from Peter Hammill - Loops and Reels (1983)

With the cosmos closed for renovations during the 1980's, Hammill turned to his bedroom experiments, with variable success, until one day, bereft of any specific skills to play it, he picked up a gifted kora, and decided to go tribal on "A Ritual Mask", which, for all its primitive crudeness (nobody gets to be a kora master on the fly, nor was that the intent obviously; it doesn't even sound like one), is not only quite the shamanistic must, but a precocious self-reflexive damnation of the predatory appropriation of artifacts from their cultural bedrocks (someone pre-aced his practical post-colonial studies dissertation).

It is also another example of how his adaptive strategies to face different musical times and modes of production could render such surprising and unique results every so often (would anyone have seen something like this coming from the most visionary proghead of his time? Hardly). In fact, considering he has been somewhat grasping at straws ever since his 2004 masterwork Incoherence (his recent association with dull proggers Isildur's Bane was quite the giveaway), and since, by that time, that was not something I was expecting he could still deliver either (his 90's production standards, while considered, could on occasion be a bit of a snooze), maybe a return to this abandoned aesthetic path could be just the thing for him to wake from his relative artistic slumber (though he has certainly more than earned it). Someone offer the man a mbira, is all I'm saying. 

Other than that, the entangled circularity of "The Moebius Loop" also reflects Hammill's willingness and capacity to draw his subject matters literally from the musical materials he was working with, in this case, tape loops, taken as a sort of operative metaphor for that flipping uncertainty we can get when pondering (too little, too late) on whether we might be on the right or wrong track at a given point in our lives, suggesting that the static certainties that can entrap us over changing circumstances might be more the result of cognitive laziness or emotional stuntedness than moral clarity. 

That conceptual and methodological focus is, in fact, what gives some coherence to this release, which is highlighted by Hammill's short but illuminating liner notes. However, these also end up exposing how the rest of this material (not taking into account the barely tweaked version of "In Slow Time", which is great, but should be heard in the context of the masterpiece with which he opened the 80's, A Black Box) wasn't worked by itself to the same self-sufficient clarity as those two pieces, somehow becoming dependent on that meta-discourse to shine some light on it, making it like pieces of modern art relying on statements of intent to guide our interpretation and persuade us to appreciate them. Maybe that can get the dilettante in me to find them a bit more interesting, but that's also the very thing that can run further against them ever being able to spark an unprompted emotion, and for all the tangents he took (for some reason he himself deemed this "abnormal work"), that is surely not the Hammill way.

from Locanda delle Fate - Forse le lucciole non si amano più (1977)

The first track from this album, "A volte un istante di quiete" (thankfully, an instrumental), stands at the edge of classic Italian prog, looking at the neo-prog that's to come (particularly in the duller midsection), but still holds its own. Unfortunately, by the second track they go for the jump, and the results are as glossy as that cover. 

Ironically, the title of the record ("maybe fireflies don't love each other anymore") always made me wonder if it could be a reference to Pasolini's famous article that expounded on the disappearance of fireflies as a symptom of the destructive modernization of Italian society (more specifically, of the socionature of its traditional ways of life); but if it were, it would seem to end up suggesting how classic prog had become an ever more escapist genre, resolving all social, political, even civilizational contradictions facing contemporary societies through a retreat into fantasy land (to where, clearly, multiple and renewed forms of denial continue to push us, expecting everything will simply work out, with no idea how); a land where the coming extinction of Lampyridae was more likely to be poetically framed as a newfound inclination for asexuality (maybe they just wanted to work on their inner insect selves) than as one more neglectful side-effect of catastrophically short-sighted anthropocentric planetary engineering. 

As such, conceivable good intentions aside, with all its professionalism at the service of a nostalgic aesthetic (which can in itself feel redolent of a conflicting mix of artistic naivete and commercial savviness), this, like so many "prog" records of its time, showed that, for those who took an actually progressive view of musical creation (and maybe of its dialectical entanglement with social organization itself, while we're at it), punk or no punk, it was definitely time for a change.

(One of the very few fireflies I ever saw in the woods near me; always isolated females, advertising their loneliness like a neon sign. Who could look at that horny little face and say she's to blame for not hooking up?)

from Helium - The Magic City (1997)

While more idiosyncratic than their debut, Helium's second and final album, promising to usher us into an indie fantasy world, also came short of amazing me with its sleight of hands. Nonetheless, having still managed, in the midst of it, to materialize out of thin air some thoroughly unexpected 8 minutes of Mary Timony just happily rummaging through her bag of guitar tricks, I can't very well say I've closed the book on her either; even if I doubt that, like most people trying to have a successful career in music, she ever dared giving in wholly to her innermost geeky musical inclinations, which is what "The Revolution of Hearts Pts. I & II" made me wish she felt she could. 

from Helium - The Dirt of Luck (1995)

Throwing Muses, of course; Breeders, alright; Sleater Kinney, sure; but in the fruitful female-fronted indie-band scene, when I get to Belly or this here Helium things do start to sound a bit reiterative for me, what with the stiff guitar chord progressions (even though Mary Timony does try to flourish them up here and there), or the sedate affectation in the vocals. In fact, other than the evocative piano miniature "Comet #9", the song that caught my ear here the most is even called Cannon..., wait, no, Superball, that's it, not "Cannonball", "Superball".

None of this is bad, mind you, and I do get hints that there is a differentiated musical personality lurking under it, but it could have been pushed much more to the front, along with those few musical ideas and elements that fleetingly tried to evade hegemonic 1990's alternative rock tropes, only to keep coming back for more, like people who can't decide between the smothering comfort of being in a relationship and the freedom of being by their sorry selves.

Anyway, I will most likely check out some more Timony stuff at some point (I heard The Golden Dove years ago, I think I enjoyed it, but apparently not to the point of making a point of returning to it soon), but this one, I feel, fades too much into an already too familiar musical landscape to be able to make its own case. Perhaps it could have benefited (in what concerns my appreciation) from my having heard it sooner - first exposure, with its biographical resonance and subjective novelty effect, being a significant factor in our relative judgement of related artistic works -; although, by definition, it is logically impossible for me to ascertain if that would in fact have made a difference; but, as the socratic acknowledgement of what we don't or can't know is a foundation for knowledge in itself, and the awareness of our cognitive limitations and perceptual biases seems to have become one of the most fundamental forms of personal growth we can aspire to these days, I think I'll just embrace the doubt.

from Ilitch - Periodikmindtrouble (1978/2000)

I wouldn't go so far as to say that while Thierry Müller/Ilitch's next (and much more vivid) album is the one with "suicides" on the title (10 of them, no less), it's this one that makes you contemplate what Camus deemed the only truly serious philosophical problem; but obviously, in saying I wouldn't say it, I'm saying the thought has rhetorically crossed my mind, and the fact is that the prolonged experience of listening to (most of) Periodikmindtrouble (despite the title being on point) can be rather wearisome (particularly in its extended reissued form). 

The first disk is the most taxing, a collection of barely formed electronic sketches, sounding both minimal and haphazard, and stretched beyond reason, as they seem to exist in a state of drooling numbness (which I can relate to, but don't necessarily enjoy), where the perception of time is halted, and a track being 3 or 25 minutes long feels entirely arbitrary (or its own point, as if experimenting with pointlessness was the response an unresponsive universe was asking for, or the way to achieve true existential homeostasis). 

The second one is fairly more endurable, with the use of the harmonium insufflating the atmosphere, and a few ragged guitar lines bringing it occasionally closer to Heldon/Richard Pinhas territory; although, most of it still tends to feel static, bereft of strong emotional resonances, let alone of an interest in developing musical ideas. 

Of course, that may have been the point all along, but as "Impasse raga" suggests, adding to its programmatic title an anguished pulse that brings us a step closer to some kind, any kind, of breakthrough, the aesthetic paralysis underlying this music could have been excavated much further to actually touch on its emotional roots. 

On the other hand, if Müller didn't manage to do so, perhaps to expect more would ultimately amount to a form of blaming the victim: judging by the missed opportunities on this one, it is apparent that at this point he was simply unwilling or unable to go beyond the symptoms. No wonder, then, that when he did manage to go there, just one suicide wouldn't cut it.

from Annexus Quam - Beziehungen (1972)

No one can hear you scream in space, we know, but judging by "Trobluhs el e Isch", a cool space-free-jazz number, Annexus Quam were determined to prove you could hear them skronk. Alas, after the launch, and unlike all those sci-fi movies filled with audible space battles, the absence of atmosphere wasn't having any of it, so they just ensconced themselves back in the ship, in a room with no view, feeling deflated, and biding their time with some generic improvs that took very little from their imagined surroundings. 
Not to make any other sort of equivalence, particularly of a moral nature (this record is certainly doing no harm), it's just like the ultimate form of affluence porn that is seeing the richest men alive burning up the ill-begotten (however legally, which actually makes it worse; that a social system can foster the extreme individual accumulation of wealth that can only be collectively produced) rough equivalent of some poor country's GDP to literally take to the skies and happily watch the planet they contributed to exhaust, preparing for their great escape to Mars, reject the rest of us down here on its crust like human grafts: I fail to see any good reason to leave Earth for this.

from David Shire - The Conversation (1974/2001)

 

As usual for soundtracks, even for one of Coppola's (discreetly) greatest films (beware, spoilers ahead), The Conversation suffers from consisting mostly of minor variations on a main theme. Even when it breaks free from it, for a couple of snappy jazz numbers, it kills the mood produced by said theme which, in itself, is fantastic, and (like that final panoramic shot, going back and forth, as if mimicking a security camera, of Gene Hackman playing his sax in the middle of a presumably bugged apartment futilely ripped to shreds) perfectly embodies the film's atmosphere of ultimately resigned surrender to all-pervading suspicion, surveillance, menace and paranoia (obviously, a now unrelatable 1970's problem). Still, once is enough. A few variations do try to reach for some unusual tools, venturing timidly into musique concrète, but all of it is always cut short by a constant return to that inescapable theme, whose recurrence could even be said to bear a certain thematic pertinence. However, when its execution follows (no matter how tastefully) the principle of least artistic effort, it can still make you rapidly feel that, like good old Gene, you're just being made to run around in circles.

from Bacamarte / Mário Neto - Sete Cidades (1999)

 

from Bacamarte - Depois do fim (1983)

Mário Neto was obviously a skilled guitarist, but that's not enough to elevate this rather generic 1980's brazilian prog affair (where there's not even anything specifically 'brazilian' to begin with). While it has gained something of a cult status within the 'community', I actually think the album Neto released in 1999, Sete Cidades, where he gets to show off all he wants, has a higher ratio of interesting compositional and instrumental bits; even if, overall, it is clearly under-produced (maybe to its own benefit) and marred by similar problems as this one, mostly its all round lyrical ingenuousness.

Anyway, it's actually funny how, for a genre that's reputed for being complex and pretentious, you often get in these records a single track that demonstrates, by contrast, how often proggers dialed back the adventurousness they were capable of, to meet some sort of commercial expectations, thus aesthetically cancelling what the genre was supposed to be all about. Here, it is "Controvérsia", which, if you can give some of those badly dated farty moog sounds a pass, is a short instrumental track that possibly has as much musical moxie as the rest of the album combined, because, apparently, the market ruled that having a girl sing corny melodies about the end of the world (no matter how topical that keeps getting) over synth chords with some soloing in between is "progressive". I beg to differ.

from Modern Music Band - Modern Music Band (1972)

Here's one of those 1970's bands whose eagerness to be "modern" (which this swedish outfit equated with putting together some brass/hammond-driven proto-progressive pop-rock songs, à la early days Chicago) actually entailed that their music quickly sounded rather passé. Neither exciting nor offensive, all the songs just pass me by, and the instrumental breaks aren't given enough time to showcase anything other than standard competence, which is a shame, because, judging by the progressive jazzy intro "Betjänten", if the band had been left to their own design, without having to pay lip service to some hey-I'm-hip vocalizing, I could see this being an album I would be happy running my mouth about.