lose count. Something led both of these men here and something separated them as well.

Though more than a decade earlier than bassist Ruben Radding, Wally Shoup began exploring the noises he was able to coax from a sax in the early seventies. It seems the time that he chose to begin playing allowed him the fortunate opportunity of discovering music during an era when musicians were still able to amass label support for bizarre endeavors. Beefheart was between the enigmatic Trout Mask Replica and Lick My Decals Off, Baby. And while Coltrane had exited this world to the next, his disciples raged into the following decade with Pharaoh Sanders releasing Thembi and Village of the Pharaohs. This was the musical backdrop in which Shoup “began practicing daily” and “exploring the intricacies of the instrument”. The search was on for same-thinking players. And early enough a musical partner was proffered in Ross Rabin. Together these two, along with Keith Gardner would release Scree-Run Waltz in the early ‘80s.

As a resultant effect of recording and self-releasing Scree-Run Waltz, a twenty something noise advocate from New York began following the career of Wally Shoup. This personage, Thurston Moore, who would become acclaimed and captivate the ears of slackers across the country, would not be a consistent collaborator. Eventually, another New Yorker would. For a time at least.

At about this same time as this tape only release, in our nations’ capitol a young Radding was exercising his musicality within the “intensely serious” band, Age of Consent, before moving on to play with Dave Grohl in Dain Bramage. Each act was on the effete side of Punk, falling into the unfortunately named New Wave category.

While a Grohl collaborator, Radding, prompted to an encore in 1987, improvised a song after running through the entirety of the Dain Bramage cannon.

“All agreed that it was excellent,” Radding expounded, “but the others in the band refused to ever do it again!” Perhaps due to the uncertainty of the outcome, Radding’s band mates relegated him to servitude under others’ constructed musical writings.

Even if Shoup was a bit antiquated for what was ‘70s punk, Radding grew up amidst the flood of D.C. hardcore bands and in one way or another absorbed some of the attitudes that punk glorified: “anti-consumerism, self-determination and lack of aesthetic rules”. Championing those ideas was and will continue to coalesce scenes. But free-jazz or improvisers are still only figuring out how to take advantage of the market that still buys Sun Ship or Bap-Tizum. Radding observes that “nowadays the musicians in the jazz world are catching up with where we were 25 years ago, starting their own record labels, booking their own tours. Any music that doesn’t get much corporate or mass audience support is going to operate this way, with the artists and hardcore enthusiasts taking matters into their own hands.” No one can argue this point. And in a round about way, Shoup and Radding think the same thing, express it differently verbally and similarly musically.

Of the many avenues Shoup uses as a creative release, his website plays host to a few of his writings on music. In one essay he describes the relation between Punk and Free-Jazz. It’s interesting to note that he differentiates the Sex Pistols, the Damned and other assorted groups, as Punk Rock, not as Punk. Beefheart, he postulates, is Punk. And while that’s hard to argue, Beefheart was also a number of other things and is now a recluse. Ostensibly, the root of what Shoup seeks to uncover is the lack of precedent for tracing a music backwards. Beefheart was punk. There was not an antecedent. For that matter Zappa or Syd Barrett can be referred to as punk because what they did was an aural fuck all. The British Punk faire he mentions is criticized for substituting posturing for musical proclivity. Punk, in its most obvious form will keep the basic above ground musical tenets, which Shoup identifies as having a “keeper of the beat, player of the right notes at the right time in the right way.” The point he misses is that, Beefheart may have created a stirring racket that any listener in the ‘60s or ‘70s found alluring and subversive, but he never barked the lines “Fuck this and fuck that/Fuck it all and fuck a fucking brat” as Johnny Rotten did.

Radding’s musical experiences were enough prodding to transplant himself from D.C. to New York where his life became “about sitting alone in a room with a keyboard, which I don’t play worth a damn, scribbling dots and lines on paper, which no one would ever hear,” he sarcastically recalls. The scholarly approach to music was not an advantageous one to Radding. Luckily, while working in a bookstore, he discovered Anthony Braxton. His playing was changed irrevocably.

Finding that his experiences in D.C. and New York had taken their course and after a brief layover in Missoula, Radding made it to Seattle in the spring of 1997. Burnt out from travel and his musical endeavors, Radding sought a break from action and settled in the North West. Bereft of his dormant musical inclinations, Radding eventually sought out solace in improvising, finding Shoup and his musical brethren.

Discovering a complimentary player is perpetually difficult. Add to that fact, that the form is non existent and this compounds the problem. Enough similarities existed in style and concept that Shoup immediately knew he “found a great player” after musically conversing with Radding. The immediacy and rhythmic irregularities, which in this music stand for regularity, endeared Radding to Shoup and countless other groups that he has played with. The bassist explains this by supposing, “I have a tendency in my playing to imply form and others pick up on that.” Even amidst the maelstrom of sound Radding’s bass techniques manage to collect any ensembles thoughts and terrestrialize other players’ warblings.

“I don’t define the music material as much as I define how it will be shaped and developed,” figures Radding.

Coming from New York, coincidentally an incubator for Free Jazz and Punk, Radding possessed a different perspective and had different experiences, like being involved with the precursor of the now defunct club Tonic. “The jazz scene was shockingly conservative,” Radding recalls about Seattle upon his arrival. “The Jazz scene and the Free Improv communities were not as integrated as they were in NY,” he continued via e-mail. Since leaving the North West and venturing back to Brooklyn, which he calls the “center of this music”, Radding has played with a variety of groups ranging in sound from Klezmer back to more Jazz oriented ensembles. “I prefer to be in New York for many reasons, the pool of talent, the diversity, the challenges.”

The Quartet of Shoup, Radding, Burns and Campbell gave Seattle an improv group that equals the progressive tag that Seattle has acquired. Although Radding now calls the East Coast home, the group has recorded and released an album entitled The Levitation Shuffle. The settings that the band creates for Shoup’s horn become familiar, allowing conversations between players to develop. At once the band can be caterwauling and the next moment, Shoup drops out and development amongst three musicians ensues. Suppressed and quiet explorations without a leader provide needed breaks from louder actions and serve to punctuate Shoup’s re-entry into the fold. There is a hint of David Thomas (Pere Ubu), who might be considered a punk himself, in Shoup’s horn work. Much like the vocal entanglements Thomas ensnared himself in, Burns and Shoup frequently arouse imagery of family infighting replete with emotional outbursts. The Quartet, and its recording, question what can and should be considered proper playing. It challenges the listener to not only appreciate the sounds that they hear, but to make it through the recording and view the distinctive tracks as a single entity. The Wally Shoup Quartet was a single entity, briefly. Now only chance circumstances reunite them.

Odd Nosdam – Level Live Wires (Anticon, 2007)

(This originally appeared in Rock-a-Rolla)

The scattered aural aesthetic of Anticon is forever weaving in and out of its past. Level Live Wires works hard to sit itself firmly in early Anticon styles while still trying to accommodate newer listeners who are familiar with some of the more rock flavored releases of the collective. The more droney aspects of this slab are in relation to the latter day releases and include a consistent vocal throughout “Fat Hooks” that somehow, tangentially, refers to Rhys Chatham or Lou Reed. In all fairness though, the beats presented by Nosdam include dirty, earthy samples that can shoot images of old vinyl into listeners’ heads as on “Kill Tone” and its sequel “The Kill Tone Two”. In the same manner that the producer uses simplistic hip-hop and assimilates it into an even more minimalist structure, he has created a vast array of track titles that are obviously interrelated. “Burner” and “Up in Flames” are a prime example of this work with the two following each other closely and sharing a very similar tempo. Criticism aside, this disc can work as something to drive your car, read a book, take a nap or just jam out to; all the while, Odd Nosdam pushes his label towards a return to form.

Tracklisting:
01 – On
02 – Kill Tone
03 – We Dead
04 – Freakout 3
05 – Fat Hooks
06 – Blast
07 – The Kill Tone Two
08 – Burner
09 – Up In Flames
10 – Slight Return
11 – Off

Mushroom – Joint Happening/Yesterday, I Saw You Kissing Tiny Flowers…

(This originally appeared in Rock-a-Rolla)

On every release, Mushroom has a different purpose stated throughout their musical excursions. At some points they do want to sound is if Krautrock was a validly popular musical offshoot. And at others, the sound of their city, San Fran, in past days becomes the focus. These two releases, Joint Happening and Yesterday, I Saw You Kissing Tiny Flowers…, shows the structural elements of the bands compositions being based around themselves and then someone else’s talents. On Joint Happening, the band is joined by Eddie Gale. With this addition the band doggedly attaches itself to early ‘70s fusion. Mushroom’s explorations often seem looser, if that’s possible, then much of what was being birthed in the ‘70s. Frequently the sound is not as tough and funky, “Our Love” for example. But on “I was Torn Down at the Dance Place, Shaved Head at the Organ”, the entire groove is based around the break beat. Now, all of these things occur organically, but on Yesterday, the band occasionally submits their sound to the leadership of Levy. Her performance won’t necessarily interest fans of the instrumentals even when Afro-beat, Kraut jams and somewhat sloppy grooves are all present.